The Mende language is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken both by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca. Mende belongs to the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo language family. In 1921, Kisimi Kamala invented a syllabary for Mende he called Ki-ka-ku. The script achieved widespread use for a time but has largely been replaced with an orthography using the Latin alphabet.

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Mende
• Bibiliography on Mende
• [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mende.htm The Mende syllabary (Omniglot)