Relation to Niger-Congo

Mande does not share the morphology characteristic of most of the Niger-Congo family, such as the noun-class system. Nor are there many recognized cognates in core vocabulary between Mande and Niger-Congo. Accordingly, Dimmendaal (2008) argues that the evidence for inclusion is slim, and that for now Mande is best considered an independent family. The same view is held by Güldemann (2018).

Without definitively

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