1994
X, 322 pp., Index French-Dendi
Text language: French
This small dictionary (about 2,500 lexical entries) deals with Dendi, a dialect of Songhay. The main dialects of the so called southern group of Songhay (Western Songhay, Eastern Songhay, Kaado, and Zarma) are spoken along the middle part of the Niger valley in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, whereas some dialects of the so called northern group are heard in the Saharan oases as far as Algeria.
The Dendi dialect is chiefly spoken at the south-eastern marges of the Songhay region, i.e. in Benin, Niger, Nigeria, and Ghana. The present book is a brief lexical, grammatical, and phonological description of the Dendi-Songhay dialect> of Djougou (Benin), which is closely related to the Dendi dialects of Salaga (Northern Ghana) and Kandi/Parakou (Benin).
The author gained results througth his field studies in Dahomey/Benin and Ghana, which he was able to undertake with the help of the Czecheslovakian Academy of Science (CSAV Prague). Within the scope of the Collaborative Research Centre 268 (Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main) these preliminary results were later revised and enlarged by other informants on Dendi.
Under these links you will find further grammatical descriptions and text collections of the Songhay language group in West Africa:
