Western Plains Dogon

The Dogon dialects of the western plains below the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali are mutually intelligible. They are sometimes called the Kan Dogon because they use the word kan (also spelled kã) for varieties of speech. The dialects are:

• Tomo kã
• Teŋu kã
• Togo kã

Western Plains Dogon
Kan Dogon
Region	Mali, Burkina Faso
Native speakers	(260,000 cited 1998)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Dogon Plains Western Plains Dogon
Dialects	Tomo Kan Tengu Kan Togo Kan
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: dtm – Tomo Kan dtk – Tene Kan
Glottolog	west2508

The latter two are traditionally subsumed under the name Tene kã (Tene Kan, Tene Tingi), but Hochstetler separates them because the three varieties are about equidistant.

There are a quarter million speakers of these dialects, about evenly split between Tomo Kan and Tene Kan, making this the most populous of the Dogon languages. There are a few Tomo-speaking villages just across the border in Burkina Faso.

Phonology

Consonants

Tomo-Kan consonants^[2]

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	k	ʔ
	voiced/nasal	b	d	d͡ʒ	g	ʔ̃
Fricative	voiceless	(ɸ)	s			h
	voiced		(z)
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Tap			ɾ
Approximant	central	w	l	j
	nasal	w̃		(j̃)

• Consonant germination also occurs frequently among sounds [kː lː nː tː].
• /z/ can only occur among loanwords.
• /ɸ/ is interchangeable with /h/.

Togo-Kan consonants^[3]

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	(t͡ʃ)	k	(ʔ)
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	g
Fricative		(f)	s		(ɣ)	(h)
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Tap	central		ɾ
	nasal		ɾ̃
Approximant	central	w	l	j
	nasal	w̃		j̃

• Consonant sound /t͡ʃ/ only rarely occurs and in almost absent.
• Consonant sounds [z ʃ ʒ] are absent, except in loanwords.
• /ɡ/ can be realized as a fricative [ɣ] between vowel sounds /a ɔ/.
• Sounds [f h] only occur from loanwords, and are interchangeable.
• Glottal sound [ʔ] can only occur as an element in some reduplicated forms of vowel-initial words, or between vowels within a word.

Vowels

	Oral		Nasal
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close	i iː	u uː	ĩ ĩː	ũ ũː
Close-mid	e eː	o oː	ẽ ẽː	õ õː
Open-mid	ɛ ɛː	ɔ ɔː	ɛ̃ ɛ̃ː	ɔ̃ ɔ̃ː
Open	a aː		ã ãː

• In Tomo Kan, an extra central vowel sound [ʉ] is also attested possibly as a result of /i/ preceding a nasalised segment or a /u/. It may also regularly be pronounced as [u] as well.^[2]

References

1. Tomo Kan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Tene Kan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Dyachkov, Vadim (2019). A Grammar of Tomo Kan Dogon.
3. Heath, Jeffrey (2015). A Grammar of Togo Kan. University of Michigan.

• Blench, Roger (2005). "A survey of Dogon languages in Mali: Overview". OGMIOS: Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages. 3.02 (26): 14–15. Retrieved 2011-06-30..
• Hochstetler, J. Lee; Durieux, J.A.; E.I.K. Durieux-Boon (2004). Sociolinguistic Survey of the Dogon Language Area (PDF). SIL International. Retrieved 2011-06-30.