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A Mooré speaker speaking Mooré and Dioula, recorded in Taiwan.
Video 1 min:23 sec, 2018.

Mooré[3][4] is a Gur language of the Oti–Volta branch and one of the three official languages of Burkina Faso. It is the language of the Mossi people, spoken by approximately 6.46 million people in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, Niger, Mali, Togo, and Senegal as a native language, but with many more L2 speakers. Mooré is spoken as a first or second language by over 50% of the Burkinabé population and is the main language in the capital city of Ouagadougou. It is closely related to Frafra, and less related to Dagbani.

The Lord’s Prayer in Mooré translation (Church of the Pater Noster)
Blackboard with text in Mooré, including use of the letter Ʋ (v with hook)

Phonology

The Mooré language consists of the following sounds:[5]

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close close i u
near-close ɪ ʊ
Close-mid e o
Open a
Notes
  • All vowels (other than /e/ and /o/) can also be nasalized.
  • All vowels (oral and nasal) can be short or long.
  • Other linguists include the vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/; here, they are analysed as diphthongs, (/ɛ/ is considered to be ea and /ɔ/ is considered to be oa).

Consonants

Mooré consonant phonemes
Labial Alveolar Postalveolar
/ palatal 		Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ɲ
Stop voiceless p t k ʔ
voiced b d ɡ
Fricative voiceless f s h
voiced v z
Liquid r
Approximant l j w
Notes
  • The semivowel /j/ ⟨y⟩ is pronounced [ɲ] (palatal nasal) in front of nasal vowels.

Orthography

In Burkina Faso, the Mooré alphabet uses the letters specified in the national Burkinabé alphabet. It can also be written with the newly-devised Goulsse alphabet.

Burkinabé Mooré alphabet
A ʼ B D E Ɛ F G H İ Ɩ K L M N O P R S T U Ʋ V W Y Z
a ʼ b d e ɛ f g h i ɩ k l m n o p r s t u ʋ v w y z
Phonetic values
a ʔ b d e ɛ f ɡ h i ɪ k l m n o p r s t u ʊ v w j z

References

Citations

  1. ^ Mooré at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ “Proposal to encode the Minim Dag Noore script in the UCS” (PDF). unicode.org.
  3. ^ “More, language of the Mossi tribe; phrase book”. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
  4. ^ School, Live Lingua-Online Language. “FSI More(Mossi) Basic Language Course”. Live Lingua.
  5. ^ cf. Kabore (1985): (p.44) for the consonants, (p.85-86) for the vowels.

Works cited

  • Kabore, Raphael (1985). Essai d’analyse de la langue mooré (parler de Wàogdgò: Ouagadougou) (Thesis) (in French). University of Paris 7.

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