The Bamabara language, primarily spoken in Mali is a member of the Niger-Congo language family, specifically within the Mande branch. According to the eLinguistics.net analysis using specific software modules to assess linguistic relationships, the five languages most similar to Bambara are Mandinka, Jula, Fula, Mende, and Kpelle.
- Mandinka (81.2)
Mandinka is one of the closest relatives of Bambara. Spoken by the Mandinka people across Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire, it is mutually intelligible with Bambara to a significant extent. Both languages share similar grammar, vocabulary, and tonal systems. - Jula (63.7)
Jula is another close relative of Bambara, widely spoken in Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Mali. Like Bambara, it serves as a trade language and lingua franca in West Africa. The two languages are so similar that speakers of Bambara and Jula can often understand each other without formal study. - Fula (43.9)
Spoken by the Fulani people across a vast area of West Africa, Fula has significant similarities with Bambara, despite belonging to a different linguistic branch of the Niger-Congo family. The similarities arise from centuries of interaction, trade, and cultural exchange. As a result, they have shared loanwords and expressions. - Mende (39.6)
Spoken primarily in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Mende is another member of the Mande family, so it is closely related to Bambara. While it is not mutually intelligible with Bambara, Mende shares deep lexical similarities. These connections highlight the shared historical migration patterns of their peoples. - Kpelle (34.7)
Kpelle, spoken in Liberia and Guinea, is also part of the Mande family and exhibits strong affinities with Bambara. Like Mende, Kpelle is not mutually intelligible with Bambara but shares common linguistic features such as verb morphology, tonal systems, and syntactic structures.
(to be considered for the list, the language must be spoken by at least one million people)
If possible, I’ll kindly request for Italian, please. Also, I feel like it could be interesting to see the modern languages most similar to classical Latin, as that is a language that has deeply shaped the modern world.