Mende, Bandi, and Loko belong to the southwestern group of Mande and are spoken in Sierra Leone/Liberia, northeastern Liberia, and north-central Sierra Leone, respectively.
Figures are incomplete for this group. UBS (1982) notes 76,000 Loko speakers and 40,000 Bandi speakers. UBS (1978) notes 940,000 Mende speakers in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Grimes (1996) gives figures of 1,260,000 speakers of Mende, 119,000 speakers of Loke, and (citing L. Vanderaa CRC 1991) 70,800 speakers of Bandi.
Mende is a regional lingua franca and first language in southern Sierra Leone; it is one of the four major languages of Sierra Leone. Bandi and Loko are local first languages.
No standard orthography exists for any of these languages, although Mende is supported by a sizable dictionary.
Dwyer suggests separate sets of learning materials for Mende, Bandi, and Loko, with priority given to Mende, the language/dialect with the largest number of speakers.
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