Ethnology and Ontology of the West African People
One of the branches of the Niger-Congolese family is the Mande people. Their languages differ significantly in fundamental parameters from other Niger-Congolese languages, therefore linguists consider them to be the first to separate from the main trunk, along with the Ijo and Dagon languages. The differences between the Mande and the very structure of the Niger-Congolese family are so great that there are classifications that distinguish the Mande languages into a separate families.