Western Plains Dogon
Dialect group
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
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
Consonant germination also occurs frequently among sounds [kː lː nː tː].
/z/ can only occur among loanwords.
/ɸ/ is interchangeable with /h/.
Consonant sound /t͡ʃ/ only rarely occurs and in almost absent.
Consonant sounds [z ʃ ʒ] are absent, except in loanwords.
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