Susu (endonym:Susu:Sosoxui;French:Soussou) is the language of theSusu orSoso people ofGuinea andSierra Leone,WestAfrica. It is in theMande language family, and its closest relative isYalunka.

It is one of thenational languages ofGuinea and spoken mainly in the coastal region of the country.

The language was also used by people in the coastal regions of Guinea and Sierra Leone as atrade language.

The first literature in Susu was a translation of the first seven chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, translated by John Godfrey Wilhelm of theChurch Mission Society. This was published in London as "Lingjili Matthew" in 1816. J.G. Wilhelm translated a considerable portion of the New Testament, but only this small part appears to have been printed.

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Susu is an SOV language, Poss-N, N-D, generally suffixing, non-pro-drop, wh-in-situ, with no agreement affixes on the verb, no noun classes, no gender, and with a clitic plural marker which attaches to the last element of the NP (N or D, typically), but does not co-occur with numerals. It has no definite or indefinite articles. Sentential negation is expressed with a particle, mu, whose distribution is unclear (with adjectival predicates it seems to sometimes infix, but with transitive verbs it comes before the object).

Examples:

cf.

Object pronouns have the same form as subject pronouns:

Possessive affixes precede the noun:

baba "father":m baba "my father"i baba "your (sg) father"a baba "his/her/its father"wom baba "our father"wo baba "your (pl) father"e baba "their father"

Adverbs can precede the subject or follow the verb:

NPs come in a variety of forms:

khamé "boy (sg)", khame e "boys (pl)taami "bread (sg)", taami e "breads (pl)"

1. woto keren car one "one car"
2. woto firin car two "two cars"
3. woto sakhan "three cars"
4. woto nani "four cars"
5. woto suli "five cars"
6. woto senni "six cars"
7. woto solofere "seven cars"
8. woto solomasakhan "eight cars"
9. woto solomanani "nine cars"
10. woto fu "ten cars"
11. woto fu nun keren "eleven cars"
12. woto fu nun firin "twelve cars"

n woto nde e to né 1sg car indef.D pl see PAST "I saw several cars"/"J'ai vu des autos."woto nde "some car"di nde "some boy"bangkhi nde "some house"khame nde "someone"se nde "something"nde "who/some"i nde to? you who see "Who did you see?"i munse don ma? 2sg what eat PRES "What will you eat?"

Susu has been written with a variety of writing systems, including theAjami variant of theArabic script (perhaps introduced during the time of theImamate of Futa Jallon), variousLatin script orthographies (formalized with the adoption of theGuinean languages alphabet under the government ofAhmed Sékou Touré and adapted in 1989 to adhere closer to theAfrican reference alphabet), and theN'ko andAdlam scripts.^[3] Additionally, an alphabetic script known as Koré Sèbèli or Wakara, developed by sociologist Mohamed Bentoura Bangoura based on traditional symbols used by secret societies, has been adopted by a small community of users since its introduction in 2009.^[3][4]

Sosoxui is closely related to theYalunka language.

Susu language test ofWikipedia atWikimedia Incubator

• Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Susu and English 1861 translation
• PanAfrican L10n page on Susu
• Susu alphabet and phonology
• Peace Corps Susu language manual

• Mande languages
• Languages of Guinea
• Languages of Sierra Leone
• Languages of Guinea-Bissau

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 26
• CS1 French-language sources (fr)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Languages with ISO 639-2 code
• Articles containing Susu-language text
• Articles containing French-language text
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles needing cleanup from April 2019
• All pages needing cleanup