The linguistic makeup of Africa is nothing like what it is in Europe or the United States. In Africa, many indigenous languages are spoken vigorously at the community level, even if they don’t receive much recognition at the national and especially international level. Most African countries are home to incredibly diverse populations of dozens or even hundreds of ethnic groups speaking just as many unique languages. This leads to the need for a lingua franca to bind the people of a single country together—in Sierra Leone, that’s English, used in government, education, and media, with Krio, an English-based Creole, spoken by more than 90% of the population as a way to speak with Sierra Leoneans from other regions. But for most Sierra Leoneans, their native language is indigenous.
One of these indigenous languages is Kono. Most of the Kono population speaks the Kono language, which claims roughly 320,000 speakers, heavily concentrated in the Kono District in Sierra Leone’s Eastern Province. Since the Kono people rarely venture outside of their diamond-laden land, the language is generally found only in the district. As important as Kono may be in the Kono District, the language simply isn’t big enough for most translation companies to cater to—but we at TranslationServices.com are dedicated to providing quality translation services for Kono.
You can see a free quote for Kono translation today if you just send us a message inquiring about one.
A deeper exploration of the Kono language
The Kono people are estimated to have inhabited the Kono District of modern-day Sierra Leone for thousands of years, having migrated southward from Mali and Guinea, where they were regarded as a powerful people. The Kono language comes from the Niger–Congo language family, which accounts for most languages spoken across sub-Saharan Africa, but Kono occupies a relatively small branch called Mande, confined to the southwestern reaches of West Africa.
This means Kono is related to major West Africa languages such as Mandinka, Mende, and Dyula, but it’s most closely related to Vai, spoken by 120,000-odd people in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Kono forms sentences in a word order of subject-object-verb, which is typical for Mande languages, and it incorporates minimal inflection, preferring to rely on particles and word order to express grammatical relationships. Kono distinguishes between definite (“the”) and indefinite (“a/an”), a feature that many languages lack, but it only has a word for “the,” with none for “a/an.”
The best Kono translation services you’ll find on the web
While Kono may not be the most in-demand language we could offer, we nonetheless understand the importance of the language and the need that some people may have to translate into or from Kono. That’s who we made our Kono translation team for, and we’re committed to producing the best Kono translation services we can. That means translation both to and from the language, performed by passionate and experienced Kono translators hailing from all corners of the Kono District.
Do you need Kono translation for business purposes? Let our team help you move your operations to the Kono District with pinpointed translations of your documents into Kono. Or, maybe you want to take your business out into the rest of world—we can translate your Kono-language documents into English. Maybe you’re a researcher and you want to survey Kono speakers in Sierra Leone—we can translate your questionnaire faithfully and accurately. Perhaps you love the traditional stories of the Kono people and want to share them with people abroad—let us translate them for you! Or maybe you want to bring new stories—in the form of books, poems, or even digital media like apps and games—to the Kono people. Our Kono translators are equipped to handle all these translation projects.
You can get started with Kono translation services today—all you need to do is contact us!