Dear Amir,

Thank you for pointing this out. Jula / Bamanankan / Bambara (*) – that’s pretty much the same (Mande) language, and a major one, to be sure. The name Jula is standard in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire; Bambara in Mali. 

I can put you in contact with people who speak it. We can see off list to the follow-up as you wish. 

Best regards,
Mohomodou 

* FYI * Radio France Internationale (RFI) and the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) use a broader term, “Mandenkan” (Mande language). This is the RFI Mandenkan feed line: http://ma.rfi.fr/  ** Audio in the language, texts in French.
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Mohomodou Houssouba
www.songhay.org
mh@songhay.org

Am 28.04.2018 um 10:50 schrieb Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>:

Hi,

Are there any speakers of the Jula language (also known as Dioula)?

If you know this language, I wanted to let you know that there is demand from people for Wikipedia articles in this language.

I've been researching the usage of the search box in Wikipedia's interlanguage links panel, and I can see that there are many people searching for this language while they are reading articles in French and English. They cannot find anything because the Wikipedia in this language doesn't exist yet, but if it existed, there would be people who would want to read it.

If you speak this language or know somebody who does, please contact me. I'll be happy to help you start a Wikipedia in it.

(I'm expecting these questions, so I'll just answer them right away.
Q: Where can I read about this research?
A: I'll publish a report very, very soon.
Q: Are there any languages that people are searching?
A: Yes, there are many, and you'll see all of them in the report, but I wanted to mention Jula especially because it's the most notable languages that came up in this research in which there is no Wikipedia at all, not even an Incubator. There are other languages of Africa that came up there, such as Yoruba, Xhosa and others, but there are Wikipedias in them, albeit small ones.)

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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