Mandingo is group of dialects scattered over the countries of West Africa from Senegal to Nigeria. These dialects are named differently in many different countries but all are mutually intelligible are closely related in their grammar, morphology, phonology, syntax, Lexus and structure. For this and other reasons, Mandingo came second after Hausa as a language of communication in the West Africa. The number of people speaking Mandingo as either LI or LII is estimated at about 12 million.

A number of materials in history state that Mandingo people were the most influential in the history of West African empires especially the empire of Mali that transformed into an Islamic state in the 13th century and extended to include the lake of Guinea and Bilad et-Tukroor to the cost of the lake of Senegal up to the desert and valleys of the present day Niger republic. The spread of Islam in these areas created larger space for Mandingo language. This is because Mandingo remained in all these areas the second language of Islam after the Arabic. Being directly responsible for communicating Islam in those areas, Mandingo language has to accommodate tones of Arabic lexical items into its lexical system and lastly advanced the relation by adopting Arabic script.