Bambara, also known as Bamanankan, is a language spoken in Mali by as many six million people. Fewer numbers of people speak or understand the language, or dialects of it, in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Gambia.

The differences between Bambara and Dioula are minimal. Bambara belongs to a group of closely-related languages called Manding (related to Mandinka, Mande language group). It is a SVO language and has two toness.