Editing Bambara language (section)

===Latin orthography===
It uses seven vowels a, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ and u, each of which can be nasalized, pharyngealized and murmured, giving a total number of 21 vowels (the letters approximate their [[help:IPA|IPA]] equivalents). {{citation needed|date=June 2018}}
Writing with the Latin alphabet began during the [[French West Africa|French]] colonization, and the first orthography was introduced in 1967. Literacy is limited, especially in rural areas. Although written literature is only slowly evolving (due to the predominance of French as the "language of the educated"), there exists a wealth of [[oral tradition|oral literature]], which is often tales of kings and heroes. This oral literature is mainly passed on by the [[griot]]s (''Jeliw'' in Bambara) who are a mixture of [[storytelling|storyteller]]s, praise singers, and human history books who have studied the trade of singing and reciting for many years. Many of their songs are very old and are said to date back to the old empire of Mali.