Bambara, more correctly known as Bamanankan (ߓߡߊߣߊ߲ߞߊ߲), its designation in the language itself (literally 'Bamana(n) sound'), is a language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

 spoken in Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

 by as many as six million people (including second language users). The Bambara language is the mother tongue of the Bambara ethnic group, numbering about 4,000,000 people, but serves also as a lingua franca

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...

 in Mali (it is estimated that about 80% of the population speaks it as a first or second language).