Bambara language

Bambara, also known as Bamanankan in the language itself, is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people (including second language users). The differences between Bambara and Dioula are minimal. Dioula is a language spoken or understood, by fewer numbers of people, in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Gambia. The Bambara language is primarily spoken by members of the Bambara ethnic group, numbering about 270,000 people, but serves also as an interethnic language of Mali.

Bambara belongs to a group of closely-related languages called Manding, within the larger Mandé group. It is an SOV language and has two tones. It uses seven vowels a, e, , i, o, and u (the letters approximate their IPA equivalents). Writing was introduced during the French occupation and alphabetisation is a major issue 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 literature, which is often tales of kings and heroes. This oral literature is mainly tradited by the "Griot" who are a mixture of storytellers, partysingers 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 kingdom of Mali. Bambara is a national language of Mali, and also the most widely understood language in Mali.

Bambara has many local dialects. Some dialect variants: Somono, Segou, San, Beledugu, Ganadugu, Wasulu and Sikasso.

Jula (Dioula)

Jula is a dialect in the Manding linguistic continuum and is closely related to Bambara. It is a widely-used trade language in West Africa.

Writing

Since the seventies Bambara has mostly been written in the Latin alphabet, using some additional phonetic characters. The vowels are a, e, (formerly è), i, o, (formerly ò), u; accents can be used to indicate tonality. The former digraph ny is now written or ñ (Senegal). The ambiguous digraph "ng" represented both the "hard ng" sound in "finger" and the "ng" in "king." The 1966 Bamako spelling conventions render the latter sound as " ŋ"

N'Ko is a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa; N’Ko means 'I say' in all Mande languages. Kante created N’Ko in response to what he felt were beliefs that Africans were a "cultureless people" since there was prior to this time, no indigenous African writing system for his language. N'ko came first into use in Kankan, Guinea as a Maninka alphabet and disseminated from there into other Mande-speaking parts of West Africa. The script is still in use for Bambara, although the Latin alphabet is much more common.

There are some newspapers in Bambara.

Grammar

Bambara belongs to a group of closely-related languages called Manding (related to Mandinka, Mande language group). It is an SOV language and has two tones. The subject is usually followed by an auxiliary verb (see auxilaries in Wiktionary) possibly followed by the object and finally the verb.

In mathematical linguistics Bambara is regarded with interest, since for only very few languages it was possible to show that they were not context-free. For Zurich German and Dutch the proof is based on sentence construction, whereas the proof for Bambara is based on word construction.

Bambara has no gender. Gender for a noun can be specified by adding a suffix, -ce or -ke for male and -muso for female. The plural is formed by attaching -w to words. Sentences usually contain auxiliary verbs.

Bambara uses postpositions, like "bolo" to indicate directions. Many postpositions are based on nouns, "bolo" also means hand.

In urban areas, many Bambara conjunctions have been replaced in everyday use by French borrowings that often mark code-switches. The Bamako dialect makes use of sentences like: N taara Kita mais il n'y a personne là-bas. : I went to Kita but there was no one there [French. The sentence in Bambara alone would be N taara Kita nka mògòsi tuntè yen. The French proposition "est-ce-que" is also used in Bambara, however it is pronounced more slowly and as three syllables; "ess uh kuh".

Bambara uses many French loan words. For example, some people might say: I ka kulosi ye jauni ye: "Your skirt is yellow" (using a derivation of the French word for yellow, jaune.)

However, one could also say: I ka kulosi ye neremuguman ye, also meaning "your skirt is yellow." The original Bambara word for yellow comes from "neremugu," mugu being flour made from nere, a seed from a long seed pod. Neremugu is often used in sauces in Southern Mali.

Most French loan words are suffixed with the sound 'i'; this is particularly common when using French words which have a meaning not traditionally found in Mali. For example, the Bambara word for snow is niegei, based on the French word for snow neige. As there has never been snow in Mali, there has not been a traditional meaning for the word and thus no unique word in Bambara to describe it.

Examples

N b bamanankan mn dni-dni: I speak a little bit of Bambara (litt: I aux positive Bambara understand small-small)

I tna dumuni ke wa?: Aren't you going to eat? (litt: you aux negative future eat action question particle)

Music

Malian artists such as Oumou Sangare, Rokia Traore, Ali Farka Toure, Salif Keita, Habib Koité, and the blind couple Amadou & Mariam often sing in Bambara. Alpha Blondy often sings in Dioula.

Tiken Jah Fakoly (reggae) often sings in Dioula and French.

Bibliography

Bird, Charles & Kanté, Mamadou (1977) Bambara-English, English-Bambara student lexicon. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club.
Kastenholz, Raimund (1998) Grundkurs Bambara (Manding) mit Texten (second revised edition) (Afrikawissenschaftliche Lehrbücher Vol. 1). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
Konaré, Demba (1998) Je parle bien bamanan. Bamako: Jamana.
Touré, Mohamed & Leucht, Melanie (1996) Bambara Lesebuch: Originaltexte mit deutscher und französischer Übersetzung = Chrestomathie Bambara: textes originaux Bambara avec traductions allemandes et françaises (with illustrations by Melanie Leucht) (Afrikawissenschaftliche Lehrbücher Vol. 11) . Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.

External links

Mali - History - Language
The Rosetta Project
Bambara phrasebook at Wikitravel
Bambara at French Wikibooks contains more material
Bambara entries (>1000) in the French Wiktionary
Mandenkan Journal
Bambara page from Ethnologue site

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