Languagle #59: Bambara
Ji ma masa dɔn
Ji ma masa don
"Water knows no king."
What it means
Water does not care who you are. If you cannot swim, the river will take you, whether you are a king or a commoner. Some dangers treat everyone the same.
How to say it
jee ma ma-sa dawn
Bambara is tonal, which the spelling doesn't show, so keep the syllables even. Ɔ is the aw in 'law'.
Word by word
- Ji jee: water
- ma ma: not
- masa ma-sa: king, chief
- dɔn dawn: know
Bambara puts the verb last: water, not, king, know.
Where it was written down
A traditional proverb, in Bambara a ntalen, passed down by word of mouth. The English comes from a French translation.
How to recognise Bambara
Bambara is written in the Latin alphabet plus a few letters from the African reference alphabet: ɛ, ɔ, ɲ and ŋ. Words are short and mostly end in a vowel. Fulah uses hooked letters like ɓ, ɗ and ƴ instead, and Wolof uses ñ and ë. Bambara is also written in N'Ko, a script created in 1949 that runs right to left.
About the Bambara language
Bambara, or Bamanankan, is a Mande language spoken as a first language by around 4 million people and as a second language by many more, making it the lingua franca of Mali. It is closely related to Dyula and Maninka. It is written mainly in the Latin alphabet, with letters such as ɛ, ɔ and ɲ, and also in N'Ko, a script created in 1949 for the Mande languages.
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