Язык бамана: история, диалекты и письменность Мали

Manding language of Mali

Bambara is spoken throughout Mali as a lingua franca. The language is most widely spoken in the areas east, south, and north of Bamako, where native speakers and/or those that identify as members of the Bambara ethnic group are most densely populated. These regions are also usually considered to be the historical geographical origin of Bambara people, particularly Ségou, after diverging from other Manding groups.

The main dialect is Standard Bamara, which has significant influence from Maninkakan. Bambara has many local dialects: Kaarta, Tambacounda (west); Beledugu, Bananba, Mesekele (north); Jitumu, Jamaladugu, Segu (center); Cakadugu, Keleyadugu, Jalakadougu, Kurulamini, Banimɔncɛ, Cɛmala, Cɛndugu, Baninkɔ, Shɛndugu, Ganadugu (south); Kala, Kuruma, Saro, dialects to the northeast of Mopti (especially Bɔrɛ); Zegedugu, Bɛndugu, Bakɔkan, Jɔnka (southeast). was developed for the language beginning in 1930 by Woyo Couloubayi (c. 1910 1982) of Assatiémala. Named for the first characters in Couloubayi's preferred collation order, Masaba is a syllabary which uses diacritics to indicate vowel qualities such as tone, length, and nasalization. Though not conclusively demonstrated to be related to other writing systems, Masaba appears to draw on traditional Bambara iconography and shares some similarities with the Vai syllabary of Liberia and with Arabic derived secret alphabets used in Hodh (now Hodh El Gharbi and Hodh Ech Chargui Regions of Mauritania). As of 1978, Masaba was in limited use in several communities in Nioro Cercle for accounting, personal correspondence, and the recording of Muslim prayers; the script's current status and prevalence is unknown.

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 IPA equivalents). Writing with the Latin alphabet began during the 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 literature, which is often tales of kings and heroes. This oral literature is mainly passed on by the griots (Jeliw in Bambara) who are a mixture of storytellers, 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.

The basic sentence structure is subject object verb (SOV). Take the phrase, n t'a lon (I don't know [it]). n is the subject (I), a is the object (it), and [ta] lon is the verb ([to] know). The t' is from the negative present tense marker té, bé being the affirmative present tense marker (n b'a don would mean "I know it"). Like many SOV languages, Bambara uses postpositions rather than prepositions their role being similar to English prepositions but placed after the noun. The language has two (mid/standard and high) tones; e. g. sa 'die' vs. sá 'snake.' The typical argument structure of the language consists of a subject, followed by an aspectival auxiliary, followed by the direct object, and finally a transitive verb. Bambara does not inflect for gender. Gender for a noun can be specified by adding an adjective, cɛ or kɛ for male and muso for female. The plural is formed by attaching a vocalic suffix u, most often with a low tone (in the orthography, w) to nouns or adjectives.

In urban areas, many Bamanankan 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 avait personne là bas. : I went to Kita [Bamanankan ] but there was no one there [French]. The sentence in Bamanankan alone would be Ń taara Kita nka mɔkɔ si tun tɛ yen. The French proposition "est ce que" is also used in Bamanankan ; however, it is pronounced more slowly and as three syllables,
Bamanankan uses many French loan words. For example, some people might say: I ka kurusi ye nere ye: "Your skirt is yellow" (using a derivation of jaune, the French word for yellow, they often use joni.) However, one could also say: I ka kulosi ye nɛrɛmukuman ye, also meaning "your skirt is yellow." The original Bamanankan word for yellow comes from "nɛrɛmuku," being flour (muku) made from néré (locust bean), a seed from a long seed pod. Nɛrɛmuku 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 Bamanankan word for snow is niegei, based on the French word for snow neige. As there has never been snow in Mali, there was no unique word in Bamanankan to describe it.

Malian artists such as Oumou Sangaré, Sidiki Diabaté, Fatoumata Diawara, Rokia Traoré, Ali Farka Touré, Habib Koité and the married duo Amadou & Mariam often sing in Bambara. Lyrics in Bambara occur on Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants". Additionally, in 2010, Spanish rock group Dover released its 7th studio album I Ka Kené with the majority of lyrics in the language. American rapper Nas also released a track titled "Patience" in 2010, which featured Damian Marley and extensively sampled the Amadou & Mariam song "Sabali", as sabali is a Bambara word meaning patience.

Bambara was until 2023 one of several languages designated by Mali as a national language. In 2023, after a new constitution was approved by a majority of voters, Bambara became co official, together with 12 other languages spoken in the country. French was removed as the official language and was kept only as a working language.