Bamanankɛ ni Maninkakɛ

This very short tale comes from Moussa Travélé's 1923 book "Proverbes et contes bambara."

This particular "tale" is less a story than a joke.

Its humor hinges on differences between two major Manding varieties: Bambara and Maninka.

If the joke were about American vs. British pronunciations, English speakers might say that it was a "dialect" or an "accent" joke.

A footnote on the title in the original edition states that the story's goal is to show that Maninka words are long while Bambara words are short.

That's not really the goal. What we are supposed to do is laugh. But it captures something important: the tale's humor depends on us having contextual knowledge about the similarity and the differences between the varieties as well as the sociolinguistic stereotypes associated with Bambara, Maninka and Jula as social identities.

A Maninka man and a Bambara man ask a Jula man for some salt. The Jula man turns their request into a small verbal challenge, and differences in how they speak become the source of the joke.

Maninkakɛ ni Bamanankɛ taara ɲɔgɔn fɛ Julakɛ yɔrɔ ko o ka u sɔn kɔgɔnin na.

Julakɛ ko min da mana kɔgɔ tɔgɔ fɔ fɔlɔ, ko à n'o sɔn.

Bamanankɛ ko: "Kwa!"¹

Maninkakɛ ko: "Fɔdɔkisɛ ka fidi! I di wadakan fɔ kɛ! I ma 'kɔkɔ' kofɔ!"²