Days of the Week

To discuss days of the week, Bambara speakers often use a set of words that can be traced back to Arabic historically:

• ntɛnɛn = Monday
• tarata = Tuesday
• araba = Wednesday
• alamisa = Thursday
• juma = Friday
• sibiri = Saturday

For Sunday, people often use one of two forms:

• kari
• dimansi, which comes the French dimanche ('Sunday')

Attaching don/lon

Across all of these forms, you can optionally attach the word for 'day' (don in Bambara; lon in Jula). For instance:

ntɛnɛn + don → ntɛnɛndon

juma + lon → jumalon

Etc.

If we follow this logic, we can summarize all of the days of the week as follows:

• ntɛnɛ(don/lon)
• tarata(don/lon)
• araba(don/lon)
• alamisa(don/lon
• juma(don/lon)
• sibiri(don/lon)
• kari(don/lon)

Adding don or lon to the day of the week doesn't change the meaning in any way. Use whichever one suits your fancy.

French loanwords

In other cases, Bambara speakers will simply use French loanwords. For those of you that don't know French therefore, it can be helpful to be able to recognize the following words:

• lundi = Monday
• mardi = Tuesday
• mercredi = Wednesday
• jeudi = Thursday
• vendredi = Friday
• samedi = Saturday
• dimanche = Sunday

Using days of the week in sentences

The days of the week can be used like normal nouns. For instance, in this sentence, juma is the subject:

Juma ka di

"Friday is nice" (as in, "Fridays are nice days")

But they are also often used in dispensable parts of the sentence that linguists sometimes called adjuncts (or circonstants in French). For instance:

N bɛ taa kalanso la arabadon

"I go to school on Wednesday"

Notice how we could ostensibly drop arabadon without changing the fundamental meaning of the sentence:

N bɛ taa kalanso la arabadon

"I go to school on Wednesday"

When a word or phrase acts an adjunct in a sentence in Bambara, you can also place it the beginning of the sentence. For instance:

Arabadon, n bɛ taa kalanso la

"Friday, I go to school"

Let's do the same thing with another sentence. For instance:

Sita bɛna kalan kɛ

"Sita will study" (Lit. "Sita FUTURE studies do")

To specify the day that Sita will study, we can simply add the day of our choice either at the end or the beginning of the sentence:

Sita bɛna kalan kɛ tarata.
"Sita will study on Tuesday"

OR

Tarata, Sita bɛna kalan kɛ.
"Tuesday, Sita will study"

Remember that you could add don or lon to the end of tarata if you wanted:

Sita bɛna kalan kɛ tarata(lon)

"Sita will study on Tuesday(day)"

Now you know the days of the weeks and how to use them to discuss your schedule or plans in a simple way!