Listening Texts

Trial

I ni se! Welcome to the Listening Texts book!

It's a collection of narrated audio texts that are roughly 30-60 seconds long.

They are a useful complement to practice the grammar covered in the Advanced Beginner Coursebook and Intermediate Coursebook.

They get slightly more complex as you go along.

Chapters

1) Kariba ka du [in Beg. B]
2) Tabalitigi [in Beg. B]
3) Ali bɛ sukaro fɛ
4) Musa man kɛnɛ
5) Bari bɛ bamanankan kalan [in Beg. B]
6) Dumuniw
7) Mɔgɔw ni u ka baaraw
8) Sugu
9) Bari tununna
10) Bari taara Musa bara
11) Sɛnɛkɛla ni ja
12) Ngɔlɔ ka kɔɲɔdon
13) Seliba
14) Sɛnɛkɛla min ye jinɛ namara [Needs translation]
15) Donsokɛ ni kungo-kɔnɔ-sogow [Needs translation]
16) Sungurun ye jɔn ta ye? [Needs translation]

Basic Dyula

Details

The audio recordings from this collection stem from the following public domain textbooks that were financed by the US government:

Charles Bird, John Hutchison, and Mamadou Kanté, An Ka Bamanankan Kalan: Beginning Bambara. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University African Studies Center, 1977).
Long, Ronald W., and Raoul S. Diomande. 1968. Basic Dyula: Grammatical Outline and Introductory Exercises. Intensive Language Training Center: Indiana University.

To make the audio useful for modern usage via the Internet, I have substantially “reworked” them in various ways, such as:

I segmented digitizations of the original audio tapes into smaller individual files (so that specific segments of the original tape could be easily listed to without needing to scroll or cue up a specific moment in the timeline)
I cleaned, edited and removed unnecessary pauses of the smaller segments for a better and more realistic listening experience

Additionally, I have transcribed each audio segment into modern Latin-based Manding orthography that deviates from the original found in the textbooks.