Foli

Passive Voice

In the video, we heard the following sentence:

I ka mɔgɔsɛbɛya bɛ sɔrɔ à sen fɛ

Lit. "Your serious-person-ness is obtained via it"

As in, "Your reputation is earned via [your greetings]"

This is an example of the passive voice at work.

Let's take a simpler version of the sentence:

Mɔgɔsɛbɛya bɛ sɔrɔ

Lit. "Serious-person-ness is obtained"

As in, "A reputation is earned"

As I gestured towards in a lower-level chapter on Verb Types and Light Verb Constructions, the passive voice is applied in Bambara simple by dropping the direct object from a construction with a verb that is underlyingly transitive (such as k'à sɔrɔ "to obtain something").

For instance, let's take a slightly more concrete example using the verb k'à sɔrɔ:

N bɛ wari sɔrɔ

"I earn money"

This sentence is the active voice. This means that the subject of the sentence actively does the action. (Linguists would say that subject is the "agent" in this case.)

If you drop the direct object wari from it, you end up with a sentence in the passive voice. This means that the subject is now interpreted as undergoing the action:

N bɛ sɔrɔ

"I am earned"

(as in, "I must be earned", for instance)

This sentence is grammatically sound, but it's not something you will likely hear often.

Instead, you will likely hear passives with sɔrɔ used for things that one seeks, looks for, gets or obtains. Such as, warimisɛn or "small change for money", for instance!

For example:

Warimisɛn tɛ sɔrɔ

"Change isn't earned/obtained/found"

(as in, "Change can't be found around here")

The implied "doer" or "performer" (or "agent") of the action of obtaining (sɔrɔ) is people in general (mɔgɔw). But you can make it explicit even when using the passive voice:

Warimisɛn tɛ sɔrɔ mɔgɔw fɛ

"Change isn't obtained by people"

The active voice equivalent would be:

Mɔgɔw tɛ warimisɛn sɔrɔ

"People don't obtain change"

In this case, mɔgɔw is the "agent" who acts upon warimisɛn.

This use of mɔgɔw fɛ or something similar at the end of the sentence is a great way to test and see if a sentence is in the passive voice or not. If you can add it, then you are dealing with a passive construction.

Here's a few other examples. I have put the implied "doer" in parentheses to make it clear that it's a passive construction.

(And remember all of the sentences can be interpreted as passive simply because of the nature of the verbs; they all require a direct object normally because they are transitive. If it's dropped, the sentence becomes passive.)

Kungo la, foli ɲuman bɛ kɛ (mɔgɔw fɛ)

"In the bush, good greetings are done (by people)"

As in, "In rural areas, people do proper greetings"

Or:

Baara tɛ sɔrɔ Bamakɔ (mɔgɔw fɛ)

"Work isn't obtained in Bamako (by people)"

As in, "Work can't be found in Bamako" or "It's hard to find work in Bamako"

Or:

Tubabukan tɛ fɔ yan (mɔgɔw fɛ)

"French isn't said/spoken here (by people)"

As in, "People don't speak French here"

You can use also the passive voice in the perfective:

Loko dunna kaban (ne fɛ)

"The plantains were eaten already (by me)!"

As in, "I ate the plantains already"

In many situations, passive voice constructions are much more frequent and natural in Bambara than they are in English (or French). So keep your ears and eyes open for them and try to incorporate them into your speech as you notice how people use them.

Expressing "like; as if" with i n'à fɔ, i ko, komi, etc

In the video, we heard the following rather long statement:

Adamadenya jɔsen fɔlɔfɔlɔ don yan nɔ. Comme silamɛya fana jɔsen fɔlɔfɔlɔ ye seli ye. I n'à fɔ chrétienya jɔsen fɔlɔfɔlɔ ye seli ye cogo min na.

"It's humanity's first pillar here. Like Islam's first pillar is prayer. And like the way in which Christianity's first pillar is prayer.

Let's simplify the sentence for clarity:

Adamadenya jɔsen don. Comme silamɛya jɔsen ye seli ye. I n'à fɔ chrétienya jɔsen ye seli ye.

"It's humanity's pillar. Like Islam's pillar is prayer. Like Christianity's pillar is prayer.

Here can we see that the words comme (which is actually just a French loanword that means "like") and i n'à fɔ are both translated as "like".

These two expressions are actually part of a set of expressions that play this role:

• i ko — Lit. "You say"
• i n'à fɔ — Lit. "You will say it"
• komi — Fr. comme
• ikomi — An apparent fusioning of i ko and the French loanword comme
• comme — The French loanword itself which is often borrowed directly

All of these can be use interchangeably in a number of different kinds of ways.

As a preposition

When any of these words appear before a noun, they are acting as prepositions and they can be translated as "like" (or more abstractly "similarly to").

For instance, let's start with i ko, which can be translated roughly as something like "one would say":

Sali bɛ foli kɛ i ko Kadi

Lit. "Sali greets [one would say] like Kadi"

"Sali greetings like Fanta"

The same kind of rough translation can be done with i n'à fɔ (Lit. "You will say it"):

Sue kunsigi bɛ i n'à fɔ Fanta ta

"Sue's hair is like Fanta's"

You can also use the three interrelated turns of phrase komi, ikomi or simply comme. For example:

Adama ye "Salaam Aleykum" fɔ ikomi morikɛ

"Adama said 'Salaam Aleykum' like the cleric"

As a Conjunction

In other cases (and just like in English), the "like-expressions" can be used a conjunction that introduces a subordinate clause.

For instance:

À bɛ foli kɛ i ko à bɛ mɔgɔ bonya

"He greets like he respects people"

Or:

U tɛmɛna i n'à fɔ u ma an ye

"They passed by as if they didn't see us"

(Note that in the above example, I translated i n'à fɔ as "as if" as opposed to "like". Both can work depending on the context.)

This conjunction usage is especially helpful for capturing very common observational English sentences like:

• It seems like / as if…
• It looks like / as if…
• It sounds like / as if…
• It's like / as if…

For all these, you could say something like this using the situative bɛ/tɛ.

For instance:

À bɛ i ko i t'à fɛ ka taa

"It seems like you don't want to go"

Or:

À tɛ i n'à fɔ n t'à fɛ ka taa nka…

"It's not like I don't want to go but…"

Oftentimes, people use the verb ka kɛ in the perfective to same effect. For example:

À kɛra i ko i sɛgɛnna

"It seems like you are tired"

Lit. "It has.occured like you are tired"

Or:

À ma kɛ i n'à fɔ Adama man ɲi nka à tɛ foli kɛ ka ɲɛ!

"It's not like Adama isn't good but he doesn't greet properly!"

Expressing "since" or "seeing as" with komi or ikomi

The forms ikomi and komi (and their French loanword from which they stem: comme) are very prevalent as a conjunction often appears at the beginning of sentence.

In such cases, the best translation is often "since" or "seeing as" or "given that" in English. But "because" can also work.

For instance:

Ikomi i ma n fo, n tɛna i dɛmɛ

"Since you didn't greet me, I won't help you"

This usage is almost identical with the way that comme is used in a similar way in French (e.g., "Comme tu m'as pas salué, je ne vais pas t'aider")

Such constructions are often used elliptically, meaning that people often just say the first half of the sentence and leave out the second subordinate clause:

Komi i ma foli kɛ…

"(Well) since you didn't say hello… (I'm not going to help you)

Adjuncts (AKA "Circonstants")

In the video, we heard the following:

Nafaba de b'à la Mali la

"Big usefulness is upon it [greetings] in Mali"

As in, "Greetings are very useful in Mali"

This is a good example of a grammatical topic that you have seen and perhaps already implicitly learned: adjuncts (which are sometimes called circonstants in the French linguistic tradition).

Let's take another look at our sentence and make a few minor adjustments to make it easier to work with:

Nafa bɛ foli la Mali la

"Usefulness is upon greetings in Mali"

As in, "Greetings are useful in Mali"

In this example, the phrase Mali la is an "adjunct", which means that it is a dispensable part of the sentence. Not dispensable from a communicative perspective, but rather from a grammatical perspective.

For instance, if we simply dropped Mali la, it would still be a complete sentence:

Nafa bɛ foli la Mali la

"Usefulness is upon greetings in Mali"

This isn't always the case. You couldn't drop it from a different situative sentence like this one, for instance:

❌ Mɔgɔsɛbɛya bɛ Mali la

"Serious-person-ness is in Mali"

Here, without Mali la, you break the sentence because the situative bɛ requires a location.

(NOTE: There are some exceptions to this rule about bɛ, but let's put that aside for our purposes.)

The location is what linguists call an argument of the situative copula bɛ. It is required.

In the sentence from the video though, it is bonus information and it can either be dropped or it can be moved to earlier in the sentence. For example:

Mali la, nafa bɛ foli la

"In Mali, usefulness is upon greetings"

This is generally how adjuncts work in Bambara. Here's another example from the video:

Yan nɔ, an ka laada ye foli de ye

"Here, our custom is greetings

(NOTE: The expression yan nɔ is regional expression that combines yan "here" and the archaic postposition rɔ "in". It's the same thing as saying yan by itself.)

Here yan nɔ is an adjunct within the sentence. It could be dropped or it could be moved to the end like so:

An ka laada ye foli de ye yan nɔ

"Our custom is greetings here"

As in, "Greetings are our custom here in these parts"

The reason this is important is that indirect objects (covered in "Sugu | Market") can resemble adjuncts but they are in fact arguments of the verb that can't be moved (or generally dropped, but there are edge cases) without breaking the sentence or fundamentally changing its meaning.

For instance, you can say:

N ye dugawu kɛ musokɔrɔba ye

"I did benedictions for the elder woman"

But you can't move musokɔrɔba ye without breaking the sentence:

❌ Musokɔrɔba ye, n ye dugawu kɛ

"For the elder woman, I did benedictions"