Senankuya

Demonstratives with nin and o, etc

In the video, we hear the following:

C'est-à-dire... nin siya ni nin siya nin, u b'à fɔ ko nin– ninnu ye senankuw ye.

This is a good example of the demonstrative marker nin, which literally means "this". It's used in three distinct ways in one sentence!

The counterpart to nin is o, which means, you guessed it, "that". If we oversimplify a bit, they can be explained just like in English:

• nin = this [used for something that is close]
• o = that [used for something that is far]

Let's look at them in detail one by one.

nin "this"

Let's clean it up slightly for our purposes:

Nin siya ni nin siya nin, u b'à fɔ ko ninnu ye senankuw ye.

"This ethnicity and this ethnicity [this], they say that these are joking cousins"

As in, "People say that this and that ethnic group are joking cousins"

We can start with the first use of nin. It's one of two where nin is used like a special kind of determiner that points to a noun that it is associated with:

nin siya

"this ethnicity"

Here as you can see, the demonstrative marker appears before the noun. This is one of three possible options. And it's not actually the most typical.

The kind of default place for nin would be after the noun (just like determiners and adjectives in Bambara):

siya nin

"this ethnicity"

When nin appears in this position, it is often reduced to something that sounds like [in] instead of nin. Some authors will also use this shortened form in writing (e.g., siya in "this ethnicity"). I generally recommend that you use the full form nin when writing.

In any case, there is no formal difference in meaing when you put nin before or after a noun. The choice is up to you more or less (though putting it before is perhaps slightly more marked stylistically):

siya nin nin siya

"this ethnicity"

In fact, you can also do both at the same time! This is demonstrated in the original quote:

nin siya nin

"this ethnicity"

Lit. "this ethnicity this"

In sum, you have three options, which we can list in order of markedness:

• After X nin
• Before Nin X
• Both Nin X nin

The determiner nin can also be made plural so that it means something like "these" instead of "this". The default way of doing this would be to simply add -nu. Like so:

siya nin "this ethnicity" → siya ninnu "these ethnicities"

(NOTE: In Malian Bambara spelling today, the standard written convention for the plural of nin is -nu, but in Burkinabè Jula, they just use the plural marker -w [e.g., siya ninw "these ethnicities" instead of siya ninnu]. I'd recommend justing using -nu by default but being aware of the spelling variation that you may encounter. Pronunciation-wise, as well, there is some variability too. People often say what sounds like [nunu]) instead of ninnu. Indeed, some people write this form as well! In short, remember that ninnu, ninw and nunu are the same thing.)

When this happens, there is no need to make the noun itself plural. (Just like with Adjectives.)

The plural form ninnu will always appear after the noun:

siya ninnu ninnu siya

"these ethnic groups"

But you can add some emphasis by using ninnu in combination with nin beforehand. For instance:

nin siya ninnu

"these ethnic groups"

(As in, "these ethnic groups here")

In all of the previous examples nin acts as a determiner. It is attached to a specific noun (or set of nouns) that is points out.

But just like in English, it can be used as a pronoun. That is, it can take the place of a noun as well.

For instance, let's take the example our original quote from the video:

Ninnu ye senankuw ye

"These are joking cousins"

(As in, "These ethnic groups are joking cousins")

This happens all the time in everyday interactions. For instance, imagine that you were at the market and a clothing vendor was holding up different shirts that you might like. You might have an interaction like this:

– Jumɛn ka ɲi? Nin walima nin? – Nin ka ɲi.

– Which one is good? This [one] or this [one]? – This [one] is good.

(NOTE: In the above example, in English, we might more naturally respond "That one is good" based on the proximity of the shirt that you preferred or some other spatial or contextual factor. The demonstratives nin and o can be boiled down to "this" and "that". But the use of nin and o doesn't always line up 100% with the way that we use "this" and "that" in English.)

o "that"

As stated before, the demonstrative o means "that". It's used for things that are further away (contextually from something else).

It can be used in one of two ways. It functions as one of the following:

• determiner
• pronoun

When it's a determiner, it appears before the noun:

o muso

"that woman"

You can also add emphasis by adding nin afterwards:

o muso nin

"that woman"

Lit. "that woman this"

To use o in a plural construction to express the idea of "these" (e.g., "these people"), you combine it with just a plural noun or with plural form ninnu (lit. "these").

For instance:

O musow

"Those women"

Lit. "That women"

Or:

O muso ninnu

"Those women"

Lit. "That woman these"

When o is a pronoun, it can have one of two functions:

• Demonstrative (i.e., it stands in for something is far away)

  N tɛ nin fɛ. N bɛ o fɛ.

  "I don't want this. I want that."

• Anaphoric (i.e., it stands in for something previously mentioned)

  Cɛ ye koka min. O diyara.

  "The man drank the Coke. It [the Coke] was pleasing"

  (NOTE: It would be possible to use the regular pronoun à here without a true change in meaning [e.g., Cɛ ye koka min. À diyara.])

The plural form of o as a pronoun is olu. For instance:

Olu ka ɲi

"Those are good"

Remember that the emphatic form of the third person pronoun is also olu. This means that there is formal distinction between these two sentences:

Olu ka ɲi "They are good"

AND

Olu ka ɲi "Those are good"

Usage

The words nin and o line up pretty well with "this" and "these" respectively. That said, you might notice that in practice their usage is slightly different in Bambara than in English. What I mean is that people will use nin, o and their related forms in ways that are slightly different than how we use "this", "that", etc., in English.

For instance, the form nin is sometimes used in a way that is close to the definite article "the" in English. For instance:

Baara nin ka di n ye

"I like the/this work"

In other cases, you may find that sometimes uses ninnu (lit. "these") in a way that people might normally say "those" in English. For instance, if you and a friend say someone across the street who was crazy and that you wanted to avoid, you might gesture towards him and say:

Cɛ nin ye fatɔ ye

"This guy is a madman!" (as in, "That guy is crazy!")

In practice, these differences in usage are not difficult, but you may find yourself needing to be flexible or diverge from how you would use demonstratives in your own language or other languages that you speak.

Agentive suffixes like -la, -baga, etc

In this video, we hear the following:

Ne bɛ se k'i weele sisan, ko — parce que ele ye dagari ye — k'i neni, ko "i fakɛ dɔrɔminna"!

"I can call you now, like — because you're a Dagari — and insult you and say "Your dad's a drunk!"

Let's clean up the sentence for our purposes:

Ne bɛ se k'i weele sisan k'i neni, ko: "I fakɛ dɔrɔminna"!

"I can call you now and insult you, like, 'Your dad's a drunk!'

In this quote, we have a good example of a particular agentive suffix -la/na being used to express the idea of someone being a "drinker" and by extension a "drunk".

By agentive suffix, I simply mean a little ending that can be use to create a so-called agent noun—that is, a word that designates someone who does something. In our example above this would be the word dɔrɔminna (or dɔlɔminna in standard Bambara) which designates a "drinker".

The word can be broken down into various parts:

dɔlɔminna dɔlɔ-min-na

Lit. "alcohol-drink-er"

As in, "a drinker" or, in extreme cases, "a drunk"

The agentive suffix in this example therefore is -la/na, which translates conveniently as "-er" here.

For a full lesson on Agentive Suffixes, please complete this Grammar chapter.

Adjectives derived from nouns via -ma, -lama, and -ntan

In this video, we hear the following:

"Ele! I dangaden, i naloma nin!"

"Hey you! You wretch, you imbecile!"

This quote features a good example of a word, naloma (translated here as "imbecile"), which at its core is an adjective derived from a noun.

The original noun in question is nalon, which literally means something like "idiot". For instance:

Cɛ ye nalon ye

"The man is an idiot"

But if we want to say something like "the idiotic man", then we need nalon to take the form an adjective. This can can be done with the suffix -ma:

nalonma nalon-ma

"idiot-like" OR "idiotic"

With this, we can say something like:

Cɛ nalonma taara

"The idiotic man left"

You may be wondering then: why is nalonma translated as "imbecile" in the original quote? This has to do with the fact that — as you may recall from "Butiki" — the adjective nalonma can be converted and re-used as a noun without any formal marking.

In any case, what's important is that there are three useful suffixes that allow the creation of adjectives from nouns:

• -ma = "-like", "-y"
• -lama/nama =
• ntan = "lacking"

Let's look at them one by one.

-ma

I already covered this one, but in short, -ma creates an "ornamental" (or "ornative") adjective. It is a little bit like saying "having X" or "equipped with X" where X is the noun that it is attached to. A good example in English would be a word like "leafy" (having leaves).

Here's a few examples:

• kɔnɔma = pregnant (< kɔnɔ = pregnancy)
• hakilima = smart (< hakili = intellect; idea)
• barikama = strong (< barika = divine strength)
• kɔgɔma = salty (< kɔgɔ = salt)

In practice though, you will often hear usages where -ma doesn't create a purely ornamental meaning. Sometimes, it just seems to creates a rather straight-forward adjective of some kind:

• bulama = blue (< bula = indigo dye)
• binkɛnɛma = green (< binkɛnɛ = fresh grass)
• nɛrɛmuguma = yellow (< nɛrɛmugu = nèrè powder)

In other cases, you may need to translate expressions using -ma with something else entirely:

• fura jima = liquid medicine (< ji = water)
• Ne denmisɛnma... = "Me, as a child…" (< denmisɛn = child)

-lama/nama

The form -lama (which takes the form -nama if preceded by a nasal sound) creates a "similitive" meaning, which is akin to "-like" or "-ish" in English. A good example in English would be "box-like" (i.e., something similar to a box).

Di ye fɛn jilama ye

"Honey is a water-like thing"

But it can also have a meaning of "including X" or "made up of X". For instance:

jɛkulu sɛbɛlama group paper-including

"an official group"

In some cases, it seems to nearly be interchangeable with -ma:

nɛrɛmuguma

"yellow"

VS

nɛrɛmugulama

"yellow" / "yellow-ish"

-ntan

The suffix -ntan has a "privative" value. It has a meaning akin to "lacking X".

Here's some examples:

• hakilintan = witless (< hakili "intellect; idea")
• kunntan = mindless (< kun "head")
• nafantan = usless (< nafa "benefit")
• faantan = destitute (< fanga "strength")