Pronouns

In this chapter, we're gonna explicitly cover the standard pronouns of Bambara (and Jula).

We've, of course, already seen most of them along the way in earlier chapters. But now, we're going to go over them explicitly, so that you both recognize all of them and know when to use which ones and why.

Specifically, I'm gonna cover:

• Singular pronouns
• Plural pronouns
• When to use emphatic pronouns

Singular pronouns

There are three singular pronouns in Manding:

n

'I'

And:

i

'you'

And:

à

'he/she/it'

(NOTE: I have put a grave accent mark (or "diacritic") above the letter a. This is to mark the fact that the word is, in fact, low tone. I generally don't mark tone in Basic Bambara, but you'll see why I have done so in just a bit.)

Unlike in English these pronouns do not change depending on whether they are a subject, direct object or a possessive pronoun.

That said, singular pronouns (like the plurals too, as we'll see) have emphatic counterparts. So in fact, the singular pronouns are:

n/ne

'I'

And:

i/e

'You'

And:

à/ale

'He/she/it'

(NOTE: The second person emphatic pronoun e may also take the form ele in some areas. Use whichever one you are more comfortable with!)

Despite the name, emphatic pronouns are generally interchangeable with their "normal" or non-emphatic counterparts. I'll cover a few of the limited contexts in which you should use an emphatic instead of a non-emphatic/regular pronoun in just a bit.

Plural Pronouns

As you might expect, there are three plural pronouns in Bambara. I typically introduce them to new students like so:

an

'we'

Then:

aw

'you all'

And:

u

'they'

Ok, so what about the emphatic forms? Well, I actually have already presented you with one of them.

Let's look at all of the plural pronouns—non-emphatic and emphatic forms together:

an/anw

'we'

Then:

á/aw

'you all'

And:

u/olu

'they'

(NOTE: The emphatic form of 'you all' can also be alu in some places. This is particularly the case in Jula-speaking areas.

Did you notice what I did?

When I first gave you the plural pronouns, I snuck in the emphatic form aw ('you all') instead of its non-emphatic form á. Why?

I did so for two reasons.

First, the form aw is more widely used than á even by native speakers of Bambara. There are though a few constructions (such as imperatives, which you will learn about later), in which it's more normal to use á.

Second, I did so because as you may have noticed á is almost the same as the third person singular form à—the only thing that distinguishes them is tone (that is, the relative pitch at which they are pronounced).

Here I have used diacritics above the vowels to mark tonal distinctions. This, however, is not generally done in Latin-based Bambara—most often, people write without marking tone at all. As such, one old workaround, which you sometimes see, is that people write "plural you" as a letter A with a trailing apostrophe, a', so that we know it's not "he/she/it" (which they would then write as a plain A: a).

(NOTE: None of this is an issue if you are reading and writing in N'ko since tone is systematically marked in that writing system. This is nice when you are trying to figure out which word an author means or how to pronounce things properly.)

For your purposes as a beginner, it's best to just stick with aw and then know that you may run into á in some cases.

When to use emphatics

Alright, so if emphatics and non-emphatics are nearly interchangeable why do they have distinct names?

First, it's because they can do different work.

Emphatic pronouns allow you to draw particular attention to a pronoun in a sentence. This is a little bit like the way that we use stress in English (e.g., I am your father vs I am your father).

For instance:

Ne ye i fa ye.

'I am your father'

Second, there are some specific grammatical constructions that require the use of an emphatic form. Here's two to give you a sense of what I mean:

• Presentative constructions using don/tɛ

For instance, if you were looking for your favorite hat and your friend thought they found it, but it wasn't in fact the right one, you'd say:

Ale tɛ. (❌ À tɛ)

"That isn't it.''

• Following ni ('and') and ani ('and'; literally, 'it and'). For instance:

Ne ani ale bɛ Sikasso. (❌ Ne ani à bɛ Sikasso)

'Me and him are in Sikasso.'

• Before the question marker wa (which we will cover explicitly in "Question Words" later). For instance:

– I teriw dun?
– Olu wa? U ka kɛnɛ! (❌ U wa?)

– And your friends?
– Them? They are healthy!

There are other cases where native speakers will naturally use emphatic pronouns. But my advice to you is to not get too focused on trying to memorize when to use or not use emphatics; you will unconsciously pick up the patterns just by listening to and speaking with other people!

Summary

Ayiwa! Here's what we now know about personal pronouns:

• Personal pronouns have non-emphatic or emphatic forms that are generally interchangeable:

n/ne : I

i/e(le) : you

à/ale : he/she/it

an/anw : we

á/aw : you all

u/olu : they

• Emphatic forms are used 1) to draw attention to a pronoun; and 2) in some specific grammatical contexts