Ouaga ni Bobo bɛ danna cogo di?

Intro

In the following video, I ask people in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso about the differences between their city (commonly shortened to "Bobo") and Ouagadougou (commonly shortened to "Ouaga".

Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso and a primarily Mooré-speaking city. It is located in the heart of the country’s central plateau and is almost exclusively populated by Mossi people. (Note: their language is called “Mooré” in French.)

Bobo-Dioulasso, in contrast, is the country’s second-largest city and predominantly Jula-speaking. It serves as an important hub for the entire west and southwest regions of the country. These areas are home to a diverse mix of ethnic groups, each with their own language, but Jula is the primary language of interethnic communication. In previous decades, Bobo was considered the economic capital of Burkina Faso, but that role has increasingly been taken away from it but Ouagadougou.

The video is roughly one question segment from Episode 9 of Na baro kè.

Watch

Watch the video without the subtitles. If they are on, click on the little "CC" symbol and turn them off.

Watch and Read

Now turn on the subtitles in Bambara/Jula (click on the little "CC" button) and read along.

If you are lost, you can also switch it into English and then re-watch in Bambara/Jula.

And remember, you can also slow down the video to make it easier to follow along. I recommend 75%. Click on the little gear symbol.

List of Selected Grammar Points

• Expressing "like; as if" with i n'à fɔ, i ko, etc
• Expressing "since" or "seeing as" with komi or ikomi

Grammar Points Explained

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

  In the video, we hear the following sentence which is half in Jula and half in French:

  À bɛ i n'à fɔ, c'est la même famille en quelque sorte.

  "It's as if it's the same family in some kind of way"

  Within the first half of this sentence, we have a common use of the turn of phrase i n'à fɔ, which can generally be glossed as "like" or "as if" in English.

  À bɛ i n'à fɔ …

  "It's like"

  If we expand out the contraction in it and break down the the expression's word individually, we can get at its literal meaning:

  i na à fɔ

  Lit. "you will say it"

  There isn't a clear English turn of phrase that works in a similar way using a verb related to speaking.

  But it's a little bit like the expression on dirait (que) (Lit. "one would say [that]") in French, which can often be translated as "it looks/seems like" in English.

  This multiword expression is basically a grammatical part of speech. It can play the role of both preposition or conjunction.

  As a preposition before a noun for instance:

  Bobo tɛ i n'à fɔ Ouaga

  "Bobo isn't like Ouaga"

  Or as a conjunction before a whole clause:

  À kɛra i n'à fɔ Bobo ka di ka tɛmɛ Ouaga kan!

  "It seems like Bobo is more pleasant than Ouaga!"

  You can express English expressions like "It seems like…", "It sounds like…", "It looks like…" using i n'à fɔ as part of a variety larger constructions using the verb ka kɛ (Lit. "to occur" or the situative copulas bɛ/tɛ.

  For instance with ka kɛ:

  À kɛra i n'à fɔ i tɛ taa Bobo

  "It seems/sounds/looks like you don't go to Bobo"

  Or:

  À ma kɛ i n'à fɔ n fa ma taa Ouaga abada

  "It's not like my dad didn't ever go to Ouaga"

  Or, for example, with bɛ/tɛ

  À bɛ i n'à fɔ i tɛ taa Bobo

  "It's like you don't go to Bobo"

  (as in, "If I didn't know better, I'd say that you don't go to Bobo")

  Or:

  À tɛ i n'à fɔ n tɛ Ouaga dɔn

  "It's not like I don't know Ouaga"

  The expression i n'à fɔ has a sister phrase that functions and can be used in essentially the exact same way: i ko (Lit. "you say").

  Bobo tɛ i ko Ouaga

  "Bobo isn't like Ouaga"

  At other times, speakers of Bambara and Jula will simply use the French loanword comme directly:

  À bɛ comme …

  "It's like …"

  This loanword is often pronounced and written as komi.

  In yet another case, you may also encounter the hybrid form ikomi, which appears to fuse i ko and komi (from Fr. comme) together:

  À bɛ ikomi …

  "It's like / as if …"

• 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" in English. For instance:

  Ikomi n ma se Ouaga, n tɛ se ka kuma à kan

  "Since I haven't been to Ouaga, I can't speak about it"

  This usage is almost identical with the way that comme is used in a similar way in French (e.g., "Comme je ne suis jamais allé, je ne peux pas en parler")