Jamsay Dogon is one of the
Dogon languages
The Dogon languages are a small closely-related language family that is spoken by the Dogon people of Mali and may belong to the proposed Niger–Congo family. There are about 600,000 speakers of its dozen languages. They are tonal languages, an ...
spoken in
Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...
, and the only one spoken in
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the ...
apart from a few villages of
Tomo Kan. It is one of the plains languages spoken in Dogon villages outside the
Bandiagara Escarpment
The Bandiagara Escarpment is an escarpment in the Dogon country of Mali. The sandstone cliff rises about above the lower sandy flats to the south. It has a length of approximately .
The area of the escarpment is inhabited today by the Dogon pe ...
(the cliffs that the
Dogon
Dogon may refer to:
*Dogon people, an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, in West Africa
*Dogon languages, a small, close-knit language family spoken by the Dogon people of Mali
*'' Dogon A.D.'', an album by saxophonist Juliu ...
ethnic group is usually associated with). It is a major language in
Koro Koro may refer to:
Geography
*Koro Island, a Fijian island
* Koro Sea, in the Pacific Ocean
* Koro, Ivory Coast
*Koro, Mali
* Koro, Wisconsin, United States, an unincorporated community
Languages
*Koro language (India), an endangered language spo ...
, at the south end of the escarpment, and stretches as far north as
Douentza
Douentza (Fulfulde: ''Duwayⁿsa'') is a town and urban commune in the Mopti Region of central Mali. The town lies 145 km east-northeast of Mopti on the RN16, a paved road that links Mopti and Gao. It is the administrative center of the Do ...
. It is not
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
with other Plains Dogon languages, but is widely known as the
prestige variety
In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige Variety (linguistics), varieties are language or dialect families wh ...
due to its use as the language of radio broadcasts. Dialects are ''Domno tegu, Gono tegu, Bama tegu,'' and ''Guru tegu''; their degree of mutual intelligibility has not been recorded. Domno is the standard dialect, and considered the purest; ''Guru'' (Koro) is the dialect of that town.
Phrases
Jamsai gets its name from a common response to a greeting: Jam sai, or "peace only." A typical Jam sai greeting goes like this:
:A: ''Jam now'' (do you have peace in the morning?)
:B: ''Jam sai'' (peace only)
:A: ''Kanya now'' (do your people have peace in the morning?)
:B: ''Jam sai''
:A: ''Taardé''
The greeting then repeats, with B asking all the same questions of A. "Taardé" is the way of the question asker telling the askee that he's done with his inquiry.
A few other common phrases and words:
* ''E nam sayoba?'' (Do your people have peace?)
* ''Guinea nissama?'' (Did you sleep well?)
* ''Nya nyé (Eat!)
* ''Ejuko'' (Good)
* ''Ejila'' (Bad)
* ''ni inim'' (Bathe—literally to put water on oneself)
* ''Ewé'' (market)
* ''Yayerrem'' (I will be right back—literally "I am coming there")
* ''miten'' (friend. Can also mean boyfriend/girlfriend)
References
* Heath, Jeffrey (unpublished
Jamsay Grammar University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
* .
*
{{Dogon topics, state=collapsed
Dogon languages
Languages of Mali