Friday, December 02, 2016

Quick comments on language in Mali today

In transit on the way back from a quick 3 weeks in Mali as part of a short-term consultancy with the Mali Justice Project. More on the project at another time, hopefully, but here are some quick (and unfortunately superficial) observations regarding language in Mali while they're still fresh in the memory.

This was my first time in Mali since 2008. Bamako has grown considerably, and from observations and descriptions, there is a much larger urban middle class. However, that has not seemed to have been accompanied by a shift to French in everyday language (as one might see in some other cities in Francophone states). Bambara seems to be spoken everywhere, with French and occasional other languages as well.

As an obvious foreigner, efforts to use Bambara are generally met positively or matter-of-factly (to the extent one's accent hasn't obscured the fact one is using the language). That was great, though I admit it almost got a bit disconcerting to have airport security shift out of role to banter with the toubab speaking broken Bambara.

Only one real opportunity to speak Fulfulde, and that with a colleague in the project office. I found though that the whoosh of Fulfulde I was able to call up (to my surprise) was hard to turn off at first. Part of that is shifting between too many languages for a former monolingual (even crossed wires between Bambara and Chinese once - an old occasional lapse I ascribe to the similar structures of the languages and how I think my brain handles them).

In traveling outcountry to Segou and Sikasso, also found Bambara easy to use in various settings. With Segou that is expected, since it is ethnically Bambara (and the center of a major precolonial Bambara kingdom), but even in Sikasso, the major city in the ethnically Senufo/Minianka region of Mali, there was no problem speaking Bambara with anyone small merchants to heads of services. In fact, a 2-day project meeting of people involved in commerce, transportation, and services de contrôle in Sikasso worked mainly in Bambara after starting in French.

Not so much signage in Bambara, though on the road to Segou did notice a couple of signs with N'Ko (wasn't able to get photos, sorry). Orange - the phone company - had a TV ad with "I ni tié" (i ni cɛ ≈ thank you). Frenchified renditions of Bambara text are frequent in the written forms I saw in such short usage, which generally accompanied French.

Also had the chance to visit the ACALAN offices - more about that in another post.

No comments: