Bambara vs Jula vs Mandinka | Audience Questions 

I ni ke, Fatima :-) Yes, Mandinka is closer to Maninka/Malinké than Bambara (for a few reasons)

I ni ce! :-)

I ni ce, Siôn! Thanks for letting me know. I hesitated to share the questions from the live Q+A but then I thought, "What the hell -- no one is gonna watch the live replay and the questions come up regularly" 🙃

@@Ankataa it's just what's needed. There's so much confusion, not helped by Africans themselves saying things like "I speak dialect" or "tribal language" (what's a tribe - nation/language community or a clan??). I'm also interested (and confused by 'Bantu' is that like Latin or like Proto Indo-European? Been very interested and in communication with Kwesi Kwaa Prah who set up CASAS en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwesi_Prah and hope language conitiuums can create a united standard language big enough to create a viable linguistic economy. Would like more simple explanatory videos like this.

@@SionTJobbins Great, thanks for letting me know! Yes, I'm aware of Kwesi's work and I also believe that outsiders often think that there are thousands of African languages and no one understands one another, but the reality is that there are many large lingua francas spoken by tens of millions with a few forms that, yes, vary, but no more than Arabic or even English or French does across the world!

I'm gonna use the word "ethnic group" instead of "tribe", but I think we are talking about the same thing. What's tricky with Maninka vs Mandinka is that linguistically they are different enough that mutually intelligibility between the two can be a stretch for outsiders like me. That said, they share an ethnic identity. The difference between "maninka" and "mandinka" as an ethnic label is just a question of accent (i.e., do you pronounce a "d" in the middle or note). Both names from from "Manden-ka" which means 'inhabitant of Manden". "Manden" is the name of a region at the Mali/Guinea border and it was also the name of polity that is commonly referred to as the "Mali Empire". "Mali" is derived from the Arabic deformation of the name "Manden".

@@Ankataa true, ethnicity is the right word to use instead of tribe. And I notice some Mandinka speakers in Senegal and Gambia claim not to understand malinke from guinea, while some claim to understand it, it's a 50/50 thing.

You're welcome! Yeah, it was a pretty high-flying overview, but I'm glad it was helpful :-) Makes me think that it was worth posting!

I did my best to explain what I have learned! :-)

I ni ce :-)

You're welcome! Are you trying to learn one of the Manding varieties?

@@Ankataa i’m speaking mandinka from Gambia. I’m next to fluent in it but i’m born in Sweden. I’m just curious to learn about different manding languages. The hard part is when I hear french words in the middle of the sentence, and I would self proclaim myself as an ok french speaker as well. The subtitles you provide are gold and makes it easy to understand words with varying accents.

@@Eziopct Ah cool! Thanks so much for sharing. It really makes me happy to think that the videos and subtitles could help you go further with the language! Yes, it's much the same for me when I hear Gambians speak -- it throws me off to hear English loanwords instead of French 🙂

Perhaps a little bit! The question was more about the varieties and not so much where does one find speakers of the language :-)

Mory Kanté's first language as far as I know was Maninka. I'd assume that most of the song is in Maninka too (but I'd have to listen to be sure he didn't also use any other languages)

@@Ankataa Thank you so much for your prompt answer. It was a very popular song in Europe when it was released in the 80s (still the most popular one outside Africa apparently). I tried to find out directly from the source writing to the record label and they said “Mandingue” but I know that’s only the language group. Wiki says “Mandinka”, but it didn’t make sense to me since that’s not prevalent in Guinea (and I had checked on the purple map you show where it’s visible). So I thought it would probably be Maninka, also since it’s the historical language right? Thank you so much for your answer. I feel honored that we come to the same conclusion.

@@Bellasie1 Yes, it's "Maninka" (sometimes called "Malinké" in French). "Mandingue" is the broader catch-call term for all of the Manding varities in French. Happy to help! The terms "Maninka" and "Mandinka" are the same name (historically "people of Manden"), but in linguistic terms, they designate two varieties of Manding that are quite distinct. Here's my info on Man*d*inka: www.ankataa.com/blog/2020/11/13/resources-for-learning-mandinka

@@Ankataa Oh wow! Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you very much! I like the way the language sounds and I love the kora music thus the songs, too, but it’s not my area of language study at all originally, so thank you so much for creating such quality content on this fascinating subject! You earned a new subscriber! Oh and I’m curious now, but did you learn at INALCO in Paris? I see you’re in the US… I always wondered where “rare” (African / Asian / Oceanian and pre-colonization pan-American) languages are academically taught in the US. I know INALCO teaches Bambara and Soninke only these days, not sure about SOAS in London and L’Orientale in Naples, Italy but they probably do or did at some point.

@@Bellasie1 I am American, but I actually live in Paris these days. Previously, I learned the language while in the Peace Corps (a US government program) in Burkina Faso where I studied Jula. Later, I spent a year at l'INALCO studying Bambara and Manding linguistics. Then I did my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania where I continued to study the language (but primarily via Maninka written in N'ko). After that I spent 3 years at the University of Hamburg, but they didn't teach any Bambara/Manding there. In the US universities, there aren't a lot of regular offerings of Bambara anymore unless there's students. From what I understand, Indiana still does it more or less regularly, but it depends on student demand. A lot of grad students reach out to me from US institutions because they want to study the language, but it's not formally supported or offered by their university

Thanks for chiming in, Killa! Yes, it's true that they can often get the gist. There are lots of comments on this channel from Senegambian Mandinka speakers who say that they can and can't or kind of can follow what people are saying in the videos :-) I like your summary of the history of Manding, but I would put it differently. The originally name of the language in the language itself would have been "mandenkakan" (< "manden-ka-kan" = roughly, 'language of the people of Manden'). The modern names "Maninka(kan)" and "Mandinka(kan)" are just iterations of this name. The name for the original ethnic group (what you call "tribe" -- I generally don't use this term) would have been "mandenka" (lit. "person of Manden"). Today in English, you hear both "Manding" and "Mandingo". For me, "Manding" is more common in academic literature and linguistic usage. The term "Mandingo" is often used in Sierra Leone and Liberia, etc., as well as in the Black diaspora in the US for instance.

@@Ankataa Cheers very interesting. Yes the spelling also depends on wether the country is Anglophone or Francophone. These European languages along with other post colonial devisions have sadly caused further divisions in Manding & many other African languages.

They are part of the same broader linguistic family (the Mande family), but they aren't anywhere close to mutually intellegible. It's close English and German are both Germanic languages.

What is the project? Feel free to share more info if you have a link. Otherwise, send me an email via my contact page: ankataa.com/contact

@@Ankataa thank you so much!

Thanks for reaching out, Chal! Those are cool requests, but as a teacher and linguist, I'm really focused on Manding since it's basically one language. I know of scholars and writings about Mande as a broader family, but it's not something that I'm planning on producing any videos about in the near future. If you are looking for articles to check out for something in particular for non-Manding languages of the Mande family, you could check out the journal "Mandenkan" (which is a misleading name since it covers all of Mande). The journal is completely open access: llacan.cnrs.fr/pub_mandenkan.php

@@Ankataa Thanks so much for this!! Looking forward to more of your content!

Busa (busanchi, like the hausas call it) and Bisa languages are spoken in the northern region of my country Nigeria, with other similar dialects like kyenga and boko. Busa/Bisa also have some gur/voltaic influences because they are also part of the old borgu emirate which are gur/voltaic influenced, this is a major reason why Busa/bisa are very distinct and different from main manding dialects like bambara/Dioula/Malinke etc

@@solomonosemeke2761 I've spoken with people from the Bissa and Bokobaru Tribes. They can often understand Manding languages roughly half the time in their native tongues (those from Ivory Coast & Burkina Faso). The "Gur Influence" you speak of seems to mainly lie with borrowed loanwords from the surrounding Gur peoples, yet the Languages are still Mandé.

Mande speaking people are the biggest brand covering all west Africa the language are very similar. This is why Nigeria, chad,Ghana, niger are all parts of that great manding empire ​@@chalgoode6449

Thanks for chiming in, Musa! Do you mean "had" or "has"? I know that there are Manding speakers in Sierra Leone (like in many other places), but the map is based on specific data from a published source. It's listed here on the page where I uploaded the image for anyone to use: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Manding_language_continuum.png

@@Ankataa has...

Thanks for chiming in, Blackbird! I think I follow you, but the one thing I would say is that "Julakan" is not pejorative in many communities of Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire. In fact, it's the prefered name for the spoken variety of people that consider themselves to be ethnically "Jula". This was the case in the village where I lived for two years in Burkina Faso, for instance. This dynamic is described in publications such as this one: Sanogo, Mamadou Lamine. 2003. “L’ethnisme jula: origines et évolution d’un groupe ethnolinguistique dans la boucle du Niger.” In Burkina Faso, Cents Ans d’Histoire, 1895-1995, edited by Yénouyaba Georges Madiéga, 369-79. Paris, France: Karthala.

I Ceesay! :-)

Thanks for chiming in! It's a bit more complicated than that. There was a process of Jula ethnogenesis over the centuries that led to Jula becoming an ethnic identity for some in areas like Kong and Bobo-Dioulasso

I ni ce i hakilina na! "Jula" kɔrɔ ko ca. Dɔw fɛ, siya tɛ, nka mɔgɔ dɔw fɛ, siya sugu dɔ don. N sigira yɔrɔ min na Burkina Faso san fila, mɔgɔ b'à fɔ ko "N siya ye jula ye". Julakan min bɛ fɔ sirada la ani julakan min bɛ fɔ o mɔgɔw fɛ, kelen tɛ. Sirada ta kɛra i n'à fɔ bamanankan. Nka min bɛ fɔ julaw ka lu (walima "du") kɔnɔ, o ni bamanankan tɛ kelen ye. N'i taara Kong walima Bobo-Dioulasso, i bɛ se k'o julakan mɛn ka o julaw dɔn.

@@Ankataa awɔ bi a bɛ i na fɔ siya don nɔn tɛ Fɔlɔ Fɔlɔ la mɔgɔ minu tunbɛ ta Burkina Faso ani Cote d'ivoire nin u tunbɛ bamanankan fɔ wolu tunbɛ wele ko jula aw ni ce famuyali ɲumanla

@@nouhoundiarra8865 Nba! I yɛrɛ ni ce. À tun bɛ ten. Nka, ne fɛ, julakan, bamanankan, maninkakan ani mandinkakan bɛɛ bɔra Manden. Mɔgɔ bɛɛ tun bɛ "mandenkakan" sugu dɔ fɔ. O la, an tɛ se k'à fɔ ko u ka kan tun ye bamanankan ye.

Gɛrɛ mali maa kɔrɔbaw la walasa i ka faamu ka fɔ Jula kan te ye bamanankan yɛlɛma len de don. I ni ce