Jamsai Dogon

Jamsay
Dyamsay tegu
Region	Mali, Burkina Faso
Native speakers	(130,000 cited 1998)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Dogon Plains Dogon Jamsay
Language codes
ISO 639-3	djm
Glottolog	jams1239

Jamsay Dogon is one of the Dogon languages spoken in Mali, and the only one spoken in Burkina Faso apart from a few villages of Tomo Kan. It is one of the plains languages spoken in Dogon villages outside the Bandiagara Escarpment (the cliffs that the Dogon ethnic group is usually associated with). It is a major language in Koro, at the south end of the escarpment, and stretches as far north as Douentza. It is not mutually intelligible with other Plains Dogon languages, but is widely known as the prestige variety 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.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	k	(ʔ)
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	g
Fricative		(f)	s	(ʃ)		(h)
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Lateral			l
Tap	central		ɾ
	nasal		ɾ̃
Approximant	central	w		j
	nasal	w̃		j̃

• /ɡ/ can be realized as a fricative [ɣ] between vowel sounds /a ɔ/.
• /f h ʔ/ can only occur among loanwords.
• /ʃ/ may occur as an allophone of /s/ when preceding /i/.

Vowels

	Oral		Nasal
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close	i iː	u uː	ĩː	ũː
Close-mid	e eː	o oː	ẽː	õː
Open-mid	ɛ ɛː	ɔ ɔː	ɛ̃ː	ɔ̃ː
Open	a aː		ãː

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)

Sources

• Heath, Jeffrey (unpublished) Jamsay Grammar Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Blench, Roger (2005). "A survey of Dogon languages in Mali: Overview". OGMIOS: Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages. 3.02 (26): 14–15. Retrieved 2011-06-30..
• Hochstetler, J. Lee; Durieux, J.A.; E.I.K. Durieux-Boon (2004). Sociolinguistic Survey of the Dogon Language Area (PDF). SIL International. Retrieved 2011-06-30.