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, ...

spoken in

Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...

, and the only one spoken in

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,87 ...

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 a sandstone cliff in the Dogon country of Mali. It rises about above the lower sandy flats to the south, and has a length of approximately . The area of the escarpment is inhabited today by the Dogon people. ...

(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 The Dogon languages are a small closely related language family that is spoken by the Dogon people of Mali and may ...

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 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 Doue ...

. It is not

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

with other Plains Dogon languages, but is widely known as the

prestige variety Prestige in sociolinguistics is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally co ...

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

* can be realized as a fricative between vowel sounds . * can only occur among loanwords. * may occur as an allophone of when preceding .

Vowels

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

Sources

* Heath, Jeffrey (unpublished
Jamsay Grammar
. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor * . * Dogon languages Languages of Mali {{Dogon-lang-stub