Why Bambara is so Great

Probably the most useful course I am taking, at least in terms of daily living in Bamako, is Bambara. My Bambara teacher, Lamine, who also acts as the homestay coordinator for SIT, makes the two hour classes quite entertaining (though they will always remain mentally exhausting).


Greetings in Mali are extremely important. Before any conversation can occur, people must greet each other properly. Even if you are in a hurry but you see someone you know, you absolutely must stop to greet them…so obviously greetings are the first thing we learned on our very first day here.

The greeting goes a little something like this:

In the morning, the greeter begins by saying I ni sogoma! The literally translation of this is “You and the morning!” Or, as Lamine puts it, “You facing the morning: are you the winner?” The greeting changes depending on the time of day; there are different forms for good morning, good day, good evening, and good night. The response to this greeting differs if you are a man or a woman. Women respond by saying n se! or, “my power,” thus expressing that they are the “winner.” Men, however, respond by saying n ba!, or, “my mother!” I guess this suggests how important a mother is to family life here.

Thus, a literal translation of a greeting in Bambara can be expressed as:

A: You and the morning!
B: My power! You and the morning!
A: My mother!
…It seemed strange at first to us, too.

Another odd but loveable trait of Bambara is the addition of the letter “i” to foreign words. For instance, when we say “I am from America,” we say, “N be bo Ameriki.” We asked Lamine how you would say various state names such as Rhode Island, Vermont, and South Carolina, and literally they are pronounced as Rhode Islandi, Vermonti, and South Carolini. So silly.