Names For Days Of The Week In Three Mande Languages: Bambara, Jula, and Mandinka

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides information about names for days of the week in three Mande languages: Bambara, Jula (Dioula), and Mandinka.

"Mande" is a category for some-but not all- traditional languages that are spoken in West Africa.

This post is part of an ongoing pancocojams series that provides information about and lists for day names in various African languages. Click the "African languages days of the week" tag to find other posts in this ongoing series.

The content of this post is presented for linguistic, cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.

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GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT MANDE (LANGUAGES CATEGORY)
Excerpt #1:
From http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0144.xml
"Mande Languages", Dmitry Idiatov, Last Modified 11 January 2017
"Introduction

Mande languages are spoken across much of inland West Africa up to the northwest of Nigeria as their eastern limit. The center of gravity of the Mande-speaking world is situated in the southwest of Mali and the neighboring regions. There are approximately seventy Mande languages. Mande languages have long been recognized as a coherent group. Thanks to both a sufficient number of clear lexical correspondences and the remarkable uniformity in basic morphosyntax, the attribution of a given language to Mande is usually straightforward. The major subdivision within Mande is between Western Mande, which comprises the majority of both languages and speakers, and Southeastern Mande (aka Southern Mande or Eastern Mande, which are also the names for the two subbranches of Southeastern Mande), a comparatively small but linguistically diverse and geographically dispersed group.

Traditionally, Mande languages have been classified as one of the earliest offshoots of Niger-Congo. However, their external affiliation still remains a working hypothesis rather than an established fact. One of the most well-known Mande languages is probably Bamana (aka Bambara), as well as some of its close relatives, which in nonlinguistic publications are sometimes indiscriminately referred to as Mandingo. Mande languages are written in a variety of scripts ranging from Latin-based or Arabic-based alphabets to indigenously developed scripts, both syllabic and alphabetic."
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This article has been reformatted for this post.

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Excerpt #2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mande_languages
"The Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé people and include Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Dioula, Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are millions of speakers, chiefly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast. The Mande languages have traditionally been considered a divergent branch of the Niger–Congo family, but that has always been controversial.”...

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INFORMATION ABOUT & NAMES OF DAYS OF THE WEEK IN BAMBARA, JULA, AND MANDINKA
Bambara
Excerpt #1:
From http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bambara.htm
"Bambara (Bamanankan)

Bambara is a Mande language with about 3 million speakers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ghana. It is spoken principally among the Bambara ethnic group in Mali, where it is the national language and the most widely understood one.

Writing was introduced to the Bambara during the French occupation (1880-1960) and Bambara is usually written with the Latin alphabet, though the N'Ko and Arabic alphabets are also used to some extent. In addition, there is a rich oral literature, consisting largely of tales of kings and heroes."...

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Excerpt #2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambara_language
"The Bambara (Bamana) language, Bamanankan, is a lingua franca and national language of Mali spoken by perhaps 15 million people, 5 million Bambara people and about 10 million second-language users. It is estimated that about 80 percent of the population of Mali speak Bambara as a first or second language. It has a subject–object–verb clause structure and two lexical tones.

Classification
Bambara is a variety of a group of closely related languages called Manding, whose native speakers trace their cultural history to the medieval Mali Empire.[3] Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible – dependent on exposure or familiarity with dialects between speakers – and spoken by 30 to 40 million people in the countries Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Gambia.[4] Manding is part of the larger Mandé family of languages."...

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Excerpt #3
http://wikitravel.org/en/Bambara_phrasebook http://wikitravel.org/en/Bambara_phrasebook
Bambara phrasebook, Mali Banner.jpg
"Bambara, or Bamanankan is a language in West Africa, mostly in Mali, where it is mother tongue of the Bambara people (30% of the population), and where 80% of the population can communicate in the language. Bambara will also be useful in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Gambia. Together with Dioulé and Malinké it belongs to the Mandekan dialect family, which itself part of the Mande group, which is a Niger-Congo language subgroup.

The language is heavily influenced by French, and even the slightest knowledge of French will make it easier to remember words. If you don't remember a word you can try to use the French word.

[...]

Sunday - kari-don
Monday - nténé-don
Tuesday - tarata-don
Wednesday - araba-don
Thursday - alamisa-don
Friday - (gé)juma-don
Saturday - sibiri-don

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Jula (Dioula)
Excerpt #1
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyula_language
"Jula (Dyula, Dioula) is a Mande language spoken in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Mali. It is one of the Manding languages, and is most closely related to Bambara, being mutually intelligible with Bambara as well as Malinke. It is a trade language in West Africa and is spoken by millions of people, either as a first or second language. It is written in the Arabic script and the Latin script, as well as in the indigenous N'Ko alphabet."...

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From https://www.ethnologue.com/language/dyu
"Jula
A language of Côte d’Ivoire

Alternate Names Dioula, Diula, Djula, Dyoula, Dyula, Jula Kong, Kong Jula, Tagboussikan

Autonym - Julakan

Population
8,500,000 in Côte d’Ivoire; Total users in all countries: 12,486,000 (as L1: 2,208,000; as L2: 10,278,000).
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"L1" = first language
"L2"- second language"

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Excerpt #3
From http://www.morethanfootprints.com/dioula-phrasebook.html

"days of the week

Monday - Tènè
Tuesday - Tarata
Wednesday - Araba
Thursday - Lamoussa
Friday - Djouma
Saturday - Sibiri
Sunday - Aty"

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Mandinka
Excerpt #1
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandinka_language
"The Mandinka language (Mandi'nka kango), or Mandingo, is a Mandé language spoken by the Mandinka people of the Casamance region of Senegal, the Gambia, and northern Guinea-Bissau. It is the principal language of the Gambia.

Mandinka belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus similar to Bambara and Maninka/Malinké. In a majority of areas, it is a tonal language with two tones: low and high, although the particular variety spoken in the Gambia and Senegal borders on a pitch accent due to its proximity with non-tonal neighboring languages like Wolof.

[...]

In Senegal and Gambia, Mandinka is approaching a system of pitch accent under the influence of local non-tonal languages such as Wolof. The tonal system is more robust in Guinea-Bisau."...

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Excerpt #2
From http://mansata.wikifoundry.com/page/Learn+to+Speak+Mandinka Days of The Week / Months / Year
"Sunday - Alahadi or Dimasso
Monday - Teneng
Tuesday - Talato
Wednesday - Arabo
Thursday - Aramiso
Friday - Ajumo
Saturday - Sibiti"

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Excerpt #3
From https://mandinkakango.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/days-of-the-week/ Mandinka Days of the week
Posted June 17, 2010 by mandinka Kaŋo
"Teneŋo - Monday
Telato - Tuesday
Arabo - Wednesday
Aramiso - Thursday
Arjumo - Friday
Si bito - Saturday
Dimasso - Sunday
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Note: The term "Mandinka" (language) shouldn't be confused with the term "Maninka" (Malinké) language.
According to https://www.alsintl.com/resources/languages/Malinke/
"Malinke (also called Maninkakan Western, Maninka-Western, Malinka) is a Manding language belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. It is spoken in Eastern Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali. There are approximately 500,000 Malinke speakers total.

Malinke has a 59% lexical similarity to Mandinka."
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Help please! While I've found online information about Maninka (Malinké), I've not been able to find any internet list of the names for the days of the week in that language.

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