Greetings in Mali: First episode of "Na baro kè"

For the last few months, I've been working on a new project.

To do it, I've had to stretch some new muscles but in the end, I'm really excited to present to you the first episode of "Na baro kè", a video series of subtitled street-side chats that I've been having in Manding with everyday people in West Africa.

While they are primarily made for learners and speakers of the language, I'd like to believe the videos will also appeal to anyone by highlighting the voices of people and places that--through an African language--it has been my great honor to learn from for nearly the last ten years.

Thanks to them and to everyone that helped me along the way with this project. Aw ka foli lo! Ala k'aw sara! ߊߟߎ߬ ߟߊ߫ ߝߏ߬ߟߌ ߟߋ߬، ߊߟߊ ߊߟߎ߬ ߛߙߊ߬

Without further ado:

The Cost of Taxis in Bamako

What’s the average cost of a taxi ride in Bamako? It depends. For me though in 2018? Average cost per ride was 1,746 XOF. Median cost was 2000 XOF.

Here’s a little visualization of data regarding price and approximate distance traveled for 60 taxi rides taken in Bamako in 2018 (you an view and play with the visualization here and the original dataset for those that can make cooler charts than me is here):

Bambara vocabulary from November fieldwork

Regardless of my job, whenever I am in West Africa I am always writing down Manding words and expressions. Sometimes, I write down words that I encounter for the first time. Other times, it is words for which I have forgotten the tone or the appropriate post-position etc. Sometimes, it’s unique usages that I hadn’t encountered before. In any case, I wrote down and then use a range of dictionaries, corpora and friends to investigate further when I have time at home or elsewhere.

Normally, all of these jottings just sits in my notebook or contributes to various dictionary projects that I have going. This time around, I decided to write up all of my jottings with Toolbox (a software that many linguists use for lexicography projects). As a both a record for myself and for any other learners or researchers curious to see the kinds of stuff I wrote down or encountered, I decided to make the write-up available on Zenodo.

Have a look here to check out the expression and words that I encountered and then attempted to check and elucidate with various dictionaries, sources and people. Hope you know them all or learn something new!

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