Zarma language
Encyclopedia
Zarma is a member of the Songhay languages
. It is the leading indigenous language of the southwestern lobe of the West African nation of Niger
, where the Niger River
flows and the capital city, Niamey, is located, and it is the second leading for that entire nation, after Hausa
, which is spoken in south central Niger. In earlier decades, it was known as Djerma. With over 2 million speakers, Zarma is far and away the most widely spoken of the Songhay languages. The two other major Songhay dialects or languages are spoken upriver in the neighboring nation of Mali. They are Koyraboro Senni
, centered on the city of Gao, with about 400,000 speakers, and yet further upriver from Zarma territory, Koyra Chiini
, centered on the eminent ancient university city of Timbuktu
, with about 200,000 speakers. According to some reports, speakers of Zarma do not understand Koyraboro Senni.
a
, b
, c
, d
, e
, f
, g
, h
, i
, j
, k
, l
, m
, n
, ɲ (or ny), ŋ, o
, p
, r
, s
, t
, u
, w
, y
, z
. In addition, v
may be used in a few rare words of foreign origin, but many Zarma cannot pronounce it.
Most of the letters are pronounced with IPA values, the exceptions being ⟨j⟩ ɟ (approximately English j, but more palatalized), ⟨y⟩ j, ⟨r⟩ ɾ (a flap). The letter ⟨c⟩ is approximately like English ch, though more palatalized. The palatal nasal ⟨ɲ⟩ is sometimes spelled ⟨ny⟩.
Long consonants are written with double letters; ⟨rr⟩ is a trill r. Long vowels are sometimes written with double letters, but not consistently. Nasal vowels are written a tilde or by a following ⟨n⟩ or ⟨ŋ⟩. In older works, /c/ was spelled ⟨ky⟩ or ⟨ty⟩. Both ⟨n⟩ and ⟨m⟩ are pronounced as a labiodental nasal ɱ before ⟨f⟩.
Tone
is not written unless the word is ambiguous, in which case the standard IPA diacritics are used, e.g. bá ("to be a lot": high tone), bà ("to share": low tone), bâ ("to want" or "even": falling tone), and bǎ ("to be better": rising tone), though in this case the meaning is almost always unambiguous in context, so these words are usually all written ba.
counterparts. There is slight allophonic variation and slight dialectal variation. Vowel length is phonemically distinctive. There are a number of combinations of vowel plus semivowel /w/ or /j/, in which the semivowel can be initial or final.
The combinations /ɡe/, /ɡi/, /ke/ and /ki/ usually have some palatal quality to them and may even become interchangeable with /ɟe/, /ɟi/, /ce/ and /ci/ in many people's speech.
All consonants may be short and all consonants except /c/, /h/, /f/ and /z/. (In some dialects, long /f/ exists in the word goffo.)
Stress
is generally unimportant in Zarma. According to Abdou Hamani (1980), two-syllable words are stressed on their first syllable, unless that syllable is just a short vowel: a-, i- or u-. Three-syllable words have stress on their second syllable. The first consonant of a stressed syllable is pronounced a bit more strongly and the vowel in the preceding syllable is weakened. Only emphasized words have a stressed syllable. There is no change of tone for a stressed syllable.
on the noun phrase. The singular definite enclitic is -ǒ or -ǎ. Some authors always write this ending with a rising tone mark even if it is not ambiguous and even if not truly a rising tone. The other endings are in the table below. The definite and demonstrative endings replace any final vowel. See Hamani (1980) for a discussion of when to add -ǒ and when to add -ǎ, as well as other irregularities. See Tersis (1981) for a discussion of the complex changes in tone that may occur.
For example, súsúbày means "morning" (indefinite singular); súsúbǎ means "the morning" (definite singular); and súsúbô means "this morning" (demonstrative singular).
There is no gender or case in Zarma; thus the third person singular pronoun a can mean he, she, it, her, him, his, hers, its, one or one's, according to its position in the sentence.
for verbs which are indicated by a modal word before the verb and any object nouns. The aspects are the completive (daahir gasu), the incompletive (daahir gasu si) and the subjunctive (afiri ŋwaaray nufa). (Beginning grammars for foreigners sometimes call the first two "past and present tenses", but this is not accurate.) There is also an imperative and a continuing or progressive construction. Lack of a modal marker indicates either the affirmative completive aspect (if there is a subject and no object) or the singular affirmative imperative (if there is no subject). There is a special modal marker, ka or ga, according to dialect, which indicates the completive aspect with emphasis on the subject. Different markers are used to indicate a negative sentence.
Linguists do not agree on the tone for ga. Some say it is high before a low tone and low before a high tone.
There are several words in Zarma expressing the English idea "to be". The defective verb tí is used to equate two noun phrases and is used only with the emphasized completive ka/ga, as in Ay ma ka ti Yakuba ("My name is Yakuba"). The existential gǒ (negative sí) is not a verb (White-Kaba, 1994, calls it a "verboid") and has no aspect; it means "exist" and usually links a noun phrase to a descriptive term such as a place, price or participle, as in A go fuwo ra ("She's in the house"). The predicative nô means "it is", "they are", etc., and is one of the most common words in the Zarma language. It has no aspect or negative form and is placed after a noun phrase, sometimes for emphasis, as in Ni do no ay ga koy ("It's to your house I'm going"). Other words, such as gòró, cíyà, tíyà, and bárà are much rarer and are usually used to express ideas, such as the subjunctive, which gǒ and tí cannot handle.
Participles can be formed with the suffix -ànté, similar in meaning to the past participle in English. This suffix can also be added to quantities to form ordinal numbers and to some nouns to form adjectives. A sort of gerund can be formed by adding -yàŋ, transforming the verb into a noun. There are many other suffixes that can make nouns out of verbs, but only -yàŋ works with all verbs.
Two verbs can be related with the word ká. (In many dialects it is gá, not to be confused with the incompletive aspect marker or the emphasized completive marker.) The connector ká implies that the second verb is a result of the first, or that the first is the reason or cause of the second, as in ka ga ŋwa, "come (in order to) eat."
Word order in noun phrases. When a noun ("determinatum") is to be modified by another noun ("determinant"), the determinant is placed in front of the determinatum. The determinant may show possession, purpose or description. All other modifiers of a noun (adjectives, articles, numbers, demonstratives, etc.) are placed after it.
Example. Here is a proverb in Zarma:
Da curo fo hẽ, afo mana hẽ, i si jinde kaana bay.
i.e., 'you need to hear both sides of the story'.
Songhay languages
The Songhay, Songhai, or Songai languages are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the west African states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. They have been widely used as a lingua franca in that region ever since the...
. It is the leading indigenous language of the southwestern lobe of the West African nation of Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
, where the Niger River
Niger River
The Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea...
flows and the capital city, Niamey, is located, and it is the second leading for that entire nation, after Hausa
Hausa language
Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people...
, which is spoken in south central Niger. In earlier decades, it was known as Djerma. With over 2 million speakers, Zarma is far and away the most widely spoken of the Songhay languages. The two other major Songhay dialects or languages are spoken upriver in the neighboring nation of Mali. They are Koyraboro Senni
Koyraboro Senni
Koyraboro Senni is a variety of Songhai in Mali, spoken by some 400,000 people along Niger River from Gourma-Rharous, east of Timbuktu, through Bourem, Gao, and Ansongo to the Mali–Niger border.The expression “koyra-boro senn-i” literally denotes “the language of the town dwellers” as opposed to...
, centered on the city of Gao, with about 400,000 speakers, and yet further upriver from Zarma territory, Koyra Chiini
Koyra Chiini language
Koyra Chiini , or Western Songhay, is a variety of Songhai in Mali, spoken by about 200,000 people along the Niger River in Timbuktu and upriver from it in the towns of Diré, Tonka, Goundam, and Niafunké, as well as in the Saharan town of Araouane to its north...
, centered on the eminent ancient university city of Timbuktu
Timbuktu
Timbuktu , formerly also spelled Timbuctoo, is a town in the West African nation of Mali situated north of the River Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The town is the capital of the Timbuktu Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali...
, with about 200,000 speakers. According to some reports, speakers of Zarma do not understand Koyraboro Senni.
Orthography
The Zarma alphabet uses the following letters.a
A
A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...
, b
B
B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:...
, c
C
Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
, d
D
D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the...
, e
E
E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
, f
F
F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club...
, g
G
G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
, h
H
H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....
, i
I
I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound...
, j
J
Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...
, k
K
K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA....
, l
L
Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet...
, m
M
M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water...
, n
N
N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
, ɲ (or ny), ŋ, o
O
O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a...
, p
P
P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words...
, r
R
R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R...
, s
S
S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
, t
T
T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...
, u
U
U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
, w
W
W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V...
, y
Y
Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound...
, z
Z
Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...
. In addition, v
V
V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details....
may be used in a few rare words of foreign origin, but many Zarma cannot pronounce it.
Most of the letters are pronounced with IPA values, the exceptions being ⟨j⟩ ɟ (approximately English j, but more palatalized), ⟨y⟩ j, ⟨r⟩ ɾ (a flap). The letter ⟨c⟩ is approximately like English ch, though more palatalized. The palatal nasal ⟨ɲ⟩ is sometimes spelled ⟨ny⟩.
Long consonants are written with double letters; ⟨rr⟩ is a trill r. Long vowels are sometimes written with double letters, but not consistently. Nasal vowels are written a tilde or by a following ⟨n⟩ or ⟨ŋ⟩. In older works, /c/ was spelled ⟨ky⟩ or ⟨ty⟩. Both ⟨n⟩ and ⟨m⟩ are pronounced as a labiodental nasal ɱ before ⟨f⟩.
Tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
is not written unless the word is ambiguous, in which case the standard IPA diacritics are used, e.g. bá ("to be a lot": high tone), bà ("to share": low tone), bâ ("to want" or "even": falling tone), and bǎ ("to be better": rising tone), though in this case the meaning is almost always unambiguous in context, so these words are usually all written ba.
Vowels
There are ten vowels: the five oral vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, and their nasalizedNasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
counterparts. There is slight allophonic variation and slight dialectal variation. Vowel length is phonemically distinctive. There are a number of combinations of vowel plus semivowel /w/ or /j/, in which the semivowel can be initial or final.
Consonants
| Bilabial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Labiodental Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Dental | Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive, voiceless | p | t | c | k | ||
| Plosive, voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
| Fricative | f | s z | h | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Vibrant | ɾ r | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Semivowel | w | j |
The combinations /ɡe/, /ɡi/, /ke/ and /ki/ usually have some palatal quality to them and may even become interchangeable with /ɟe/, /ɟi/, /ce/ and /ci/ in many people's speech.
All consonants may be short and all consonants except /c/, /h/, /f/ and /z/. (In some dialects, long /f/ exists in the word goffo.)
Lexical tone and stress
Zarma is a tonal language with four tones: high, low, fall and rise. In Dosso, some linguists (such as Tersis) have observed a dipping (falling-rising) tone on certain words, e.g. ma ("the name").Stress
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
is generally unimportant in Zarma. According to Abdou Hamani (1980), two-syllable words are stressed on their first syllable, unless that syllable is just a short vowel: a-, i- or u-. Three-syllable words have stress on their second syllable. The first consonant of a stressed syllable is pronounced a bit more strongly and the vowel in the preceding syllable is weakened. Only emphasized words have a stressed syllable. There is no change of tone for a stressed syllable.
General
There are a large number of suffixes in Zarma. There are very few prefixes, of which only one (a-/i- before adjectives and numbers) is common.Nouns
Nouns may be singular or plural. There are also three "forms" which indicate whether the noun is indefinite, definite, or demonstrative. "Form" and number are indicated conjointly by an encliticClitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
on the noun phrase. The singular definite enclitic is -ǒ or -ǎ. Some authors always write this ending with a rising tone mark even if it is not ambiguous and even if not truly a rising tone. The other endings are in the table below. The definite and demonstrative endings replace any final vowel. See Hamani (1980) for a discussion of when to add -ǒ and when to add -ǎ, as well as other irregularities. See Tersis (1981) for a discussion of the complex changes in tone that may occur.
| Indefinite | Definite | Demonstrative | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | -∅ | -ǒ or -ǎ | -ô |
| Plural | -yáŋ | -ěy | -êy |
For example, súsúbày means "morning" (indefinite singular); súsúbǎ means "the morning" (definite singular); and súsúbô means "this morning" (demonstrative singular).
There is no gender or case in Zarma; thus the third person singular pronoun a can mean he, she, it, her, him, his, hers, its, one or one's, according to its position in the sentence.
Verbs
Verbs do not have tenses and are not conjugated. There are at least three aspectsGrammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
for verbs which are indicated by a modal word before the verb and any object nouns. The aspects are the completive (daahir gasu), the incompletive (daahir gasu si) and the subjunctive (afiri ŋwaaray nufa). (Beginning grammars for foreigners sometimes call the first two "past and present tenses", but this is not accurate.) There is also an imperative and a continuing or progressive construction. Lack of a modal marker indicates either the affirmative completive aspect (if there is a subject and no object) or the singular affirmative imperative (if there is no subject). There is a special modal marker, ka or ga, according to dialect, which indicates the completive aspect with emphasis on the subject. Different markers are used to indicate a negative sentence.
| Affirmative | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
| Completive | ∅ or nà | mǎn or màná |
| Emphasized completive | ka or ga | mǎn or màná |
| Incompletive | ga | sí |
| Subjunctive | mà | mà sí |
| Progressive | go ga | si ga |
| Singular Imperative | ∅ | sí |
| Plural Imperative | wà | wà sí |
Linguists do not agree on the tone for ga. Some say it is high before a low tone and low before a high tone.
There are several words in Zarma expressing the English idea "to be". The defective verb tí is used to equate two noun phrases and is used only with the emphasized completive ka/ga, as in Ay ma ka ti Yakuba ("My name is Yakuba"). The existential gǒ (negative sí) is not a verb (White-Kaba, 1994, calls it a "verboid") and has no aspect; it means "exist" and usually links a noun phrase to a descriptive term such as a place, price or participle, as in A go fuwo ra ("She's in the house"). The predicative nô means "it is", "they are", etc., and is one of the most common words in the Zarma language. It has no aspect or negative form and is placed after a noun phrase, sometimes for emphasis, as in Ni do no ay ga koy ("It's to your house I'm going"). Other words, such as gòró, cíyà, tíyà, and bárà are much rarer and are usually used to express ideas, such as the subjunctive, which gǒ and tí cannot handle.
Participles can be formed with the suffix -ànté, similar in meaning to the past participle in English. This suffix can also be added to quantities to form ordinal numbers and to some nouns to form adjectives. A sort of gerund can be formed by adding -yàŋ, transforming the verb into a noun. There are many other suffixes that can make nouns out of verbs, but only -yàŋ works with all verbs.
Two verbs can be related with the word ká. (In many dialects it is gá, not to be confused with the incompletive aspect marker or the emphasized completive marker.) The connector ká implies that the second verb is a result of the first, or that the first is the reason or cause of the second, as in ka ga ŋwa, "come (in order to) eat."
Syntax
Zarma is a SOV language; that is, the normal word order is subject–object–verb. Objects are normally placed before the verb, though the object may be placed after the verb for emphasis, and a few common verbs require the object after. Zarma has postpositions (instead of prepositions as in English) which are placed after the noun.Word order in noun phrases. When a noun ("determinatum") is to be modified by another noun ("determinant"), the determinant is placed in front of the determinatum. The determinant may show possession, purpose or description. All other modifiers of a noun (adjectives, articles, numbers, demonstratives, etc.) are placed after it.
Example. Here is a proverb in Zarma:
Da curo fo hẽ, afo mana hẽ, i si jinde kaana bay.
| da | curo | fo | hẽ, | a-fo | mana | hẽ, | i | si | jinde | kaan-a | bay |
| if | bird | one | cry, | -one | cry, | they | voice | good- | know | ||
| ‘If one bird sings, and another doesn't sing, they won't know which voice is sweetest.’ | |||||||||||
i.e., 'you need to hear both sides of the story'.
External links
- Map of Zarma language from the LL-Map Project
- Information on Zarma from the MultiTree Project
- Cawyan Zarma sanni, an instructional course in Zarma, in English, in progress
- Songhai / Zarma Language Page, Handbook of African languages
- Ethnologue, page for Mali
- Peace Corps – Niger: Zarma Dictionary
- Zarma language and culture
- Zarma Dictionary
- Webster's Dictionary
- Zarma language lessons, and MP3