Missing "macrolanguages" of Africa

Screenshot from VOA's Kinyarwanda/Kirundi site

The Voice of America (VOA) recently had a job opening for "International Broadcaster (Multimedia) (Kirundi/Kinyarwanda)." Kirundi and Kinyarwanda are the mother tongues, national languages, and co-official languages in, respectively, Burundi and Rwanda. And they are mutually intelligible, with only minor differences, such that apparently a fluent speaker of either could work on a program serving speakers of both. But there is no term covering both - unless one counts the hyphenated Rwanda-Rundi - and no language coding category to cover material designed for use across the two.

This is a situation encountered with many languages in Africa, and one for which there is at least one potential solution - the neologism and language coding category "macrolanguage." There are actually some macrolanguages defined in Africa, but these are few, and as I discuss below, kind of accidental. Is it time to systematically identify (and code) macrolanguages in Africa?

What defines a language?

For most of us, the distinction between languages seems pretty straightforward. But beyond the most spoken international languages - those used officially by the United Nations or ones you are likely to see on a school curriculum - the situation is often more complex. Sometimes two or more closely related languages are so similar that their speakers can understand each other, but sometimes variations within one language can make understanding difficult. An earlier posting on this blog looked at the notion of "neighbor languages" in Scandinavia and Africa. A broader consideration of these issues by Columbia University's John McWhorter suggests that we're really all speaking dialects, some of which benefit from written forms, and one might add, status, resources, and policy support. There is some truth to the saying that "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

However, the issues of what to call a "language" and where to draw the boundaries between it and another "language" are still of practical importance for communication (standardization, references, ICT use) and planning (government, business, education). There are two broad approaches in linguistics to doing this, corresponding with the splitter/lumper (or joiner) approaches to categorizing:  one focusing more on distinctions, and the other focusing more on commonalities.

Without going too deeply into that discussion, which gets more complicated when accounting for issues of identity, names, written forms, and national boundaries, suffice it to say that in considering African languages, there are many situations where one encounters the splitter/lumper choice.

The major reference of languages in the world, Ethnologue, takes a more splitter approach, which means that speech varieties that are closely related and interintelligible may be classified as separate languages. It is their estimate of the number of language in Africa (over 2000) that is most commonly cited, but there are other more conservative estimates.A good academic discussion of this issue entitled "How many languages are there in Africa?" was published in 2004 by Jouni Filip Maho (his estimate is under 1500).

What is a "macrolanguage"?

To make the story brief, the term "macrolanguage" is not a term that was used in linguistic description before the inauguration of the  ISO 639-3 system for encoding all languages in the late 2000s. Since that system is based on Ethnologue's "splitter" data, a new category was needed to accommodate existing codes in the earlier less comprehensive parts of ISO 639 (1&2) that in many cases were more "lumper" in approach. The term macrolanguage was in effect a "shim," to borrow someone else's term, to fit the two systems together.

There are by my count 14 macrolanguages listed for Africa (names linked to the Ethnologue macrolanguage pages): Akan; Arabic; Dinka; Fulah; Gbaya; Grebo; Kalenjin; Kanuri; Kongo; Kpelle; Malagasy; Mandingo; Oromo; and Swahili. There could be others.

That brings us back to Kinyarwanda and Kirundi. How is the relationship between them different - more distant - than any of the above established macrolanguages? One difference, as mentioned above, is no common name to make it easy, and another is that they are dominant in different countries - perhaps analogous to the situation of Scandinavian languages?

Another curious situation is that of Mandingo, which includes several western Manding languages, but not Bambara and Jula (Dyula). Even if the latter two were considered too different from the other Manding tongues, they are close enough that one could localize software for the two together. Keep in mind also that the emerging literary standard N'Ko covers all Manding languages (in a different alphabet). Should the Mandingo macrolanguage be extended to include them all?

The four languages of southwestern Uganda - Kiga, Nkore, Nyoro, ajd Tooro - are close enough to be covered by Runyakitara, a proposed (but not encoded) standard which is being used in various ways, including at least some teaching and a localization of the Google interface. Should these four be considered a macrolanguage under perhaps that same name, thus finally providing a code for localization in Runyakitara?

And there are other examples around the continent that could be discussed.

What good would more macrolanguages do?

The first benefit of identifying more macrolanguages would be in language coding - the very environment in which the term was first used. The language of VOA's website for its Kinyarwanda/Kirundi service - www.radiyoyacuvoa.com - is coded as "rw" (Kinyarwanda) since there is no macrolanguage code covering both languages. Likewise, in many cases, the grouping of very close and mutually intelligible languages as a macrolanguage could facilitate localization of software and apps to serve larger populations - and those larger markets could make it more likely that such localization would be pursued and maintained.

Another benefit would be to complement the tendency in language coding towards seeking more granularity, by recognizing natural groupings of languages (for more on this, see a message to the IETF-languages list last May). In effect providing more balance between splitting and lumping/joining.

In the broader picture, identifying macrolanguages could have benefits for policymaking and program development involving languages within macrolanguage groups, by calling attention to the closely related languages. Especially where foreigners are involved, projects may overlook such relationships and the potential resources they may provide. For example materials development for education, and various communication needs might benefit from tapping efforts and resources in closely related languages.

(Minor edits and image added, 2 Sep. 2016)

Graphics arrangement for posters in Arabic & N'Ko

Localization primarily concerns language - translation from a source language to a target language - but also requires attention to cultural dimensions of communication and presentation of images. One aspect that apparently has been overlooked on more than one occasion is the arrangement of graphics when the target language is written - and read - right-to-left (RTL).

An often cited example is advertising translated into Arabic, where "before" (on the left) and "after" (on the right) pictures were not switched in the Arabic version, unintentionally implying the opposite of the visual message the advertisers hoped to convey (one site mentions this happening for a medicine and for laundry detergent).

RTL in ebola materials

International SOS to its credit has various ebola education materials in several languages, including Arabic and N'Ko, which are both written RTL. However these products - whatever the quality of their translations (which I'm not in a position to judge) - have run afoul of the same issue described above: The graphic layouts have not been inverted to correspond with the text direction.

First, ebola awareness posters in Arabic and N'Ko:

Ebola awareness posters in N'Ko (Manding) and Arabic, from International SOS

The graphics in these posters are arranged in exactly the same way as they are for left-to-right languages (like English), which means that the text reads one way, while the images are ordered in the opposite direction. Not ideal - readers can probably figure it out (assuming a certain level of literacy and familiarity with a visual clue like the arrow point, which we take for granted), but why make them work at it? Imagine following instructions or a comic in English with illustrations in panels organized from your right to your left.

But it's easy to fix. Here's the middle section of the N'Ko poster with graphics inverted:

This was quick and dirty, done with MS Paint on a laptop (can anyone who reads N'Ko evaluate it?). A professional effort would use a more sophisticated graphics program (Gimp or Adobe Photoshop) to get the spacings and alignments right and maybe flip some of the individual images. But the text and the illustrated story line here do at least go in the same direction.

Handwashing poster in Arabic from ISOS

And there's more. A handwashing poster in Arabic, again from International SOS (translation by Translators Without Borders), has the images of steps ordered in the direction contrary to how the language is read. It could be redone with the image sequence reversed to RTL and the digits changed to Arabic form (١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠).

Again, I'm not trying to be critical, but these are errors that stand out, and don't require any particular knowledge of the languages or scripts involved to set right.

A lot of good effort and resources went into producing such materials, and for good reasons, but all that gets unnecessarily discounted if such a basic mistake - one well known in advertising, localization, and development communication - is not corrected before dissemination.

But starting from where we are, with the urgency of the epidemic that prompted these efforts behind us, we have the opportunity to more carefully review and revise such materials to prepare them for re-use/re-purposing (per the 2Ds+4Rs). And in the case of layout, to think about establishing a best-practice of producing alternate graphics templates with inverted image order for RTL languages. How can this be done?

Dioula, Jula, Dyula, or Diula?

Hint: It's all the same language.

The New York Times recently featured an article on speakers of West African languages in the Bronx (a borough of New York City) that mentioned "Diula." From experience I realized that it probably is a less-often used spelling of the variety of Manding spoken mainly in Burkina Faso and northern Côte d'Ivoire, usually spelled Dioula (the French spelling), Jula (the usual spelling in the language itself as well as in English), or Dyula (also used in English and French). There are apparently other variant spellings such as Djula, Dyoula, Joula, and Juula (per various sources).

The number of spellings for this language therefore rivals the number for Temne, which I discussed in an earlier posting. However in the case of Jula/Dioula the existence of multiple spellings is partly related to French phonetics (French being used officially in almost all the areas where Jula is spoken, and the language of the first European descriptions of Julas and  Jula language). In French, the hard "j" sound in Manding (or English) requires using a "d," and the "u" sound corresponds to the French "ou," not the French "u."

So now it looks like all the permutations between "Jula" and "Dioula" have been covered. The "dy" digraph appears to have been introduced in the 1960s and was indeed preferred over "j" for Manding in the famous 1966 expert meeting in Bamako on unification of African alphabets. By the time of the 1978 expert meeting in Niamey, however, that was changing: Côte d'Ivoire retained "dy" while Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) was using "j." I'm not sure that "dy" is still used in Julakan (the Jula language) in Côte d'Ivoire. Nevertheless, it still figures in the repertoire of alternate spellings used for the language name in English and French.

Unfortunately the multiple spellings probably lead to confusion, such as appears to be the case in the NY Times, which has in the past used Dioula, Dyula, Jula, and Diula. Also the use of French spellings in English can lead to mispronunciations by Anglophones - "dee-oo-la"  instead of "joo-la" (I've noticed this kind of thing on multiple occasions over the years).

And then there's Diola, Jola, or Joola

In any event, one should be clear that there is no relation between Jula/Dioula and the dialect cluster known as Jola, Diola, or Joola (pronounced more or less like "joe-la"). That is spoken in the Casamance, Senegal and neighboring areas of Gambia and Guinea-Bissau.

RFI's new Mandenkan service & webpage

RFI Mandenkan logo

Radio France Internationale (RFI) launched a new service in Manding - "RFI Mandenkan" - on Monday 19 October, along with a webpage for the service in French and Manding.

The bilingual webpage featured what appears to be Bambara (one of the Manding tongues - see below), and uses an orthography close to the official one used in Mali. (One minor difference is use of "ny" in place of the letter "ɲ".) It will be interesting to track how this content evolves (and whether and how VOA's "Mali Kura Bambara" service might respond).

Regarding the RFI Mandenkan broadcasts, there was apparently confusion among some (based on a message seen on an email list) as to what frequencies were to carry the first Mandenkan emissions - maybe this is typical for newly started shortwave radio services.

A comment about the broadcasts by Nafadji Sory Condé (on RFI's article announcing the service) called attention to issues with terminology in Mandenkan, and suggested that the broadcast staff consult with N'Ko specialists - this is an interesting perspecive, since evidently some in the N'Ko movement are really studying the language in its diversity as part of developing and teaching a literary standard for Manding. In other words, the language itself is not lacking, but knowledge of the range and depth of its vocabulary may not be known to all native speakers educated primarily in French-medium schools.

I took the chance to listen to some of the audio via the ma.rfi.fr webpage (you can click on a couple of places at the head of the page to listen), and was suitably humbled (fast for my rusty L2 level), though I was able to get some of it. Overall, it sounded smooth, which I guess one should expect from this level of radio.

About Manding & Mandenkan

Manding is a term for a group of (mostly) mutually intelligible languages within the Mande language family of West Africa - notably Bambara, Jula (Dioula), Malinké, and Mandingo. It is spoken as a first or second language by significant populations in all or parts of several countries: Mali; Burkina Faso; Côte d'Ivoire; Guinea; Gambia; and Senegal.

Mandenkan is a way of saying "Manding language." Manding in English and Mandingue in French obviously originated from one or more of the Manding languages. However the term Mandenkan as a word in the language(s) to describe them together may be a recent construct (I recall hearing questions about it in the late 1980s, and a 2000 publication by Prof. Eric Charry seems to indicate that Mandenkan and another form, Mandekan, originated with linguists).

The kan suffix is interesting. While in English or especially French, "tongue" ("langue") is used to mean language or expression, in Manding, "throat" ("kan") is used to express language or voice. The endonyms for the Manding languages mentioned above are Bamanankan, Julakan, Maninkakan, and Mandinkakan.

RFI's choice of Mandenkan

RFI's choice of Manding is interesting for at least a couple of reasons. First, they deliberately chose a category that crossed many borders in West Africa (note the quote by Imogen Lamb in this piece from Mali Presses), as well as the standard linguistic demarcations (Bambara, Malinké, etc.). Compare with VOA's focus on Bambara in Mali. And second, this is the first African language service that RFI has undertaken in primarily a Francophone zone (demographically most of the potential audience for RFI Hausa is in Nigeria, not Niger). For a more complete discussion of these and related issues, see Coleman Donaldson's blog post from last year, when RFI's Manding project was still in formation, "RFI and Voice of America learn Manding."

(Of possible interest on a similar topic: "Hausa on the international radio websites.")

Where has that word been all these years?

Recently had an interesting conversation in Philadelphia with Coleman Donaldson, who just completed his master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, writing his thesis on aspects of the history of N'Ko.* One anecdote he shared stuck with me - how a Manding speaker read a word written in N'Ko that brought tears to his eyes, as he'd last heard that from his mother when he was 15. There's a lot wrapped up in a reaction like that, but one question that has stayed with me is what happened to that word in all the years in between?

That is taking a certain liberty with the story, and it is certainly true that in any language and culture, someone may hear something infrequently used years apart and react to it strongly. But in a world where many unwritten and policy-neglected languages are contracting, the thought I had was that the spoken language alone may not keep the range of expression that it had been able to in earlier times. How many words are lost through lack of use in speech, lack of teaching, and not being written and read?

A humorous account of an exchange in Mali about the Bambara word for indigo-dyed cloth - galafini - and some tailors' ignorance of it is another case in point, but this is not an esoteric term or rare concept in the context it was discussed. I personally recall being surprised when in Niger to find a native Fulfulde speaker who knew only the locution neɗɗo mo yiyataa (person who can't see) for blind person, and not the word bumɗo in his language (derived from the root wum- etc.). I also remember when in Guinea in the mid-1980s hearing co-workers my age saying that their elders could hold a conversation in front of them in their common language (Pular) that they could not fully understand, due to terms and expressions used that they did not know.

So, what if the man in the anecdote (as I heard it) did not read that particular word in N'Ko and it had never been written down (except perhaps in an academic publication or two in shelved in university libraries in Europe and America)? And in that way, that that particular word and concept was lost to him, and became progressively forgotten in the speech community? Could it effectively be lost entirely?

Such loss of words - and hence range of expression - must have a cost to speakers of the affected languages and to their communities and societies at large. It arguably may not be too far from the Orwellian "Newspeak" in impact, though as a process not as a project.

How many efforts are there in Africa that successfully counter such language contraction, as N'Ko seems to be doing for Manding?

More on N'Ko

I have mentioned N'Ko on this blog previously, but here are three important aspects in addition to its being a script invented in 1949 by Souleymane Kanté in Guinea that are worth knowing:

1. N'Ko is also a kind of "koiné," or emerging standard, of the Manding languages of several countries in West Africa, which is expressed in a growing number of publications. Manding is a subgroup of Mande languages that include several highly mutually intelligible languages, notably: Several varieties of Maninka and Mandinka, which Ethnologue groups as the Mandingo "macrolanguage"; Bambara; and Jula.
2. Tone markings are integral to the system, not optional as in the Latin-based orthographies (where they are generally omitted except in dictionaries). This feature allows for distinctions not only between words with different tones, but also use of tones affecting meaning in phrases.
3. N'Ko is also a movement, involving people volunteering time to teach others and distribute materials. From the point of view of someone who has worked in and studied community development, this is remarkable. (I personally first learned of this aspect of N'Ko in Bamako in 2000 on meeting one activist, Sounkalo Dembele, who was at the time making trips to various villages near the city on his own time to teach N'Ko classes.)

______
* "Colonial and Islamic Language Policy and the Birth of N'Ko in Postwar French West Africa," 2015

Does spelling matter in Malinke ebola materials?

An earlier post looked at problems with non-standard Bambara in an ebola poster. Here I'll look at similar issues with a poster in Malinke (Maninka), a closely related Manding language spoken mainly in upper Guinea, and also southwestern Mali.

The Malinke poster at right is a translation of a CDC poster on ebola symptoms, one of various different materials translated into a number of languages by Translators Without Borders. It appears to be written in the old, pre-1985 Guinean orthography with some French spellings.

After independence, Guinea adopted a common alphabet to transcribe all its languages, using the keys available on the typewriters of the day. Many people learned to read and write with these spelling rules (I personally encountered people and Pular materials using this system, and used it myself, in the mid-1980s), and to some degree their use persists.

When the government transitioned after the death of longtime president Sékou Touré in the mid-1980s, Guinea adopted an orthography harmonized with that of the other countries of the region. For Malinké that meant for example the following changes: dy → j ; è → ɛ ; nh → ŋ ; ny → ɲ ; ö → ɔ ; and ty → c (the latter sound is represented by "ch" in English and variously by "tch" or "thi" in French).

The French writing influences in the poster are dj instead of dy or j, and ou instead of u. The accent aigu on é in the poster is probably gratuitous (the letter e in the old and new Malinke orthographies indicates the same sound) - unless a tone was intended by the writer (Manding languages are tonal, but usually tones are not marked in writing them in Latin-based script).

To see what the current orthography would look like, a simple set of substitutions would be straightforward, however I'm not sure on some word divisions (what knowledge I have of Bambara is an imperfect guide for that task).

The product as is, is presumably readable - and read-aloud-able - by many in Guinea since it is based on the older transcription. I don't have information on how widespread use of the new orthography is, but that is a question that should be considered.

And to the extent it is used consistently, conversion to the new system would be easy - which would facilitate use with Malinké populations outside of Guinea, or comparison with materials in other Manding languages (for terminology development etc.). Malike is also written in the N'Ko script (which has been the subject of some previous posts) - transcription between that and the Latin-based systems for communication or for comparison  is not as simple.

So in answer to whether spelling matters - yes, especially if the material is to be re-used or reviewed in comparison to other materials in Malinke or in other Manding languages. The fact that there has been a change in orthographies adds a complication, but one easily dealt with if each system is used consistently. And as indicated above, the matter of relative knowledge and use of the old and new orthographies for Malinke - and other languages of Guinea - is a question.

Addendum (2 January 2015)

I am told that the ebola poster above has numerous mistakes. This again points to the need to review materials in African languages (per "2Ds & 4Rs"), preferably before publication.

See also follow up posting: "More on written Malinke."

Two issues in use of African languages in ebola messaging

A recent tweet highlights two issues about use of African languages in messaging about ebola in West Africa: nomenclature, the names and spellings of the languages; and re-use of material in one language variety (or dialect) in an area where another is spoken.

@donosborn Yep, I think #Wolof is newly added there, along w/msg from FLOTRG. "Madingo" & "Fullar" [sic] could find use in Senegal.
— zenodotus (@zenodotus) October 23, 2014

(NB- "FLOTRG" = First Lady of the Republic of Guinea.)

The reference is to two of the eleven language names for radio spots produced for the CDC (which have been mentioned previously on this blog). "Madingo" is actually a misspelling of "Mandingo," which may refer either to: (1) one of the Manding languages known to its speakers as Mandinka and spoken mainly in Senegambia; (2) the Mandingo "macrolanguage," a subgroup of Manding languages in the west of West Africa, including notably Mandinka, and Malinké (Maninkakan) of Guinea and neighboring countries; or (3) the entire range of Manding languages, per older usage (in English).

Misspellings happen - I also noted a couple on the Ebola Communication Network site (since corrected) - but they also make it hard to locate information in searches. But, the apparent imprecision on the Manding variety in which the radio spot is recorded is another issue: these languages have a significant degree of mutual intelligibility, but material in one of them on technical or sensitive topics will not necessarily be understood as intended by speakers of other varieties.

On the latter topic, Mary Crickmore, a high school classmate who later on took a different path to learning and working in Fula in Mali than I did, noted in correspondence how Fulfulde translations of sections of Where There is No Doctor ran into issues with some anatomy terms when tested in different parts of the country. I personally noted similar issues in shifting from Fulfulde in Mali to Pular in Guinea.

This is not to say that material developed for one variety of a language (or one of a group of close and mutually intelligible languages) cannot be used in others, but that attention to differences of expression and vocabulary is essential to being understood as one intends, so it is helpful to be clear about the specific language variety(ies) involved. (The flip-side of this issue is how materials and terminology developed separately in different varieties of a language can be compared and harmonized, which requires awareness about the relationships of languages.)

So possible re-use of the CDC radio spots in other countries where the languages are spoken (as suggested in the tweet above) would require review and likely a "localized" version to re-record. This in turn would benefit from access to scripts for such radio spots, or where these were not used or are not available, transcriptions, of the audio. (See 2Ds & 4Rs on this blog for further discussion.)

As for "Fullar," it is not a term I have encountered, but it clearly refers to "Fula" (or "Fulah" with that random or gratuitous "h") and "Pular" (the main endonym for the language in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau). Fullar in any event is not a standard term, and as such, would likely not be found in searches. (The case of names used for Fula is complicated enough already, without adding another term!)

The CDC radio spot webpage also lists "Themne" for "Temne" - the former is a known alternative spelling, and seems to be another case of the "random/gratuitous h."

Non-standard terms or spellings pose the same problem for searches that misspellings do. So, as more work is done on ebola messaging in African languages by diverse governmental, intergovernmental, nongovernmental, and academic organizations, there will be a need to catch instances where corrections are needed. Recourse might be made to the coding and names in ISO-639, as an available set of standards.

Ebola factsheet in Bambara

The Mali Health Organizing Project and Dokotoro Project have produced ebola factsheets for health workers in French and Bambara. Below is the factsheet in the Bambara language, reproduced from their Word docx version, with reference to the PDF version (the latter has more content; an image of the PDF is pictured at right).

Both of the abovementioned projects are engaged in important health work for Mali. I was particularly interested to learn of the Dokotoro Project's work on translating the well-known health education book Where There Is No Doctor into Bambara. (It seems this work could also link with the WikiProjectMed to expand the number and quality of health articles in the Bambara Wikipedia.)

Bambara is a Manding language, spoken mainly in Mali as a first or second language, and into eastern Senegal. Among Manding varieties, it is especially close to Jula (also written Dyula; the French spelling, Dioula, is also seen), which is widely spoken in Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire. One imagines it would be possible to adapt this text to Jula without much difficulty, and with a little more work, to Malinké, Mandingo, etc. (It might be very useful to collect material on ebola in the Manding languages to facilitate comparison, cross-translation, and harmonization of terminology and messaging.)

The text below is in the official orthography of Bambara in Mali, but without tone markings (Bambara is a tonal language, but tone marks are often omitted in writing). As is the case with a number of African languages, the Latin-based alphabet includes some letters from the IPA character set - however it is not really accurate to refer to this orthography as an "IPA transcription." The text below could also be written in N'Ko, and the previously published N'Ko ebola FAQ could be written with this orthography, although proponents of N'Ko find the Latin-based alphabet is not well adapted to the language.

---

Kunnafoni ka ɲɛsin kɛnɛya baarakɛlaw ma, minnu bɛka Ebola kɛlɛ

K’a ɲini ka Ebola sidɔn. A kunkankumaw bɛ se yɔrɔ la ka sɔrɔ bana yɛrɛ ma se o yɔrɔ la. Kɛnɛya baarakɛ law de bɛ se ka hakilisigi kumaw fɔ mɔgɔw ye o kibaruyaw kan. Ni mɔgɔw ye yɛrɛtangafɛɛrɛ dɔw sigi sen kan minnu bɛ dɔ bɔ bana in jɛnsɛnni na, o bɛ kɛ sababu ye ka ni caman kisi.

1. Ebola yɛrɛ ye mun ye?

Ebola ye farigan jugumanba ye min bɛ sɔrɔ banakisɛ fɛ, jolibɔn bɛ a sen kɔrɔ (joli bɛ bɔ banabagatɔ fari la). A bɛ sɔrɔ banabagatɔ joli walima a farilaji fɛ, walima fɛn wɛrɛw fɛ banakisɛ bɛ minnu na. A bɛ se ka denbaya kuturu bɛɛ faga. Tuma dɔw la, a daminɛ na a ni bana wɛrɛw bɔlen don.

2. Ebola taamasiɲɛw ye mun ye?

A taamasiɲɛw de filɛ: Farigan, kungolodimi, fangadɔgɔya, fasasiradimi, fɔɔnɔ, kɔnɔboli, kurukuruw, ɲɛkisɛw bilenyali, yegentu ani basibɔn (kɔnɔ na ani farikolo kɔ kan)

3. Ebola bɛ cogodi sisan?

Ka na se Utikalo tile 15 ma, fiɲɛbana, basibɔn ni farigan bɛ min sen kɔrɔ ni a tɔgɔ ye ko Ebola, o yera Gine (Lagine), Siyera Lewɔni, Liberiya ani Nizeriya jamanaw kɔnɔ. A mɔgɔ fagataw bɛ bi duuru b’ɔ kɛmɛ kɛmɛ sara la. Bana in ma se Mali la fɔlɔ.

4. Ebola banakisɛ jɛnsɛnni bɛ bali cogodi?

A kunbɛncogo ɲuman ye mɔgɔw kana maga banabagatɔ la, sanko a farilajiw. A nafa ka bon mɔgɔw ka to ka u tɛgɛ ko ka u saniya tuma bɛɛ. A banakisɛ bɛ se ka to fiɲɛ na ka tile caman kɛ, o kama aw ka kan ka aw makoɲɛfɛnw bɛɛ saniya ni zawɛliji ye (tubabukan: l’eau de javel).

5. A banakisɛ bɛ jɛnsɛn cogodi?

Ebola bɛ sɔrɔ ebolatɔ farilaji de fɛ. Wɔsiji, joli, kɔnɔboli, fɔɔnɔ, lawaji, jiyiriyaraw ani sugunɛ bɛ a banakisɛ lase mɔgɔ ma. Ni bana bɛka juguya, a yɛlɛma ka teli o waati de. Laadala sukoya dɔw sen fɛ, mɔgɔw bɛ maga su la o fana bɛ kɛ sababu ye ka Ebola banakisɛ yɛlɛma.

6. Ebola fura ye mun ye?

Fura foyi ma sɔrɔ Ebola la fɔlɔ. Kɛnɛyaso minnu sigilen don Ebola kɛlɛli kama, olu ka baara sinsinnen don a sɔrɔcogo kɛlɛli de ma dɔrɔn, ka fara banabagatɔw mabɔli kan ani ka waleyaw kɛ minnu bɛ u dɛmɛ ka u farilaji segin. Hali ni mɔgɔw hakilila ko banabagatɔw mabɔli tɛ fɛɛrɛ ɲuman ye walima a bɛ u somɔgɔw degun, ebolatɔw mabɔli tɔw la, o ye wajibi ye ka a sababu kɛ a banakisɛ ka farati ye ani a bɛ se ka denbaya bɛɛ lajɛlen minɛ.

7. Jamana ɲɛmɔgɔw bɛka mun kɛ walasa ka dankari kɛ bana in na?

Mali bɛka fɛɛrɛ caman tigɛ a kama. O fɛɛrɛw ye:

• 1lɔ.    Ka dabaliw kuraya ani ka u sɛgɛsɛgɛ;
• 2nan.    Ka jamana dondaw, ni a kɛnɛyasow ani sigida mɔgɔw kɔlɔsi;
• 3nan.    Ka kunnafonisiraw sigi sen kan minnu bɛ kuma kɛnɛya sabatili taabolow kan;
• 4nan.    Ni sɔmi kɛra mɔgɔ minnu ma, ka olu sɛgɛsɛgɛ, ka u mabɔ kɛnɛyabagatɔw la, ka u ladon ani ka u kɔlɔsi;
• 5nan.    Ka sigida mɔgɔw kunnafoni, ka u bilasira ani ka bana in kunbɛnbaara bɛɛ kɔlɔsi.

Source: PDF and Word docx versions of Ebola Factsheet for Health Workers in Bambara.