Phrases
Jamsai gets its name from a common response to a greeting: Jam sai, or "peace only." A typical Jam sai greeting goes like this:
- A: Jam now (do you have peace in the morning?)
- B: Jam sai (peace only)
- A: Kanya now (do your people have peace in the morning?)
- B: Jam sai
- A: Taardé
The greeting then repeats, with B asking all the same questions of A. "Taardé" is the way of the question asker telling the askee that he's done with his inquiry.
A few other common phrases and words:
- E nam sayoba? (Do your people have peace?)
- Guinea nissama? (Did you sleep well?)
- Nya nyé (Eat!)
- Ejuko (Good)
- Ejila (Bad)
- ni inim (Bathe—literally to put water on oneself)
- Ewé (market)
- Yayerrem (I will be right back—literally "I am coming there")
- miten (friend. Can also mean boyfriend/girlfriend)
Read more about this topic: Jamsai Dogon
Famous quotes containing the word phrases:
“And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
One who the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I know those little phrases that seem so innocuous and, once you let them in, pollute the whole of speech. Nothing is more real than nothing. They rise up out of the pit and know no rest until they drag you down into its dark.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)