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:
“She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The Americans ... have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“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)