Kissi language

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Kissi
Spoken in: Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone 
Region: West Africa
Total speakers: ~500'000
Language family: Niger-Congo
 Atlantic-Congo
  Atlantic
   Southern
    Mel
     Bullom-Kissi
      Kissi
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: –
ISO 639-3: –
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Kissi (or Kisi) is a language split into two parts, northern and southern. The northern dialect is spoken in Guinea and in Sierra Leone. In its northern form, it often uses loanwords from the Malinke and the Mende language.

The southern dialect is spoken in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The two dialects are notably different, but are closely related.

In Guinea, the main places Kissi is spoken are the cities of Kissidougou and Guéckédou and their préfectures.

Contents

[edit] Grammar (northern Kissi)

[edit] Signs not in the English alphabet

Note that this is the new spelling. The old one was used in the Kissi New Testament (1986) and many documents of the time of Sekou Toure (the first President of Guinea).

IPA Description English example Kissi example (More)
ɲ Palatal nasal consonant like French champignon or Spanish año. ɲunaa (ask)
ƞ Velar nasal consonant like in 'song' o kɔɛ loƞ (He went there) ƞɔƞɔndo (bullfrog)
ɛ Open 'e', open-mid front unrounded vowel like in elderly [ɛldɛrli] laossɛ (greeting) muɛi (knife)
ɔ Open 'o', open-mid back rounded vowel like in coin [cɔin] mɔmɔ (rice) kɔɛ (to go)

Kissidougou dialects preserve a distinction between /r/ and /l/ phonemes that have been merged as allophones in dialects south of Guéckédou. For instance, "la huƞ" means exactly the same as "ra huƞ". Also, "Thank you" is realized as "barika" around Kissidougou and "balika" south of Guéckédou.

[edit] Sounds

/gb)/, the voiced labial-velar plosive [IPA-ɡ͡b] is a sound that doesn't exist in European languages. it is spoken like the beginning of a /g/ (like in "grow") and a /b/. Practice repeating 'beg' rapidly until it becomes 'gbe'. Theses are some examples:

gbaƞgbaƞ (name of a river in Kissidougou)

gbaala (outdoor kitchen)

maagbana (a city taxi)

gbɛŋgbɔ (a stool)

[edit] Pronouns

Kissi pronoun Pronunciation English pronoun Kissi example English translation
y /i/ I y tyo kɔlaƞ loƞ. I'm going there.
a /a/ You a tyo kɔlaƞ loƞ. You're going there.
o /o/ He/Her o tyo kɔlaƞ loƞ. He's going there.
n /n/ We n tyo kɔlaƞ loƞ. We're going there.
la /la/ You (plural) la tyo kɔlaƞ loƞ. You're going there.
aa /aː/ They aa tyo kɔlaƞ loƞ. They're going there.

As you can already see from these examples, verbs aren't conjugated like English verbs, but they are inflected by tone.

Kissi pronoun Pronunciation English pronoun Kissi example English translation
ya /ja/ Me o tyo ya lɔ. He's going to beat me.
yɔƞgu ya ho. / k'ya ho. Give me that.
nɔm /nɔm/ You y tyo nɔm lɔ. I'm going to beat you.
ndu /ndu/ Him /Her y tyo ndu lɔ. I'm going to beat him / her.
o tyo ndu pilɛ lɔ. He's going to beat himself.
na /na/ Us o tyo na lɔ. He's going to beat us.
nia /nia/ You (plural) o tyo nia lɔ. He's going to beat you.
ndaa /ndaː/ Them o tyo ndaa lɔ. He's going to beat them.

[edit] Articles

Definite and indefinite articles do not exist in Kissi, so "muɛi" means "the knife" as well as "a knife". If an object has to be defined (because there are more than one, for example), "this" is used:

example: muɛi coƞ - this knife

If that is not exact enough, an object is described using adjectives.

yɔƞgu ya muɛi. / k'ya muɛi. - Give me a/the knife.

yɔƞgu ya muɛi bɛndɛi. / k'ya muɛi bɛndɛi. - Give me the big knife.

[edit] References

  • Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version.
  • G. Tucker Childs. A Grammar of Kisi, A Southern Atlantic Language. 1995. 370 pp.
  • G. Tucker Childs: A Dictionary of the Kisi Language. With an English-Kisi Index
  • Denise Paulme. Les Gens du Riz: Les Kissi de Haute-Guinée. Paris. Librairie Plon. 1954, 1970. 324 pp. Online version

[edit] Links

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