Talk:Toumani Diabaté

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[edit] Accent on Diabate

Though the 'é' conforms to accepted European pronounciation, Toumani's native language does not use any accents and he himself does not use an accent on his name. All of his CD's have his name printed as 'Diabate' without the accent.

It should be removed. Trefalcon (talk) 19:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

My copy of The Mandé Variations has the accent. None of the earlier CDs that I looked at had it, though. Is this just a mistake on the new CD, or has he decided to use the accent in Europe? Klausness (talk) 15:25, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

His official biography uses the accent.[1] What is Toumani's native language? Korg (talk) 15:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

That's his European record companies biography, not necessarily 'official'. Toumani speaks Malinke and Bambara, Manding languages. I could be wrong here, since the 'é' does clue people in as to how to pronounce his name, but it just seems strange to me. Of course Diabate is a transliteration to begin with, so maybe its acceptable to put the accent there. Trefalcon (talk) 21:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Bambara has a very simple orthography using the Latin alphabet (plus a couple of additional letters), but Bambara words, especially names, are usually written with French spelling, which doesn't fit the language well at all. The name is pronounced "Jah-bah-tay" with no extra emphasis on any syllable. In Bambara it would probably be written "Jabate". French doesn't have a letter for the English/Bambara "j", thus the spelling of "Ja" as "Dia". NeilFaiman (talk) 16:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)