Different ways to ask "Did you sleep well?"

Linguistic Questions
1

My question is about different ways to ask “Did you sleep well?”.
In one of the videos I saw “Hɛɛrɛ sira?” you translate it as " did you have a peace full night" if I remember it correctly.
My boyfriend asks sometimes: “Sunɔgɔ kayɛ wa?” and sometimes “Yala i sunɔgɔra ka ne wa?” when I asked for the difference he said its differed accents and I can use both. This answer is not very satisfying for me. I would like to have more details regarding the meaning of the different words and the situation in which or the person with which I might rather use the one or the other.

1 Like
2

I ni ce, @Aina! I dansɛ! Welcome to the Forum :slight_smile:

Yes, “Hɛɛrɛ sira?” literally means “Did peace pass the night?” and it can be used to say “Did you have a peaceful night?” or “Did you sleep well?”

As for your boyfriend’s sentences, here is what I’d say…

One of them is very clear. It’s “Yala i sunɔgɔra ka ɲɛ wa?” This uses the question words yala and wa (both are a bit like est-ce que in French) and can be broken down as follows (using QUE for the question words that can’t be translated one-to-one in English):

Yala i sunɔgɔra ka ɲɛ wa?

QUE you slept well QUE? → “Did you sleep well?”

  • The expression ka ɲɛ is a verb in the infinitive that literally means “to be good”, but it’s often used adverbially in a way that translates as “well”

The other sentence is less clear, but it might have to do with the way that you’ve tried to transcribe it. I’m guessing it’s something similar with the verb ka sunɔgɔ “to sleep” (or the noun form meaning “sleep”) and ka ɲɛ “well” but the way that you’ve written it doesn’t 100% make sense. It could also be something like “Sunɔgɔ ka ɲi wa?” (Lit. “Is sleep good?”), but that doesn’t quite make sense contextually and it’s not something that I typically hear people say in the morning.

Hope that helps! Maybe it can lead to you get more info or a better transcription of what your BF is saying for the less clear sentence :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Aw ni ce! @Aina, here are some other ways that I know of that would also fall into the context of asking someone “Did you sleep well?”

• I sunɔgɔra kosɛbɛ?

• Tana ma si?

• I sira hɛɛrɛ la?

2 Likes
4

Thanks Coleman!

I asked again an actually he says ‘I sunɔgɔ kayɛ?’

Or the one with the two questions words.

5

Thanks Christy :grin:

I am going to surprise him now. What’s exactly the difference between those versions

2 Likes
6

You’re welcome! :slightly_smiling_face: Ummm… :eyes: Let’s see if we can get Coleman to chime in with the details on the differences… :face_with_peeking_eye::upside_down_face: Hi, @Coleman! :blush:

Although, I will say that I don’t tend to hear “Tana ma si?” much where I am… when it is used it’s MOSTLY but NOT OFTEN said to me by an elderly person. It’s been a very rare usage in my personal encounters… I respond with “Tana tɛ.” But, here’s a YouTube link to a more in depth explanation about it all and how one can go about responding. :clinking_glasses:

1 Like
7

Interesting! If you really want to dig into this, perhaps you can record a voice memo from your phone of him saying it and upload it here so we can hear? :ear:

My hunch is that he might be saying “I sunɔgɔra ka ɲɛ?” and that it’s very hard to heard the “-ra”. Otherwise, the grammar doesn’t quite make sense to me. But it could be a local or regional variation that truncates the verb or does something weird.

8

They are just different ways to ask if someone slept well :upside_down_face: Without going into detail, here’s the literal translations more or less:

  • I sunɔgɔra kosɛbɛ? = You slept well?
  • Tana ma si? = An ill didn’t pass the night?
    [NOTE: As @Christy said, this isn’t super frequent in most Bambara-speaking areas. It’s also not frequent in Jula-speaking areas. It’s more Maninka. That said, you do hear it because, it’s all Manding :slightly_smiling_face:]
  • I sira hɛɛrɛ la? = You passed.the.night in peace?
1 Like