"Djatitché" and "baradegni"

Bonjour cher forum,

While reading the chapter "Un mythe à décomposer: la “bourgoisie de planteur” of the book “Etat et Bourgoisie in Côte d’Ivoire” (1982) I came across these two words (Djatitché & baradegni ). They looked dioula to me and obviously the first one contains cɛ (man) and the second contains bara (work). I was just wondering what the rest of the words mean and how you would conventionally spell them. I have been told that both words are commenly used, including without the cɛ.

I ni ce!

1 Like

I ni ce, @Chouquette !

I am not familiar with the book and the words are slightly elusive based on the translations that you/the book provided: “djatitché” was translated as ‘planteur’ and “baradegni” as “main d’oeuvre”.

  • djatitché: This word looks and sound a bit like jatigicɛ (the “g” can be dropped; [jatii]), which comes the from the following:

    jatigi-cɛ

    host-man
    ‘(male) host’

    The word jatigi is very common and refers to what is often called one’s “logeur” in French.

  • baradegni: This word looks like it might be the word baaradennin, which comes from the following:

    baara-den-nin
    work-child-DIMINUTIVE

    The word baaraden is very common and often used to refer to a domestic worker or something like a day laborer.

I am not 100% sure if that interpretation makes sense diven the way that the first one is translated as “planteur” in French, but I think it’s likely that the emic label in Jula is different from the French language label used in the book?

I ni ce, Coleman!

This is very helpful and makes actually perfect sense as jatigicɛ is translated in the book as planteur in the sense of ‘landowner’ learning the personnwho employs baaraden :slight_smile:

1 Like