Dear bamana fellows!
I have a question about proper names. I am musician and play and study west african drumming. Some names of rhythms are buildt out of connected single words. For example “denmusoninkelen”. This name consists obviously out of the words “den muso nin kelen”. Should I write all this together, or should i write in seperate words?
The same with the Malinke rhythm “Sàa faa lóndan ye” (probably “saga faga dunan ye” in Bamana). Do I write this as “Sàafaalóndanye”, or as “Sàa faa lóndan ye”.
I would be glad to get some help in this question.
When it comes to the proper names of song and rhythms and how best to spell them, I can’t say that I am an expert, but here’s some thoughts.
Would you write all of the words of a song or rhythm together in English or German? I think you would only write them together if it was part of the established spelling system for these languages. So a song called “I love you” would not typically be written “Iloveyou” (unless the artist decide to do so for some stylistic reason). And if the song were “Airport Love”, you would likely not write it “Air Port Love”. Why? Because “Airport” is generally written as one word in English. I think that you could or should follow this same convention for the name of songs/rhythms in Manding.
Would the words typically be written together in Manding? This is where things get trickier because you need to know Manding orthographic practices and/or the prescriptive spelling rules suggested by articles and institutions. And of course, it is complicated further by the fact that established or standard spelling practices are more variably in Manding varieties than in languages like English or German. But there are of course tendencies and best practices. I think that the word boundaries of the proper names of the songs/rythms should be guided by them.
To take one of your examples, if {Denmusoninkelen} means “One little daughter/girl” than I would write it as two words:
denmusonin kelen
This can be analyzed and broken down into:
den.muso.nin kelen
child.woman.little one
But I wouldn’t therefore write the words separately.