Peace Corps Bambara Language Manual

COURSE OVERVIEW
This Bambara book is designed in the behalf of the Peace Corps Trainees learning Bambara to help them meet the needs of Peace Corps Mali in terms of their linguistic and cultural training as Volunteers.

As this manual will be mostly used during the training that happens among the village communities, its contents are based upon the CBT style. We hope then, dear PCTs, that the use of this book could contribute efficiently not only to your training in Bambara language, but also to culturally guiding you, future volunteers. The success of this book in both fields will depend on its use relating on the realities of your training sites.

This trainee book "Kalanden ka Gafe" is designed as follows:

I- COMMUNICATIVES TASKS
- Objectives
- Pictures
- Cultural Notes
- Safety and Security Notes
- Personal health Notes
- Dialogs
- Texts
- Vocabulary
- Grammar
- Exercises
- TDAs
- Self Evaluation

2- APPENDIX
- Grammatical Notes
- Proverbs
- Translation
- Stories

PROGRAMS THAT USED THIS LANGUAGE
Mali: 1971-present

PROGRAM SECTORS
Mali: Education, Environment, Agriculture, Health, Business

Bambara, also known as Bamana, and Bamanankan by speakers of the language, is a language spoken in Mali, and to a lesser extent Burkina Faso and Senegal, by as many as six million people (including second language users). The Bambara language is the language of people of the Bambara ethnic group, numbering about 4,000,000 people, but serves also as a lingua franca in Mali (it is estimated that about 80 percent of the population speak it as a first or second language). It is a Subjectobjectverb language and has two tones.Bambara is a language/dialect of the Manding language cluster, a cluster of languages whose ethnic-speakers generally trace their cultural history to the ancient city of Manding, where modern-day Kita, Mali now exists. Bambara is classified as part of the larger, very broad Mandé group. Dialects of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible dependent on exposure or familiarity with dialects between speakers.

Bambara is spoken in: Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana

Bambara is also called: Bamana