REPORT RESUMES 46 ED 018 784 . AL 001 161 LESSONS IN SANGO. VOLUME I, BASIC COURSE IN SANGO. BY- SAMARIN, WILLIAM J. GRACE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AND COLLEGE REPORT NUMBER BR -6 -2286 PUB DATE 67 CONTRACT OEC36062286..1662 MS PRICE mr-s1.25 HC- $12.96 322P. DESCRIPTORS- * SANGO, *LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION, *INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, LANGUAGE GUIDES, STANDARD SPOKEN USAGE,CONNECTED DISCOURSE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC, THE 25 LESSONS IN THIS TEXT ARE DESIGNED TO TEACH SPOKEN SANGO TO SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH. THE AUTHOR FEELS THAT WITH SUFFICIENT APPLICATION "A STUDENT OUGHT TO BE ABLE7.(;) SPEAK THE LANGUAGE IN ABOUT THREE MONTHS" AND HE HAS INCLUDEDHERE WHAT. HE CONSIDERS THE MOST IMPORTANT SANGO GRAMMATICAL MATERIAL AND NON - FRENCH VOCABULARY. GENERALLY THELESSONS CONSIST OF A CONVERSATION, GRADED GRAMMATICAL NOTES, GRAMMATICAL DRILLS, PHONOLOGICAL DRILLS, AND VOCABULARY. ALL THE CONVERSATIONS CONCERN REALISTIC SITUATIONS INCENTRAL AFRICA AND ARE BASED ON SPONTANEOUS RECORDINGS. THESELESSONS ALSO CONTAIN EXTENSIVE SECTIONS OF CONNECTED DISCOURSE TO ENABLE THE STUDENT TO UNDERSTAND AND PRODUCE STRETCHES OF SPEECHLONGER THAN THE SENTENCES FOUND IN THE DIALOGS.ALL SANGO MATERIAL IS WRITTEN IN AN ORTHOGRAPHY ARRIVED AT THROUGH COMPARISON OF THE VARIOUS SPELLING SYSTEMS NOW IN USE IN THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC. FOR INFORMATIONCONCERNING THE AVAILABILITY OF THIS AND OTHER SANGO MATERIALS, THE AUTHOR'S ADDRESS IS- -GRACE COLLEGE, P.O. BOX 397, WINONA LAKE, INDIANA 46590. (JD) ,- ?.4. ?ER Ve.' LESSONS IN SANGO U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION -& WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION ;POSITION OR POLICY. VolumeX 110.sic Course in Sango William JSamarin Associate Professor of Linguistics 1967 ammeimpoglmilrimIlPIEMPINIMPINIW imummiumopmlimummunimmumminomummilMINNIMIM. The research reported herein was performed pursuantto a contract with the United States popimettent of Health, .116,cation and Welfare, Office of Feduoation, =der provia *ions of Ilatik Title VI,Section 602. Rubor lit Itar844, .as amended* This first edition of Basic Course in Sang* was produced in 3)40 copies of which 40 copies appear in the Hartford Studies in Linguistics(Hartford .Seminary Foundation,55 Ilisaboth Street, Hartford, Connecticet,06105). The rest are distributed by Grace College,P.O. Box 397, Winona Lake, Indiana, 46590 (in cooperation with the author). It was not originally planned that these lessons be duplicated in fulfillment of the abovimmentioned contract.However, to make them availaw able for immediate use,it was finally decided to use the typescript preparing Xerox plates for offset duplication.Tido decision accounts for the rather unsightly appearance of maw of the pages,for Which apologies are nolo. ,. i I . LESSONS IN SANGO VolumeX Basic Course in Sango William J. Samarin Associate Professor of Linguistics 1967 CONTENTS Introductioni-xiv Lessons 1-297 Grammatical Grammatical Phonological . Conversations. Notes Drills Drills Vocabulary 1. 1 1 5 6 -- 2. 9 10 11 15 -- 3. 18 19 22 24 -- 4. 28 29 30 32 -- 5. 35 37 39 44 46 6. 48 51 55 59 -- 7. 62 64 66 68 -- 8. 73 76 78 84 9. 89 91 94 98 100 10. 102 104 106 108 112 11. 114 117 121 127 129 12. 132 113 136 138 141 13. 142 143 146 152 154 14. 155 157 163 OW = 165 15. 167 170 174 -- 178 16. 181 183 189, -- 193 17. 195 199 202 .... 210 18, 212 214 216 -- 222 19: 224 227 229, -- 230 20. 232 233 235 -- 239 21. 241 244 247 ... 254 22. 255 256 261 41119.01 265 23. 267 269 272 -- 275 24... 277 279 283 . -- 25. 287' 289 292 -- 296 Index 299 INTRODUCTION General remarks about Sango Sango is the lingua franca of the Central AfricanRepublic and the contiguous areas of the Chad and Cameroun Republics aswell as the Congo (Kinshasa).With Sangolea person can communicate with at least one million people in Middle Africa, regardless oftheir ethnic background. It is for practically all speakers a secondlanguage, although there are many young people in the large townsfor whom it is the first language; the latter learn Sango before they learn French or an ethnic (i.e. "tribal") language, and some may neverlearn an ethnic language and learnFrench very poorly. Sango is therefore not the tribal language of anybody.There is, however, a tribal language by the same name.The Sango people, and their very closely-related kin, the Yakoma and theNgbandi, live along the banks of the Ubangi River upstream ofBangui. It was from their language that the lingua franca issued.It is not yet clear precisely when and why Sango came to be used as acontact language, but it appears that when the French conquered thisUbangi-Shari area the riveri.Le population was already using it. Although the lingua franca is derived from thetribal language, the two must be distinguished. Speakers of the lingua franca are not able to understand the native language ofthe Ngbandi- Yakoma -Sango people, although they might have some idea what isbeing said. The latter, for their part, probably haveto learn to speak the lingua franca even while recognizingthat it is "their" language. The situation is comparable to thatwhen a native-speaker of English must learn to speak Pidgin English in anyof its forms (West African, Jamaican, Surinamese, or Melanesian). Indeed, lingua franca Sango is like Pidgin English, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese Crioulo in being a "simplified" form of a natural language.Sango has neither the tonal nor the grammatical complexity of its "mother" language. It is, however, a truly African. language in every way -- in phonology, syntax, and idiom. Take away the French borrowings, and it would be difficult to distinguish Sango from the other languages of the area. There are, in fact, other African lingua francas like Sango, notably Swahili. and Kituba (derived from Kikongo). In the Central African Republic Sango is the unofficial national language.Among Centralafricans (meaning the citizens of the C.A.R.) Sango enjoys more prestige than the tribal languages, which are often identified with "bush" life. It is sometimes contrasted with French, which ,is called the "white man's language" (1ALui tf.thbunzA), as beihg preeminently. the "African's language" (yIngS tf zo vok6).In any multilingual situation the language most used is Sango. This is, true even when speakers have a good.control ofFrench. (Centralafricans have been observed speaking Sango amongst themselves at a United Nations affair in 'New York City.) Sango is unquestionably the language of informal andintimate relations whereas French is the language of formal relations. This generalization should guide the foreigner in its use. He should remember that, as with all human relations, it is the host who opens the door from the formal to the informal. In Western society, one must remember, the guest does not leave the living room or take off his suit jacket except at the invitation of his host. Likewise, ii the French-speaking Centralafricanwill expect the foreigner to speak French; if the former is addressed by thelatter in Sango, he might be insulted.To avoid this error, it isbetter to err in the other direction and presume aknowledge of French: the interlocutor, even if he knowslittle or no French at all, willbe complimented by one's assessment of his status inthe society. Once rapport has been established, it maybepossible to switch to Sango; but one must be warned that the switching cuesmaybe as subtle as they arein Western society even after thehost has invited his guestto make himself at home. Of course, one can err inthe other direction, that is, by being more formalthan the situation demands. It would be insulting to address apoorly-clad upcountryvillager inFrench, for his appearance clearlyindicates that he never hadthe opportunity him of his to attend school; speaking to him in French strips self-respect. As one might expectwhere Western culture hasbeen mediated Some through the French language,there many French words inSango. of these are very recent,like republique. There are other Words that have been in thelanguage a long time; they have been not now recognize "naturalized" phonologically,and Centralafricans do them as French loans: e.g. AU,'to ruin, to die' < tell (colloquial), ski 'thousandfrancs' < sac. It is difficult to because there are more ways how many French wordsthere are in Sango, French will than one of being "in" alanguage. A person who knows no the one who has gone to think that lgre 'time' is Sango whereas There is, moreover, school will recognize itsderivation in l'heure. that French intrudes a greatdifference between speakersin the degree iii in their Sango. Interestingly enough, it is not so much how much French a person knows that determines the incidence of French words, but, as Charles Taber has dicovered, the status of the speaker: 31. , . lower -class people seem to use more French than the elite. In additiaft to this psychological motivation for borrowing from French, there is a topical one: it is obvious that in talking about automobiles one is going to use more French than he would in talking about gardening or hunting. I It is important to look at this subject with more care, for it is . easy to be deceived about the place of French in Sango. It is quite generally held by EUropeans, in fact, that Sango is a hodge-podge of African and French words. (Some Europeans do indeed speak a kind of hodge-podge language, but it is not Sango!) However, Dr. Charles Taber, who made a careful study of the incidence of French words in a body of tape-recorded Sango material consisting of 37,217 words, concludes that "Sango remains fundamentally and overwhelmingly African in the usage of its speakers" (36).The reason for this conclusion is a statistical one.