Susu language

Susu (endonym: sus: Sosoxui; French: Soussou) is the language of the Susu or Soso people of Guinea and Sierra Leone, West Africa. It is in the Mande language family, and its closest relative is Yalunka.

It is one of the national languages of Guinea and spoken mainly in the coastal region of the country.

History

The language was also used by people in the coastal regions of Guinea and Sierra Leone as a trade language.

The first literature in Susu was a translation of the first seven chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, translated by John Godfrey Wilhelm of the Church Mission Society. This was published in London as "Lingjili Matthew" in 1816. J.G. Wilhelm translated a considerable portion of the New Testament, but only this small part appears to have been printed.

Phonology

Grammatical sketch

Susu is an SOV language, Poss-N, N-D, generally suffixing, non-pro-drop, wh-in-situ, with no agreement affixes on the verb, no noun classes, no gender, and with a clitic plural marker which attaches to the last element of the NP (N or D, typically), but does not co-occur with numerals. It has no definite or indefinite articles. Sentential negation is expressed with a particle, mu, whose distribution is unclear (with adjectival predicates it seems to sometimes infix, but with transitive verbs it comes before the object).

Examples:

Pronouns

cf.

Object pronouns have the same form as subject pronouns:

Possessive affixes precede the noun:

baba "father": m baba "my father" i baba "your (sg) father" a baba "his/her/its father" wom baba "our father" wo baba "your (pl) father" e baba "their father"

Adverbs

Adverbs can precede the subject or follow the verb:

Grammatical number

NPs come in a variety of forms:

khamé "boy (sg)", khame e "boys (pl) taami "bread (sg)", taami e "breads (pl)"

Orthography

Susu has been written with a variety of writing systems, including the Ajami variant of the Arabic script (perhaps introduced during the time of the Imamate of Futa Jallon), various Latin script orthographies (formalized with the adoption of the Guinean languages alphabet under the government of Ahmed Sékou Touré and adapted in 1989 to adhere closer to the African reference alphabet), and the N'ko and Adlam scripts.^[3] Additionally, an alphabetic script known as Koré Sèbèli or Wakara, developed by sociologist Mohamed Bentoura Bangoura based on traditional symbols used by secret societies, has been adopted by a small community of users since its introduction in 2009.^[3][4]

References

1. ^ "Proposal for the encoding of « KORE SEBELI »". unicode.org
2. ^ Houis, Maurice (1963). Étude Descriptive de la Langue Susu. Dakar: Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, Université de Dakar.
3. ^ Sagno, Geneviève. "Langues nationales : comment la langue soussou en Guinée en est venue à être écrite avec autant d'alphabets" (in French). BBC Afrique. BBC. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
4. ^ Bangoura, Mohamed Bentoura; Guigon, Lucille; Sylla, Mohamed Lamine (July 2020). "Proposal for the encoding of « KORE SEBELI »". Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 20 July 2023.

External links

• Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Susu and English 1861 translation
• PanAfrican L10n page on Susu
• Susu alphabet and phonology
• Peace Corps Susu language manual