Kissi language - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kissi is a language split into two parts, northern and southern. The northern dialect is spoken in Guinea

Guinea

Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...

and in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...

. In its northern form, it often uses loanwords from the Malinke and the Mende language

Mende language

Mende is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone....

.

The southern dialect is spoken in Liberia

Liberia

Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...

and Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

. The two dialects are notably different, but are closely related.

In Guinea, the main places Kissi is spoken are the cities of Kissidougou

Kissidougou

Kissidougou is a city in southern Guinea. It is the capital of in the Kissidougou Prefecture, and had a population of 66,018 in the 1996 census. Following intensified conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia during the fall and winter of 2000, many people from the city of Guéckédou fled to...

and Guéckédou and their préfectures.

Letters not in the English alphabet

Note that this is the new orthography. The old one was used in the Kissi New Testament (1986) and many documents of the time of Sekou Toure (the first President of Guinea).

IPA	Description	English example	Kissi examples
ɲ	Palatal nasal Palatal nasal The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J... consonant	like French champignon or Spanish año.	ɲunaa (ask)
ŋ	Velar nasal Velar nasal The velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N.... consonant	as in 'song' [sɒŋ]	o kɔɛ loŋ (He went there) ŋɔŋɔndo (bullfrog)
ɛ	Open 'e', open-mid front unrounded vowel	as in 'elderly' [ɛldərli]	laossɛ (greeting) muɛi (knife)
ɔ	Open 'o', open-mid back rounded vowel	as in 'coin' [kɔɪn]	mɔmɔ (rice) kɔɛ (to go)

number one to ten in kissi

Kissidougou dialects preserve a distinction between /r/ and /l/ phonemes that have been merged as allophones in dialects south of Guéckédou. For instance, "la huŋ" means exactly the same as "ra huŋ". Also, "Thank you" is realized as "barika" around Kissidougou and "balika" south of Guéckédou.

Sounds

/gb)/, the voiced labial-velar plosive

Voiced labial-velar plosive

The voiced labial–velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is a and pronounced simultaneously. To make this sound, say go, but close your lips as if you were saying Bo; release your lips at the same times as or a fraction of a second after you pronounce the...

[IPA-ɡ͡b] is a sound that doesn't exist in European languages. it is spoken like the beginning of a /g/ (like in "grow") and a /b/. Practice repeating 'beg' rapidly until it becomes 'gbe'.
Theses are some examples:

gbaŋgbaŋ (name of a river in Kissidougou)

gbaala (outdoor kitchen)

maagbana (a city taxi)

gbɛŋgbɔ (a stool)

Pronouns

Kissi pronoun	Pronunciation	English pronoun	Kissi example	English translation
y	/i/	I	y tyo kɔlaŋ loŋ.	I'm going there.
a	/a/	You	a tyo kɔlaŋ loŋ.	You're going there.
o	/o/	He/She	o tyo kɔlaŋ loŋ.	He's going there.
n	/n/	We	n tyo kɔlaŋ loŋ.	We're going there.
la	/la/	You (plural)	la tyo kɔlaŋ loŋ.	You're going there.
aa	/aː/	They	aa tyo kɔlaŋ loŋ.	They're going there.

As you can already see from these examples, verbs aren't conjugated like English verbs, but they are inflected by tone.

Kissi pronoun	Pronunciation	English pronoun	Kissi example	English translation
ya	/ja/	Me	o tyo ya lɔ. yɔŋgu ya ho. / k'ya ho.	He's going to beat me. Give me that.
nɔm	/nɔm/	You	y tyo nɔm lɔ.	I'm going to beat you.
ndu	/ndu/	Him /Her	y tyo ndu lɔ. o tyo ndu pilɛ lɔ.	I'm going to beat him / her. He's going to beat himself.
na	/na/	Us	o tyo na lɔ.	He's going to beat us.
nia	/nia/	You (plural)	o tyo nia lɔ.	He's going to beat you.
ndaa	/ndaː/	Them	o tyo ndaa lɔ.	He's going to beat them.

Articles

Definite and indefinite articles do not exist in Kissi, so "muɛi" means "the knife" as well as "a knife".
If an object has to be defined (because there are more than one, for example), "this" is used:

example: muɛi coŋ - this knife

If that is not exact enough, an object is described using adjectives.

yɔŋgu ya muɛi. / k'ya muɛi. - Give me a/the knife.

yɔŋgu ya muɛi bɛndɛi. / k'ya muɛi bɛndɛi. - Give me the big knife.

Links

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