🇳🇪Zarma for English speakers

1. Zarma and its world

Zarma (Zarma Ciine or Zarma Sanni; older French spelling "Djerma") is a Songhay language and the second most widely spoken language of Niger after Hausa, with speaker estimates ranging from about 1.4 million (a 1990s survey extrapolation) to several million across West Africa.¹² It is the leading indigenous language of Niger's southwestern river valley — including the capital, Niamey — and one of Niger's recognized national languages, while French remains the country's sole official language.²³ Communities also live in Mali, Burkina Faso, northern Benin, and northern Nigeria, where Zarma speakers are known as Zabarma.¹²

The Songhay family itself is a linguistic puzzle: an older idea placed it inside Nilo-Saharan, but Glottolog treats Songhay as an independent lineage, and some scholars have even argued it began as a trade language along the Saharan caravan routes.³⁴ For you as a learner, the practical consequence is happy news: Zarma is not related to anything you already know, but it is compact, regular, and refreshingly free of the machinery that makes many languages hard.

Zarma ciine ga ti Nizer laabu sanni beeri fo. Boro boobo ga Zarma salaŋ Nyamey ra, isa me gaa, nda saaji ra. Da ni ga ba ni ma Nizer laabu bay, kala ni ma Zarma dondon.

English: Zarma is one of the great languages of Niger. Many people speak Zarma in Niamey, along the river, and in the countryside. If you want to know Niger, you must learn Zarma.

Why learn Zarma as an English speaker?

• No grammatical gender, no case endings, no verb conjugation for person or number. The third-person pronoun a covers "he," "she," and "it"; verbs never change shape for their subject.²
• A small, learnable sound system — five vowels (plus nasal versions), consonants mostly familiar from English, and a spelling system that says what it means.²⁵
• It opens Niamey and the Sahel. French will get you through offices; Zarma gets you into compounds, markets, and conversations. In greetings-culture West Africa, even ten phrases transform how you are received.
• It is a gateway Songhay language: Zarma is close to the Songhay varieties spoken from Timbuktu down the Niger bend — a chain of mutually familiar speech across three countries.¹⁴

What to expect

Two features need respect from day one. First, word order: Zarma is subject–object–verb in most sentences — "I water drink" rather than "I drink water" — with postpositions instead of prepositions (fuwo ra, literally "house-in").² Second, tone: Zarma distinguishes four tones (high, low, falling, rising), almost never written but occasionally the only difference between words — bá "be a lot," bà "share," bâ "want," bǎ "be better."² Context nearly always disambiguates, and ordinary writing simply spells all of them ba. Train your ear early; don't panic about marks.

2. Sounds and spelling

Zarma has been written in two scripts for generations: the Latin alphabet standardized by Niger's 1999 orthography decree, and an Arabic-derived Ajami tradition going back centuries in the Sahel.²⁵ This guide uses the Latin standard throughout.

• Vowel length matters: long vowels are (inconsistently) written double — beeri "big," kaaru "climb." Hold them noticeably longer.²
• Nasal vowels are officially written with a tilde under the vowel; most modern publications put it above (sõhõ "now"), or use a following n/ŋ.²⁵
• Consonants can be long (doubled) too, and both n and m sound like [ɱ] before f. The letter v appears only in loanwords.²
• Stress is light and predictable (usually the first syllable of two-syllable words) and never changes a word's tone.²

3. First words: greetings are everything

Sahelian etiquette runs on greetings — a proper exchange asks after the person, their household, their work, and their night's sleep before any business. The universal opener is fofo, and most greeting questions begin with mate "how."

— Fofo! Mate ni go? — Baani samay. Mate kwaara? — Kwaara go baani. Mate goy? — Goy go no, a si futu. Saabu!

English: — Hello! How are you? — In good health. How is home (the village)? — Home is well. How is work? — The work is there, it's not bad. Thanks!

The flashcard deck at the top of this page holds the full 341-word vocabulary of this guide, with the same list downloadable as CSV, TSV, or an Anki deck — identical, row for row, to the full word table on the Zarma vocabulary page.

• Zarma vocabulary — full 341-word table + SRS trainer — The complete deck as a browsable table, with CSV / TSV / Anki / .apkg downloads.

4. The sentence machine: SOV and the aspect markers

A Zarma verb never conjugates. Instead, a little preverbal marker tells you the aspect — whether the action is complete, ongoing or habitual, wished-for, or negated. Learn five markers and you can build almost anything:²

Notice the shape of every example: subject — marker — object — verb. The object sits before the verb. Beginner books sometimes call ga "present tense" and the bare form "past tense"; that is a simplification the descriptive sources explicitly warn against — Zarma marks aspect (complete vs. incomplete), not tense.²

Ay ga koy habu. Habu ra, ay ga leemu day. Da ay du nooru, ay ga wa day mo. Suba, ay si koy habu: ay ga goro fu ra.

English: I go to the market. At the market, I buy oranges. If I get money, I'll buy milk too. Tomorrow I'm not going to the market: I'll stay home.

Pronouns — the complete set

Numbers

1 fo · 2 hinka · 3 hinza · 4 taci · 5 gu · 6 iddu · 7 iyye · 8 ahakku · 9 yagga · 10 iway. Teens use cindi "remainder": iway cindi fo 11. Tens: waranka 20, waranza 30, waytaci 40, waygu 50; zangu 100, zambar 1000. Numbers follow the noun: zanka hinka "two children."²

Practice reader — A1 story: Fofo, ay ma Haruna

Ay ma ka ti Haruna. Ay go Nizer laabu ra. Ay kwaara go isa me gaa. Kwaara ra, boro boobo go no. Susubay kulu, ay ga tun. Ay ga hari haŋ, ay ga buuru ŋwa. Ay baaba ga koy fari. Fari ra, a ga hayni duma. Ay nya go fu ra. A ga hawru hina, a ga zankey nyumay. Ay kayne ga koy lokkol. Lokkol ra, a ga caw, a ga hantum. Zaari kulu, ay ga goy. Almaari, ay ga ye fu. Fu ra, iri ga salaŋ, iri ga haaru. Iri kwaara ga kayna, amma a ga kaan iri se gumo.

English: My name is Haruna. I am in the country of Niger. My village is on the bank of the river. In the village there are many people. Every morning I get up. I drink water, I eat bread. My father goes to the field. In the field he plants millet. My mother is in the house. She cooks the meal, she washes the children. My little brother goes to school. At school he reads, he writes. Every day I work. In the evening I return home. At home we talk, we laugh. Our village is small, but it is very sweet to us.

Ay windi ra, boro iyye go no: ay baaba, ay nya, ay beere, ay kayne hinka, ay wayme, nda ay. Iri gonda haw hinka nda feeji taci. Gorŋo boobo mo go no. Hansi fo go windo ra. A ma ka ti Bobo. Bobo ga ba zankey. Zankey ga zuru nda Bobo zaari kulu. Muusu fo mo go no; a ga kani wayno ra. Cin ra, muuso ga hansi guna, hanso ga muusu guna — i si salaŋ, amma i go baani!

English: In my compound there are seven people: my father, my mother, my older brother, my two younger siblings, my sister, and me. We have two cows and four sheep. There are also many chickens. There is a dog in the compound. His name is Bobo. Bobo likes the children. The children run with Bobo every day. There is also a cat; it sleeps in the sun. At night the cat watches the dog and the dog watches the cat — they don't talk, but they're at peace!

Zaari fo, ay ga koy habu. Habu ra, ay ga leemu day. Ay ga albasan nda tamaatu day mo. Wayborey ga taafe neera. Alborey ga haw neera. Zankey ga gorŋo neera. Boro kulu ga salaŋ, boro kulu ga haaru. Ay ga hari haŋ, zama wayno ga dungo. Almaari, iri kulu ga hawru ŋwa fu ra. Hawru banda, ay nya ga ci iri se baaru. Baaru ga kaan, zankey ga hangan. Cin ra, ay ga kani. Ay ga kani baani. Kala suba, habu! Fofo, Zarma ciine!

English: One day, I go to the market. At the market I buy oranges. I also buy onions and tomatoes. The women sell cloth wrappers. The men sell cattle. The children sell chickens. Everyone talks, everyone laughs. I drink water, because the sun is hot. In the evening we all eat dinner at home. After dinner, my mother tells us a story. The story is sweet, the children listen. At night I sleep. I sleep in peace. Until tomorrow, market! Hello, Zarma language!

5. Nouns: the little endings that replace "the" and "this"

Zarma has no separate words for "the" or "this." Instead, the noun's ending changes — an enclitic fuses onto the noun phrase, marking definiteness and number at once:²

So from susubay "morning": susuba "the morning," susubô "this morning." From zanka "child": zankey "the children." The indefinite plural -yaŋ works like English "some": Ay no leemuyaŋ "Give me some oranges." And when a number or context already makes plurality clear, Zarma happily uses the singular: ay zanka hinka "my two children."²

Fu — fuwo: "house" — "the house." Boro — borey: "person" — "the people." Zarma ciine ra, gaabi go hay kayney ra: hanga ma hangan, mo ma di, gaa ni ga faham.

English: Fu — fuwo: house — the house. Boro — borey: person — the people. In Zarma, the strength is in the small things: let the ear listen and the eye see, and then you will understand.

6. Possession and postpositions

Possession is pure juxtaposition — possessor first, no linking word: Fati tira "Fati's book," ay baaba "my father," fu meeyo "the door of the house" (lit. house mouth-the). The same pattern builds purpose compounds: haŋyaŋ hari "drinking water."² All other modifiers — adjectives, numbers, demonstratives — follow the noun.

Where English has prepositions, Zarma has postpositions — the relation word comes after its noun:²

7. Commands, wishes, and saying no

• Imperative singular is the bare verb: Kaa! "Come!" Plural adds wa: Wa kaa! "Come (all of you)!" Negative commands use si: Si koy! "Don't go!"²
• The subjunctive ma expresses wishes, purposes, and polite instructions: Ni ma goro "please sit"; A ma kaa "let him come." Its negative is ma si.²
• Negation summary: si (incompletive) — Ay si ba "I don't want"; mana (completive) — A mana kaa "s/he didn't come."²

Guna mate aspect ga goy: Ay ga ŋwa — ay go ga ŋwa — ay ŋwa — ay mana ŋwa — ay ma ŋwa — ma ŋwa! Sanni fo, alhaali iddu. Zarma ciine si ba alwaati granmar; a ga ba alhaali granmar: hay kaŋ ban, hay kaŋ go no, hay kaŋ ga hima ka te.

English: Watch how aspect works: I eat (habitually) — I am eating — I ate — I didn't eat — let me eat — eat! One verb, six situations. Zarma doesn't care about tense grammar; it cares about aspect grammar: what is finished, what is ongoing, what ought to happen.

Asking questions

Practice reader — A2 story: Habu zaari (Market day)

Hunkuna, aljuma no. Aljuma, habu zaari no iri kwaara ra. Susubay, ay nya ne ay se: "Haruna, koy habu. Ma leemu day, ma albasan day, ma ciiri day mo. Suba, boro yaŋ ga kaa iri do." A na nooru no ay se. Ay na noorô sambu, ay na a daŋ ay taafe ra. Ay nda ay coro Muusa, iri koy habu care banda. Fonda boŋ, iri di boro boobo: wayborey nda taafe hanno yaŋ, alborey nda hawyaŋ, zankey nda feejiyaŋ. Boro fo go no nda farka; farko go ga jinay boobo jare.

English: Today is Friday. On Friday it's market day in our village. In the morning my mother said to me: "Haruna, go to the market. Buy oranges, buy onions, and buy salt too. Tomorrow some people are coming to our place." She gave me money. I took the money and put it in my cloth. My friend Moussa and I went to the market together. On the road we saw many people: women with beautiful wrappers, men with cattle, children with sheep. One man was there with a donkey; the donkey was carrying many goods.

Habu ra, boro kulu ga salaŋ. Ay hã wayboro fo: "Leemu marge no?" A tu: "Leemu fo, nooru way." Ay ne: "A ga ba gumo! Ay ga ni no nooru gu." Iri salaŋ, iri haaru, gaa ay na leemu iddu day nooru wahakku ra. Woodin banda, ay na albasan day nda ciiri. Muusa na tonko day nga nya se. Iri di jasare fo mo; a go ga doonu te, borey go ga hangan nda farhã.

English: At the market, everyone talks. I asked a woman: "How much are the oranges?" She answered: "One orange, ten units." I said: "That's a lot! I'll give you five." We talked, we laughed, then I bought six oranges for eighty. After that I bought onions and salt. Moussa bought hot pepper for his mother. We also saw a griot; he was making song, and the people were listening with joy.

Waati kaŋ wayno to zaari bindi, iri ye fu. Fonda boŋ, beene hari sintin ka kaŋ! Iri zuru, iri furo tuuri beeri fo cire. Waati kaŋ beene hari ban, iri ye ka dira. Fu ra, ay nya di leemey, a farhã. A ne: "Saabu, ay izo. Sõhõ, ma hari haŋ, ma fulanzam." Almaari, iri ŋwa hawru nda ham. Hawru ga kaan gumo. Cin ra, ay ci ay kayne se habu baaru kulu: nooru sanni, jasare sanni, nda beene hari sanni. A haaru kala a hẽ. Gaa iri kani nda farhã.

English: When the sun reached midday, we returned home. On the road, rain began to fall! We ran and went in under a big tree. When the rain finished, we walked again. At home, my mother saw the oranges and was delighted. She said: "Thank you, my child. Now drink water and rest." In the evening we ate dinner with meat. The meal was delicious. At night I told my little brother all the market news: the money story, the griot story, and the rain story. He laughed until he cried. Then we went to sleep happy.

8. The four ways "to be"

English uses "be" for everything; Zarma splits the job between several words, none of which maps one-to-one onto English — the classic intermediate hurdle:²

The particle no doubles as Zarma's focus machine: put the emphasized phrase before no and the rest follows. Ni do no ay ga koy — "it's to YOUR place I'm going." You will hear no constantly; it carries no tense or negative of its own.²

9. Chaining verbs with ka

The connector ka links two verbs, the second expressing result or purpose: kaa ka ŋwa "come (in order) to eat." Whole families of everyday idioms ride on this pattern: sintin ka … "begin to …," ban ka … "have already …," ba ka … "be about to …," gay ka … "it's been a while since …"² Master ka and your Zarma stops sounding like beads on a string and starts flowing.

Zarma ciine ra, sanney ga margu care gaa nda "ka". Boro kaŋ ga ba a ma faham, a ma hangan borey se habu ra, fondo boŋ, windi ra. Da ni gay ka hangan, ni ga sintin ka salaŋ danga Zarma boro.

English: In Zarma, sentences join to each other with "ka." Whoever wants to understand should listen to people at the market, on the road, in the compound. If you listen for a long time, you will begin to speak like a Zarma person.

Word-building: suffixes that do heavy lifting

• -ante makes participle-like adjectives from verbs (like English "-ed"), and ordinals from numbers.²
• -yaŋ nominalizes any verb into a gerund — the only fully general noun-maker: haŋyaŋ "drinking" (haŋyaŋ hari "drinking water"), dondonyaŋ "learning."² (Yes, it looks like the plural enclitic; context keeps them apart.)
• -koy "owner of" builds professions and roles: farikoy "farmer" (field-owner), fukoy "householder," and even Irikoy "God" ("our master").
• -andi makes causatives: dondon "learn" → dondonandi "teach" (cause to learn).

Practice reader — B1 story: Fondo beeri (The road to Niamey)

Jiiri woone ra, ay beere ne ay se: "Haruna, ni beeri sõhõ. Kaa iri ma koy Nyamey, ni ma di birni beero." Ay farhã gumo, zama ay mana di Nyamey ce fo. Susubay, za wayno mana fun, iri tun ka koy fonda beeri gaa. Iri kaaru moota fo ra — a to boro waranka! Fonda boŋ, ay di fariyaŋ, kwaarayaŋ, nda isa beero kaŋ ga dira danga gondi kwaaray saajo ra. Ay hã ay beere: "Isa wo, man no a ga koy?" A tu: "A ga koy hala Nizeriya laabu, gaa a ga furo teeku ra."

English: This year my older brother said to me: "Haruna, you're big now. Come, let's go to Niamey so you can see the big city." I was very happy, because I had never seen Niamey. In the morning, before the sun was up, we rose and set out onto the highway. We climbed into a car — it held twenty people! Along the road I saw fields, villages, and the great river that moves like a white snake through the bush. I asked my brother: "This river, where does it go?" He answered: "It goes all the way to Nigeria, then it enters the sea."

Nyamey ra, hay kulu ga beeri: fuwey ga kuuku, fondey ga beeri, motayaŋ boobo go ga zuru. Iri koy habu beero kaŋ se i ga ne "petit marché". Noodin, ay maa ciine waani-waani: Zarma, Hawsa, Fulfulde, nda Fransee. Ay beere na ay cabe lokkol beero, nda lopitaal, nda Irikoy fuwo beero. Zaari bindi, iri ŋwa mo nda ham habu me gaa. Ay di annasaara yaŋ mo; i go ga Zarma dondon! I ne ay se: "Fofo, mate ni go?" nda Zarma ciine. Ay haaru, ay tu: "Baani samay!"

English: In Niamey everything is big: the houses are tall, the roads are wide, many cars are running. We went to the big market they call the "petit marché." There I heard many different languages: Zarma, Hausa, Fulfulde, and French. My brother showed me the big school, the hospital, and the great mosque. At midday we ate rice and meat at the edge of the market. I even saw foreigners; they were learning Zarma! They said to me, "Hello, how are you?" in Zarma. I laughed and answered: "In good health!"

Almaari, iri koy iri baaba coro fo do. A ma ka ti Amadu. Amadu gonda fu hanno Nyamey ra, amma a ne: "Kwaara sanni ga kaan ay se ka bisa birni wane." Iri kani noodin. Suba susubay, iri ye fu. Fonda boŋ, ay laakal go ga miila: birni ga beeri, amma kwaara mo gonda nga darza. Ay ga ba ay ma ye Nyamey han fo, ay ma caw noodin, ay ma te lokotoro wala dondonandiko. Amma sõhõ, ay bine go kwaara ra, ay borey do. Woodin no ga ti fondo beeri cimi: ni ma koy, ni ma di, gaa ni ma ye ka kaa fu.

English: In the evening we went to one of our father's friends. His name was Amadou. Amadou has a fine house in Niamey, but he said: "The village's talk is sweeter to me than the city's." We slept there. The next morning we returned home. On the road my mind kept thinking: the city is big, but the village too has its glory. I want to return to Niamey one day, to study there, to become a doctor or a teacher. But for now my heart is in the village, with my people. That is the true highway: go, see, and then come back home.

10. Relatives, conditionals and connected speech

• kaŋ is the all-purpose relative marker ("who/which/that"): boro kaŋ ga Zarma salaŋ "a person who speaks Zarma"; habu beero kaŋ se i ga ne… "the big market which they call…"
• da opens conditions ("if/when"): Da ni gay ka hangan, ni ga faham "If you listen long, you'll understand." The attested proverb below opens exactly this way.²
• Comparison uses bisa "surpass": A beeri ka bisa ay "He is bigger than me" (lit. he is-big surpassing me).
• zama "because," amma "but," wala "or," gaa "then" knit clauses into narrative — you met all four in the B1 story.

A proverb, glossed to the bone

Da curo fo hẽ, afo mana hẽ, i si jinde kaana bay.²

Gloss: if bird one cry, other-one NEG.COMPL cry, they NEG.INCOMPL voice sweet-DEF know — "If one bird sings and another doesn't, they won't know whose voice is sweetest." Meaning: hear both sides of the story.

Look at the machinery on display: da conditional, fo/afo "one/another," the completive negative mana against the incompletive negative si, the definite -a on kaan "sweet," and SOV order with bay "know" parked at the end. One proverb, half the grammar of this guide.

11. The writing traditions — and the tone question

Niger fixed the official Latin orthography by ministerial decree in 1999 (Arrêté n°0215/MEN/SP-CNRE, drafted at the Institut de Recherches en Sciences Humaines in Niamey).⁵ Alongside it, the Ajami tradition — Zarma in Arabic letters — has centuries of history in Qur'anic-school circles, with Niger's convention differing from Mali's in five characters.² Tone is normally unwritten in both; dictionaries and linguists mark it with accents (á à â ǎ) only where ambiguity threatens, e.g. bá/bà/bâ/bǎ.² At B2 you should be reading tone-unmarked text comfortably, reconstructing tones from context — exactly what native readers do.

Zarma hantumyaŋ gonda fondo hinka. Fondo jina: annasaara hantumyaŋ, kaŋ Nizer laabu na a kayandi jiiri zambar fo nda zangu yagga nda wayga cindi yagga ra. Fondo hinkante: Ajami hantumyaŋ, Larabu hantumyaŋ fondo, kaŋ gay Sahel laabu ra za zamana boobo. Alfayaŋ ga Ajami cabe Irikoy fuwey ra; lokkol ga annasaara hantumyaŋ cabe. Fondo hinka wo, i kulu Zarma wane yaŋ no — afo si bisa afo. Boro kaŋ ga ba a ma Zarma caw, a ma fondo hinka kulu bay: yaadin no a ga hin ka tira kulu caw, zeeno wane nda taji wane.

English: Zarma writing has two roads. The first road: the Latin script, which Niger standardized in 1999. The second road: Ajami writing, the Arabic-script road, which has endured in the Sahel through many eras. The marabouts teach Ajami in the mosques; the school teaches the Latin script. These two roads both belong to Zarma — neither surpasses the other. Whoever wants to read Zarma should know both roads: that way they can read every book, old and new.

Dialect awareness

Zarma sits inside a Southern Songhay continuum: neighbouring varieties include Songhay proper (Kaado), Kurtey, Wogo, and Dendi — and the labels are as much about identity as isogloss: SIL's field survey found the same communities calling their speech "Songhay," "Zarma," or "Kaado" depending on context, with "Kaado" carrying derogatory overtones for some speakers.¹ In Dosso some speakers add a fifth, dipping tone.² What you learn here is Niamey-valley Zarma, understood throughout the continuum.

Practice reader — B2 story: Jasare sanni (The griot's words)

Iri kwaara ra, jasare fo go no kaŋ se boro kulu ga ne Baaba Sori. A zeeno gumo, amma a jinde ga kaan ka bisa zanka wane. Han kulu almaari, da wayno kaŋ, borey ga margu a windo ra: alborey, wayborey, zankey — boro kulu ga ba a ma baaru ci. Baaba Sori ga doŋ baaruyaŋ bay: koy baaruyaŋ, wongu baaruyaŋ, nda darza boro baaruyaŋ. A ga ne: "Boro kaŋ si nga doŋ bay, a si nga sõhõ faham; boro kaŋ si nga sõhõ faham, a si hin ka nga suba hanse."

English: In our village there is a griot whom everyone calls Baba Sori. He is very old, but his voice is sweeter than a child's. Every evening, when the sun sets, people gather in his compound: men, women, children — everyone wants him to tell a story. Baba Sori knows the stories of long ago: tales of chiefs, tales of wars, tales of people of glory. He says: "Whoever does not know their past cannot understand their present; whoever does not understand their present cannot repair their tomorrow."

Han fo, zanka fo hã a: "Baaba, ifo se ni ga doŋ baaruyaŋ ci, kaŋ dunya sõhõ gonda telefon nda telewizyoŋ?" Jasare haaru moso, gaa a tu: "Ay izo, telefon ga hin ka ci ni se hay kaŋ te hunkuna Ameriki laabu ra, amma a si hin ka ci ni se may no ni ti. Woodin, iri baaruyaŋ hinne no ga hin ka a ci. Da curo fo hẽ, afo mana hẽ, i si jinde kaana bay — da ni maa sanni fo hinne, ni si cimo kulu bay." Zankey dangay; i goro, i hangan. Cino ra, a na baaru fo ci iri se: boro fo kaŋ na nga kwaara faaba nda nga laakal, manti nda nga zaama.

English: One day a child asked him: "Father, why do you tell the old stories, when the world now has telephones and television?" The griot laughed softly, then answered: "My child, the telephone can tell you what happened today in America, but it cannot tell you who you are. That, only our stories can tell. If one bird sings and another doesn't, they won't know whose voice is sweetest — if you hear only one word, you don't know the whole truth." The children fell silent; they sat, they listened. That night he told us a story: of a man who saved his village with his mind, not with his sword.

Za han din, ay sintin ka jasare sanney hantum tira ra. Ay si ba i ma daray, zama Baaba Sori bumbo ne: "Da boro zeeno bu, danga danji na tira fu beeri fo ŋwa." Ay na baaru waranka hantum sõhõ, Zarma ciine ra nda Fransee ciine ra. Han fo, da Irikoy yadda, ay ga i te tira kaŋ zankey ga caw lokkol ra. Yaadin no jasare sanni si bu: a ga tun, a ga funa, a ga koy jine — danga isa kaŋ ga dira, kaŋ si kay abada.

English: Since that day, I have begun writing down the griot's words in a book. I don't want them to be lost, for Baba Sori himself says: "When an old person dies, it is as if fire has eaten a great library." I have written twenty stories now, in Zarma and in French. One day, God willing, I will make them into a book that children will read at school. In this way the griot's words will not die: they will rise, they will live, they will go forward — like the river that moves and never, ever stops.

12. Formal and public Zarma

Advanced Zarma means handling the language's public registers: radio news bulletins, religious discourse dense with Arabic loans (alhakku "right," laakal "mind," alwaati "time," the weekday names), civic vocabulary (burcintara "freedom," from burcin "free person"), and the rhetorical parallelism of oral literature. Compare the official register of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1, in Zarma:²

Fayanka kulu no si adamayzey nda care game ra i burcintara nda i alhakey ce-diraw kayandiyaŋ fondo ra da i na i hay. I gonda lakkal, nda laasaabu, kaŋ ga naŋ i ma baafunay ɲayzetaray haali ra.

English (UDHR Art. 1): All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. — Note the officialese: stacked -yaŋ nominalizations (kayandiyaŋ), Arabic-derived civic vocabulary (alhakey, lakkal, laasaabu), and a sentence rhythm no market trader would use. Recognizing register is the C1 skill.

At this level, deliberately vary your own output: retell one event three ways — to a friend (short clauses, plain narrative), to an elder (greeting-rich, deferential subjunctives with ma), and as a radio report (nominalizations, full names, no ellipsis). Studio Kalangou's daily Zarma bulletins (media list below) are your model for the third register.

Practice reader — C1 story: Lokkol nda fari (School and field)

Waato nda waato, iri kwaara ra, borey si ba lokkol sanni. I ga ne: "Lokkol ga zankey sambu iri gaa; da i caw, i ga dinya fari goy, i ga dinya iri alaadey." Ay baaba bumbo, waato kaŋ ay to lokkol jiiri, a si ba ay ma koy. Amma ay nya kay a jine, a ne: "Zanka wo ga koy lokkol, zama dunya go ga barmay. Boro kaŋ si caw, suba, a ga te danga boro kaŋ si di fondo cin ra." Ay baaba dangay, gaa a yadda. Yaadin no ay furo lokkol, waato kaŋ ay gonda jiiri iddu.

English: Long, long ago in our village, people didn't like school talk. They would say: "School takes the children from us; if they study, they'll forget farm work, they'll forget our customs." My own father, when I reached school age, didn't want me to go. But my mother stood before him and said: "This child will go to school, because the world is changing. A person who cannot read will be, tomorrow, like someone who cannot see the road at night." My father was silent, then agreed. That is how I entered school, when I was six years old.

Sõhõ, jiiri iway bisa. Ay te dondonandiko iri kwaara lokkolo ra. Susubay, ay ga zankey dondonandi caw nda hantumyaŋ; zaari bindi banda, ay ga koy fari, ay ga ay baaba gaa dumayaŋ ra. Zama ay faham sõhõ: lokkol nda fari manti care ibare yaŋ no — i hinka care banda ga kwaara no ŋwaari nda laakal. Zanka kaŋ ga caw, gaa a ga fari goy bay mo, boro hanno no: a kambe ga te goy, a boŋo ga te miila. Iri alaadey mo si daray lokkol ra — ay ga zankey dondonandi jasarey baaruyaŋ, iri ga doonuyaŋ te Zarma ciine ra.

English: Now, ten years have passed. I have become a teacher in our village school. In the mornings I teach the children reading and writing; in the afternoons I go to the field and help my father with the planting. For I understand now: school and field are not enemies — the two of them together give the village food and knowledge. A child who studies and also knows farm work is a fine person: the hands make work, the head makes thought. And our customs are not lost at school — I teach the children the griots' stories, and we make songs in the Zarma language.

Han fo, ay baaba kaa lokkol do. A goro, a dangay, a hangan zankey se: i go ga caw Zarma ciine ra, i go ga a baaruyaŋ hantum. Waati kaŋ iri fatta, a ne ay se moso: "Ay izo, waato, ay miila lokkol ga zankey sambu iri gaa. Sõhõ ay di: a ga iri sanney gaabandi. Ni nya na cimi ci." Woodin, ay se, darza beeri no ka bisa nooru kulu: ay baaba yadda, iri kwaara zankey go ga caw, nda Zarma ciine go ga furo tirayaŋ ra. Fondo ga kuuku jine, amma iri sintin ka dira.

English: One day my father came to the school. He sat, he was quiet, he listened to the children: they were reading in Zarma, they were writing its stories. When we went out, he said to me softly: "My child, long ago I thought school would take the children from us. Now I see: it is strengthening our words. Your mother told the truth." That, for me, was a glory greater than any money: my father agreed, our village children are studying, and the Zarma language is entering into books. The road ahead is long, but we have begun to walk.

13. Tone, style, and the music of the language

Mastery means hearing what is not written. Four written-identical words — ba — resolve in speech to bá "be many," bà "share," bâ "want/even," bǎ "be better";² the definite enclitics you learned at A2 are themselves partly tonal (-ǒ vs -ô). C2 work is therefore ear-work: shadow radio Zarma daily (see the media list below), transcribe thirty seconds, then check your transcription with a literate speaker. Beyond tone, cultivate the three ornaments of high Zarma style: proverb placement (a well-timed proverb ends an argument), parallel doubling (a ga tun, a ga funa, a ga koy jine — rise, live, go forward), and the ideophone-rich description of everyday actions that no dictionary fully captures.

Practice reader — C2 story: Isa sanni (What the river says)

I ga ne — za doŋ, za Zarma borey mana kaa ne, isa go no. A ga dira moso-moso, danga albarka kaŋ si ban. Kwaara kulu kaŋ goro a me gaa, a ga i no hari, a ga i no hamisa, a ga i no laabu tajo kaŋ ga hayni hay. Woodin se no iri kaayey ga ne: "Isa ya iri nya no." Amma nya wo, waati-waati, a ga futu mo: da beene hari ba, isa ga tun, a ga fariyaŋ daabu, a ga fuwey zeeri. Zarma borey ga bay: hay kulu kaŋ ga hanno, a ga hin ka futu mo — woodin no ga ti dunya alaada.

English: They say — since long ago, before the Zarma people even came here, the river was there. It moves slowly, slowly, like a blessing that never ends. Every village that settles on its bank, it gives them water, it gives them fish, it gives them the fresh soil that bears millet. That is why our ancestors said: "The river is our mother." But this mother sometimes turns fierce too: when the rains are heavy the river rises, it covers the fields, it topples houses. The Zarma know: everything good can also turn harsh — that is the way of the world.

Ay kaayo, kaŋ te hi-koy nga zamana ra, doona ka ci ay se: "Ay izo, isa ciine dumi hinka go no: sanni kaŋ a ga ci zaari, nda sanni kaŋ a ga ci cin. Zaari sanno, boro kulu ga maa: hario zurayaŋ, hamisey fattayaŋ, hiyey dirawyaŋ. Amma cin sanno, boro kaŋ ga hangan nda laakal hinne no ga faham: isa ga ci ni se kaŋ dunya ga dira, a si kay; kaŋ boro kulu, danga hari ize fo, ga fun beene, ga zumbu ganda, ga ye ka margu nda nga dumey." Waato din, ay mana faham; sõhõ kaŋ ay boŋ hamno te kwaaray, ay ga faham moso-moso.

English: My grandfather, who was a boatman in his day, used to tell me: "My child, the river has two kinds of speech: the words it speaks by day and the words it speaks by night. The day-speech everyone hears: the water's running, the fishes' leaping, the pirogues' passing. But the night-speech only one who listens with the mind understands: the river tells you that the world moves and does not stop; that every person, like a single drop of water, comes from the sky, descends to earth, and returns to gather with its kin." Back then I did not understand; now that the hair on my head has turned white, I understand little by little.

Hunkuna, da ay go ga woone hantum, ay go ga isa guna ay fu meeyo gaa. Wayno go ga kaŋ; wayno ciray ga daabu hario boŋ, danga taafe ciray kaŋ i daŋ a gaa. Cino ga kaa, handariyey ga fatta, isa sanno ga barmay. Ay hantumyaŋo ga to nga me: sanney kulu kaŋ ay dondon, jasarey baaruyaŋ kulu kaŋ ay hantum, isa no ka i no ay se: dirawyaŋ sanni, muraadu sanni, ye-ka-kaa sanni. Zarma ciine bumbo, danga isa no: a ga zuru, a ga dira laabu waani-waani ra, a ga sanni tajiyaŋ sambu nga fonda boŋ — amma a jinde, jinde kaana din, si barmay abada. Boro kaŋ ga ba a ma woodin bay, a ma kaa isa me gaa, cin ra, a ma hangan.

English: Today, as I write this, I am watching the river from my doorway. The sun is setting; its red light spreads a cover over the water, like a red wrapper laid across its body. Night comes, the stars come out, the river's speech changes. My writing reaches its end: all the words I have learned, all the griots' tales I have written down — it was the river that gave them to me: words of journeying, words of purpose, words of going-and-returning. The Zarma language itself is like the river: it runs, it travels through country after country, it picks up new words along its road — but its voice, that sweet voice, never changes. Whoever wants to know this: come to the riverbank at night, and listen.

14. Books, media and culture in Zarma

Zarma is under-resourced compared with Hausa or Swahili, but a real learner's ecosystem exists — much of it free:

Ma hangan Zarma se han kulu: rediyo ra, doonu ra, sinima ra. Da ni maa sanni fo kaŋ ni si bay, ma a hantum, ma boro hã, ma a dondon. Dondonyaŋ fondo ga kuuku, amma boro kaŋ ga dira han kulu, a ga to nga muraadu. Zarma borey ga ne: boro si dunya bay nda zaari fo.

English: Listen to Zarma every day: on the radio, in songs, in films. When you hear a word you don't know, write it down, ask someone, learn it. The road of learning is long, but whoever walks every day reaches their goal. The Zarma say: no one knows the world in a single day.

Reference and courses

• Peace Corps Niger Zarma courses (free, Live Lingua archive) — The classic practical courses — greetings, market language, grammar drills — free and public-domain.
• Bernard & White-Kaba, Dictionnaire zarma-français (ACCT, 1994) — The standard modern dictionary (via French).
• Tersis, Le Zarma, Étude du Parler Djerma de Dosso (SELAF, 1972) — The closest thing to a dedicated reference grammar.
• SIL: Southern Songhay Speech Varieties in Niger (Harrison et al., 1997) — Free sociolinguistic survey — the dialect landscape around Zarma.
• Omniglot: Zarma alphabet and pronunciation — Quick orthography reference with the UDHR sample text.
• Glottolog: Zarma-Kaado (zarm1239) — Classification, status, and bibliography.

Listening, watching, reading

• Studio Kalangou — news in Zarma (Fondation Hirondelle) — Professional Nigerien newsroom publishing daily radio bulletins in Zarma (and Hausa/French) — the single best C1 listening source.
• ORTN / Télé Sahel — Niger's national broadcaster — National-language programming including Zarma.
• Oumarou Ganda's films (Cabascabo, 1968; Le Wazzou polygame, 1971) — Pioneering Nigerien cinema with Zarma dialogue — Le Wazzou polygame won the first FESPACO grand prize.
• Mamar Kassey (band, Niamey) — Niger's flagship fusion band — lyrics in Zarma/Songhay, Fulfulde and Hausa.
• Moussa Poussy (Zarma singer) — Niamey star of Zarma-language popular music.
• Zarma Bible portions & audio — Parallel text + audio — slow, clear register for shadowing.

15. Where this guide's facts come from

The grammatical framework above follows the descriptive tradition of Hamani (1980) and Tersis (1972, 1981) as synthesized in accessible references, cross-checked against SIL's sociolinguistic survey and Niger's official 1999 orthography decree; the proverb, the UDHR passage, and several model sentences are attested items from those sources, and the practice stories are original compositions built from the deck vocabulary and the documented grammar. Where sources conflict (speaker counts, Songhay's genetic classification), the disagreement is reported rather than resolved.