User:A12n/Bambara tone marking

Not complete

Bambara (Bamanankan) is a tonal language, featuring basically a high and a low tone on vowels. Whether and how to mark these in text and in references is a question that has been discussed in various contexts, and treated in different ways.

Background
Basically, in Bambara written in the current Latin-based orthography, tones can be unmarked (common in text & publications, even lexical, from Mali), or marked (common in many lexical publications, as well as grammars and instructional materials). Marking tones may be featured in different ways, these days always using "accent" marks (acute for high, grave for low): mark all tones; mark all tones but on first syllable only; mark either the high or the low tone, with the other tone unmarked; or marking only tones where the difference marks a difference in meaning (high tone meaning one thing, and low another).

In the French Wiktionary some 2400 terms in Bambara had been added by the time I first touched a Bambara entry in 2014. Virtually all were entered without tone marks. I chose to maintain that practice, while endeavoring to include indications of tone in pronunciation notes.

At all

 * Moussa Diaby (République du Mali, Ministère de l'Éducation Nationale), Léxique de base : Bamanankan - Français, Fondation Karanta, 2003
 * Moussa Diaby (République du Mali, Ministère de l'Éducation Nationale), Léxique de base : Français - Bamanankan, Fondation Karanta, 2003
 * Kassim Kɔne [Koné], Bamanankan daɲɛgafe, Mother Tongue Editions, 1995

At all, except very few instances

 * Richard Nci Diarra, Lexique bambara-français-anglais, 13 décembre 2010 (bambara.org)

At all, but indication of high tone 1st syllable given as "(')" beside word

 * DNAFLA, Lexique français-bambara, EDIM, Bamako, 1980
 * Moussa Diaby, Léxique spécialisé en santé et agriculture : Bamanankan - Français, Français - Bamanankan, République du Mali, Ministère de l'Éducation de Base, 1993

On initial syllable & sometimes others

 * Charles Bailleul, Artem Davydov, Anna Erman, Kirill Maslinksy, Jean Jacques Méric, et Valentin Vydrin. Bamadaba : Dictionnaire électronique bambara-français, avec un index français-bambara. 2011–2014.
 * Gérard Dumestre, Dictionnaire bambara-français, Université de Sorbonne, 1981

Systematically, but only as underline under low tone

 * Charles Bailleul, Petit dictionnaire bambara-français français-bambara, Avebury Publishing Co., 1981

Systematically

 * Gérard Dumestre, Dictionnaire bambara français : suivi d'un index abrégé français-bambara, Karthala, 2011

Proposed approach for Wiktionary
Wiktionary could in my opinion have the best of both worlds, listing the tone-unmaked Bambara words (in the Latin-based orthography) as principal entries, since these seem to be most common in current usage of the language, while putting tones only in pronunciation, and as alternative spellings where these emerge in common usage.