Mende: Nunga wa ɔ
We start off with something a bit "nonstandard", if we can call it that. Today we have a song where I started from a butchered text and a translation, and miraculously identified the language and (hopefully) successfully de-butchered the text. But first, a little backstory.
I am a member of a Catholic religious movement called Communion and Liberation, CL for short. Suffice it to say that this movement organizes yearly summer holidays for its communities, that it's basically everywhere in the world, and that it issues songbooks. One summer holiday, I took a look at the African section of the songboook, and found three songs:
In the afternoon of Oct 5, as I was still digging through that rabbit hole, I thought back to the songbook's African section, that one page, and I thought: Malaika I've done, Salelaka Mokonzi I'm doing, let's try our luck with the third one. What language is it in? Let's find the lyrics! Uh-oh. 404 not found. All I found via Google was this video. I even looked for "libro canti clu" (the songbook), but I couldn't find it, or the African page was out of the viewable portion.
So I went to Quora. Because that's where I go when I can't find something :). At about 16:23, I asked this question, and I sent my standard 8 answer requests. I put all the info I had (only a partial translation from the video's description and a transcription attempt of the lyrics from the video) in a comment posted sometime before 16:57.
As I waited, however, I didn't stay idle: I turned to Google Translate. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover very many African languages: we have Amharic, Chichewa, Hausa, Igbo, Sesotho, Shona, Somali, Swahili, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. I tried them all at some point, though the only screenshot I have for this point in time is trying Amharic and concluding it's not Amharic because "Come my people" in Amharic has nothing to do with "Nunga wa o".
I googled "nunga" and found this, which has since been heavily edited as the quotation here clearly shows, but which made me suspect they could have botched the origin of the song and mistaken Aborigine for African, so I added a relevant topic to the question and A2A'd the author of the only answer given so far except my self-answer, and a couple more people. I also looked into Aboriginal languages, and googled "wa wirangu", one such language. It was around 18:15 by then.
That answer came the next day around 13:11, with a bunch of googled info (including the only other online video of the song), and some looking at the text, concluding it was probably a Bantu language, with Arabic influence ("world" was approximately "dunya", cfr. Swahili "dunia" from Arabic "دُنْيَا dunyā", "world"), where "Savior" was something like "mubao", possibly related to Lingala "mobikisi", thus it couldn't be Swahili, because in that language "Saviour" is "mwokozi". Actually, the other video came with the brief comment exchange we had on that answer.
At this point I see screenshots of me trying some Bantu languages to see if I could find one with these properties.
Later that day, I mentioned my difficulties to a CL friend, whom we'll call LS, and that evening, at 20:42, he whatsapped me the songbook's page, so I finally had lyrics… but not a complete translation, because the translation in the songbook is a joke which only translates beginning and end of the chorus, that's it. Like, are you kidding me?
Anyway, starting ~22:20, I added the songbook's lyrics to the comment. These matched the video, except for the end of verse 2, which was the made-up «Bona mugua, gianga tze ia dunia» in the songbook, and the repeated «Jesu mia, mu bao mu ia ghie» in the video. In a while, I'll give you the songbook text, so you can see what Gibberish came out at around 22:30 from Google Translating it from Chichewa. Oh, and I de-italianized the spelling of a portion, and the change in the translation was drastic.
I tried googling "mu bao mu ia ghie", but to no avail.
At 23:18, I started asking this Linguistics Stack Exchange question, which was soon closed, because "language identification" doesn't mean "identify the language of a specific sample" to them, and in fact questions dealing with specific samples are specifically off-topic on that site. Oh well. Here's the question as I see it (it's mine so I can see it even though it's deleted):
The question says it was asked 21:43, but that's nonsense. Apparently Stack Exchange has a GMT-1 clock (why?).
At 0:02 I received the following comment by Draconis, who also interacted with me about Salelaka Mokonzi: «Dunia is Swahili for "world", from Arabic dunyā». At 1:04, «Unfortunately, "identification of specific samples of text" is specifically off-topic here, so this is likely to be closed», and that's when I made the UPDATE. Here is the full comment exchange. By 12:18 the following day, the question was on hold, soon to be closed and, eventually, deleted.
I mentioned this and the second video to LS, who has a friend ad Politecnico di Milano who confirmed the video was by their Coro Alpino, but the video is 10 years old and this guy was in Politecnico since a shorter time, so he couldn't give any info. The mention happened at 10:30, this answer came at 20:46, together with a suggestion to write to the high floors of the CL musical hierarchy, clcoro@comunioneliberazione.org. The evening ended with LS planning to get a screenshot of a newer songbook (the pic he'd sent me was from an older edition).
Meanwhile, I'd asked my Kenyan friend (the one who'd helped me with Malaika), at 13:25, if she could understand anything of the song. Answer came at 13:53, and was "nope". She couldn't recognize the language. That unfortunately only excluded Swahili, as she stated in a message later that evening, so nothing new under the sun.
Next day at 14:09, pic of new songbook. No change since 2010. Dang.
Days passed with no news. On Oct 15, the question was closed. I assume I was busy with my work? As in, finding out my thesis project had been published by others and starting on the articles for a new one, and preparing the "passage of year"?
Anyway, the next piece of news is on Oct 19 when, starting 15:24:28 and finishing between 15:48:03 and 15:48:10, I posted my self-answer on Quora, wirthout all the updates. Why the log says posted 3:45:02 PM, I have no clue.
At 16:01, I wrote to those high floors, asking both about this song, and about Nostalgíĵa po nastoĵáśemu, which I remembered with a completely different tune than in the video I linked.
Meanwhile, I'd googled "kigobu", finding Idk what, so I thought of googling more words. I somehow landed on a Kurdish song, "tu sorghuli", in the process, looking for "kigobu", apparently a Kurdish word that Google doesn't know, as well as a language, cfr. the self-answer. Looking for "veli", "muga", and "mubao" gave nothing. My answer got upvoted by Nick :) while I wrote the email. I mentioned the email to LS, who suggested a more generic Subject than just the titles of the two songs. Back to searching though. "janga" and "keni" gave nothing, but "tsiyawo", googled around 15:56, landed me on this comment on a post by a now-inextant Facebook page. The page was called "La voix des Comores", and I found out Comorian, the language(s) of the Comoros, is/are Bantu, so I tried that path. Unfortunately, the page was deleted so long ago it's not even Google-cached, so all we have of it is this extract from a Google search at 17:27:51: «Pour la première fois nous donnons raisons à nos frères mahorais d'avoir choisi … ko bé wa comore wa tsaha wahéléwé havassa amba mahorais ini tsiyawo». I tried to decipher that around 17:30, without much success. Look for a dictionary, find Glosbe Maore Comorian, tsiyawo isn't found there, "God" gives "Mungu", "saviour" gives "Îsa Kristi" or "hui" as unreliable options, "world" gives a bunch of unreliable options including "dunia", "in" gives "moni mwa"… not very promising. All of this searching takes place within 16:00:29. 16:01:51, "evil" is "ovu" or "upeu". 16:09 I write to the page asking if the video is in Comorian, getting a nice possibly-auto reply. 16:11 I update LS, with little hope in this Comorian thing.
I looked for more Comorian stuff. Babilon was a crappy translator. I mean, when translating "the" to Comorian (Ngazidja) gives "在峇株巴辖种植园"… and the same happens when translating that comment from above into English…. Anyway, it would seem that, googling for dictionaries, I landed on the Omniglot entry for Comorian, where I found the following list of "Bantu languages":
Anyway, thus began the dictionary abuse, which I will leave only as documented in that famous self-answer as well as the Cult of Linguists post I submitted on Oct 22, as well as its comments. Even if I had enough screenshots to reconstruct exactly what I looked up where, it would be too boring for me to do :). So now… wait a second.
Oct 21, 14:58, those high floors finally reply, saying they didn't know where the song came from, and sending the following text and translation, which I will copy as is, and then de-Italianize / translate to English.
That said, it's analysis time. My sources are:
So I worked on the chorus and tried my best with the verses up till 21/10 14:58, when I finally got the full translation from the famous "high floors". At that point, I finally had a decent starting point, and eventually cracked (or so I thought - the suffixes detailed above I only just found out about and it's July 2020) the whole song. I updated that self-answer numerous times, so look at that for more story.
Meanwhile, at 7:25 on 21/10, La voix des Comores had replied «Bonjour , non ils chantent en Comorien , merci de votre compréhension» and «Ils ne chantent pas en Comorien». As if I didn't know already :).
Between 11:50:37 and 12:25:18 on 22/10, I wrote and submitted this Cult of Linguists post, which was accepted IIRC quite some time later, though I can't remember when. Oh wow, it had an upvote that same day at 14:37:24! This means I remembered very incorrectly indeed :).
About a minute later I was sending the link to LS, and discussing an email to the high floors about my work with him. The email was sent at 12:46 (probably 14:46, I recall some kind of GMT-1 time zone, I assume it was Outlook), and got a thank you reply «per il tuo dettagliato contributo» (for your detailed contribution) the next day at 15:58.
At which point I needed a speaker to confirm this analysis. I tried asking around, and it turns out one of the porters at the GSSI Student House (a.k.a. "Grand Hotel") knew someone from Sierra Leone who was in L'Aquila at the time. That info was given me by the porter herself on probably Dec 2 2019, but that same day, at 20:40, she messengered me «L’ho inviata al mio amico ma ha detto che non capisce questa lingua e che loro parlano 17 lingue diverse nel suo paese» (I sent it [the song, in the form of the video] to my friend [the Sierra Leone guy mentioned just now] but he told me (s)he doesn't understand this language and they speak 17 different languages in his/her country). Daaaamn…
On 4/12, I presumably looked for "Sierra Leone" on Facebook, and landed on the Facebook page "Sierra Leone people", and messaged it with «Good evening. I'm a linguaphile who recently identified a certain song as Mende language (hence potentially from Sierra Leone, which is why I'm writing to you), and tried to reconstruct the correct lyrics from a horribly butchered transcription and a not-entirely-accurate translation. Can you help me verify if I've done it right or figure out where I've gone wrong? Here is my work: https://www.quora.com/q/col/Cracking-a-Mende-song». The reply was just an autoreply written with a mere greeting in mind, instead of a question, i.e., it worked if replying to no more than a greeting, and made absolutely no sense in reply to my message. I waited for a reply for ever. On May 2 I insisted, and a real reply finally came in… on May 11. So I sent the whole analysis to the page (in a slightly older form than above), and they said they'd get someone to check it. On May 13, I asked if they'd written to their contact, and they said they were waiting for a reply. And that's been the situation ever since, with the annoying autoreply being virtually all that came back when I asked for news 4 times more or less. So that's it.
Well, one last thing. On 5/12 in the evening, I tried writing to all my black Facebook and Whatsapp contacts if they spoke, or knew anyone who spoke, either Mende or Lingala (cfr. my other post on Sáleláká Mokonzi). Out of all those who answered, who were the majority of those I wrote to, none knew anything about Mende or had any valuable contacts. So nothing there either, sadly.
Oh wait! I was almost forgetting. On November 9th I messaged the Linguistics Stack Exchange chat, but nothing came out of it. Then I found a post by someone who dealt with African languages, and pinged him in the chat on 15/11, and after a brief exchange which carried on into the following day, I wrote to Prof. Christopher Green on 17/11. He replied the following day that what he worked on (Bambara and possibly more) is far enough from Mende that he couldn't really help, and directed me to Charles Riley, to whom I wrote that same day. Unfortunately, all the reply I got from him was «I am away from my desk this week, attending the African Studies Association conference in Boston. I may be delayed in my responses to e-mail until Monday, November 25th.», presumably an autoreply. So that's that.
On 16:50 on 16/8/20, Sierra Leone People informed me they're looking for another Mende speaker, since the one they'd contacted was latitating. Hopefully they'll get an answer soon.
Writing this on 22/11/20. Sierra leone people hasn't replied since 16/8, giving auto-reply on 24/8 and 3/10 and 14/10, and not even that on 16/9. On 6/11/20 I posted on the page, hoping for views, but nothing, because the post doesn't appear on the page. On the same day, I tried writing to Sierra Leone, but to no avail. I also tried posting on the page a few days later, and cannot even get a link for my post. Back in Oct 27 I'd googled "Mende speakers" and landed on this paper by David Dwyer [the link is now broken and just gives a generic Uni website, the paper can only be found on Scribd here], prof. at UMichigan, whom I'd planned to email but ended up messaging on Research Gate instead, to no avail. Nobody can find me a speaker, at least among those who answer…
Then on 21(?)/11/20 I read this answer posted on the Cult of Linguists, and I comment on it. Me and the author have a longish exchange in the comments where I mention this song to him (again), and he, on 22/11/20, points me to a Youtube he recently discovered who has studied a bunch of African languages including Mende, which he speaks in this video. So I comment on said video, and on 28/11/20 I receive an email from this Abubaka I'd never heard of before, about Mende: the Youtuber put me in contact with a Mende speaker! But the joy lasts short, because the speaker doesn't reply to my immediate reply. So I write again, and no reply. Apparently, as per Youtuber's comment, Abubaka «doesn't always have internet access», which is probably an understatement, since I've still got no answer and it's 1/1/21. I sent him a Chinese-Mende translation as well in the meantime, one of In our world. We'll just have to be patient. As if that's news. And on 6/3/21 the wait finally ends, everything is confirmed correct, and I can record the song, which I get to a week later.
I am a member of a Catholic religious movement called Communion and Liberation, CL for short. Suffice it to say that this movement organizes yearly summer holidays for its communities, that it's basically everywhere in the world, and that it issues songbooks. One summer holiday, I took a look at the African section of the songboook, and found three songs:
- A horribly butchered Malaika; I knew it was butchered because I'd worked on it the previous May and the holiday was in June/August;
- Sáleláká Mokonzi, which I'd be working on a couple months later;
- And today's song, Nunga wa ɔ (or rather, "Nunga ua oh", as the songbook would have it), which I'd never seen or heard of before.
In the afternoon of Oct 5, as I was still digging through that rabbit hole, I thought back to the songbook's African section, that one page, and I thought: Malaika I've done, Salelaka Mokonzi I'm doing, let's try our luck with the third one. What language is it in? Let's find the lyrics! Uh-oh. 404 not found. All I found via Google was this video. I even looked for "libro canti clu" (the songbook), but I couldn't find it, or the African page was out of the viewable portion.
So I went to Quora. Because that's where I go when I can't find something :). At about 16:23, I asked this question, and I sent my standard 8 answer requests. I put all the info I had (only a partial translation from the video's description and a transcription attempt of the lyrics from the video) in a comment posted sometime before 16:57.
As I waited, however, I didn't stay idle: I turned to Google Translate. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover very many African languages: we have Amharic, Chichewa, Hausa, Igbo, Sesotho, Shona, Somali, Swahili, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. I tried them all at some point, though the only screenshot I have for this point in time is trying Amharic and concluding it's not Amharic because "Come my people" in Amharic has nothing to do with "Nunga wa o".
I googled "nunga" and found this, which has since been heavily edited as the quotation here clearly shows, but which made me suspect they could have botched the origin of the song and mistaken Aborigine for African, so I added a relevant topic to the question and A2A'd the author of the only answer given so far except my self-answer, and a couple more people. I also looked into Aboriginal languages, and googled "wa wirangu", one such language. It was around 18:15 by then.
That answer came the next day around 13:11, with a bunch of googled info (including the only other online video of the song), and some looking at the text, concluding it was probably a Bantu language, with Arabic influence ("world" was approximately "dunya", cfr. Swahili "dunia" from Arabic "دُنْيَا dunyā", "world"), where "Savior" was something like "mubao", possibly related to Lingala "mobikisi", thus it couldn't be Swahili, because in that language "Saviour" is "mwokozi". Actually, the other video came with the brief comment exchange we had on that answer.
At this point I see screenshots of me trying some Bantu languages to see if I could find one with these properties.
- I excluded Sesotho from Google Translating "saviour" into "mopholosi".
- I excluded Cilubà from this dictionary.
- I excluded Kituba from Glosbe-translating "world" – as well as whatever that French-Kituba dictionary on archive.org gave me.
- It would seem I couldn't exclude Lusong for lack of an online dictionary.
- I presumably excluded Orundandi/Nande with a downloaded dictionary (?) and Glosbe, where I tried "only" because it was at the end of the translated part.
- I presumably excluded Otetela as well.
- Ikayi and Iyaka seem to have been unexcludable.
- Not sure what happened with Swazi, Ndebele, and Xhosa.
- Then I have Google Chichewa give me "dziko" for "world".
- Ganda was Glosbe-excluded with "people" not being "nunga".
- Not sure what happened with Sukuma or Lingala.
Later that day, I mentioned my difficulties to a CL friend, whom we'll call LS, and that evening, at 20:42, he whatsapped me the songbook's page, so I finally had lyrics… but not a complete translation, because the translation in the songbook is a joke which only translates beginning and end of the chorus, that's it. Like, are you kidding me?
Anyway, starting ~22:20, I added the songbook's lyrics to the comment. These matched the video, except for the end of verse 2, which was the made-up «Bona mugua, gianga tze ia dunia» in the songbook, and the repeated «Jesu mia, mu bao mu ia ghie» in the video. In a while, I'll give you the songbook text, so you can see what Gibberish came out at around 22:30 from Google Translating it from Chichewa. Oh, and I de-italianized the spelling of a portion, and the change in the translation was drastic.
I tried googling "mu bao mu ia ghie", but to no avail.
At 23:18, I started asking this Linguistics Stack Exchange question, which was soon closed, because "language identification" doesn't mean "identify the language of a specific sample" to them, and in fact questions dealing with specific samples are specifically off-topic on that site. Oh well. Here's the question as I see it (it's mine so I can see it even though it's deleted):
CL strikes again, let's say. Last time it was this question, arising from this song which came to me through CL, this time I have a song in an unidentified African language which came to me via a CL songbook.
(CL is a Catholic religious movement, "Communion and Liberation" in full.)
This is a cross-post of this, but I have little hope of getting an answer on Quora TBH.
So what do I know about the song? Well, first things first. The lyrics in the songbook read:
As for the translation, all we know is this:
@NickNicholas answered my A2A there, and he found out:
UPDATE
I have been informed that identifying the language of specific samples of texts is specifically off-topic, hence the close vote. If you come to this question and it's closed, you may join this chat room for the answer. It was created for the Lingala song, but I guess we can add this other song to it. If anyone does head over there, please tag any message about this song as #NungaWaOh.
(CL is a Catholic religious movement, "Communion and Liberation" in full.)
This is a cross-post of this, but I have little hope of getting an answer on Quora TBH.
So what do I know about the song? Well, first things first. The lyrics in the songbook read:
Chorus
Nunga ua oh,
Awa mu ghewo veli
Dugni gna mu ga,
Awa mu glua chi gobu
Tamia mu bao,
Gianga tze ia dunia
Jesu mia,
Mu bao mu ia ghie.
Umi bi piema,
Be pi piema nullo
Sondi na bi guama,
Be pi piema nullo
Gi kuna baha,
Bali baie bembu
Jesu mia,
Mu bao mu ia ghie.
Mu keni tziawo,
Tziawo ti dugni lunga
Mu geni tziawo,
Tziawo ti dugni lunga
Mu dugni umbua,
Mu clanga lakau
Bona mugua,
Gianga tze ia dunia.
I have a strong suspicion that this is Italianized spelling, so let me convert it to a less Italocentric spelling:Nunga ua oh,
Awa mu ghewo veli
Dugni gna mu ga,
Awa mu glua chi gobu
Tamia mu bao,
Gianga tze ia dunia
Jesu mia,
Mu bao mu ia ghie.
Umi bi piema,
Be pi piema nullo
Sondi na bi guama,
Be pi piema nullo
Gi kuna baha,
Bali baie bembu
Jesu mia,
Mu bao mu ia ghie.
Mu keni tziawo,
Tziawo ti dugni lunga
Mu geni tziawo,
Tziawo ti dugni lunga
Mu dugni umbua,
Mu clanga lakau
Bona mugua,
Gianga tze ia dunia.
Chorus
Nunga wa oh,
Awa mu gewo veli
Dunyi nya mu ga,
Awa mu glwa ki gobu
Tamya mu bao,
Janga tse ia dun'ya
Yesu mya,
Mu bao mu ya gye.
Umi bi pyema,
Be pi pyema nullo
Sondi na bi gwama,
Be pi pyema nullo
Gi kuna baha,
Bali baye bembu
Yesu mya,
Mu bao mu ya gye.
Mu keni tsiawo,
Tsiawo ti dunyi lunga
Mu geni tsiawo,
Tsiawo ti dunyi lunga
Mu dunyi umbwa,
Mu clanga lakau
Bona mugwa,
Janga tse ya dun'ya.
Part of the conversion is based on this video, which also suggests the last two lines should actually be the same as verse 1.Nunga wa oh,
Awa mu gewo veli
Dunyi nya mu ga,
Awa mu glwa ki gobu
Tamya mu bao,
Janga tse ia dun'ya
Yesu mya,
Mu bao mu ya gye.
Umi bi pyema,
Be pi pyema nullo
Sondi na bi gwama,
Be pi pyema nullo
Gi kuna baha,
Bali baye bembu
Yesu mya,
Mu bao mu ya gye.
Mu keni tsiawo,
Tsiawo ti dunyi lunga
Mu geni tsiawo,
Tsiawo ti dunyi lunga
Mu dunyi umbwa,
Mu clanga lakau
Bona mugwa,
Janga tse ya dun'ya.
As for the translation, all we know is this:
Vieni mio popolo | Come my people,
vieni e prega Dio. | Come and pray God.
Il mondo sta diventando cattivo, | The world is becoming evil,
venite e pregate per la misericordia | Come and pray for mercy
è il nostro salvatore: | He’s our Saviour
non più guerre nel mondo, | No more wars in the world,
Gesù Cristo è l'unico salvatore | Jesus Christ is the only Saviour.
This comes from the video's description. The first two and last line are also given in the songbook. It seems this is the translation of the chorus. Or at least, that's my guess.vieni e prega Dio. | Come and pray God.
Il mondo sta diventando cattivo, | The world is becoming evil,
venite e pregate per la misericordia | Come and pray for mercy
è il nostro salvatore: | He’s our Saviour
non più guerre nel mondo, | No more wars in the world,
Gesù Cristo è l'unico salvatore | Jesus Christ is the only Saviour.
@NickNicholas answered my A2A there, and he found out:
- The Bay Ridge Band recorded this (and also the Lingala song from the links at the beginning), but has it in no album listing;
- A (possibly different) The Bay Ridge Band also recorded it;
- Neither band seems to have left any indication of the language, merely labeling it as "African"; as Nick said, «We know that issuing a song into the Western noösphere, and just calling it “African” with no further explanation, is a reprehensible act, for which Rizo Maniscalco and his buddies deserve bastinado’ing»;
- We have "mu bao" twice, apparently matching "saviour" in the translation;>/li>
- Yesu matches Jesus;
- It appears "dunyi/dun'ya" should match "world";
- Based on translations of "saviour" by Google, and on knowing Lingala has "mobikisi" for that (cfr. Lingala song), we can exclude: Amharic (አዳኝ | ādanyi), Chichewa (mpulumutsi), Hausa (mai ceto), Igbo (onye nzoputa), Sesotho (mopholosi), Shona (muponesi), Somali (badbaadiye), Swahili (mwokozi), Xhosa (umsindisi), Yoruba (olugbala), and Zulu (umsindisi), i.e. all the African languages on Google (I mean, Malagasy wouldn't count, but it's mpamonjy there anyways), and of course Lingala.
UPDATE
I have been informed that identifying the language of specific samples of texts is specifically off-topic, hence the close vote. If you come to this question and it's closed, you may join this chat room for the answer. It was created for the Lingala song, but I guess we can add this other song to it. If anyone does head over there, please tag any message about this song as #NungaWaOh.
The question says it was asked 21:43, but that's nonsense. Apparently Stack Exchange has a GMT-1 clock (why?).
At 0:02 I received the following comment by Draconis, who also interacted with me about Salelaka Mokonzi: «Dunia is Swahili for "world", from Arabic dunyā». At 1:04, «Unfortunately, "identification of specific samples of text" is specifically off-topic here, so this is likely to be closed», and that's when I made the UPDATE. Here is the full comment exchange. By 12:18 the following day, the question was on hold, soon to be closed and, eventually, deleted.
I mentioned this and the second video to LS, who has a friend ad Politecnico di Milano who confirmed the video was by their Coro Alpino, but the video is 10 years old and this guy was in Politecnico since a shorter time, so he couldn't give any info. The mention happened at 10:30, this answer came at 20:46, together with a suggestion to write to the high floors of the CL musical hierarchy, clcoro@comunioneliberazione.org. The evening ended with LS planning to get a screenshot of a newer songbook (the pic he'd sent me was from an older edition).
Meanwhile, I'd asked my Kenyan friend (the one who'd helped me with Malaika), at 13:25, if she could understand anything of the song. Answer came at 13:53, and was "nope". She couldn't recognize the language. That unfortunately only excluded Swahili, as she stated in a message later that evening, so nothing new under the sun.
Next day at 14:09, pic of new songbook. No change since 2010. Dang.
Days passed with no news. On Oct 15, the question was closed. I assume I was busy with my work? As in, finding out my thesis project had been published by others and starting on the articles for a new one, and preparing the "passage of year"?
Anyway, the next piece of news is on Oct 19 when, starting 15:24:28 and finishing between 15:48:03 and 15:48:10, I posted my self-answer on Quora, wirthout all the updates. Why the log says posted 3:45:02 PM, I have no clue.
At 16:01, I wrote to those high floors, asking both about this song, and about Nostalgíĵa po nastoĵáśemu, which I remembered with a completely different tune than in the video I linked.
Meanwhile, I'd googled "kigobu", finding Idk what, so I thought of googling more words. I somehow landed on a Kurdish song, "tu sorghuli", in the process, looking for "kigobu", apparently a Kurdish word that Google doesn't know, as well as a language, cfr. the self-answer. Looking for "veli", "muga", and "mubao" gave nothing. My answer got upvoted by Nick :) while I wrote the email. I mentioned the email to LS, who suggested a more generic Subject than just the titles of the two songs. Back to searching though. "janga" and "keni" gave nothing, but "tsiyawo", googled around 15:56, landed me on this comment on a post by a now-inextant Facebook page. The page was called "La voix des Comores", and I found out Comorian, the language(s) of the Comoros, is/are Bantu, so I tried that path. Unfortunately, the page was deleted so long ago it's not even Google-cached, so all we have of it is this extract from a Google search at 17:27:51: «Pour la première fois nous donnons raisons à nos frères mahorais d'avoir choisi … ko bé wa comore wa tsaha wahéléwé havassa amba mahorais ini tsiyawo». I tried to decipher that around 17:30, without much success. Look for a dictionary, find Glosbe Maore Comorian, tsiyawo isn't found there, "God" gives "Mungu", "saviour" gives "Îsa Kristi" or "hui" as unreliable options, "world" gives a bunch of unreliable options including "dunia", "in" gives "moni mwa"… not very promising. All of this searching takes place within 16:00:29. 16:01:51, "evil" is "ovu" or "upeu". 16:09 I write to the page asking if the video is in Comorian, getting a nice possibly-auto reply. 16:11 I update LS, with little hope in this Comorian thing.
I looked for more Comorian stuff. Babilon was a crappy translator. I mean, when translating "the" to Comorian (Ngazidja) gives "在峇株巴辖种植园"… and the same happens when translating that comment from above into English…. Anyway, it would seem that, googling for dictionaries, I landed on the Omniglot entry for Comorian, where I found the following list of "Bantu languages":
- Bemba
- Bulu
- Chichewa
- Chokwe
- Comorian
- Digo
- Duala
- Ewondo
- Fang
- Ganda/Luganda
- Gwere
- Herero
- Ikizu
- Jita
- Kikuyu
- Kimbundu
- Kinyarwanda
- Kirundi
- Kisi
- Kongo
- Konjo
- Lingala
- Loma
- Lozi
- Makonde
- Mandekan
- Maore
- Mende
- Mushungulu
- Mwani
- Nkore
- Northern Ndebele (South Africa)
- Northern Ndebele (Zimbabwe)
- Northern Sotho
- Nyole
- OshiWambo
- Ronga
- Sena
- Shona
- Soga
- Southern Ndebele
- Southern Sotho
- Swahili
- Swati
- Tofa
- Tshiluba
- Tsonga
- Tswana
- Tumbuka
- Umbundu
- Venda
- Xhosa
- Yao
- Zigula
- Zinza
- Zulu.
- Bemba and Bulu don't appear in my screenshots;
- Chichewa was excluded previously (see above);
- Chokwe is the first to appear in the screenshots, excluded, I guess, or undecidable; it seems I only found a google book that I couldn't access, so I guess it was undecidable;
- Comorian is where I came from;
- Digo I skipped for some reason, it seems;
- Duala got me to Glosbe, where "world" had a bunch of unreliable options, none of which was anywhere close to dunia, and "saviour" and "savior" had no translations, so I probably marked it as undecidable;
- Ewondo is practically ditto, though "ntun" for "world" was kinda something;
- Fang… gave me a google translation result because it's an English word :); then back to the above situation;
- Ganda/Luganda was already excluded above;
- Gwere, or Lugwere, led me to this dictionary, where "world" gave nothing useful, and "saviour" gave "mununuli", so excluded;
- Herero, Ikizu, and Jita went Glosbe and gave absolutely nothing;
- Kikuyu and Kimbundu went like Duala and Ewondo;
- Kinyarwanda led me to kinyarwanda.net, where world=isi and saviour=umukiza, so nope;
- Kirundi led me to this, where world is isi and savior is umurokozi or umukiza, so nope;
- Kisi I skipped for whatever reason apparently;
- Kongo went Glosbe, like Duala;
- For some reason I translated Konjo from English to English, uuh what?
- Then I attempted Tigrinya, apparently, with this, which went like Duala;
- Konjo… did that lead me to two items above perhaps?
- Lingala was already excluded;
- Loma had no online dictionary that I could find;
- Lozi gave Glosbe jackshit, and I assume Makonde did too, since I see only one screenshot for that language, showing Glosbe as a google result, and ready to head for the next language; ah yes, Glosbe Makonde has 5 very useful entries: corpse, dead person, iron, revolver, steel; and that is shown in a screenshot after I modified the query in the search bar, weird…;
- Mandekan led me to a Google book dictionary which gave me nothing;
- Maore… isn't that Comorian though? Still, after telling Google that no, I hadn't misspelled Māori, I realized it was Maore Comorian, and moved on;
- Mende, googled around 17:51:50, went Glosbe; nunga and wa exist; my gives nothing; savior gives Mbawɔmo, I wonder if I saw that; saviour gives nothing, damn American dictionary makers :); pray gives nothing; apparently I looked for more words, because then I informed LS that I thought it was Mende, with words nunga=people, wa=come, Ngewo=God, dunyi=world, Yesu=Jesus, and Mbawomo=saviour; that was at 18:03; yep, lots of googling time :).
Anyway, thus began the dictionary abuse, which I will leave only as documented in that famous self-answer as well as the Cult of Linguists post I submitted on Oct 22, as well as its comments. Even if I had enough screenshots to reconstruct exactly what I looked up where, it would be too boring for me to do :). So now… wait a second.
Oct 21, 14:58, those high floors finally reply, saying they didn't know where the song came from, and sending the following text and translation, which I will copy as is, and then de-Italianize / translate to English.
Rit. Nunga ua oh, Awa mu ghewo veli Dugni gna mu ga, Awa mu glua chi gobu Tamia mu bao, Gianga tze ia dunia Jesu mia, Mu bao mu ia ghie Umi bi piema, Be pi piema nullo Sondi na bi guama, Be pi piema nullo Gi kuna baha, Bali baie bembu Jesu mia, Mu bao mu ia ghie Rit. Mu keni tziawo, Tziawo ti dugni lunga Mu geni tziawo, Tziawo ti dugni lunga Mu dugni umbua, Mu clanga iaka[u] Jesu mia, Mu bao mu ia ghie Rit. Nunga [wa / u a] oh, Awa mu gewo veli Dunyi gna mu ga, Awa mu glwa ki gobu Tamya mu bao, Janga tse ya dunya Jesu mya, Mu bao mu ya gye Umi bi piema/pyema/piyema, Be pi piema/pyema/piyema nullo Sondi na bi gwama, Be pi piema/pyema/piyema nullo Ji kuna baha, Bali baye bembu Jesu mya, Mu bao mu ya gye Rit. Mu keni tsi(y)awo, Tsyawo ti dunyi lunga Mu geni tsi(y)awo, Tsyawo ti dunyi lunga Mu dugni umbwa, Mu klanga iaka[u] Jesu mya, Mu bao mu ya gye |
Rit. Vieni mio popolo, Vieni e prega Dio Il mondo sta diventando cattivo, Venite e pregate per la misericordia È il nostro salvatore, Non più guerre nel mondo Gesù Cristo è L'unico nostro salvatore Quando rubi, Credi di farlo a qualcun altro Quando bestemmi Credi di farlo a qualcun altro Quando morirai Come spiegherai questo a Dio? Gesù Cristo è L'unico nostro salvatore Rit. Mia madre se n'è andata, Ha lasciato questo mondo Mio padre se n'è andato, Ha lasciato questo mondo Noi abbiamo preso il mondo Nelle nostre mani Gesù Cristo è L'unico nostro salvatore Chorus Come, my people, Come and pray God The world is becoming evil, Come ye and pray for mercy [He]'s our saviour, No more wars in the world Jesus Christ is Our only saviour. When you steal, You believe you're doing it to someone else When you blaspheme You believe you're doing it to someone else When you die How will you explain this to God? Jesus Christ is Our only saviour. Chorus My mother has gone, She has left this world My father has gone, He has left this world We have taken the world In our hands Jesus Christ is Our only saviour. |
That said, it's analysis time. My sources are:
- The Glosbe dictionary, it its Mende-English "GME" direction, as well as the other way, "GEM";
- this dictionary "D", which I can no longer seem to view in the browser; it seems that ẹ means e and e means ɛ in this dictionary, how confusing; I also assume both ọ and o̱ mean ɔ in this dictionary;
- This "MendeManual", a short grammar, "MM".
- Lines 1-2. Original spelling: Nunga ua oh, awa mu ghewo veli. Reconstructed spelling: Nūŋgā wa ɔ̄, a wa, mu Ŋgēwɔ vɛli. Analysis:
- Nunga, nū "person" (GME usage examples, GEM suggests "numu" via definite "numui" = "the person", D confirms both on pp. 118-119) + -ŋgā plural suffix (MM p. 12); thus "people";
- wa: "come" (GME+GEM usage examples, D p. 145); if it's "u a", then "wu wa" might be the thing, "wu" is "ye" (D p. 150, GME+GEM examples);
- oh: exclamative particle, probably implying this "wa" is an imperative (D p. 122 "ọ̄", GME unsure on "oo" but yes for "o", GEM confirms "o");
- a: other exclamative particle (D p. 1);
- wa: "come" (see above);
- mu: "we" (GME+GEM examples, D p. 91);
- Ŋgēwɔ: "God" (D p. 108 "ngẹ̄wo̱"), GME+GEM examples "ngewɔ");
- vɛli: lenited form of fɛli, "pray" (D p. 13), lenition due to object Ngēwɔ.
Leniting Ngēwɔ to Yēwɔ would give "pray our God", but it matches the corrupted text less.
Not sure if I should use the definite form Ngɛ̄wɔi or not; with vɛi, Glosbe always had the definite form; - Lines 3-4. Original spelling: Dugni gna mu ga, awa mu glua chi gobu. Reconstructed spelling: Ndunyii^ nyāmu gā, a wa mu wa a ŋgi gɔ̄hũ. Analysis:
- Ndunyii: ndunyi "world" or "earth" (GME+GEM examples) + -i "the" (MM, p. 12);
- nyāmu: "evil, bad" or "sin" (D pp. 186 & 120, GEM examples);
- gā: lenited from kā, "learn" (D pp. 16 gā & 40 kā, GME+GEM examples), lenition due to object nyāmu;
- a: exclamative (D p. 1);
- wa: "come" (see above);
- mu: "we" (see above);
- wa a: "bring" (D p. 145);
- ŋgi: "His" (D p. 198 "His own ṅgi-nda", GME+GEM examples);
- gɔ̄hũ: I assume this is short for gɔ̄hũne, lenited from kɔ̄hũne, "joy" (D p. 48, which also gives kɔ̄hũ = conceive, giving us doubts, GEM+GME examples).
The older analysis of "wā ŋgi gɔ̄hũ" as "make Him happy" seems to only be based on a GME+GEM example where "waa a gohune" seemingly translates to "make him happy"; the full sentence is «Ndenga ti wolonga ti lebla ma, na a waa a kohunɛ wa ti lebla gama kɛ ti Kɛkɛ gama na ngelegohu», Glosbe-translated as «By learning to be obedient, children will make their parents and their heavenly Father very happy.», which analyzes as «child.PL they err/listen.PL they parent for_the_sake_of, now/there/thence ?? make? ?? joy ?? their parent to/with.POST and their father to/with.POST this/now/there/thence within_the_sky», so presumably «Children listen to their parent, therefore "a" bring-joy-come to their parent and to their father in Heaven», which is a somewhat different context than we have, I think. - Lines 5-6. Original: Tamia mu bao, gianga tze ia dunia. Reconstructed: Ta mīa mu Bāɔ̄moi/Bāɔ̄, njīanga t’yɛ̄ n’a ndunyii a. Analysis:
- Ta: He/she/it/they (D p. 135, MM p. 14 doesn't give they, GME and GEM aren't too clear);
- mīa: "be" (D p. 89, GME+GEM examples);
- mu: "our" (same sources as mu=we above I suppose, Mende doesn't distinguish we/our, I/my, and similar);
- Two options here:
- Bāɔ̄moi: lenited from Mbāɔ̄moi, from Mbāɔ̄mo, "saviour" (D p. 85, GEM only has one example with savior, the Mende having Mbawomo) + -i (definite marker, see above); that possessives take definite nouns is shown in MM p. 11, 20, 21, though there are also examples with indefinite;
- Bāwɔ̄: "health" (D p. 197);
- njīanga: plural of njīa, "word, saying, language, matter, affair, concern, quarrel, law-suit" (D p. 117, GME goes in the direction of "speech, word, saying(s)"), so perhaps "war";
- t’yɛ̄: elided from tī yɛ̄:
- tī: "they not" (MM p. 14, D p. 138, GME+GEM examples);
- yɛ̄: "be" (D p. 154 "yɛ", MM p. 30 "yɛ̄").
- n’a: na a:
- na: "there" (D p. 91, GEM(+GME?) examples, MM p. 30);
- a: "in" (D p. 1);
- ndunyii: "the world" (see above);
- a: usual exclamative, see above.
- Lines 7-8. Original: Jesu mia, mu bao mu ia ghie. Reformed: Yesu^ mīa, mu Bāɔ̄moi a ŋgiɛ̄. Analysis:
- Yesu: Jesus (guessable, GME+GEM examples only);
- mīa: "be" (cfr. above);
- mu: "our" (cfr. above);
- Bāɔ̄mo: "saviour" (cfr. above);
- (mīa) a: "be" (MM pp. 18 20 23 24 show plenty of uses of "mīa a" and "a" to mean "to be", though the "Yo a ngie" = "Who is he" that gave me the idea isn't among those examples AFAICT);
- ṅgiɛ̄: "Him", form used with the preposition "a".
- Lines 9-10. Original: Umi bi piema, be pi piema nullo. Reformed: Hūma bi piema, bɛ bi piem'a nū lɔ. Analysis:
- Hūma: "theft" or "steal" (D p. 34, p. 242 curiously gives hũma, with u-tilde instead of u-macron, GME+GEM examples – only for "steal" because theft=stealing);
- bi: "you (thou)" (D p. 5, MM p. 14 only has bia and negative bī, GME+GEM examples);
- piema: pie "do/make" (GME examples, MM p. 13) + -ma, progressive suffix (MM p. 35);
- bɛ bi: "yourself"; bɛ means "self", basically; now, D p. 3 gives you "bi bɛ" and similar, but GME examples also show "bīa bɛ bi" and even just "bɛ bi", so I assume the order isn't fixed; if those are Glosbe fabrications or misinterpretations on my part, then this must be lɛ, "yet, still" (D p. 69, possibly one lonely GEM example for "yet");
- piem'a: piema, "doing/making" (cfr. above) + a, "to, unto" (D p. 1, p[robably GME+GEM examples too);
- nū: "person" (cfr. l. 1);
- lɔ: habitual marker (MM p. 34).
The previous "pie ma" strategy had a ma that was either out of place, or a postposition in the place of a preposition (in pie ma nu). - Lines 11-12. Original: Sondi na bi guama, be pi piema nullo. Reformed: Sɔ nde a mbī gbāma, bɛ bi piema nū lɔ. Line 12 is the same as line 10 above, so I'll analyze only l. 11. Analysis:
- Sɔ: I presume I took the dictionary's (p. 132) gloss "all the way, as far as" and stretched it into "even (when)";
- nde: "say" (D p. 95 "ndē", GME+GEM examples "nde");
- a: preposition, here used to put the object after the verb, as reported by the grammar (MM pp. 15 16 shows a marking the object, but it's still object then verb… p. 26 has «Nya longɔ a sakī» = «I want cassava seeds», and we know from earlier in the grammar that longɔ=want and sakii are the seeds); could be nā "now" or na "there", all on D p. 91, but those seem superfluous, and it couldn't be na "that" (D p. 91), because that goes after a noun, not before it;
- mbī: presumably contracted from mbiyei, "the name", from mbīye "name" (D p. 212; p. 86 curiously only has mbīje for that meaning) + the usual definite marker -i;
- gbāma: "in vain, gratuitously, for nothing" (D p. 17, GME examples suggest "waste of time" which I believe the dictionary also reports, GEM two examples for "in vain" both have "gbama")
- Lines 13-14 – and 15-16 coincide with 7-8. Original: Gi kuna baha, bali baie bembu. Reformed: Ji kūna ba hā, jiā gbī’ay’a Ngēwɔ? Analysis:
- Ji: "when" (D p. 38, GME+GEM examples);
- kūna: "in the future" (D p. 54);
- ba: "you, thou" (D p. 1, GME+GEM examples, MM p. 14 only has bīa and negative bī);
- hā: "die" (D pp. 24-25, GME+GEM examples "haa");
- jiā: "these", plural of ji/jī (D p. 37 under "ji");
- gbī’: from gbīa, "explain" (D p. 19);
- ay’: elided from ayē, "how" (D p. 1);
- a: "to" (cfr. above);
- Ngēwɔ: God (cfr. above).
- Lines 17-18. Original: Mu keni tziawo, tziawo ti dugni lunga. Reformed: Mu gɛni/yēni ti ya wɔ̄, ti ya wɔ̄ ti ndunyii^ lɔ̄ṅga. It would seem 17-18 are supposed to have yēni while 19-20 have gɛni, but I feel like this distinction is fabricated by the translation and text in the songbook. Analyisis:
- Mu: "our" (cfr. ll. 7-8);
- gɛni/yēni: gɛni is lenited from kɛni, plural of kɛ, "father" (D p. 44, GEM examples have kɛkɛ which is I believe an alternate form); yēni is from njēni, plural of njē, "mother" (D p. 116, GME+GEM examples); the translaton had "mother" in this line and "father" in the following, and geni here and keni below; I suspect it's supposed to be "fathers" in both cases;
- ti: "they" (cfr. ll. 5-6);
- ya: "go / have gone" (D p. 152, single GME example confirms "have gone");
- wɔ: "long ago" (D p. 148, GME+GEM examples "wɔɔ");
- ti ya wɔ̄ see above;
- ti: "they" (cfr. ll. 5-6);
- ndunyii: ndunyi "world" (cfr. ll. 3-4 and 5-6) + -i "the" as usual;
- lɔ̄ŋga: lenited from ndɔ̄ŋga, which is ndɔ̄, "leave" (D p. 98), + -ṅga, past tense suffix (MM p. 36).
- Lines 21-22. Original: Mu dugni umbua, mu clanga lakau. Reformed: Mu ndunyii būmbua, mu kpēŋga yake hũ
Analysis:
- – Mu: "we" (cfr. ll. 1-2 and more);
- Ndunyii: "the world" (cfr. ll. 3-4 and 5-6);
- būmbua: lenited from mbūmbua, contraction of mbūmbuŋga, from mbūmbu "take" (D p. 88, GME+GEM examples) + -ŋga, past tense suffix from above, whose contraction to -a is reported in MM p. 36);
- mu: "we" (cfr. above);
- kpēŋga: kpe "leave off" (D p. 59-60) + past suffix -ŋga cfr. above; – yake hũ: the similar phrase "yaka hũ" apparently translates to "in the arms" in a Glosbe example («took the children into his arms» -> «i ti gulu ngi yaka hu»); there is an example in the dictionary where "hũ" is after some other noun and translates to "sleeping", i.e. "in sleep" I believe; "yake" means "arm" according to D p. 164; hũ="in, inside" is D p. 32 + GME+GEM examples.
Nūŋgā wa ɔ̄, A wa, mu Ŋgēwɔ vɛli. Ndunyii nyāmu gā, A wa mu wa a ŋgi gɔ̄hũ. Ta mīa mu Bāɔ̄moi/Bāɔ̄, Njīanga t’yɛ̄ n’a ndunyii a. Yesu^ mīa, Mu Bāɔ̄moi a ŋgiɛ̄. Hūma bi piema, Bɛ bi piem'a nū lɔ. Sɔ nde a mbī gbāma, Bɛ bi piem'a nū lɔ. Ji kūna ba hā, Jiā gbī’ay’a Ngēwɔ? Yesu^ mīa, Mu Bāɔ̄moi a ŋgiɛ̄. Mu gɛni/yēni ti ya wɔ̄, Ti ya wɔ̄ ti ndunyii lɔ̄ṅga. Mu gɛni ti ya wɔ̄, Ti ya wɔ̄ ti ndunyii lɔ̄ṅga. Mu ndunyii būmbua, Mu kpēŋga yake hũ. Yesu^ mīa, Mu Bāɔ̄moi a ŋgiɛ̄. |
People, come, Come, let's pray God. The world learns sin (i.e. becomes evil), Oh come, let's bring (forth) His joy. He is our saviour/health, There won't be quarrels (=wars?) in the world. He is Jesus, He's our Saviour. You're making a theft, You yourself are always making [it] to a person. Even when you say the name in vain, You yourself are always making [it] to a person. When you will die, How will you explain these things to God? He is Jesus, He's our Saviour. Our fathers/mothers have gone long ago, They've gone long ago, they've left the world. Our fathers have gone long ago, They've gone long ago, they've left the world». We have taken the world, We've left it off in [his] arm He is Jesus, He's our Saviour. |
So I worked on the chorus and tried my best with the verses up till 21/10 14:58, when I finally got the full translation from the famous "high floors". At that point, I finally had a decent starting point, and eventually cracked (or so I thought - the suffixes detailed above I only just found out about and it's July 2020) the whole song. I updated that self-answer numerous times, so look at that for more story.
Meanwhile, at 7:25 on 21/10, La voix des Comores had replied «Bonjour , non ils chantent en Comorien , merci de votre compréhension» and «Ils ne chantent pas en Comorien». As if I didn't know already :).
Between 11:50:37 and 12:25:18 on 22/10, I wrote and submitted this Cult of Linguists post, which was accepted IIRC quite some time later, though I can't remember when. Oh wow, it had an upvote that same day at 14:37:24! This means I remembered very incorrectly indeed :).
About a minute later I was sending the link to LS, and discussing an email to the high floors about my work with him. The email was sent at 12:46 (probably 14:46, I recall some kind of GMT-1 time zone, I assume it was Outlook), and got a thank you reply «per il tuo dettagliato contributo» (for your detailed contribution) the next day at 15:58.
At which point I needed a speaker to confirm this analysis. I tried asking around, and it turns out one of the porters at the GSSI Student House (a.k.a. "Grand Hotel") knew someone from Sierra Leone who was in L'Aquila at the time. That info was given me by the porter herself on probably Dec 2 2019, but that same day, at 20:40, she messengered me «L’ho inviata al mio amico ma ha detto che non capisce questa lingua e che loro parlano 17 lingue diverse nel suo paese» (I sent it [the song, in the form of the video] to my friend [the Sierra Leone guy mentioned just now] but he told me (s)he doesn't understand this language and they speak 17 different languages in his/her country). Daaaamn…
On 4/12, I presumably looked for "Sierra Leone" on Facebook, and landed on the Facebook page "Sierra Leone people", and messaged it with «Good evening. I'm a linguaphile who recently identified a certain song as Mende language (hence potentially from Sierra Leone, which is why I'm writing to you), and tried to reconstruct the correct lyrics from a horribly butchered transcription and a not-entirely-accurate translation. Can you help me verify if I've done it right or figure out where I've gone wrong? Here is my work: https://www.quora.com/q/col/Cracking-a-Mende-song». The reply was just an autoreply written with a mere greeting in mind, instead of a question, i.e., it worked if replying to no more than a greeting, and made absolutely no sense in reply to my message. I waited for a reply for ever. On May 2 I insisted, and a real reply finally came in… on May 11. So I sent the whole analysis to the page (in a slightly older form than above), and they said they'd get someone to check it. On May 13, I asked if they'd written to their contact, and they said they were waiting for a reply. And that's been the situation ever since, with the annoying autoreply being virtually all that came back when I asked for news 4 times more or less. So that's it.
Well, one last thing. On 5/12 in the evening, I tried writing to all my black Facebook and Whatsapp contacts if they spoke, or knew anyone who spoke, either Mende or Lingala (cfr. my other post on Sáleláká Mokonzi). Out of all those who answered, who were the majority of those I wrote to, none knew anything about Mende or had any valuable contacts. So nothing there either, sadly.
Oh wait! I was almost forgetting. On November 9th I messaged the Linguistics Stack Exchange chat, but nothing came out of it. Then I found a post by someone who dealt with African languages, and pinged him in the chat on 15/11, and after a brief exchange which carried on into the following day, I wrote to Prof. Christopher Green on 17/11. He replied the following day that what he worked on (Bambara and possibly more) is far enough from Mende that he couldn't really help, and directed me to Charles Riley, to whom I wrote that same day. Unfortunately, all the reply I got from him was «I am away from my desk this week, attending the African Studies Association conference in Boston. I may be delayed in my responses to e-mail until Monday, November 25th.», presumably an autoreply. So that's that.
On 16:50 on 16/8/20, Sierra Leone People informed me they're looking for another Mende speaker, since the one they'd contacted was latitating. Hopefully they'll get an answer soon.
Writing this on 22/11/20. Sierra leone people hasn't replied since 16/8, giving auto-reply on 24/8 and 3/10 and 14/10, and not even that on 16/9. On 6/11/20 I posted on the page, hoping for views, but nothing, because the post doesn't appear on the page. On the same day, I tried writing to Sierra Leone, but to no avail. I also tried posting on the page a few days later, and cannot even get a link for my post. Back in Oct 27 I'd googled "Mende speakers" and landed on this paper by David Dwyer [the link is now broken and just gives a generic Uni website, the paper can only be found on Scribd here], prof. at UMichigan, whom I'd planned to email but ended up messaging on Research Gate instead, to no avail. Nobody can find me a speaker, at least among those who answer…
Then on 21(?)/11/20 I read this answer posted on the Cult of Linguists, and I comment on it. Me and the author have a longish exchange in the comments where I mention this song to him (again), and he, on 22/11/20, points me to a Youtube he recently discovered who has studied a bunch of African languages including Mende, which he speaks in this video. So I comment on said video, and on 28/11/20 I receive an email from this Abubaka I'd never heard of before, about Mende: the Youtuber put me in contact with a Mende speaker! But the joy lasts short, because the speaker doesn't reply to my immediate reply. So I write again, and no reply. Apparently, as per Youtuber's comment, Abubaka «doesn't always have internet access», which is probably an understatement, since I've still got no answer and it's 1/1/21. I sent him a Chinese-Mende translation as well in the meantime, one of In our world. We'll just have to be patient. As if that's news. And on 6/3/21 the wait finally ends, everything is confirmed correct, and I can record the song, which I get to a week later.
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