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In Ba kom, names of peoples, countries, regions, and cities cannot stand on their own. They can only be used as modifiers alongside a noun that designates the type of name.
These nouns include:
di — country
in di — person from a country
den di — people of a country
in — person (of an ethnicity)
den — people, ethnic group
hang — province, state, prefecture
in hang — person from a province, state, prefecture
dom — city, town, village
in dom — person from a city
haun — island
lin — river
To say that one is from a country or of an ethnicity, one does not use a relational adjective with i; instead, one uses the following pattern:
a in [country/ethnicity]
For example:
Mi a in di cung.
[I] [be] [person] [country] [China]
"I am Chinese."Mu o a in di bálat?
[question] [he/she] [be] [person] [country] [India]
"Is he/she Indian?"Mi a in akan.
[I] [be] [person] [Akan]
"I am Akan."Mu si a in calagi?
[question] [you] [be] [person] [Cherokee]
"Are you Cherokee?"Mi a in néhiyau.
[I] [be] [person] [Cree]
"I am Cree."Mi a in wíyat.
[I] [be] [person] [Vietnam]
"I am Vietnamese."Mim ain mat a in hawáii. Mim a li na in di wóxingten.
[we] [live] [die] [be] [person] [Hawaii]
[we] [be] [ever] [not] [person] [country] [U.S.A.]
"We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be American."
Nationality and Ethnicity
Nationality and Ethnicity
When a country's name is not the name of an ethnic group, one cannot place in or den before it. One must say in di "person of the country" or den di "people of the country" to refer to such nationalities.
Distinguishing between ethnicity and nationality may lead speakers to rethink nationalism, and think about how nations are artificially constructed by ruling elites, and not self-organized by the subjects of national governments.
For example, since "Japanese" is not an ethnicity, one cannot say in nipon for "a Japanese person"; to refer to a person from Japan, one must say in di nipon.
To specify a Japanese person's ethnicity, one must say in yamato "Yamato person", in ainu "Ainu person", in liyukiyu "Ryukyuan person", etc.
In spite of this, for the sake of brevity, if a language is the main official language of a country, its name can be formed by swapping di for ba.
Here are some examples with nationalities that use di:
di kánada — Canada
in di kánada — Canadian person
den di kánada — the Canadian people
di naci — Nigeria (abbreviation of nacíliya)
in di naci — Nigerian person
den di naci — the Nigerian people
di itop — Ethiopia
in di itop — Ethiopian person
den di itop — Ethiopian people
Here are some examples of nationalities that can take any prefix:
míkma — Mi'kmaq
di míkma — Mi'kma'ki, country of the Mi'kmaq
in míkma — Mi'kmaw, a Mi'kmaw person
den míkma — Mi'kmaq, the Mi'kmaq people
ba míkma — Mi'kmawi'simk, the Mi'kmaq language
fahan — French
di fahan — France
in fahan — French person
den fahan — the French people
ba fahan — the French language
somal — Somali
di somal — Somalia
in di somal — Somalian person
in somal — Somali person
den somal — the Somali people
ba somal — the Somali language
kut — Kurdish
di kut — Kurdistan
in kut — Kurd
den kut — the Kurds
ba kut — the Kurdish language
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