Previously negative words can also take on a positive meaning, and that’s called amelioration. The most dramatic example, for me, is the word “nice.”“Nice” initially meant “ignorant”! It comes from the Latin word “nescius,” which means ignorant.
etc.,” he said. Several Fulani people confirmed this.
However, as I pointed out in my May 13, 2012 column titled, “The Arabic Origins of Common Yoruba Words,” a well-respected Italian linguist by the name of Professor Sergio Baldi in his 1995 paper titled “On Arabic Loans in Yoruba” said “ijamba” is actually an Arabic loan. He defined “ijamba” as “bodily harm,” but the meaning of the word I’m familiar with is one that associates it with cunning, cheating, deceit. Dr. Lasisi Olagunju, editor of the Nigerian Tribune on Saturday, agreed that “bodily harm” is an accurate signification of “ijamba” in Yoruba.
The word is derived from the Arabic “danb,” or “danba,” which means “sin, crime.” My theory is that since Hausa people had an earlier contact with Arabs than Yorubas, Hausa people first domesticated “danba” to “zamba” before exporting it to Yoruba.
Nevertheless, since Yoruba always substitutes “z” with “s” when it borrows words from languages with a “z,” it seems unlikely that Yoruba borrowed it directly from Hausa. If it did, the word would have been rendered as “samba,” like it is in the Baatonu language. The phonological transformation of “zamba” to “jamba” in Yoruba probably first occurred by way of Fulfulde in Ilorin since the Fulfulde pronounce “zamba” as “jamba.”
A case of misrecognition
As I pointed out two weeks ago, “Masu jamba” was a phrase used by newly arrived Hausa-speaking Sokoto immigrants in Ilorin in the 1800s to refer to Afonja’s “jama,” as his army was called. Because “masu jama” (literally “people of the jama”) was a derogatory term, it retained this sense when it was borrowed in Yoruba--even when it underwent phonological transformation as “mesu jamba”-and unfairly used on all Ilorin people. It just so happened that “zamba” (“jamba” in Fulfulde) also described the attitude of the “masu jama”--they were mercenaries who tricked people and who resisted converting to Islam. But members of the jama were not initially called “masu zamba.” Zamba is a later addition, which emerged out of a phonological misrecognition of jama, but it probably stuck because it also describes Afonja’s jama.
One Abdulganiy Akinremi said, “since ‘masu’ is the plural of ‘mai’ both meaning person and people respectively, then considering the fact that jama’a also [means] people (group) in Arabic, would it not be counterintuitive for the people, even as at then, to have referred to the Afonja army as ‘masu jama’a’?” He argued that the phrase would mean, “people people”.
Well, that’s mixing Arabic grammar with Hausa grammar, but inter-lingual dynamics don’t work that way. The grammar and syntax of unrelated languages can’t always be combined. For instance, we say “Sahara desert” in English even though “sahara” means desert in Arabic, which means we are saying “desert desert.” We say “lake chad” even though “chad” means lake in Kanuri. We say “Aso Rock” even though “aso” means rock in Gbagyi. So there is no reason why there shouldn’t be “masu jama’a.”
But it’s even more complicated than that. “Masu” is merely a relater to a plural noun. It doesn’t mean “people.” The word for people in Hausa is “mutane.” Jama was the fixed name for a wellknown group in Ilorin in the 1800s. Newly arrived Hausa-speaking immigrants from Sokoto used the relater “mai” to describe members of the group, thus “masu jama.” In fact, if the group had been named “Mutane,” the Hausa immigrants would be justified to call it “Mai Mutane” because “Mutane” would be a proper noun. phonological