Essential French phrases

What everyone actually calls the city. 'Yamoussoukro' is for official letters; in speech, on shopfronts and on bus destination boards it is Yakro.

The shared taxi. Yamoussoukro's are white with green and orange stripes, and a hop across town costs a few hundred francs — the city is spread out but blessedly uncongested.

Good morning, literally 'the day has dawned'. This is Baoulé country and the greeting lands very differently from a French bonjour. Midday is 'Anti o!' and evening 'Anou o!'.

The respectful Baoulé address for chiefs and notables. Getting the register right matters more here than in Abidjan — this is the region that produced the first president, and traditional authority is still real.

Welcome, from Akan — and Baoulé is an Akan language, so here it is a local word rather than a borrowed one. The welcome to a returning traveller is 'n'ja kwaa'.

Hello and thank you in Dioula, the trade language. Nearly 18% of the district is Burkinabè, Malian or Guinean, so this gets used constantly in the market at Habitat.

In Ivorian French this means please, not sorry. 'Donne-moi un peu d'eau pardon.' The single fastest way to stop sounding like a visitor.

Commiseration — 'oh no, sorry about that'. Used constantly for small misfortunes, from a dropped bag to bad news.

The Baoulé Easter homecoming, when the diaspora empties out of Abidjan and returns to the region. Saturday is for community assemblies that settle disputes; Sunday runs all night with the Goli mask.

Chicken or guinea fowl slow-steamed in a sealed clay canari with peppers and aubergine, shaken rather than stirred so no liquid escapes. The Baoulé dish, and this is where to eat it.

Pounded yam, eaten with sauce graine or aubergine sauce. The region grows about 133,000 tonnes of yam a year — cocoa may pay the bills, but yam is what people actually eat.

Steamed fermented cassava semolina, the national staple, added to UNESCO's intangible heritage list in December 2024. Ivorians are pointed about the fact that the real thing is made here.

An open-air grill-restaurant. In Yakro the ones that matter cluster around the INP-HB campus rather than the monuments — cheaper, busier and open far later.