Yoruba vocabulary is also used inAfrican diaspora religions such as the Afro-Brazilian religions ofCandomblé andUmbanda, the Caribbean religion ofSantería in the form of the liturgicalLucumí language, and various Afro-American religions ofNorth America. Among modern practitioners of these religions in the Americas, Yoruba is aliturgical language, as most of them are not fluent in it, yet they still use Yoruba words and phrases for songs or chants, which are rooted in cultural traditions. For such practitioners, the Yorubalexicon is especially common for ritual purposes, and these modern manifestations have taken new forms that do not depend on vernacular fluency.[5][6][7][8]
Yoruba is classified among theEdekiri languages, which together withItsekiri and the isolateIgala form theYoruboid group of languages within theVolta–Niger branch of theNiger–Congo family. The linguistic unity of the Niger–Congo family dates to deep pre-history, with estimates ranging around 11,000 years ago (the end of theUpper Paleolithic).[9] In present-dayNigeria, it is estimated that there are around 50 million Yoruba primary and secondary language speakers, as well as several other millions of speakers outside Nigeria, making it the most widely spoken African language outside of the continent. There is a substantial body of literature in the Yoruba language, including books, newspapers, and pamphlets.[10] Yoruba is used in radio and television broadcasting and is taught at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.[10] Historically, Yoruba was spoken by many slaves trafficked to the Americas, particularly Latin America, during the latter period of theAtlantic slave trade.
The Yorubadialect continuum consists of several dialects. The various Yoruba dialects inYorubaland can be classified into five major dialect areas: Northwest, Northeast, Central, Southwest, and Southeast.[a] Clear boundaries cannot be drawn, but peripheral areas of dialectal regions often have some similarities to adjoining dialects.
North-West Yoruba was historically spoken in theỌyọ Empire. In NWY dialects, Proto-Yoruba velar fricative/ɣ/ and labialized voiced velar /gʷ/ have merged into /w/; the upper vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ were raised and merged with /i/ and /u/, just as their nasal counterparts, resulting in a vowel system with seven oral and three nasal vowels.
South-East Yoruba was most likely associated with the expansion of theBenin Empire afterc. 1450.[12] In contrast to NWY, lineage, and descent are largelymultilineal andcognatic, and the division of titles into war and civil is unknown. Linguistically, SEY has retained the /ɣ/ and /gw/ contrast, while it has lowered the nasal vowels /ĩ/ and /ʊ̃/ to /ɛ̃/ and /ɔ̃/, respectively. SEY has collapsed the second and third-person plural pronominal forms; thus,àn án wá can mean either 'you (pl.) came' or 'they came' in SEY dialects, whereas NWY for example hasẹ wá 'you (pl.) came' andwọ́n wá 'they came', respectively. The emergence of a plural of respect may have prevented the coalescence of the two in NWY dialects.
Central Yoruba forms a transitional area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY and shares many ethnographical features with SEY. Its vowel system is the most traditional of the three dialect groups, retaining nine oral-vowel contrasts, six or seven nasal vowels, and an extensive vowel harmony system. Peculiar to Central and Eastern (NEY, SEY) Yoruba also is the ability to begin words with the vowel [ʊ:], which in Western Yoruba has been changed to [ɪ:].
Literary Yoruba, also known asStandard Yoruba,Yoruba koiné, andcommon Yoruba, is a separate member of the dialect cluster. It is the written form of the language, the standard variety learned at school, and that is spoken by newsreaders on the radio. Standard Yoruba has its origin in the 1850s, whenSamuel A. Crowther, the first native African Anglican bishop, published a Yoruba grammar and started his translation of the Bible. Though for a large part based on theỌyọ andIbadan dialects, Standard Yoruba incorporates several features from other dialects.[b] It also has some features peculiar to itself, for example, the simplifiedvowel harmony system, as well as foreign structures, such ascalques from English that originated in early translations of religious works.
Because the use of Standard Yoruba did not result from some deliberate linguistic policy, much controversy exists as to what constitutes 'genuine Yoruba', with some writers holding the opinion that the Ọyọ dialect is the "pure" form, and others stating that there is no such thing as genuine Yoruba at all.[citation needed] Standard Yoruba, the variety learned at school and used in the media, has nonetheless been a decisive consolidating factor in the emergence of a common Yoruba identity.
The earliest evidence of the presence of Islam in Yorubaland goes back to the 14th century. The earliest documented history of the people, traced to the latter part of the 17th century, was in Yoruba but in the Arabic script calledAjami. This makes Yoruba one of the oldest African languages with an attested history of Ajami (Cf. Mumin & Versteegh 2014; Hofheinz 2018). However, the oldest extant Yoruba Ajami exemplar is a 19th-century Islamic verse (waka) by Badamasi Agbaji (d. 1895– Hunwick 1995). There are several items of Yoruba Ajami in poetry, personal notes, and esoteric knowledge (Cf. Bang 2019). Nevertheless, Yoruba Ajami remained idiosyncratic and not socially diffused, as no standardized orthography existed. The plethora of dialects and the absence of a central promotional institution, among others, are responsible.
In the 17th century, Yoruba was written in theAjami script, a form ofArabic script.[13][14] It is still written in the Ajami writing script in some Islamic circles. Standard Yorubaorthography originated in the early work ofChurch Mission Society missionaries working among theAku (Yoruba) ofFreetown. One of theirinformants was Crowther, who later would proceed to work on his native language himself. In early grammar primers and translations of portions of the English Bible, Crowther used theLatin alphabet largely without tone markings. The only diacritic used was a dot below certain vowels to signify theiropen variants[ɛ] and[ɔ], viz.⟨ẹ⟩ and⟨ọ⟩. Over the years, the orthography was revised to represent tone, among other things. In 1875, theChurch Missionary Society (CMS) organized a conference on Yoruba Orthography; the standard devised there was the basis for the orthography of the steady flow of religious and educational literature over the next seventy years.
The current orthography of Yoruba derives from a 1966 report of the Yoruba Orthography Committee, along with Ayọ Bamgboṣe's 1965Yoruba Orthography, a study of the earlier orthographies and an attempt to bring Yoruba orthography in line with actual speech as much as possible. Still similar to the older orthography, it employs theLatin alphabet modified by the use of thedigraph⟨gb⟩ and certaindiacritics, including theunderdots under the letters⟨ẹ⟩,⟨ọ⟩, and⟨ṣ⟩. Previously, the vertical line had been used to avoid the mark being fully covered by anunderline, as in ⟨e̩⟩, ⟨o̩⟩, ⟨s̩⟩; however, that usage is no longer common.
A
B
D
E
Ẹ
F
G
Gb
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
Ọ
P
R
S
Ṣ
T
U
V
W
X
Z
a
b
d
e
ẹ
f
g
gb
h
I
j
k
l
m
n
o
ọ
p
r
s
ṣ
t
u
v
w
x
z
The Latin letters⟨c⟩,⟨q⟩,⟨v⟩,⟨x⟩,⟨z⟩ are not used as part of the official orthography of Standard Yoruba and only occur in loan words from English. However,⟨z⟩ is used in certain Yoruba dialects, like the Ao dialect.
In addition to the underdots, three further diacritics are used on vowels and syllabicnasal consonants to indicate the language's tones: anacute accent⟨´⟩ for the high tone, agrave accent⟨`⟩ for the low tone, and an optionalmacron⟨¯⟩ for the middle tone. These are used in addition to the underdots in⟨ẹ⟩ and⟨ọ⟩. When more than one tone is used in one syllable, the vowel can either be written once for each tone (for example, *⟨òó⟩ for a vowel[o] with tone rising from low to high) or, more rarely in current usage, combined into a single accent. In this case, acaron⟨ˇ⟩ is used for the rising tone (so the previous example would be written⟨ǒ⟩), and acircumflex⟨ˆ⟩ for the falling tone.
In 2011, a Beninese priest-chief by the name of Tolúlàṣẹ Ògúntósìn devised a new script for Yoruba, based on a vision received in his sleep which he believed to have been granted byOduduwa. ThisOduduwa script has also received support from other prominent chiefs in theYorubaland region of both countries.[15][16]
The syllable structure of Yoruba is (C)V(N). Syllabic nasals are also possible. Every syllable bears one of the three tones: high⟨◌́⟩, mid⟨◌̄⟩ (generally left unmarked), and low⟨◌̀⟩. The sentencen̄ ò lọ (I didn't go) provides examples of three syllable types:
Yorubavowel diagram, adopted fromBamgboṣe 1969.[17] Black dots mark oral vowels, while the colored regions indicate the ranges in possible quality of the nasal vowels.
Standard Yoruba has seven oral and five nasal vowels. There are nodiphthongs in Yoruba; sequences of vowels are pronounced as separate syllables.Dialects differ in the number of vowels they have; seeabove.
In some cases, the phonetic realization of these vowels is noticeably different from what the symbol suggests:
The oral/i/ is close front[i], and the nasal/ĩ/ varies between close front[ĩ] and near-close front[ĩ̞].[17]
The oral/u/ is close back[u], and the nasal/ũ/ varies between close near-back[ũ̟], close back[ũ], near-close near-back[ũ̟˕] and near-close back[ũ̞].[17]
The oral/e,o/ are close-mid[e,o], and do not have nasal counterparts.[17]
The oral/ɛ/ is open-mid[ɛ], and the nasal/ɛ̃/ varies between mid[ɛ̝̃] and open-mid[ɛ̃].[17]
The oral/ɔ/ is near-open[ɔ̞], and the nasal/ɔ̃/ varies between open-mid[ɔ̃] and near-open[ɒ̃].[17]
Nasal vowels are by default written as a vowel letter followed by⟨n⟩, thus:⟨in⟩,⟨un⟩,⟨ẹn⟩,⟨ọn⟩,⟨an⟩. These do not occur word-initially. In the standard language,/ɛ̃/ occurs only in the single wordìyẹncode: yor promoted to code: yo ~yẹncode: yor promoted to code: yo ("that"). The status of the vowel[ã] is controversial. Several authors have argued it is not phonemically contrastive.[c] Often, it is in free variation with[ɔ̃].Orthographically,⟨ọn⟩ is used after labial and labial-velar consonants, as inìbọncode: yor promoted to code: yo ("gun"), and⟨an⟩ is used after non-labial consonants, as indáncode: yor promoted to code: yo ("to shine"). All vowels are nasalized after the consonant/m/, and thus there is no additional⟨n⟩ in writing (micode: yor promoted to code: yo,mucode: yor promoted to code: yo,mọcode: yor promoted to code: yo). In addition, the consonant/l/ has a nasal allophone[n] before a nasal vowel (seebelow), and this is reflected in writing:inúcode: yor promoted to code: yo ("inside, belly") (/īlṹ/ →[īnṹ]).[d][20]
The voiceless plosives/t/ and/k/ are slightly aspirated; in some Yoruba varieties,/t/ and/d/ are more dental. Therhotic consonant is realized as a flap[ɾ][21] or, in some varieties (notably Lagos Yoruba), as thealveolar approximant[ɹ] due to English influence. This is particularly common with Yoruba–English bilinguals.
Yoruba also lacks aphoneme/n/; the letter⟨n⟩ is used for the sound in the orthography, but strictly speaking, it refers to anallophone of/l/ immediately preceding a nasal vowel.
In addition to this, Yoruba lacks the breathy h that one might find in English words like house or hat. When speaking most people will add aglottal stop,/ʔ/, an approximant like/ɰ/, or just leave it silent.
There is also asyllabic nasal, which forms asyllable nucleus by itself. When it precedes a vowel, it is a velar nasal[ŋ]:n ò lọ[ŋòlɔ̄] 'I didn't go'. In other cases, its place of articulation ishomorganic with the following consonant:ó ń lọ[óńlɔ̄] 'he is going',ó ń fò[óḿfò] 'he is jumping'.
Yoruba is atonal language with three-level tones and two or three contour tones. Every syllable must have at least one tone; a syllable containing a long vowel can have two tones. Tones are marked by use of the acute accent for high tone (⟨á⟩,⟨ń⟩) and the grave accent for low tone (⟨à⟩,⟨ǹ⟩); mid is unmarked, except on syllabic nasals where it is indicated using a macron (⟨a⟩,⟨n̄⟩). Examples:
H: ó bẹ́ [ó bɛ́] 'he jumped'; síbí [síbí] 'spoon'
M: ó bẹ [ó bɛ̄] 'he is forward'; ara [āɾā] 'body'
L: ó bẹ̀ [ó bɛ̀] 'he asks for pardon'; ọ̀kọ̀ [ɔ̀kɔ̀] 'spear'.
When teaching Yoruba literacy,solfège names of musical notes are used to name the tones: low isdo, mid isre, and high ismi.[23]
Apart from tone's lexical and grammatical use, it is also used in other contexts such as whistling and drumming. Whistled Yoruba is used to communicate over long distances. The language is transformed as speakers talk and whistle simultaneously: consonants are devoiced or turned to [h], and all vowels are changed to [u]. However, all tones are retained without any alteration. The retention of tones enables speakers to understand the meaning of the whistled language. The Yorubatalking drum, thedùndún oriya ilu, which accompanies singing during festivals and important ceremonies, also uses tone.[24][25]
Written Yoruba includesdiacritical marks not available on conventional computer keyboards, requiring some adaptations. In particular, the use of the sub dots and tone marks are not represented, so many Yoruba documents simply omit them. Asubiaro Toluwase, in his 2014 paper,[26] points out that the use of these diacritics can affect the retrieval of Yoruba documents by popular search engines. Therefore, their omission can have a significant impact on online research.
When a word precedes another word beginning with a vowel, assimilation, or deletion ('elision') of one of the vowels often takes place.[27] Since syllables in Yoruba normally end in a vowel, and most nouns start with one, it is a widespread phenomenon, and it is absent only in slow, unnatural speech. The orthography here follows speech in that word divisions are normally not indicated in words that are contracted due to assimilation or elision:ra ẹja →rẹja 'buy fish'. Sometimes, however, authors may choose to use an inverted comma to indicate an elided vowel as inní ilé →n'ílé 'in the house'.
Long vowels within words usually signal that a consonant has been elided word-internally. In such cases, the tone of the elided vowel is retained:àdìrò →ààrò 'hearth';koríko →koóko 'grass';òtító →òótó 'truth'.
Mostverbalroots aremonosyllabic of thephonological shape CV(N), for example:dá 'to create',dán 'to polish',pọ́n 'to be red'. Verbal roots that do not seem to follow this pattern are mostly former compounds in which asyllable has been elided. For example:nlá 'to be large', originally a compound ofní 'to have' +lá 'to be big' andsúfèé 'to whistle', originally a compound ofsú 'to eject wind' +òfé or ìfé 'a blowing'. Vowels serve as nominalizing prefixes that turn a verb into a noun form.
This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(June 2008)
Yoruba is a highlyisolating language.[29] Its basic constituent order issubject–verb–object,[30] as inó nà Adécode: yor promoted to code: yo ("he beat Adé"). The bare verb stem denotes a completed action, often called perfect; tense and aspect are marked by preverbal particles such asńcode: yor promoted to code: yo (imperfect/present continuous) orticode: yor promoted to code: yo (past). Negation is expressed by a preverbal particlekòcode: yor promoted to code: yo.Serial verb constructions are common, as in many other languages ofWest Africa.
Although Yoruba has nogrammatical gender,[31] it has a distinction between human and non-human nouns when it comes tointerrogative particles:ta nicode: yor promoted to code: yo for human nouns ("who?") andkí nicode: yor promoted to code: yo for non-human nouns ("what?"). The associative construction (coveringpossessive/genitive and related notions) consists of juxtaposing nouns in the order modified-modifier as ininú àpótícode: yor promoted to code: yo ("inside box", "the inside of the box"),fìlà Àkàndécode: yor promoted to code: yo ("Akande's cap") oràpótí aṣọcode: yor promoted to code: yo ("box for clothes").[32][33] More than two nouns can be juxtaposed:rélùweè abẹ́ ilẹ̀code: yor promoted to code: yo ("railway underground", "underground railway"),[34]inú àpótí aṣọcode: yor promoted to code: yo ("the inside of the clothes box"). Disambiguation is left to context in the rare case that it results in two possible readings. Plural nouns are indicated by a plural word.[clarification needed][30]
There are two prepositions:nícode: yor promoted to code: yo ("on", "at", "in") andsícode: yor promoted to code: yo ("onto", "towards"). The former indicates location and absence of movement, and the latter encodes location/direction with movement.[35] Position and direction are expressed by the prepositions in combination with spatial relational nouns likeorícode: yor promoted to code: yo ("top"),apácode: yor promoted to code: yo ("side"),inúcode: yor promoted to code: yo ("inside"),etícode: yor promoted to code: yo ("edge"),abẹ́code: yor promoted to code: yo ("under"),ilẹ̀code: yor promoted to code: yo ("down"),etc. Many of the spatial relational terms are historically related to body-part terms.
The wide adoption of imported religions and civilizations such as Islam and Christianity has had an impact both on written and spoken Yoruba. In hisArabic-English Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Quran and Sunnah, Yoruba Muslim scholarAbu-Abdullah Adelabu argued Islam has enriched African languages by providing them with technical and cultural augmentations withSwahili andSomali inEast Africa andTuranci Hausa andWolof in West Africa being the primary beneficiaries.Adelabu, a Ph D graduate fromDamascus cited—among many other common usages—the following words to be Yoruba's derivatives of Arabic vocabularies:[36][better source needed]
Amin: Arabic form of the Hebrew religious termAmen, fromآمینʔāmīn
Some common Arabic words used in Yoruba are names of the days such asAtalata (الثلاثاء) for Tuesday,Alaruba (الأربعاء) for Wednesday,Alamisi (الخميس) for Thursday, andJimoh (الجمعة,Jumu'ah) for Friday. By far,Ọjọ́ Jimoh is the most favourably used. This is becauseeti, the Yoruba word for Friday, means 'delay'. This is an unpleasant word for Friday,Ẹtì, which also implies failure, laziness, or abandonment.[37][better source needed] Ultimately, the standard words for the days of the week are Àìkú, Ajé, Ìṣẹ́gun, Ọjọ́rú, Ọjọ́bọ, Ẹtì, Àbámẹ́ta, for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday respectively. Friday remains Eti in the Yoruba language.
Ibeyi, Cuban francophone sister duo, often sing inLucumí, a liturgical variety of Yoruba used inSantería.
Sakara, a Yoruba song originating fromAbeokuta, Ogun Nigeria. One of the first performers of this type of music was in Lagos in the 1930s.
Apala, Apala (or Akpala) is a percussion-based music genre originally developed by the Yoruba people of Nigeria during the country's history as a colony of the British Empire. It originated in the late 1970s.
Fuji, a popular, contemporary Yoruba musical genre.
Jùjú, a style of Nigerian popular music derived from traditional Yoruba percussion.
Àpíìrì, a popular music common among Ido and Igbole Ekiti environs of Ekiti State. The musical instruments usually consist of beaded Calabash gourds and gongs supported with harmonic lyrics
^This widely followed classification is based on Adetugbọ's 1982 dialectological study;[11] this classification originated in his 1967 PhD thesisThe Yoruba Language in Western Nigeria: Its Major Dialect Areas,ProQuest288034744. See alsoAdetugbọ 1973, p. 183–193.
^Compare for example the following remark byAdetugbọ 1967 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFAdetugbọ1967 (help), as cited inFagborun 1994, p. 25: "While the orthography agreed upon by the missionaries represented to a very large degree the phonemes of the Abẹokuta dialect, the morpho-syntax reflected the Ọyọ-Ibadan dialects."
^Abraham, in hisDictionary of Modern Yoruba, deviates from this by explicitly indicating the nasality of the vowel; thus,inú is found underinún,etc.[19]
^Orie, Ọlanikẹ Ọla (2013). "Yoruba and Yoruboid languages".Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. pp. 1200–1204.ISBN9786610156009.OCLC1109207232.
^Orie, Ọlanikẹ Ọla (2012).Acquisition reversal : the effects of postlingual deafness in Yoruba. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. p. 43.OCLC836821267.
^Asubiaro, Toluwase V. (2014). "Effects of Diacritics on Web Search Engines' Performance for Retrieval of Yoruba Documents".Journal of Library and Information Studies.12 (1):1–19.doi:10.6182/jlis.2014.12(1).001.
^See Bamgboṣe 1965a for more details. See also Ward 1952:123–133 ('Chapter XI: Abbreviations and Elisions').
^DELAB International Newsmagazine, November 20051465-4814
^A lecture by Abu-Abdullah Adelabu of AWQAF Africa, London titled: "The History Of Islam in 'The Black History'"DELAB International Newsmagazine, April 20031465-4814
Adetugbọ, Abiọdun (1982). "Towards a Yoruba Dialectology". In Afọlayan (ed.).Yoruba Language and Literature. pp. 207–224.
Afọlayan, Adebisi, ed. (1982).Yoruba language and literature. Ifẹ / Ibadan: University of Ifẹ Press / Ibadan University Press.
Ajayi, J.F. Ade (1960). "How Yoruba was Reduced to Writing".Odu: A Journal of Yoruba, Ẹdo and Related Studies (8):49–58.
Bamgboṣe, Ayọ (1965a). "Assimilation and contraction in Yoruba".Journal of West African Languages (2):21–27.
Bamgboṣe, Ayọ (1965b).Yoruba Orthography. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.
Bamgboṣe, Ayọ (1969). "Yoruba". In Elizabeth Dunstan (ed.).Twelve Nigerian Languages. New York: Africana Publishing Corp. p. 166.ISBN0-8419-0031-0.
Fagborun, J. Gbenga (1994).The Yoruba Koiné –Its History and Linguistic Innovations. LINCOM Linguistic Edition vol. 6. München/Newcastle: LINCOM Europe.ISBN3-929075-47-4.
Fresco, Max (1970).Topics in Yoruba Dialect Phonology. (Studies in African Linguistics Supplement Vol. 1). Los Angeles: University of California, Dept. of Linguistics/ASC.
Ladipọ, Duro (1972).Ọba kò so (The king did not hang) — Opera by Duro Ladipọ. (Transcribed and translated by R.G. Armstrong, Robert L. Awujọọla and Val Ọlayẹmi from a tape recording by R. Curt Wittig). Ibadan: Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.
Oyètádé, B. Akíntúndé & Buba, Malami (2000) 'Hausa Loan Words in Yorùbá', in Wolff & Gensler (eds.)Proceedings of the 2nd WoCAL, Leipzig 1997, Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 241–260.
Oyenuga, Soji (2007). "Yoruba". In Soji and Titi Oyenuga (ed.).Yoruba For Kids Abroad – Learn Yoruba In 27 Days. Saskatoon, Canada: Gaptel Innovative Solutions Inc. pp. 27 days.
Adéwọlé, L. O. (2000).Beginning Yorùbá (Part I). Monograph Series no. 9. Cape Town: CASAS.
Adéwọlé, L. O. (2001).Beginning Yorùbá (Part II). Monograph Series no. 10. Cape Town: CASAS.
Bamgboṣe, Ayọ (1966).A Grammar of Yoruba. [West African Languages Survey / Institute of African Studies]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barber, Karin (1985).Yorùbá Dùn ún So: a beginner's course in Yorùbá (1st ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press.ISBN978-0300029581.
Bowen, Thomas Jefferson (1858)."Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba Language: With an Introductory Description of the Country and People of Yoruba".Available at the Internet Archive.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg)
.svg)
