Yoruba (native name èdè Yorùbá, 'the Yoruba language') is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 22 million speakers. A dialect continuum is a range of Dialects spoken across a large geographical area differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close and gradually decreasing ^[1] The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil ^[2] Sierra Leone (where it is called Oku), and Cuba (where it is called Nago). The Yoruba (Yo•row•ba ( Yorùbá in Yoruba Orthography) are one of the largest ethno-linguistic or Ethnic groups in West Africa Nigeria, officially named the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal Constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and one Federal Benin (bə'nɪn officially the Republic of Benin, and also known as Benin Republic, is a country in Western Africa. TOGO was a Japanese roller coaster design company famous for inventing the Stand-up roller coaster. |utc_offset = -2 to -4 |time_zone_DST = BRST |utc_offset_DST = -2 to -5 |cctld Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. The Republic of Cuba (ˈkjuːbə or) consists of the island of Cuba (the largest and second-most populous island of the Greater Antilles) Isla de la Yoruba is an isolating, tonal language with SVO syntax. In morphological typology (in linguistics an isolating language (also analytic language) is any Language in which words are composed of Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words In Linguistic typology, subject-verb-object ( SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first the Verb second and the object Apart from referring to the aggregate of dialects and their speakers, the term Yoruba is used for the standard, written form of the language. Yoruba is classified as a Niger-Congo language of the Yoruboid branch of Defoid, Benue-Congo. Yoruboid is a group of languages comprised of Igala, a language spoken in central Nigeria, and the Edekiri group the members of which are spoken in

The traditional Yoruba area - currently comprising the southwestern portion of Nigeria, the republics of Benin and Togo and mideastern Ghana - is commonly called Ìlẹ-Yorùbá or Yorubaland. Nigeria, officially named the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal Constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and one Federal Benin (bə'nɪn officially the Republic of Benin, and also known as Benin Republic, is a country in Western Africa. TOGO was a Japanese roller coaster design company famous for inventing the Stand-up roller coaster. The Republic of Ghana is a country in West Africa. It borders Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast to the west Burkina Faso to the north Togo to the The Yoruba (Yo•row•ba ( Yorùbá in Yoruba Orthography) are one of the largest ethno-linguistic or Ethnic groups in West Africa The Nigeria component comprises today's Ọyọ, Ọṣun, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, and Lagos states as well as the western part of Kogi state. Geography Oyo State cover approximately an area of 28454 square kilometers and ranked 14th by size History The modern Osun State was created in 1991 from part of the old Oyo State. Administrative Divisions The state contains the following twenty Local Government Areas Famous native sons and daughters Abeokuta is the birthplace Government and society The state contains eighteen Local Government Areas the major ones being Akoko, Akurẹ, Okitipupa, Ondo, and History Ekiti was an independent state prior to the British conquest History Kwara State was created on 27 May 1967 when the Federal Military Government of General Yakubu Gowon broke the four regions that then constituted the Federation Lagos State is an administrative region of Nigeria, located in the southwestern part of the country History and people The state was formed in 1991 from parts of Kwara State and Benue State. Geophysically, Yorubaland forms part of a plateau (elevation 366 m) bordered to the north and east by the Niger River. The Niger River (ˈnaɪdʒɚ NYE-jer) is the principal River of western Africa, extending about 4180 km (2600 miles A large part of it is densely forested; the northern part however, including Ọyọ, lies in the savanna to the north of the forest.

History

The ancestor of the Yoruba speakers is, according to their oral traditions, Oduduwa, son of Olúdùmarè, the supreme god of the Yoruba. Oduduwa, phonetically written as Odùduwà, and sometimes contracted as Odudua, Oòdua, is generally held among the Yoruba to be the ancestor Although they share a common history, it is only since the second half of the nineteenth century that the children of Oduduwa share one name. Before the abolition of the slave trade, Yorubas among the liberated slaves in Freetown were known among Europeans as Akú, a name derived from the first words of Yoruba greetings such as Ẹ kú àárọ̀ ‘good morning’ and Ẹ kú alẹ́ ‘good evening’. Freetown is the Capital and largest City of Sierra Leone, and a major Port on the Atlantic Ocean. ^[3] Remi-Niyi Alaran, 2007 contends that the word Yoruba comes from the phrase “yi o rú ẹbọ” or "yorúbọ", meaning “will make sacrifices”, referring to the Ẹbọ (ritual sacrifice that complements Ifa divination) in Yoruba spirituality. At some stage the term Yariba or Yoruba came into use, first confined to the Ọyọ Kingdom; the term was used among the Hausa (as it is today) but its origins are unclear. ^[4] Under the influence of the Yoruba Samuel Ajayi Crowther, (first Bishop of West Africa and first African bishop of the Church of England, who was a war captive freed on the high seas en-route to slavery) and subsequent missionaries, and for a large part due to the development of a written version of the language, the term Yoruba was extended to include all speakers of related dialects. Bishop Samuel Adjai (Ajayi Crowther (c 1809 - 31 December 1891 was a linguist and the first African Anglican bishop in Nigeria.

The first appearance in print of any variety of Yoruba dates from 1819, in the form of a small vocabulary collected by Bowdich, an English diplomatic agent in Ashanti. The Ashanti Empire or Asante Empire, also known as the Ashanti Confederacy or Asanteman (independent from 1701-1896 was a pre-colonial West ^[5] This is relatively late for a West African language spoken as widely as Yoruba (cf. Akan, 1602; Ewe, 1658); it can be attributed to the fact that virtually no European trade took place on the Yoruba coast before the nineteenth century. See also Akan languages Akan is a language group spoken by related peoples in mainly Ghana and eastern Côte d'Ivoire. The Gbe languages (ɡ͡bè form a cluster of about twenty related Languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. Linguistic means —including, for example, historical-comparative linguistics, glottochronology, and dialectology — used along with both traditional (oral) historical sources and archaeological finds, have shed some light on the history of the Yorubas and their language before this point. Glottochronology refers to methods in Historical linguistics used to estimate the time at which languages diverged based on the assumption that the basic (core vocabulary of The North-West Yoruba dialects, for example, show more linguistic innovations. According to some, this, combined with the fact that Southeast and Central Yoruba areas generally have older settlements, suggests a later date of immigration for Northwest Yoruba. ^[6]

Varieties

Dialects

The Yoruba dialect continuum itself consists of over fifteen varieties which can be classified into three major dialect areas: Northwest, Central, and Southeast. ^[7] Of course, clear boundaries can never be drawn and peripheral areas of dialectal regions often have some similarities to adjoining dialects.

• North-West Yoruba (NWY).
  • Abẹokuta, Ibadan, Ọyọ, Ọṣun and Lagos areas
• Central Yoruba (CY)
  • Igbomina, Ifẹ, Ekiti, Akurẹ, Ẹfọn, and Ijẹbu areas.
• South-East Yoruba (SEY)
  • Okitipupa, Ondo, Ọwọ, sagamu, and parts of Ijẹbu.

North-West Yoruba is historically a part of the Ọyọ empire. In NWY dialects, Proto-Yoruba /gh/ (the velar fricative [ɣ]) and /gw/ have merged into /w/; the upper vowels /i ̣/ and /ụ/ 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. Ethnographically, traditional government is based on a division of power between civil and war chiefs; lineage and descent are unilineal and agnatic. Unilineality is a system of determining Descent groups in which one belongs to one's father's or mother's lineage. Agnatic (or patrilineal descent is established by tracing descent exclusively through males from a founding male ancestor

South-East Yoruba was probably associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c. The Benin Empire or Edo Empire (1440-1897 was a large pre-colonial African state of modern Nigeria. 1450 AD. ^[8] In contrast to NWY, lineage and descent are largely multilineal and cognatic, and the division of titles into war and civil is unknown. Primogeniture is the Common law right of the Firstborn son to inherit the entire estate, to the exclusion of younger siblings Linguistically, SEY has retained the /gh/ and /gw/ contrast, while it has lowered the nasal vowels /ịn/ and /ụn/ to /ẹn/ and /ọn/, 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 has ẹ wá 'you (pl. ) came' and wọ́n wá 'they came', respectively. The emergence of a plural of respect may have prevented coalescence of the two in NWY dialects.

Central Yoruba forms a transitional area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY, whereas it shares many ethnographical features with SEY. Its vowel system is the least innovating of the three dialect groups, having retained nine oral-vowel contrasts and six or seven nasal vowels, and an extensive vowel harmony system.

Great interactive and culture-rich resources to learn Yoruba can be found at www. YorubaForKidsAbroad. com

Standard Yoruba

Main article: Standard Yoruba

Standard Yoruba (also known as literary Yoruba, the Yoruba koiné, common Yoruba and often simply as Yoruba) is a separate member of the dialect cluster. Standard Yoruba (also known as literary Yoruba, the Yoruba koiné, common Yoruba and often simply as Yoruba is the written form of the West African Standard Yoruba (also known as literary Yoruba, the Yoruba koiné, common Yoruba and often simply as Yoruba is the written form of the West African It is the written form of the language, the standard variety learnt at school and that spoken by newsreaders on the radio. Standard Yoruba has its origin in the 1850s, when Samuel A. Crowther, native Yoruba and the first African Bishop, published a Yoruba grammar and started his translation of the Bible. Though for a large part based on the Ọyọ and Ibadan dialects, Standard Yoruba incorporates several features from other dialects^[9]. Additionally, it has some features peculiar to itself only, for example the simplified vowel harmony system, as well as foreign structures, such as calques from English which originated in early translations of religious works. In Linguistics, a calque (kælk or loan translation is a Word or Phrase borrowed from another Language by Literal, word-for-word

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 most pure form, and others stating that there is no such thing as genuine Yoruba at all. Standard Yoruba, the variety learnt at school and used in the media, has nonetheless been a powerful consolidating factor in the emergence of a common Yoruba identity.

Writing system

Yoruba orthography originated in the early work of CMS missionaries working among the Aku in Freetown, notably Kilham and Raban. The Church Mission Society, known as the Church Missionary Society in Australia and New Zealand is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Church They assembled vocabularies and published short notes on Yoruba grammar. One of their informants in Sierra Leone was Crowther, who later would proceed to study his native language Yoruba. In early grammar primers and translations of portions of the English Bible, Crowther used the Latin alphabet largely without tone markings. The only diacritic used was a dot below certain vowels to signify their open variants [ɛ] and [ɔ], viz. An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as ẹ and ọ. Over the years the orthography was revised to take care of tone marking among other things. In 1875 the Church Missionary Society (CMS) organised 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 1965 Yoruba Orthography, a study of the earlier orthographies and an attempt to bring Yoruba orthography in line with actual speech as much as possible. Still largely similar to the older orthography, it employs the Latin alphabet modified by the use of the digraph gb and certain diacritics, including the traditional vertical line set under the letters E̩/e̩, O̩/o̩, and S̩/s̩. A digraph, bigraph, or digram is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation In many publications the line is replaced by a dot (Ẹ/ẹ, Ọ/ọ, Ṣ/ṣ). The vertical line has been used to avoid the mark being fully covered by an underline. An underline, also called an underscore, is one or more horizontal lines immediately below a portion of Writing.

The Latin letters c, q, v, x, z are not used.

The pronunciation of the letters without diacritics corresponds more or less to their International Phonetic Alphabet equivalents, except for the labial-velar stops k͡p (written as <p>) and [g͡b] (written as <gb>), in which both consonants are pronounced simultaneously rather than sequentially. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Labial-velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the Lips They are sometimes called " Labiovelar consonants quot a term which can also A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. The diacritic underneath vowels indicates an open vowel, pronounced with the root of the tongue retracted (so e̩ is pronounced [ɛ̙] and o̩ as [ɔ̙]). An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as In Phonetics, advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root, abbreviated ±ATR are contrasting states of the root of the Tongue during the pronunciation <s̩> represents a postalveolar consonant [ʃ] like the English sh, <y> represents a palatal approximant like English y, and <j> a voiced palatal plosive, as is common in many African orthographies. Postalveolar consonants are Consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the Alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the The palatal approximant is a type of Consonantal sound used in many spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents The voiced palatal plosive is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that

In addition to the vertical bars, three further diacritics are used on vowels and syllabic nasal consonants to indicate the language's tones: an acute accent (´) for the high tone, a grave accent (`) for the low tone, and an optional macron (¯) for the middle tone. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. Pitch The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred only on the last syllable of a word in cases where the A macron, from Greek el μακρόv ( makrón) meaning "long" is a Diacritic ¯ placed over or under a Vowel which was originally These are used in addition to the line in e̩ and o̩. 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, a caron is used for the rising tone (so the previous example would be written ǒ) and a tilde for other possibilities. Names Usage differs as to the name of this diacritic In the field of typography the term "caron" seems to be more popular The tilde (~ (/ˈtɪldə/ is a Grapheme with several uses The name of the character comes from Spanish, from the Latin titulus

Linguistic features

Phonology

The three possible syllable structures of Yoruba are consonant+vowel (CV), vowel alone (V), and syllabic nasal (N). Every syllable bears one of the three tones: high  ́, mid  ̄ (generally left unmarked), and low  ̀. The sentence 'n̄ ò lọ' I didn't go provides examples of the three syllable types:

• n̄ — [ŋ̄] — I
• ò — [ó] — not (negation)
• lọ — [lɔ] — to go

Vowels and consonants

Standard Yoruba has seven oral and five nasal vowels. There are no diphthongs in Yoruba; sequences of vowels are pronounced as separate syllables. Dialects differ in the number of vowels they have; see above.

Yoruba vowel diagram. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract ^[10] Oral vowels are marked by black dots, while the coloured regions indicate the ranges in possible quality of the nasal vowels.

The status of a fifth nasal vowel, [ã], is controversial. A nasal vowel is a Vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through Nose as well as the Mouth. A nasal vowel is a Vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through Nose as well as the Mouth. A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A close-mid vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds The open-mid vowels make a class of Vowel sounds used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as Although the sound does occur in speech, several authors have argued it to be not phonemically contrastive; often, it is in free variation with [ɔ̃]. ^[11] Orthographically, nasal vowels are normally represented by an oral vowel symbol followed by n, i. e. in, un, ẹn, ọn, except in case of the [n] allophone of /l/ (see below) preceding a nasal vowel, i. e. inú 'inside, belly' is actually pronounced [īnṹ]. ^[12]

The voiceless plosives /t/ and /k/ are slightly aspirated; in some Yoruba varieties, /t/ and /d/ are more dental. Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips ( bilabial articulation or with the lower lip and the upper teeth ( labiodental articulation Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets Postalveolar consonants are Consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the Alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Glottal consonants are Consonants articulated with the Glottis. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds are non-lateral Liquid consonants This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically though most of them share The rhotic consonant is realized as a flap ([ɾ]), or in some varieties (notably Lagos Yoruba) as the postalveolar approximant [ɹ]. Like many other languages of the region, Yoruba has the labial-velar stops /k͡p/ and /g͡b/, e. Labial-velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the Lips They are sometimes called " Labiovelar consonants quot a term which can also A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. g. pápá [k͡pák͡pá] 'field', gbọ̄gbọ̄ [g͡bɔg͡bɔ] 'all'. Notably, it lacks the common voiceless bilabial plosive /p/, which is why /k͡p/ is written as <p>. It also lacks a phoneme /n/; though the letter <n> is used for the sound in the orthography, it strictly speaking refers to an allophone of /l/ which immediately precedes a nasal vowel. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme.

There is also a syllabic nasal which forms a syllable nucleus by itself. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the When it precedes a vowel it is a velar nasal [ŋ], e. g. n ò lọ [ŋ ò lọ] 'I didn't go'. In other cases its place of articulation is homorganic with the following consonant, for example ó ń lọ [ó ń lọ] 'he is going', ó ń fò [ó ɱ́ fò] 'he is jumping'. In Articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a Consonant is the point of contact where an Obstruction

Tone

Yoruba is a tonal language with three level tones: High, Low and Mid; the latter is the default tone. A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words ^[13] Every syllable must have at least one tone; a syllable containing a long vowel can have two tones. Contour tones (i. e. rising or falling tone melodies) are usually analysed as separate tones occurring on adjacent tone bearing units and thus have no phonemic status. ^[14] Tones are marked by use of the acute accent for High tone (á, ń), the grave accent for Low tone (à, ǹ); Mid is unmarked, except on syllabic nasals where it is indicated using a macron (a, n̄); see below). Examples:

• H: ó bẹ́ 'he jumped'; síbí 'spoon'
• M: ó bẹ 'he is forward'; ara 'body'
• L: ó bẹ̀ 'he asks for pardon'; ọ̀kọ̀ 'spear'

Assimilation and elision

When a word precedes another word beginning with a vowel, assimilation or deletion ('elision') of one of the vowels often takes place. Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a Vowel, a Consonant, or a whole Syllable) in a word or phrase producing a result that is easier ^[15] In fact, since syllables in Yoruba normally end in a vowel, and most nouns start with one, this is a very common phenomenon, and indeed only is absent in very slow, unnatural speech. The orthography here follows speech in that word divisions are normally not indicated in words that are contracted as a result of assimilation or elision: ra ẹja → rẹja 'buy fish'. Sometimes however, authors may choose to use an inverted comma to indicate an elided vowel as in ní 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, e. g. àdìrò → ààrò 'hearth'; koríko → koóko 'grass'; òtító → òótó 'truth'.

Grammar

Yoruba is an isolating language. In morphological typology (in linguistics an isolating language (also analytic language) is any Language in which words are composed of Basic constituent order is subject, verb, object (SVO), as in ó na Adé 'he hit Adé'. The bare verb stem denotes a completed action (often called perfect); tense and aspect are marked by preverbal particles such as ń 'imperfect/present continuous', ti 'past'. Negation is expressed by a preverbal particle kò. Serial verb constructions are common, as in many other languages of West Africa. The serial verb construction is a syntactic phenomenon common to many African and Asian languages

Yoruba has a distinction between human and non-human nouns; probably a remainder of the noun class system of proto-Niger-Congo, the distinction is only apparent in the fact that the two groups require different interrogative particles: tani for human nouns (‘who?’) and kini for non-human nouns (‘what?’). The associative construction (covering possessive/genitive and related notions) consists of juxtaposing nouns in the order modified-modifier as in inú àpótí {inside box} 'the inside of the box', fìlà Àkàndé 'Akande’s cap' or àpótí aṣọ 'box for clothes' (Bamgboṣe 1966:110, Rowlands 1969:45-6). More than two nouns can be juxtaposed: rélùweè abẹ́ ilẹ̀ (railway under ground) ‘underground railway’, inú àpótí aṣọ 'the inside of the clothes box'. In the rare case where this results in two possible readings, disambiguation is left to the context.

There are two ‘prepositions’: ní ‘on, at, in’ and sí ‘onto, towards’. The former indicates location and absence of movement, the latter encodes location/direction with movement (Sachnine 1997:19). Position and direction are expressed by these prepositions in combination with spatial relational nouns like orí ‘top’, apá ‘side’, inú ‘inside’, etí ‘edge’, abẹ́ ‘under’, ilẹ̀ ‘down’, etc. Many of these spatial relational terms are historically related to body-part terms.

Vocabulary

To the north of Yorubaland, Hausa is spoken. Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers spoken as a first Language by about 24 million people and as a second language by about 15 The long-standing contact between the Yoruba and the Hausa culture has influenced both languages. The imprint left by Hausa on Yoruba can be seen most clearly in the many loan-words. Two kinds of Hausa loan words can be distinguished: first, words of pure Hausa origin; and secondly, words that can be traced back to Arabic which have entered the Yoruba lexis through Hausa. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language Examples of the first type include gèjíyà 'tiredness' (< H. gàjíyàà), Ọbángíjì 'Almighty God' (< H. Ùbángíjì, lit. 'father of the house'). Examples of the second type include words like àlùbáríkà 'blessing', àlàáfíà 'well-being', and àlùbọ́sà 'onion' (Oyètádé & Buba 2000).

Literature

Main article: Yoruba literature

Yoruba has an extensive literature, both oral and written. Yoruba literature is the spoken and written Literature of the Yoruba people, the largest ethno-linguistic group in Nigeria, and in Africa.

Oral literature

• Odu Ifa
• Oriki

Written literature

• Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature
• Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa
• J. Divination process Special instruments are used to assist in the Divination to transcribe Orunmila 's wisdom through the diviner Oríkì, or Praise Poetry, is a cultural Phenomenon among the Yòrùbá -speaking people of West Africa. The Nobel Prize in Literature (Nobelpriset i litteratur is awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has in the words from the will of Alfred Daniel Olorunfẹmi Fagunwa MBE (1903 &mdash December 9, 1963) popularly known as D F. Odunjo
• Adebisi Aromolaran, king of Ijesaland
• Adebayo Faleti
• Akinwunmi Isola
• Wande Abimbola
• Afolabi Olabimtan
• Sobowole Sowande

Notes and references

Notes

References

• Adetugbọ, Abiọdun (1982). "Towards a Yoruba Dialectology", in Afọlayan (ed. ): Yoruba Language and Literature, 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, 166. ISBN 0-8419-0031-0.  
• Fagborun, J. Gbenga (1994). The Yoruba Koiné – its History and Linguistic Innovations, LINCOM Linguistic Edition vol. 6. , München/Newcastle: LINCOM Europe.  
• 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 www. YorubaForKidsAbroad. com (2007). "Yoruba", in Soji and Titi Oyenuga: Yoruba For Kids Abroad - Learn Yoruba In 27 Days. Saskatoon, Canada: Gaptel Innovative Solutions Inc, 27 days. ISBN.  

History

• Adetugbọ, Abiọdun (1973). "The Yoruba Language in Yoruba History", in Biobaku, S. O. (ed. ): Sources of Yoruba History, 176-204.  
• Biobaku, S. O. (ed. ) (1973). Sources of Yoruba History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.  
• Hair, P. E. H. (1967). "The Early Study of Yoruba, 1825-1850", The Early Study of Nigerian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  
• Law, R. C. C. (1973a). "Contemporary Written Sources", in Biobaku, S. O. (ed. ): Sources of Yoruba History, 9-24.  
• Law, R. C. C. (1973b). "Traditional History", in Biobaku, S. O. (ed. ): Sources of Yoruba History, 25-40.  

Dictionaries

• Abraham, Roy Clive (1958). Dictionary of Modern Yoruba. London: University of London Press.  
• CMS (Canon C. W. Wakeman, ed. ) (1950[1937]). A Dictionary of the Yoruba language. Ibadan: University Press.  
• Delanọ, Oloye Isaac (1958). Atúmọ̀ ede Yoruba [short dictionary and grammar of the Yoruba language]. London: Oxford University Press.  
• Sachnine, Michka (1997). Dictionnaire yorùbá-français, suivi d’un index français-yorùbâ. Paris: Karthala.  

Grammars and sketches

• 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.  
• Crowther, Samuel Ajayi (1852). Yoruba Grammar. London.  
  — the first grammar of Yoruba.
• Rowlands, E. C. (1969). Teach Yourself Yoruba. London: The English Universities Press.  
• Ward, Ida (1952). Ida Caroline Ward (1880 - 1949 was a British linguist working mainly on African languages who has done influential work in the domains of Phonology and Tonology An introduction to the Yoruba language. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons.  

External links

• Yoruba Language Resources
• kasahorow Yoruba Dictionary
• Ọrọ èdè Yorùbá - promotes the digital presentation of proper Yorùbá orthography through the creation and modification of Opensource software.
• Ethnologue report for Yoruba
• Omniglot: Yoruba orthography
• Learn Ifa language, Yoruba (French Version)
• Yoruba dictionary
• Sabere d'owo Yoruba video drama series. Radio Abeokuta (2006).
• Pan-African Localization page for Yoruba