Yoruba (;Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh Yor. ) is an Atlantic–Congo language that is spoken in West Africa, primarily in South West Nigeria, Benin, and parts of Togo. It is spoken by the Yoruba people. Yoruba speakers number roughly 50 million, including around 2 million second-language or L2 speakers. As a pluricentric language, it is primarily spoken in a dialectal area spanning Nigeria, Benin, and Togo with smaller migrated communities in Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Gambia.
Yoruba vocabulary is also used in African diaspora religions such as the Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomblé and Umbanda, the Caribbean religion of Santería in the form of the liturgical Lucumí language, and various Afro-American religions of North America. Among modern practitioners of these religions in the Americas, Yorùbá-derived lexicon is used as a liturgical language, as almost all practitioners of these Diaspora manifestations are not fluent in it, yet they still use Yorùbá words and phrases for songs or chants, which are rooted in cultural traditions. For such practitioners, the Yorùbá-derived lexicon is especially common for ritual purposes, and these modern manifestations have taken new forms that do not depend on vernacular fluency.
As the principal Yoruboid language, Yoruba is most closely related to Itsekiri (spoken in the Niger Delta) and Igala (spoken in central Nigeria).
History
Yoruba is classified among the Edekiri languages, which together with Itsekiri and the isolate Igala form the Yoruboid group of languages within the Volta–Niger branch of the Niger–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 the Upper Paleolithic). In present-day Nigeria, 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. Yoruba is used in radio and television broadcasting and is taught at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Historically, Yoruba was spoken by many slaves trafficked to the Americas, particularly Latin America, during the latter period of the Atlantic slave trade.
Varieties The Yoruba dialect continuum consists of multiple dialects. The various Yoruba dialects in Yorubaland can be classified into five major dialect areas: Northwest, Northeast, Central, Southwest, and Southeast. Clear boundaries cannot be drawn, but peripheral areas of dialectal regions often have some similarities to adjoining dialects.
North-West Yoruba (NWY) North-West Yoruba was historically spoken in the Ọyọ Empire. In NWY dialects, the Proto-Yoruba velar fricative (gh) and labialized voiced velar [ gʷ ] (gw) have both 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. Negation is typical expressed with {Ko}, continuative aspect with {N}, and the indefinite tense with {yio} and {a}. The two sibilant sounds [s] and [ ʃ ] (sh/ṣ) are usually confused, except in the Abeokuta area among the Egba.
NWY dialects cover the following varieties, peoples, and places: Egba, Ibadan, Ọyọ, Lagos (Eko), Onko, and Ibarapa. Samples:
Central Yoruba Central Yoruba forms a transitional area combining features from both sides, in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY and it shares the ethnographical features with SEY. It is however unique in its own right on other aspects. It polarizes negativeness and positiveness in its short singular pronouns. It also maintains an extensive vowel harmony system in which the occurrence of vowels in successive syllables is determined by features of laxness or tenseness. Its vowel system is also the most traditional of the three dialect groups, retaining nine oral-vowel contrasts, six or seven nasal vowels. Peculiar to Central (CY) and Eastern (NEY, SEY) Yoruba also is the ability to begin words with the vowel [ʊ:], which in Western Yoruba has been innovatively changed to [ɪ:].
Central Yoruba dialects cover the following varieties, peoples, and places: Igbomina, Ijesha, Ifẹ, Ekiti (including Akurẹ), Ẹfọn, and Western Akoko. Samples:
South-East Yoruba (SEY) The area of the South-East Yoruba dialects was for long periods associated with the expansion of the Great Benin Empire after . In contrast to NWY, lineage and descent are largely multilineal and cognatic, traditional government operated through a system of graded societies, and the division of titles into martial and civil is unknown. Linguistically, SEY is more conservative (less innovating) that NWY and has therefore retained the (gh) and [ gʷ ] (gw) contrast, while it has lowered the nasal vowels [ĩ] and [ʊ̃] to [ɛ̃] and [ɔ̃], respectively, i.e 'Irin' (iron) becomes 'Urẹn' and 'Ọ̀run' (heaven) becomes 'Ọ̀rọn'. Negation and tense-aspect distinctions are made by pronoun vowel change. i.e Mo wá (I came) becomes; Méè wá (I didn't come).
In SEY no distinction exists between the second and third-person plural pronominal forms; thus, can mean either 'you (pl.) came' or 'they came' in SEY dialects, whereas NWY has ; 'you (pl.) came' and ; 'they came', respectively. The innovative emergence of a plural of respect may have prevented the fusion of the two forms in the NWY dialects.
SEY covers the following dialects, places, and peoples: Ondo, Ọwọ, Remo, Ijẹbu, Ikale, Eastern Akoko (Akoko, Ào), Ilaje, and Usẹn. Samples:
Others North-East Yoruba (NEY) includes varieties of Yoruba that cover the following languages, peoples, and places: Yagba, Owe, Ikiri, Ijumu, Oworo, Gbede, Abunu, Okun. South-West Yoruba (SWY) cover the following languages, peoples, and places: Ketu, Awori, Sakété, Ifè (Togo), Idasha, and Anago.
Literary Yoruba
Literary Yoruba, also known as Standard Yoruba, Yoruba Koiné, and Common 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, when Samuel 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 the Ọyọ and Ibadan dialects, Standard Yoruba incorporates several features from other dialects. It also has some features peculiar to itself, for example, the simplified vowel harmony system, as well as foreign structures, such as calques 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. 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.
Phonology 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 sentence (I didn't go) provides examples of three syllable types: — — I — — not (negation) — — to go
Vowels
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.
Oral vowels Nasal vowels Front Back Front Back Close Close-mid Open-mid () () Open
In some cases, the phonetic realization of these vowels is noticeably different from what the symbol suggests: The oral is close front , and the nasal varies between close front and near-close front . The oral is close back , and the nasal varies between close near-back , close back , near-close near-back and near-close back . The oral are close-mid , and do not have nasal counterparts. The oral is open-mid , and the nasal varies between mid and open-mid . The oral is near-open , and the nasal varies between open-mid and near-open . The oral is central .
Nasal vowels are by default written as a vowel letter followed by , thus: , , , , . These do not occur word-initially. Phonemically, the standard language only has 3 nasal vowels . is only used in the word ‘thatʼ, an SEY word borrowed into the standard language which is slowly gaining traction over the traditional word, . is how is pronounced after labial consonants, an allophony represented within the orthography (Compare ‘gun’, spelled with and pronounced with a rounded vs. ‘to shineʼ, spelled with and pronounced with an unrounded ). Some speakers pronounce all instances of as , due to the lack of a meaningful phonemic difference between the two in the standard dialect. All vowels are nasalized after the consonant , and thus there is no additional in writing (, , ). In addition, the consonant has a nasal allophone before a nasal vowel (see below), and this is reflected in writing: ("inside, belly") ( → ).
Consonants LabialAlveolarPost-alv./PalatalVelarGlottalplainlabialStop Fricative Approximant/Nasal ~ ~ Rhotic
The voiceless plosives and are slightly aspirated; in some Yoruba varieties, and are more dental. The rhotic consonant is realized as a flap or, in some varieties (notably Lagos Yoruba), as the alveolar approximant due to English influence. This is particularly common with Yoruba–English bilinguals.
Like many other languages of the region, Yoruba has the voiceless and voiced labial–velar stops and : 'field', 'all'. Notably, in Nigeria it lacks a voiceless bilabial stop , apart from phonaesthesia, such as [pĩpĩ] for vehicle horn sounds, and marginal segments found in recent loanwords, such as <pẹ́ńsù> for "pencil".
Yoruba also lacks a phoneme ; the letter is used for the sound in the orthography, but strictly speaking, it refers to an allophone of 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 a glottal stop, , an approximant like , or just leave it silent.
There is also a syllabic nasal, which forms a syllable nucleus by itself. When it precedes a vowel, it is a velar nasal : 'I didn't go'. In other cases, its place of articulation is homorganic with the following consonant: 'he is going', 'he is jumping'.
Tone Yoruba is a tonal 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 (, ) and the grave accent for low tone (, ); mid is unmarked, except on syllabic nasals where it is indicated using a macron (, ). Examples: H: 'he jumped'; 'spoon' M: 'he is forward'; 'body' L: 'he asks for pardon'; 'spear'. When teaching Yoruba literacy, solfège names of musical notes are used to name the tones: low is do, mid is re, and high is mi.
Whistled Yoruba