Talk:Fula language
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I decided to name this entry "Fula language". "Fula" appears to be the typical English language term used by linguists. (Peul maybe more common with French linguists?) Fufulde and Pulaar apparently only refer to certain dialects. I used "language" rather than "languages" as a couple sources state the dialects are generally mutually comprehensible. (I hate mucking around in the dialect vs. language morass.) It seems to generally be treated as one language.
There seem to be more alternate names and some complicated language vs. ethnic group stuff (non-Fula ethnic groups speaking varieties of Fula as their native languages and such).
There's a lot of room for expansion; I'll tryh to get to a library in the next few days. I wanted to get a stub up quickly and fix up the various links to Fula (under various names.--Chris Johnson 00:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I've been wondering when someone would write this. Thanks! I look forward to seeing it expand... - Mustafaa 05:38, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Official status?
This article says that the language has official status in 9 countries. Yet the CIA World Factbook seems to disagree. If you look up the language section for each of these countries, they all show an official language (two for Cameroon), but in every case this is French (6 countries), English (3), or Arabic (1).
Perhaps in some countries the official language isn't widely spoken and the Factbook shows the word "official" only for the purpose of explaining why it's listed at all, without meaning to imply that other languages are not also official. But I find it hard to believe that they would have done this for all 9 countries, which makes me suspicious of this part of the Wikipedia article. I know practically nothing about African languages myself, though, let alone their official status. I just suggest that some checking would be desirable.
66.96.28.244 06:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
The CIA World Factbook for the US shows no official language, but rather just lists a section "Languages". While the CIA World Factbook for Senegal shows the same, just a heading entitled "Languages", of which "Pulaar" is indicated (which is given as per this article, as an alternate name of the Fula Language).
Why do I bring up the US situation. I'm certain you're already likely aware that the US does not have an official federal language, although some states do have an official language, or languages. New Mexico is such a state, where both English and Spanish are official languages of the state. Thus, all political and governmental material must be made accessible to speakers of both languages. So, "Official" status is reasonably difficult to pin down precisely. I imagine that determining the true official status of the Fula Language in these regions would require quite exhaustive fact checking, and may be unfeasible.
Fula is not an official language of any country; it's a national language of several, but that's not the same thing. - Mustafaa 22:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Mustafaa is right. I would add that the terms "official" and "national" are often used very imprecisely with regard to languages, even in some ostensibly authoritative literature. A12n 00:27, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Strategy for pages on Fula language?
I wrote something on another corner of the Wikipedia that refers to the Fula language page and potential for other pages relating to varieties of the language. See [1] --A12n 01:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages/Fula --A12n 01:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
- I have posted a question there about which term to use, Fula or Fulfulde. — mark ✎ 19:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
