| Fula (or Fulani) Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular |
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| Spoken in: | Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gambia, Chad, Sierra Leone, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Sudan, Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo | |
| Total speakers: | 10–16 million | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Senegal–Guinea Senegambian Fula-Wolof Fula (or Fulani) |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | ff | |
| ISO 639-2: | ful | |
| ISO 639-3: | variously: ful – Fulah (generic) fub – Adamawa Fulfulde fui – Bagirmi Fulfulde fue – Borgu Fulfulde fuq – Central-Eastern Niger Fulfulde ffm – Maasina Fulfulde fuv – Nigerian Fulfulde fuc – Pulaar fuf – Pular language fuh – Western Niger Fulfulde |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Fula language is a language of West Africa, spoken by the Fulɓe (Fula or Fulani people) from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan. It is also spoken as the first language by the Tukulor in the Senegal River Valley and as a second language by peoples in other areas.
There are several names applied to the language, just as there are to the Fula people. They call their language Pulaar or Pular in the western dialects and Fulfulde (pronounced full-full-day) in the central and eastern dialects. Fula(h) and Fulani in English come originally from Manding and Hausa, respectively; Peul in French from Wolof.
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Fula belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family.
Fula has the reputation of being complex but very regular in the construction of verbs, with few exceptions or "irregular" forms. The plural forms of nouns, however, are highly irregular and often do not resemble their singular form.
Fula is based on verbo-nominal roots, from which verbal, noun and modifier words are derived. It also uses infixes (a syllable inserted in the "middle" of a word, actually following the root and before the ending) to modify meaning.
There are about 25 noun classes (the number may vary slightly in different dialects).
Verbs in Fula are usually classed in 3 "voices" (except in Adamawa Fulfulde): active, middle and passive. Not every root is used in all voices. Some middle voice verbs are reflexive.
A common example are verbs from the root loot-:
Another feature of the language is initial consonant mutation between singular and plural forms of nouns and of verbs (except in Pular, there is no consonant mutation in verbs, only in nouns).
A simplified schema is as follows:
Fula has inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns.
While there are numerous dialects of Fula, it is typically regarded as a single language. Wilson (1989) states that "travellers over wide distances never find communication impossible," and Ka (1991) concludes that despite it gregraphic span and dialect variation, Fulfulde is still fundamentally one language.[1] However, Bible translators estimate that at least 7 different translations are needed to make it comprehensible for all Fulfulde speakers, and Ethnologue treats several of the varieties as separate languages:
Alternative name is sometimes given as Fuuta Jalon (which is actually the name of the region in which it is spoken).
Pular is an official regional language in Guinea, and many speakers are monolingual. The language has borrowed a lot from Arabic and French, but also from English, Portuguese, Malinke, Susu, Wolof and others.
When written using the Latin alphabet, Fula uses the following additional special "hooked" characters to distinguish meaningfully different sounds in the language: Ɓ/ɓ, Ɗ/ɗ, Ŋ/ŋ, Ɲ/ɲ, Ƴ/ƴ (i.e. implosive B, implosive D, velar N [sounds like "ng" in "king'], palatal N, ejective Y). The apostrophe (ʼ) is used as a glottal stop. In Nigeria ʼy substitutes ƴ, and in Senegal ñ is used instead of ɲ.
a, aa, b, mb, ɓ, c, d, nd, ɗ, e, ee, f, g, ng, h, i, ii, j, nj, k, l, m, n, ŋ, ny (or ñ or ɲ), o, oo, p, r, s, t, u, uu, w, y, ƴ
The letters q, x, z are used in some cases for loan words. In the Pular of Guinea an additional letter - ɠ - is also part of the orthography.
Fula has also been written in the Arabic script or Ajami since before colonization. This continues to a certain degree and notably in some areas like Guinea.