Fula language

Fula
Fulani, Fulah, Peul
Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular
Native to Western Africa
Region The Sahel
Ethnicity Fulɓe
Native speakers
 24 million (2007)[1]
Latin
Arabic
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ff – Fulah
ISO 639-2 ful – Fulah
ISO 639-3 ful – inclusive code – Fulah
Individual codes:
fuc – Pulaar (Senegambia, Mauritania)
fuf – Pular (Guinea, Sierra Leone)
ffm – Maasina Fulfulde (Mali, Ghana)
fue – Borgu Fulfulde (Benin, Togo)
fuh – Western Niger (Burkina, Niger)
fuq – Central–Eastern Niger (Niger)
fuv – Nigerian Fulfulde (Nigeria)
fub – Adamawa Fulfulde (Cameroon, Chad, Sudan)
fui – Bagirmi Fulfulde (CAR)
Glottolog fula1264[2]

Fula /ˈfuːlə/[3], also known as Fulani /fʊˈlɑːniː/[3] or Fulah[4][5][6] (Fula: Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular; French: Peul), is a language spoken as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stretches across some 20 countries in West and Central Africa. Along with other related languages such as Serer and Wolof, it belongs to the Senegambian branch within the Niger–Congo languages, which does not have tones, unlike most other Niger–Congo languages. More broadly, it belongs to the Atlantic geographic grouping within Niger–Congo. It is spoken as a first language by the Fula people ("Fulani", Fula: Fulɓe) from the Senegambia region and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan and by related groups such as the Toucouleur people in the Senegal River Valley. It is also spoken as a second language by various peoples in the region, such as the Kirdi of northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria.

Nomenclature

Person Pullo
People Fulɓe
Language Fulfulde

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 in the central and eastern dialects. Fula(h) and Fulani in English come originally from Manding (esp. Mandinka, but also Malinke and Bamana) and Hausa, respectively; Peul in French, also occasionally found in literature in English, comes from Wolof.

Morphology

Fula is based on verbo-nominal roots, from which verbal, noun and modifier words are derived. It uses suffixes (sometimes inaccurately called infixes, as they come between the root and the inflectional ending) to modify meaning. These suffixes often serve the same purposes in Fula that prepositions do in English.

It is also important to notice that, the language could possibly have a semitic (namely arabic) origin as well, due to its similarities in the formation of plurals, whereby words can completely (prefix, infix, suffix) change from singular to plural.

Noun classes

The Fula or Fulfulde language is characterized by a robust noun class system, with 24 to 26 noun classes being common across the Fulfulde dialects (Arnett 1975: 5). Noun classes in Fula are abstract categories with some classes having semantic attributes that characterize a subset of that class’ members, and others being marked by a membership too diverse to warrant any semantic categorization of the class’ members (Paradis 1992: 25). For example, there are classes for stringy long things, and another for big things, another for liquids, a noun class for strong rigid objects, another for human or humanoid traits etc. Gender does not have any role in the Fula noun class system and the marking of gender is done with adjectives rather than class markers (Arnett 1975: 74). Noun classes are marked by suffixes on nouns. These suffixes are the same as the class name though they are frequently subject to phonological processes, most frequently the dropping of the suffix’s initial consonant (McIntosh 1984:45-46).

The table below illustrates the class name, the semantic property associated with class membership, and an example of a noun with its class marker. Classes 1 and 2 can be described as personal classes, classes 3-6 as diminutive classes, classes 7-8 as augmentative classes, and classes 9-25 as neutral classes. It is formed on the basis of McIntosh’s 1984 description of Kaceccereere Fulfulde, which the author describes as "essentially the same" as Arnott’s 1970 description of the noun classes of the Gombe dialect of Fula. Thus, certain examples from Arnott also informed this table (Arnott 1975: 5), (McIntosh 1984:44).

Number Class Name Meaning Example
1.
 o Person Singular laam-ɗo ‘chief’
2.
 ɓe Person Plural laam-ɓe ‘chiefs’
3.
 ngel Diminutive Singular loo-ngel ‘little pot’
4.
 kal Diminutive Quantities con-al ‘small quantity of flour’
5.
 ngum/kum Diminutive Pejorative laam-ngum/laam-kum ‘worthless little chief’
6.
 kon/koy Diminutive Plural ullu-kon/ullu-koy ‘small cats/kittens’
7.
 nde Various, including globular objects, places, times loo-nde ‘storage pot’
8.
 ndi Various, including uncountable nouns com-ri ‘tiredness’
9.
 ndu Various ullu-ndu ‘cat’
10.
 nga Various, including some large animals nood-a ‘crocodile’
11.
 nge mainly for 'Cow,' 'fire,' 'sun' 'hunger,' nagg-e ‘cow’
12.
 ngo Various juu-ngo ‘hand’
13.
 ngu Various ɓow-ngu ‘mosquito’
14.
 ngal Various including Augmentative Singular ɗem-ngal ‘tongue’
15.
 ngol Various, often long things ɓog-gol ‘rope’
16.
 ngii/ngil Various including Augmentative Singular ɓog-gii/ɓog-gii ‘big rope’
17.
 ka Various laan-a ‘boat’
18.
 ki Various lek-ki ‘tree’
19.
 ko Various haak-o ‘soup’
20.
 kol 'Calf' 'Western type of School' ñal-ol ‘calf’, lekkol ‘school’
21.
 ɗam mainly for Liquids lam-ɗam ‘salt’, ndiy-am ‘water’
22.
 ɗum Neutral maw-ɗum ‘big thing’
23.
 ɗe Non-human Plural juu-ɗe ‘hands’
24.
 ɗi Non-human Plural na'i ‘cows’
25.
 man all classes nagge man, na'i man ‘cows’

Voice

Verbs in Fula are usually classed in 3 voices: 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-:

Consonant mutation

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:

Pronouns

Fula has inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns. The inclusive pronouns include both the speaker and those being spoken to, while the exclusive pronouns exclude the listeners.

The pronoun that corresponds to a given noun is determined by the noun class. Because men and women belong to the same noun class, the English pronouns "he" and "she" are translated into Fula by the same pronoun. However, depending on the dialect, there are some 25 different noun classes, each with its own pronoun. Sometimes those pronouns have both a nominative case (i.e., used as verb subject) and an accusative or dative case (i.e., used as a verb object) as well as a possessive form. Relative pronouns generally take the same form as the nominative.

Varieties

While there are numerous varieties of Fula, it is typically regarded as a single language. Wilson (1989) states that "travelers over wide distances never find communication impossible," and Ka (1991) concludes that despite its geographic span and dialect variation, Fulfulde is still fundamentally one language.[7] However, Ethnologue has found that nine different translations are needed to make the Bible comprehensible for most Fula speakers, and it treats these varieties as separate languages. They are listed in the box at the beginning of this article.

Status

Fulfulde is an official language in Senegal (Pulaar), an official lingua franca in Guinea, Senegambia, Maasina, North Eastern Nigeria and Northern Cameroon (Pular), where many speakers are bilingual, and a national language in many African countries, such as Mauritania, Mali, Gambia, Guinea (Conakry), Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger...

Writing systems

Latin alphabet

When written using the Latin script, Fula uses the following additional special "hooked" characters to distinguish meaningfully different sounds in the language: Ɓ/ɓ [ɓ], Ɗ/ɗ [ɗ ], Ŋ/ŋ [ŋ], Ɲ/ɲ [ ɲ], Ƴ/ƴ [ʔʲ]. The letters c, j, and r, represent the sounds /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /r/. In some dialects, c, j are pronounced as /c/, /ɟ/. An apostrophe (ʼ) is used as a glottal stop. It uses the five vowel system denoting vowel sounds and their lengths. In Nigeria ʼy substitutes ƴ, and in Senegal Ñ/ñ is used instead of ɲ.

Sample Fula alphabet

a, aa, b, mb, ɓ, c, d, nd, ɗ, e, ee, f, g, ng, h, i, ii, j, nj, k, l, m, n, ŋ, ɲ (ny or ñ), o, oo, p, r, s, t, u, uu, w, y, ƴ, '

The letters q, v, 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, but it is also only used for loan words.

Fula Alphabet
A B Mb Ɓ C D Nd Ɗ E F G Ng H I J Nj K L M N Ŋ Ɲ O P R S T U W Y Ƴ '
a b mb ɓ c d nd ɗ e f g ng h i j nj k l m n ŋ ɲ o p r s t u w y ƴ '
Phonetic value
a b mb ɓ tʃ d nd ɗ e f g ŋɡ h i dʒ ndʒ k l m n ŋ ɲ o p r s t u w j ʔʲ ʔ

Arabic script

Fula has also been written in the Arabic script or Ajami since before colonization by many scholars and learned people including Usman dan fodio and the early emirs of the northern Nigeria emirates. This continues to a certain degree and notably in some areas like Guinea, Cameroon.

In fact, Fula has got many arabic words or words with arabic roots.

There has been efforts in the 50s and 60s to create an alphabet to write Fulfulde. One was created in Mali, and another in Senegal and Nigeria. In the 1990s, more than ten different types of alphabets were created in Guinea, among the are Adolam and Wiimiye Africa. Adolam was created by Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry with the help of a N'ko teacher in the Nzérékoré Region of Guinea. But since the launching of Facebook in Fulfulde last year, all these alphabets have disappeared, as they envisage no light at the end of the tunnel.

The standard Fulfulde alphabet adopted during the convention of Bamako in 1966 is as follows: a, b, mb, ɓ, c, d, nd, ɗ, e, f, g, ng, h, i, j, nj, k, l, m, n, ŋ, ɲ (ny or ñ), o, p, r, s, t, u, w, y, ƴ, '.

The conference in which this alphabet was adopted was organized by UNESCO.

Other scripts

In the 1960s Mali and Senegal each invented their own scripts to write Fula; in the 1970s Nigeria invented its own script too. During the late 1980s, more than 20 Guineans invented new different types of scripts in order to represent the Fula language, but since the 1966 Bamako convention the UNESCO script has remained the only alphabet recognized as standard for Fula by all institutions in and outside the African continent including the African Union and UNESCO.

Below are some websites from different countries that are using the standard alphabet of Fula/Fulfulde:

References

Works

Notes

  1. ↑ Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Fula". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. 1 2 Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
  4. ↑ "Fulah". Ethnologue (19 ed.). 2016.
  5. ↑ "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: ful". ISO 639-2 Registration Authority - Library of Congress. Retrieved 2017-07-04. Name: Fulah
  6. ↑ "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: ful". ISO 639-3 Registration Authority - SIL International. Retrieved 2017-07-04. Name: Fulah
  7. ↑ "...malgré son extension géographique et ses variations dialectales, le fulfulde reste une langue profondément unie." Ka, Fary. 1991. "Problématique de la standardisation linguistique: Le cas du pulaar/fulfulde." In N. Cyffer, ed., Language Standardization in Africa. Hamburg: Helmut Buske verlag. Pp. 35-38.
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