Misplaced Pages

#892107

56-561: The Oba River ( Yoruba : Odo Ọba ) is a river in Oyo and Osun States in Nigeria. It is the main tributary of the Osun River . The landscape varies from wooded savanna in the north to rain forest in the south. The river is heavily polluted. Most of the people who live along its length practice farming and fishing. The Ọba River is named for the goddess Ọba , one of the wives of Shango ,

112-402: A phoneme /n/ ; the letter ⟨n⟩ is used for the sound in the orthography, but strictly speaking, it refers to an allophone of /l/ immediately preceding a nasal vowel. There is also a syllabic nasal , which forms a syllable nucleus by itself. When it precedes a vowel, it is a velar nasal [ŋ] : n ò lọ [ŋ ò lɔ̄] 'I didn't go'. In other cases, its place of articulation

168-490: A syllable has been elided. For example: nlá 'to be large', originally a compound of ní 'to have' + lá 'to be big' and súfèé 'to whistle', originally a compound of sú 'to eject wind' + òfé or ìfé 'a blowing'. Vowels serve as nominalizing prefixes that turn a verb into a noun form. Nominal roots are mostly disyllabic , for example: abà 'crib, barn', ara 'body', ibà 'fever'. Monosyllabic and even trisyllabic roots do occur but they are less common. Yoruba

224-529: A catchment area of 321 square kilometres (124 sq mi). The Oba continues south from the dam until it joins the Oshun River just above the settlement of Odo Oba. Settlements along its course from north to south include Apo, Iluju, Obada, Mosunmade, Otuokun, Bale, Olori and Olumoye. The river receives a left tributary just downstream from Obada and another left tributary to the south of Olori. The second tributary flows past Ife Odan. The Ọba River joins

280-420: A consonant has been elided word-internally. In such cases, the tone of the elided vowel is retained: àdìrò → ààrò 'hearth'; koríko → koóko 'grass'; òtító → òótó 'truth'. Most verbal roots are monosyllabic of the phonological shape CV(N), for example: dá 'to create', dán 'to polish', pọ́n 'to be red'. Verbal roots that do not seem to follow this pattern are mostly former compounds in which

336-566: A distinction between human and non-human nouns when it comes to interrogative particles: ta ni for human nouns ('who?') and kí ni 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'. More than two nouns can be juxtaposed: rélùweè abẹ́ ilẹ̀ (railway underground) 'underground railway', inú àpótí aṣọ 'the inside of

392-500: A plural of respect may have prevented the coalescence of the two in NWY dialects. Central Yoruba forms a transitional area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY and shares many ethnographical features with SEY. Its vowel system is the most traditional of the three dialect groups, retaining nine oral-vowel contrasts, six or seven nasal vowels, and an extensive vowel harmony system. Peculiar to Central and Eastern (NEY, SEY) Yoruba also

448-914: A riverine Yoruboid people who live in the Niger Delta region. They maintain a distinct identity separate from other Yoruboid people but speak a very closely related language. Their neighbouring languages are the Urhobo , the Okpe , the Edo , the Ijo , and the Mahin / Ugbo, Yoruba dialects spoken in neighbouring Ondo State . * - All dialects in the Ede cluster share between 85 and 95% lexical similarity and are thus all mutually intelligible without needing different specialized literature to achieve universal understanding. ** - Itsekiri

504-479: A subject–verb–object basic word order and share significant degrees of both structural and lexical similarities. Igala is a key Yoruboid language, spoken by 1.6 million people in the Niger-Benue confluence of Lokoja; it is excised from the main body of Yoruboid languages to the west by Ebira and the northern Edoid languages . Igala is closely related to both Yoruba and Itsekiri languages. The Itsekiris are

560-811: A vision received in his sleep which he believed to have been granted by Oduduwa . This Oduduwa script has also received support from other prominent chiefs in the Yorubaland region of both countries. 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 n̄ ò lọ ( I didn't go ) provides examples of three syllable types: 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

616-399: Is homorganic with the following consonant: ó ń lọ [ó ń lɔ̄] 'he is going', ó ń fò [ó ḿ fò] 'he is jumping'. C, Q, V, X and Z only appear in words borrowed from English. 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

SECTION 10

#1732801581893

672-444: Is mi . Apart from tone's lexical and grammatical use, it is also used in other contexts such as whistling and drumming. Whistled Yoruba is used to communicate over long distances. The language is transformed as speakers talk and whistle simultaneously: consonants are devoiced or turned to [h], and all vowels are changed to [u]. However, all tones are retained without any alteration. The retention of tones enables speakers to understand

728-490: Is a highly isolating language . Its basic constituent order is subject–verb–object , as in ó nà Adé 'he beat 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 . Although Yoruba has no grammatical gender , it has

784-433: Is a widespread phenomenon, and it is absent only in slow, unnatural speech. The orthography here follows speech in that word divisions are normally not indicated in words that are contracted due to 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

840-437: Is actually most closely related to SEY (South-Eastern Yoruba), and is a divergent branch thereof, but has a different standard writing orthography. *** - Some scholars classify Olukumi as separate variant of Nuclear Yoruba, and others as a dialect of SEY. Below is a list of selected Yoruboid language names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019). [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text available under

896-451: Is controversial. Several authors have argued it is not phonemically contrastive. Often, it is in free variation with [ɔ̃] . Orthographically , ⟨ọn⟩ is used after labial and labial-velar consonants, as in ìbọn 'gun', and ⟨an⟩ is used after non-labial consonants, as in dán 'to shine'. All vowels are nasalized after the consonant /m/ , and thus there is no additional n in writing ( mi, mu, mọ ). In addition,

952-492: Is particularly common with Yoruba–English bilinguals. Like many other languages of the region, Yoruba has the voiceless and voiced labial–velar stops /k͡p/ and /ɡ͡b/ : pápá [k͡pák͡pá] 'field', gbogbo [ɡ͡bōɡ͡bō] 'all'. Notably, it lacks a voiceless bilabial stop /p/ , apart from phonaesthesia , such as [pĩpĩ] for vehicle horn sounds, and marginal segments found in recent loanwords, such as <pẹ́ńsù> [k͡pɛ́ńsù~pɛ́ńsù] for "pencil". Yoruba also lacks

1008-497: Is the ability to begin words with the vowel [ʊ:], which in Western Yoruba has been changed to [ɪ:] 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 ,

1064-674: Is the main tributary of the Osun River. It rises about 15 kilometres (9 mi) north of Ogbomosho in Oyo State. The river flows past Ogbomosho, where it is dammed. The Ogbomoso Reservoir on the Oba River was completed in 1964, covers an area of 137.6 hectares (340 acres) and has a storage capacity of 3,520 megalitres (124 × 10 ^  cu ft). The dam is fed by the Idekun, Eeguno, Akanbi Kemolowo, Omoogun and Yakun streams, and has

1120-410: Is the most favourably used. This is because eti , the Yoruba word for Friday, means 'delay'. This is an unpleasant word for Friday, Ẹtì , which also implies failure, laziness, or abandonment. Ultimately, the standard words for the days of the week are Àìkú, Ajé, Ìṣẹ́gun, Ọjọ́rú, Ọjọ́bọ, Ẹtì, Àbámẹ́ta, for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday respectively. Friday remains Eti in

1176-660: Is unusual in the region since rainfall is fairly plentiful, but is common in the northern states where the farmers originate. Citations Sources Yoruba language Yoruba vocabulary is also used in African diaspora religions such as the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomblé , the Caribbean religion of Santería in the form of the liturgical Lucumí language , and various Afro-American religions of North America . Most modern practitioners of these religions in

SECTION 20

#1732801581893

1232-408: 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 ⟨ˇ⟩ is used for the rising tone (so the previous example would be written ⟨ǒ⟩ ), and a circumflex ⟨ˆ⟩ for

1288-465: Is used in radio and television broadcasting and is taught at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. The Yoruba dialect continuum consists of several 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

1344-521: The Itsekiri of Warri Kingdom. The name Yoruboid derived from its most widely spoken member, Yoruba , which has around 55 million primary and secondary speakers. Another well-known Yoruboid language is Itsekiri (about 1,000,000 speakers). The Yoruboid group is a branch of Defoid , which also includes the Akoko and Ayere-Ahan languages. The term Defoid itself is a derivative combination using

1400-728: The Niger Delta ) and Igala (spoken in central Nigeria). Yoruba is classified among the Edekiri languages , which is together with the Itsekiri and isolate Igala from 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, estimates ranging around 11,000 years ago (the end of

1456-473: 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

1512-509: The Yoruba god of thunder. His other wives were Ọshun and Ọya . According to legend, Ọshun tricked Ọba into cutting off her ear and adding it to Shango's food, saying it would please him. When Shango found out what Ọba had done he, furious, screamed and Osun and Oba fled frightened, turning into the two rivers. That is why the meeting point of the Osun and Oba rivers is so rushing. The Oba River

1568-478: The root of the tongue retracted (so ⟨ẹ⟩ is pronounced [ɛ̙] and ⟨ọ⟩ is [ɔ̙] ). ⟨ṣ⟩ represents a postalveolar consonant [ʃ] like the English ⟨sh⟩ , ⟨y⟩ represents a palatal approximant like English ⟨y⟩ , and ⟨j⟩ a voiced palatal stop [ɟ] , as is common in many African orthographies. In addition to

1624-621: The 17th century, Yoruba was written in the Ajami script , a form of Arabic script . It is still written in the Ajami writing script in some Islamic circles. Standard Yoruba orthography originated in the early work of Church Mission Society missionaries working among the Aku (Yoruba) of Freetown . One of their informants was Crowther, who later would proceed to work on his native language himself. In early grammar primers and translations of portions of

1680-500: The Americas are not fluent in the Yoruba language, yet they still use Yoruba words and phrases for songs or chants—rooted in cultural traditions. For such practitioners, the Yoruba lexicon is especially common for ritual purposes, and these modern manifestations have taken new forms that don't depend on vernacular fluency. As the principal Yoruboid language , Yoruba is most closely related to these languages Itsekiri (spoken in

1736-607: 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. ⟨ẹ⟩ and ⟨ọ⟩ . Over the years, the orthography was revised to represent tone, among other things. In 1875, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) organized a conference on Yoruba Orthography;

Oba River - Misplaced Pages Continue

1792-501: The Oba River are mostly engaged in farming and fishing. In 1977 the land use around the Ogbomoso Reservoir was 71.9% forest, 4.9% arable and 23.2% fallow. By 1992 land use was 23.5% forest, 60.5% arable and 16.0% fallow. The main crops were maize and vegetables, particularly okra . Farmers were making heavy use of nitrogenous fertiliser. In 2014 farm workers from northern Nigeria had started to practice irrigation farming in

1848-402: The Oba River basin at Ikose, Ogbomoso North Local Government and Iluju, Ikoyi-Ile, Orire Local Government in Oyo State. They were using pumps to take water from the Oba River, often piping it a kilometre or more to their farmland. Crops include vegetables, okra, maize, garden eggs and water melon. The farmers were finding a ready market with buyers from Osun, Ondo and Oyo states. Irrigation farming

1904-570: The Yoruba language. • Odu Ifa , • Oriki , • Ewi , •Esa, •Àlọ́, •Rara, •Iremoje, • Bolojo , •Ijala, •Ajangbode, •Ijeke, Alámọ̀ As of 2024, the Yoruba Misplaced Pages  [ yo ] is the most visited website in Yoruba. Yoruboid languages Yoruboid is a language family composed of the Igala group of dialects spoken in south central, and the Edekiri group spoken in a band across Togo , Ghana , Benin and southern, including

1960-415: The acute accent for high tone ( ⟨á⟩ , ⟨ń⟩ ) and the grave accent for low tone ( ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ǹ⟩ ); mid is unmarked, except on syllabic nasals where it is indicated using a macron ( ⟨a⟩ , ⟨n̄⟩ ). Examples: When teaching Yoruba literacy, solfège names of musical notes are used to name the tones: low is do , mid is re , and high

2016-555: The clothes box'. Disambiguation is left to context in the rare case that it results in two possible readings. Plural nouns are indicated by a plural word. There are two 'prepositions': ní 'on, at, in' and sí 'onto, towards'. The former indicates location and absence of movement, and the latter encodes location/direction with movement. Position and direction are expressed by the prepositions in combination with spatial relational nouns like orí 'top', apá 'side', inú 'inside', etí 'edge', abẹ́ 'under', ilẹ̀ 'down', etc. Many of

2072-451: The consonant /l/ has a nasal allophone [n] before a nasal vowel (see below ), and this is reflected in writing: inú 'inside, belly' ( /īlṹ/ → [īnṹ] ). The voiceless plosives /t/ and /k/ are slightly aspirated; in some Yoruba varieties, /t/ and /d/ are more dental. The rhotic consonant is realized as a flap [ɾ] or, in some varieties (notably Lagos Yoruba), as the alveolar approximant [ɹ] due to English influence. This

2128-508: The division of titles into war and civil is unknown. Linguistically, SEY has retained the /ɣ/ and /gw/ contrast, while it has lowered the nasal vowels /ĩ/ and /ʊ̃/ to /ɛ̃/ and /ɔ̃/, 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

2184-515: The elements ede (meaning 'language' in most lects within the grouping), "Ife", a city of profound cultural significance to speakers of the diverse lects, and -oid , a suffix meaning 'to be like' or 'in the same manner as'. The Defoid group itself is a branch of the Benue–Congo subfamily of the wider Niger–Congo family of languages. All Yoruboid languages are tonal, with most of them having three level tones. Grammatically, they are isolating with

2240-487: The emergence of a common Yoruba identity. The earliest evidence of the presence of Islam and literacy goes back to the 14th century. The earliest documented history of the people, traced to the latter part of the 17th century, was in the Yoruba but in the Arabic script called Ajami . This makes Yoruba one of the oldest African languages with an attested history of Ajami (Cf. Mumin & Versteegh 2014; Hofheinz 2018). However,

2296-639: The falling tone. In Benin , Yoruba uses a different orthography. The Yoruba alphabet was standardized along with other Benin languages in the National Languages Alphabet by the National Language Commission in 1975, and revised in 1990 and 2008 by the National Center for Applied Linguistics . In 2011, a Beninese priest-chief by the name of Tolúlàṣẹ Ògúntósìn devised a new script for Yoruba, based on

Oba River - Misplaced Pages Continue

2352-524: 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

2408-451: The fish in the Ogbomoso Reservoir were infected with parasites that could cause a risk to human consumers. The Oba River is heavily polluted, at class V on the Prati scale. There is little or no dissolved oxygen in the water. Sources of pollution include sewage and domestic and market waste, and includes much inert matter that is not readily biodegradable. The people along the whole length of

2464-475: The meaning of the whistled language. The Yoruba talking drum , the dùndún or iya ilu , which accompanies singing during festivals and important ceremonies, also uses tone. Written Yoruba includes diacritical marks not available on conventional computer keyboards, requiring some adaptations. In particular, the use of the sub dots and tone marks are not represented, so many Yoruba documents simply omit them. Asubiaro Toluwase, in his 2014 paper, points out that

2520-401: The number of vowels they have; see above . Nasal vowels are by default written as a vowel letter followed by ⟨n⟩ , thus: ⟨in⟩ , ⟨un⟩ , ⟨ẹn⟩ , ⟨ọn⟩ , ⟨an⟩ . These do not occur word-initially. In the standard language, /ɛ̃/ occurs only in the single word ìyẹn ~ yẹn 'that'. The status of the vowel [ã]

2576-507: The official orthography of Standard Yoruba. However, they exist in several Yoruba dialects. The pronunciation of the letters without diacritics corresponds more or less to their International Phonetic Alphabet equivalents, except for the labial–velar consonant [k͡p] (written ⟨p⟩ ) and [ɡ͡b] (written ⟨gb⟩ ), in which both consonants are pronounced simultaneously rather than sequentially. The diacritic underneath vowels indicates an open vowel , pronounced with

2632-563: The older orthography, it employs the Latin alphabet modified by the use of the digraph ⟨gb⟩ and certain diacritics , including the underdots under the letters ⟨ẹ⟩ , ⟨ọ⟩ , and ⟨ṣ⟩ . Previously, the vertical line had been used to avoid the mark being fully covered by an underline , as in ⟨e̩⟩, ⟨o̩⟩, ⟨s̩⟩; however, that usage is no longer common. The Latin letters ⟨c⟩ , ⟨q⟩ , ⟨v⟩ , ⟨x⟩ , ⟨z⟩ are not used as part of

2688-461: The oldest extant Yoruba Ajami exemplar is a 19th-century Islamic verse (waka) by Badamasi Agbaji (d. 1895- Hunwick 1995). There are several items of Yoruba Ajami in poetry, personal notes, and esoteric knowledge (Cf. Bang 2019). Nevertheless, Yoruba Ajami remained idiosyncratic and not socially diffused, as no standardized orthography existed. The plethora of dialects and the absence of a central promotional institution, among others, are responsible. In

2744-435: The primary beneficiaries. Adelabu , a Ph D graduate from Damascus cited—among many other common usages—the following words to be Yoruba's derivatives of Arabic vocabularies: Some common Arabic words used in Yoruba are names of the days such as Atalata ( الثلاثاء ) for Tuesday, Alaruba ( الأربعاء ) for Wednesday, Alamisi ( الخميس ) for Thursday, and Jimoh ( الجمعة , Jumu'ah ) for Friday. By far, Ọjọ́ Jimoh

2800-764: The spatial relational terms are historically related to body-part terms. Yoruba uses a vigesimal (base-20) numbering system. The wide adoption of imported religions and civilizations such as Islam and Christianity has had an impact both on written and spoken Yoruba. In his Arabic-English Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Quran and Sunnah , Yoruba Muslim scholar Abu-Abdullah Adelabu argued Islam has enriched African languages by providing them with technical and cultural augmentations with Swahili and Somali in East Africa and Turanci Hausa and Wolof in West Africa being

2856-529: 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 similar to

SECTION 50

#1732801581893

2912-424: The underdots, 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. These are used in addition to the underdots in ⟨ẹ⟩ and ⟨ọ⟩ . When more than one tone

2968-426: 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

3024-401: The use of these diacritics can affect the retrieval of Yoruba documents by popular search engines. Therefore, their omission can have a significant impact on online research. When a word precedes another word beginning with a vowel, assimilation, or deletion (' elision ') of one of the vowels often takes place. Since syllables in Yoruba normally end in a vowel, and most nouns start with one, it

3080-624: The Ọshun River in a series of rapids. The two rivers meet at the northern end of the Asejire Reservoir . The climate in the upper part of the river around Ogbomoso has consistently high temperatures, with moderate to heavy rainfall in March–July. Annual rainfall averages 1,247 millimetres (49.1 in). The vegetation is derived savanna, between the northern savanna zone and the Ibadan region rain forests. A study published in 2014 found that

3136-586: Was historically spoken in the Ọyọ Empire . In NWY dialects, Proto-Yoruba velar fricative /ɣ/ and labialized voiced velar /gʷ/ have 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. South-East Yoruba was most likely associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c.  1450 . In contrast to NWY, lineage, and descent are largely multilineal and cognatic , and

#892107