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78-702: The Ouémé River , also spelled Weme ( Yoruba language : Odò Ofe, Gbe languages: Weme) is a river in Benin . It rises in the Atakora Mountains , and is about 510 kilometres (320 mi) long. It flows past the towns of Carnotville and Ouémé to a large delta on the Gulf of Guinea near the seaport city of Cotonou. The largest tributaries are the Okpara River and the Alpouro River . Ouémé River

156-402: 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

234-490: 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

312-614: A child as the child's parents do. All members of a particular clan live in the same compound and share family resources, rights, and possessions such as land Ife was surpassed by the Oyo Empire as the dominant Yoruba military and political power between the year 1600 and 1800. The nearby kingdom of Benin was also a powerful force between 1300 and 1850. Most of the city states were controlled by Obas, priestly monarchs, and councils made up of Oloyes, recognised leaders of royal, noble and, often, even common descent, who joined them in ruling over

390-420: 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

468-566: 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

546-515: A double maxima (peak period); March–July and September–November. Annual rainfall in Ijebu Ode in the middle of Ogun state, for example, averages 2,020 millimetres or 80 inches. The area is the center of thriving cocoa , natural rubber , kola nut and oil palm production industry, as well as lucrative logging . Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states are the leading producers of cocoa in Nigeria, while

624-656: A jagged highland region in the interior, commonly known as the Yorubaland plateau or Western upland . The highlands are pronounced in the Ekiti area of the region, especially around the Effon ridge and the Okemesi fold belt, which have heights in excess of 732 m (2,400 ft) and are characterized by numerous waterfalls and springs such as Olumirin waterfall, Arinta waterfall, and Effon waterfall. The highest elevation

702-722: A mortal blow. The other Yoruba city-states broke free of Oyo dominance, and subsequently became embroiled in a series of internecine wars, a period when millions of individuals were forcibly transported to the Americas and the Caribbean , eventually ending up in such countries as the Bahamas , Cuba , the Dominican Republic , Puerto Rico , Brazil , Haiti and Venezuela , the United States, among others. During

780-666: A northerly direction into the Niger include the Moshi river, Oyun, Oshin , Awun, Asa, Ero and Oyi . The Nigerian part of Yorubaland comprises today's Ọyọ , Ọṣun , Ogun , Kwara , Ondo , Ekiti , Lagos as well as parts of Kogi . The Beninese portion consists of Ouémé Department , Plateau Department, Collines Department , Tchaourou commune of Borgou Department , Bassila commune of Donga Department , Ouinhi and Zogbodomey commune of Zou Department , and Kandi commune of Alibori Department . The Togolese portions are

858-500: 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

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936-630: A river in Benin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . 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

1014-592: A town. The individual chiefs that serve the towns as corporate entities, called Olóyès , are subject to the Baálès that rule over them. A collection of distantly related towns makes up a clan . A separate group of Oloyes are subject to the Oba that rules over an individual clan, and this Oba may himself be subject to another Oba , depending on the grade of the Obaship. In this, government begins at home. The father of

1092-753: 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

1170-399: 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

1248-444: 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

1326-563: Is 1,220 millimetres or 48.03 inches. Tree species here include the Blighia sapida more commonly known as ackee in English and ishin in Yoruba, and Parkia biglobosa which is the locust bean tree used in making iru or ogiri , a local cooking condiment. The monsoon (rainy period) in both climatic zones is followed by a drier season characterized by northwest trade winds that bring the harmattan (cold dust-laden windstorms) that blow from

1404-490: 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

1482-433: 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

1560-451: 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,

1638-621: Is found at the Idanre Inselberg Hills , which have heights in excess of 1,050 metres (3,440 ft). In general, the landscape of the interior is made up of undulating terrain with occasional inselbergs jutting out dramatically from the surrounding expanse. Some include: Okeagbe hills: 790m, Olosunta in Ikere Ekiti: 690m, Saki and Igbeti hills. With coastal plains, southern lowlands, and interior highlands, Yorubaland has several large rivers and streams that crisscross

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1716-442: Is more commonly known locally as iroko , Antiaris africana , Terminalia superba which is known locally as afara , Entandrophragma or sapele , Lophira alata , Triplochiton scleroxylon (or obeche ), Khaya grandifoliola (or African mahogany), Symphonia globulifera , and numerous other species. Some non-native species such as Tectona grandis (teak) and Gmelina arborea (pulp wood) have been introduced into

1794-521: Is part of the Guinean forest–savanna mosaic ecoregion, a transitional zone between West Africa's coastal forests and interior savannas . Part of this region is derived savanna which was once covered in forest but has lost tree cover due to agricultural and other pressures on land. Annual rainfall here hovers between 1,100 and 1,500 millimetres (43 and 59 in). Annual precipitation in Ilorin for example

1872-492: 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

1950-497: 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 ,

2028-555: Is the largest river of the Benin Republic. It is located between 6° 30° and 10° north latitude and 0° 52 'and 3° 05' east longitude(Oba S. Alain 2018). It crosses several agro-ecological zones and feeds downstream, the lagoon system ‘'Lake Nokoué-lagoon of Porto-Novo'’ through a Delta zone. The lower Delta of Ouémé, is located between latitude 6° 33'N and 8° 15 'and the meridians 1° 50' and 2° 00 ' (Zinsou et al., 2016). The lower Delta of Ouémé begins after municipality of Adjohoun in

2106-410: 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

2184-408: 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

2262-465: 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

2340-835: The Lagos Lagoon , the upper Mono River , Oba River , Erinle River , Yewa River which discharges into the Badagry creek, Okpara River which forms part of the Nigeria-Benin border before fully re-entering Benin to join the Ouémé River (Ofe in Yoruba) which drains into Lake Nokoué and the Porto-Novo creek. On the eastern flank, the Owena (Siluko), Ofosu and Ose rivers empty into the Benin river creek. Those which flow in

2418-783: 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

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2496-739: The Ogou , Anié and Est-Mono prefectures in Plateaux Region , and the Tchamba prefecture in Centrale Region . The climate of Yorubaland varies from north to south. The southern, central and eastern portions of the territory is tropical high forest , known as the Yoruba lowland forests ecoregion. The characteristic vegetation is verdant closed-canopy forests composed of many varieties of hardwood trees including Milicia excelsa which

2574-651: The Oyo Empire . Shortly after, they overran the Yoruba city of Ilorin and then sacked Ọyọ-Ile , the capital city of the Oyo Empire. Further attempts by the Sokoto Caliphate to expand southwards were checked by the Yoruba who had rallied to resist under the military leadership of the city-state of Ibadan , which rose from the old Oyo Empire, and of the Ijebu city-states. However, the Oyo hegemony had been dealt

2652-540: The Sahara . They normally affect all areas except a small portion of the southern coast. Nonetheless, it has been reported that the harmattan has reached as far as Lagos in some years. Oduduwa is regarded as the legendary progenitor of the Yoruba, and almost every Yoruba settlement traces its origin to princes of Ile-Ife in Osun State, Nigeria. As such, Ife can be regarded as the cultural and spiritual homeland of

2730-473: 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

2808-423: 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

2886-621: 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

2964-650: The 19th century, the British Empire gradually colonized Yorubaland. In 1892, the British declared war on the Ijebu Kingdom in response to its barriers on trade. The British emerged victorious in the conflict and occupied the Ijebu capital. After British colonization, the capital served as an administrative center for colonial officials as the kingdom was annexed to the colony of Southern Nigeria . The colony

3042-500: 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

3120-515: The Benin and Osse (Ovia) river occupied by the Ilaje Yorubas and continues uninterrupted up to Porto Novo , a total distance of about 280 km as the crow flies. West of Porto Novo Gbe speakers begin to predominate. The northern section is thus more expansive than the southern coastal section. The land is characterized by mangrove forests , estuaries and coastal plains in the south, which rise steadily northwards into rolling hills and

3198-607: 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;

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3276-576: The Fulani of Northern Nigeria, the Yoruba were getting ready to recover from what is popularly known as the Yoruba Civil War. One of the lessons of the internecine Yoruba wars was the opening of Yorubaland to Fulani hegemony whose major interest was the imposition of sultanistic despotism on Old Oyo Ile and present-day Ilorin. The most visible consequence of this was the adding of almost one-fifth of Yorubaland from Offa to Old Oyo to Kabba to

3354-718: The Ogbonis which were in the judiciary wing. In most cases, the message would compel the Oba to take his own life, which he was bound by oath to do. Following a jihad (known as the Fulani War ) led by Uthman Dan Fodio (1754–1817) and a rapid consolidation of the Hausa city-states of contemporary northern Nigeria, the Fulani Sokoto Caliphate annexed the buffer Nupe Kingdom and began to press southwards towards

3432-546: 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. Yorubaland in West Africa  (white) Yorubaland ( Yoruba : Ilẹ̀ Káàárọ̀-Oòjíire ) is the homeland and cultural region of the Yoruba people in West Africa . It spans

3510-471: The Yoruba nation, both within and outside Nigeria. According to an Oyo account, Oduduwa was a Yoruba emissary; said to have come from the east, sometimes understood by some sources as the "vicinity" true east on the cardinal points, but more likely signifying the region of the Ekiti and Okun sub-communities in Yorubaland, Nigeria. On the other hand, linguistic evidence seems to corroborate the fact that

3588-415: 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

3666-519: The area are characterized by swamps inhabited by floating plants dominated by water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes), water lily (Nymphaea lotus), water lettuce (Pistoia stratiotes) and lemna (Lemna pairciostata). There are also undeveloped marshy forests, dominated by the Raphia palm (Raphia hookeri) and the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis). The part of the valley covered by the water is very productive in fish (Zinsou et al., 2016). This article related to

3744-555: 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

3822-451: 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

3900-472: The continuing approval of their constituents as a matter of policy, and could be easily compelled to abdicate for demonstrating dictatorial tendencies or incompetence. The order to vacate the throne was usually communicated through an aroko or symbolic message, which usually took the form of parrot eggs delivered in a covered calabash bowl by the Basorun the head of Oyomesi (the lawmakers) after Judgements from

3978-526: The department of Ouémé and ends at the south facade where the river flows into the lagoon complex ‘'Nokoué-Porto-Novo'’ (Lalèyè et al., 2004). The subequatorial climate type, characterized by two rainy seasons and two dry seasons. On the other hand, its hydrological regime depends on the Sudanian climate (north-Benin) with a low water period usually lasts seven months (November to June) and a flood period (July to October) (Lalèyè, 1995). The plant formations along

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4056-508: 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

4134-460: The dominant Yoruba military and political power between 1700 and 1900. Yoruba people generally feel a deep sense of culture and tradition that unifies and helps identify them. There are sixteen established kingdoms, states that are said to have been descendants of Oduduwa himself. The other sub-kingdoms and chiefdoms that exist are second order branches of the original sixteen kingdoms. There are various groups and subgroups in Yorubaland based on

4212-536: The eastern half of Yorubaland was settled at an earlier time in history than the western regions, as the Northwest and Southwest Yoruba dialects show more linguistic innovations than their central and eastern counterparts. Between 1100 and 1400, the Yoruba Kingdom of Ife experienced a golden age , part of which was a sort of artistic and ideological renaissance. It was then surpassed by the Oyo Empire as

4290-426: The ecosystem and are being extensively grown in several large forest plantations. The coastal section of this area features an area covered by swamp flats and dominated by such plants as mangroves and other stilt plants as well as palms, ferns and coconut trees on the beaches. This portion includes most of Ondo, Ekiti, Ogun, Osun, Lagos states and is characterised by generally high levels of precipitation defined by

4368-487: 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,

4446-639: 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

4524-465: The family is considered the "head" and his first wife is the mother of the house. If her husband chooses to marry another wife, that wife must show proper respect to the first wife even if the first wife is chronologically younger. Children are taught to have respect for all those who are older than they are. This includes their parents, aunts, uncles, elder siblings, and cousins who they deal with every day. ... Any adult presumably has as much authority over

4602-524: 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

4680-411: The kingdoms through a series of guilds and sects. Different states saw differing ratios of power between the kingship and the chiefs' council. Some, such as Oyo, had powerful, autocratic monarchs with almost total control, while in others such as the Ijebu city-states, the senatorial councils were supreme and the Ọba served as something of a figurehead. In all cases, however, Yoruba monarchs were subject to

4758-658: The majority of this population being ethnic Yoruba . Geo-physically, Yorubaland spreads north from the Gulf of Guinea and west from the Niger River into Benin and Togo . In the northern section, Yorubaland begins in the suburbs just west of Lokoja and continues unbroken up to the Ogooué River tributary of the Mono River in Togo , a distance of around 610 km. In the south, it begins in an area just west of

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4836-447: The many distinct dialects of the Yoruba language, which although all mutually intelligible , have peculiar differences. The governments of these diverse people are quite intricate and each group and subgroup varies in their pattern of governance. In general, government begins at home with the immediate family. The next level is the extended family with its own head, an Olori-Ebi . A collection of distantly related extended families makes up

4914-475: 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

4992-452: The modern-day countries of Nigeria , Togo and Benin , and covers a total land area of 142,114 km (54,871 sq mi). Of this land area, 106,016 km (74.6%) lies within Nigeria, 18.9% in Benin, and the remaining 6.5% is in Togo. Prior to European colonization , a portion of this area was known as Yoruba country . The geo-cultural space contains an estimated 55 million people,

5070-401: 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]

5148-507: 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

5226-563: 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

5304-461: 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

5382-435: 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

5460-443: The southern portions of Ogun and Ondo states ( Odigbo , Okitipupa and Irele ) play host to large plantations of oil palm and rubber. The northern and western portions of the region is characterized by tropical woodland savanna climate (Aw), with a single rainfall maxima. This area covers the northern two-thirds of Oyo, northwestern Ogun, Kwara, Kogi, Collines (Benin), northern half of Plateau department (Benin) and central Togo. It

5538-593: 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

5616-529: 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

5694-634: The terrain. These rivers flow in two general directions within the Yoruba country; southwards into the lagoons, estuaries and creeks which empty into the Atlantic Ocean , and northwards into the Niger river . Some southward flowing rivers include; The Osun and Shasha rivers which empty into the Lekki Lagoon , the Ogun River and its major tributaries; the Oyan and Ofiki which empties into

5772-424: 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

5850-426: 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

5928-401: 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

6006-528: Was gradually expanded by protectorate treaties. These treaties proved decisive in the eventual annexation of the rest of Yorubaland and, eventually, of southern Nigeria and the Cameroons . In 1960, greater Yorubaland was subsumed into the Federal Republic of Nigeria . According to Yoruba historians, by the time the British came to colonize and subjugate Yorubaland first to itself and later to

6084-586: 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

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