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Amos Tutuola

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Yoruba ( US : / ˈ j ɔːr ə b ə / , UK : / ˈ j ɒr ʊ b ə / ; Yor. Èdè Yorùbá , IPA: [jōrùbá] ) is a language that is spoken in West Africa , primarily in Southwestern and Central Nigeria. It is spoken by the Yoruba people . Yoruba speakers number roughly 47 million, including about 2 million second-language speakers. As a pluricentric language , it is primarily spoken in a dialectal area spanning Nigeria , Benin , and Togo with smaller migrated communities in Côte d'Ivoire , Sierra Leone and The Gambia .

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73-469: Amos Tutuola ( Yoruba : Ámósì Tutùọlá ; 20 June 1920 – 8 June 1997) was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales . Amos Olatubosun Tutuola Odegbami was born on 20 June 1920, in Wasinmi , a village just a few miles outside of Abeokuta , Nigeria, where his parents, Charles Tutuola Odegbami and Esther Aina Odegbami, who were Yoruba Christian cocoa farmers, lived. Wasinmi

146-657: A blacksmith , the trade he practised from 1942 to 1945 for the Royal Air Force in Nigeria during WWII . He subsequently tried a number of other vocations, including selling bread and acting as messenger for the Nigerian Department of Labour. In 1946, Tutuola completed his first full-length book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard , within two days. In 1947, he married Victoria Alake, with whom he had four sons and four daughters; he would also marry 3 other wives. He

219-402: 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

292-490: 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

365-640: A Fox-Hunting Man . The book was at first published anonymously; the author's name, Siegfried Sassoon , was added to the title page for the second impression. Over the next six months, it was reprinted eight times. Poetry was originally the most renowned part of the Faber list, with W. H. Auden , Stephen Spender , and Louis MacNeice joining Ezra Pound , Marianne Moore , Wyndham Lewis , John Gould Fletcher , Roy Campbell , James Joyce , David Jones (artist-poet) and Walter de la Mare being published under T. S. Eliot's aegis. Under Geoffrey Faber's chairmanship,

438-420: 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

511-566: 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

584-406: A literary adviser; in the first season, the firm issued his Poems 1909–1925 . In addition, the catalogues from the early years included books by Ezra Pound , Jean Cocteau , Herbert Read , Max Eastman , George Rylands , John Dover Wilson , Geoffrey Keynes , Forrest Reid , Charles Williams , and Vita Sackville-West . In 1928, Faber and Faber published its first commercial success, Memoirs of

657-500: 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

730-465: A scholarship to two writers every year, with a focus on under-represented groups such as writers of colour, disabled writers and LGBTQ + writers. Faber Digital was launched in 2009. It has published a number of book-related apps for the iPhone and the iPad, including Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone (which was nominated for a BAFTA award), QI: Quite Interesting , Harry Hill's Joke Book , and The Waste Land for iPad app . The Waste Land for iPad app

803-811: 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

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876-598: A visiting research fellowship at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University ) at Ile-Ife , Nigeria, and in 1983 he was an associate of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa . In retirement he divided his time between residences Ibadan and Ago-Odo. Tutuola died at the age of 76 on 8 June 1997 from hypertension and diabetes . Many of his papers, letters, and holographic manuscripts have been collected at

949-399: 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

1022-444: 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

1095-470: Is Tutuola's use of his materials, chosen from all and sundry, and minted to make something beautiful, new and undeniably his own. He has handled his material with all of the skill of the good story teller and he has been able to endow it with the qualities of a "well-told-tale". His denigrators who think it devastating to name him a mere folktale-teller must realize that not all folktale-tellers are necessarily good. In The Palm-Wine Drinkard , Tutuola has infused

1168-490: 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

1241-433: 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

1314-689: 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 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,

1387-478: Is arbitrary. Anybody can begin his own style. Having begun it arbitrarily, if he persists to produce in that particular mode, he can enlarge and elevate it to something permanent, to something other artists will come to learn and copy, to something the critics will catch up with and appreciate. Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie in her own reassessment wrote in The Journal of Commonwealth Studies : What commands acclaim

1460-451: 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,

1533-492: 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

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1606-497: 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 ,

1679-410: 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

1752-767: Is the uncle of the Nigerian footballers Segun Odegbami and Wole Odegbami . Despite his short formal education, Tutuola wrote his novels in English. In 1956, after he had written his first three books and become internationally famous, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Ibadan , Western Nigeria as a storekeeper. Tutuola also became one of the founders of the Mbari Club , the writers' and publishers' organization. In 1979, he held

1825-577: Is unique, not only in Africa, where the sophisticated African writer is incapable of this tenuous and yet controlled connection, but in Europe as well, where this kind of writing is impossible. Wole Soyinka wrote in 1963: Of all his novels, The Palm-Wine Drinkard remains his best and the least impeachable. This book, apart from the work of D. O. Fagunwa , who writes in Yoruba , is the earliest instance of

1898-408: 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

1971-575: The Egba people and a traditional worshipper of the Yoruba religion . His title, "Odafin" (literally "the establisher of laws" or "lawgiver" in Yoruba ), signified that he had an administrative position within the traditional administration of Egbaland, and that he was one of the Iwarefa of the Ogboni . When Amos was seven years old, in 1927, he became a servant for F. O. Monu, an Igbo man, who sent him to

2044-600: The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin . Tutuola's works have been translated into 11 languages, including French, German, Russian, and Polish. Some translators, notably Raymond Queneau (French) and Ernestyna Skurjat (Polish), deliberately adjusted the grammar and syntax of the translations to reflect the occasionally atypical language of Tutuola's original prose. Tutuola's most famous novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in

2117-823: 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 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

2190-775: The Salvation Army primary school in lieu of wages. At age 12, he attended the Anglican Central School in Abeokuta. His brief education was limited to six years (from 1934 to 1939). After his grandfather's death in 1936, most members of the chief's family decided to adopt the European style of naming and take his name, Odegbami, as their last name. However, several other family members, including Amos, decided to take their father's name, Tutuola, instead. When his father died in 1939, Tutuola left school to train as

2263-423: 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

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2336-621: 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

2409-894: The Arts Council in partnership with the BBC – Sixty Years in Sixty Poems took the poems from Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy 's anthology, Jubilee Lines , and interpreted them using actors' recordings, sound-based generative design, and archive film footage. In 2008, Faber launched Faber Academy, a creative writing business offering courses for aspiring writers. Courses include "Writing a Novel", "Advanced Poetry", and "Getting Started: Beginners' Fiction". At times, courses are tutored by famous writers, such as Mike Figgis , Jeanette Winterson , and Tobias Hill . Notable students have included S. J. Watson and Georgian/British singer-songwriter Katie Melua . In 2018, The Faber Academy started offering

2482-656: The Bush of Ghosts' – in honour of Tutuola. Refractive Africa , the collection of which this was part, was subsequently listed as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry . In 2021, Aderemi Adegbite, the Nigerian contemporary artist-curator and poet, inaugurated the Tutuola Institute - The Yoruba Cultural Institute, an artistic and cultural intervention legally recognized in Nigeria as a Limited by Guarantee Charity. Yoruba language Yoruba vocabulary

2555-769: The Deads' Town , was written in 1946, first published in 1952 in London by Faber and Faber , then translated and published in Paris as L'Ivrogne dans la brousse by Raymond Queneau in 1953. Poet Dylan Thomas brought it to wide attention, calling it "brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching". Although the book was praised in England and the United States, it faced severe criticism in Tutuola's native Nigeria. Part of this criticism

2628-607: 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;

2701-474: The English Language? Mark Twain 's Huckleberry Finn is written in seven dialects, he tells us. It is acknowledged a classic. We accept it, forget that it has no "grammar", and go ahead to learn his "grammar" and what he has to tell us. Let Tutuola write "no grammar" and the hyenas and jackals whine and growl. Let Gabriel Okara write a "no grammar" Okolo. They are mum. Why? Education drives out of

2774-989: The Second World War, paper shortages resulted in high profits, but much of this profit went to taxation. Notable postwar Faber writers include William Golding (although the company almost rejected his Lord of the Flies ), Lawrence Durrell , Robert Lowell , Ted Hughes , Sylvia Plath , W. S. Graham , Philip Larkin , P. D. James , Tom Stoppard , and John Osborne . The firm increased its investment in contemporary drama, including plays by three Nobel Laureates: Harold Pinter , Samuel Beckett , and T. S. Eliot . Other playwrights subsequently joined Faber, including Alan Ayckbourn , Alan Bennett , Brian Friel , Tony Harrison , David Hare , Frank McGuinness , and Timberlake Wertenbaker . Modern writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro , Peter Carey , Orhan Pamuk , and Barbara Kingsolver also joined Faber. In addition, Faber has published

2847-522: 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 the Niger Delta ) and Igala (spoken in central Nigeria). Yoruba is classified among the Edekiri languages , which is together with

2920-828: 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. Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited , commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber , is an independent publishing house in London . Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden , C. S. Lewis , Margaret Storey , William Golding , Samuel Beckett , Philip Larkin , Sylvia Plath , Ted Hughes , Seamus Heaney , Paul Muldoon , Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro . Founded in 1929, in 2006

2993-415: 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

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3066-743: The band Pulp , would be joining as editor-at-large, an appointment similar to one held by Pete Townshend of The Who in the 1980s. In 2008, the imprint Faber Finds was set up to make copyrighted out-of-print books reavailable, using print-on-demand technology. Works republished in the imprint have included items from the Mass-Observation archives, and works by John Betjeman , Angus Wilson , A. J. P. Taylor , H. G. Wells , Joyce Cary , Nina Bawden , Jean Genet , P. H. Newby , Louis MacNeice , John Carey , F. R. Leavis , Jacob Bronowski , Jan Morris , and Brian Aldiss . In 2009, Faber Finds began to release e-books . Faber's American arm

3139-528: The board in 1929 included Eliot, Richard de la Mare, Charles Stewart, and Frank Vigor Morley . The firm's art director was Berthold Wolpe . Faber published biographies, memoirs , fiction, poetry, political and religious essays, art and architecture monographs, children's books , and an ecology list. It also published Eliot's literary review, The Criterion . Eliot rejected two books by George Orwell , A Scullion's Diary (the original version of Down and Out in Paris and London ) and Animal Farm . During

3212-555: 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

3285-806: The company was named the KPMG Publisher of the Year. Faber and Faber Inc. , formerly the American branch of the London company, was sold in 1998 to the Holtzbrinck company Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). Faber and Faber ended the partnership with FSG in 2015 and began distributing its books directly in the United States. Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but originated in the Scientific Press, owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer . The Scientific Press derived much of its income from

3358-451: 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

3431-508: 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

3504-487: 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,

3577-639: 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

3650-524: 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

3723-745: The life of his hybrid with the energies of a well-wrought tale. There is the urgency in the telling, the rapidity, indispensable to the Quest-motif, with which life unrolls itself; the fertility of incidents; the successful maintenance of our interest through the varying scenes. And the good-story teller is ever present in The Palm-Wine Drinkard , speaking to us in warm human tones, genial, good-natured and unpretentious. O. R. Dathorne additionally said: Tutuola deserves to be considered seriously because his work represents an intentional attempt to fuse folklore with modern life. In this way he

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3796-475: 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

3869-447: The mind superstition, daydreaming, building of castles in the air, cultivation of yarns, and replaces them with a rational practical mind, almost devoid of imagination. Some of these minds having failed to write imaginative stories, turn to that aristocratic type of criticism which magnifies trivialities beyond their real size. They fail to touch other virtues in a work because they do not have the imagination to perceive these mysteries. Art

3942-649: 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 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

4015-476: The new Nigerian writer gathering multifarious experience under, if you like, the two cultures, and exploiting them in one extravagant, confident whole. The Palm-Wine Drinkard was followed by My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in 1954 and then several other books in which Tutuola continued to explore Yoruba traditions and folklore, although none of the subsequent works managed to match the success of The Palm Wine Drinkard . His 1958 work, The Brave African Huntress ,

4088-401: 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]

4161-507: 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

4234-563: 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

4307-461: 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

4380-435: 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

4453-764: 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

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4526-529: 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

4599-515: The translated work of prominent novelists and poets including Milan Kundera , Thomas Bernhard , Günter Grass , Nikos Kazantzakis , Wisława Szymborska , Mario Vargas Llosa , and Czesław Miłosz . Having published the theatrical works of Samuel Beckett for several years, the company acquired the rights to the remainder of his oeuvre from the publishing house of John Calder in 2007. Faber announced in October 2011 that Jarvis Cocker , lead singer of

4672-424: 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

4745-426: 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

4818-401: 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

4891-587: The weekly magazine The Nursing Mirror . The Gwyers' desire to expand into trade publishing led them to Geoffrey Faber , a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford ; they founded Faber and Gwyer in 1925. After four years, The Nursing Mirror was sold and Geoffrey Faber and the Gwyers agreed to go their separate ways. Faber selected the company name of Faber and Faber, although there was no other Faber involved. T. S. Eliot, who had been suggested to Faber by Charles Whibley , had left Lloyds Bank in London to join Faber as

4964-685: Was Faber's second collaboration with Touch Press, following the Solar System for iPad , which won the Futurebook Award for Digital innovation at the Book Industry Awards in 2011. In 2013, in partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing plc , Faber Digital launched Drama Online, a subscription-based digital content platform for libraries, educators, students, and researchers. Faber introduced Faber Factory in 2011, an eBook conversion and digitisation service. Faber Factory won

5037-511: Was a small farming village founded between the years 1845 and 1880 by constituents of the Egba subethnic group from Abeokuta. Tutuola's father and grandfather belonged to this subethnic group. Amos was the youngest son of his father; his mother was his father's third wife. His grandfather the Odafin of Egbaland, Chief Odegbami (c. 1842–1936), patriarch of the Odegbami clan, was a chieftain of

5110-568: Was due to his use of "broken English" and "primitive" style, which supposedly promoted the Western stereotype of "African backwardness". This line of criticism has, however, lost steam. In the opinion of Taban Lo Liyong : Now, in all that he has done, Amos Tutuola is not sui generis. Is he ungrammatical? Yes. But James Joyce is more ungrammatical than Tutuola. Ezekiel Mphahlele has often said and written that African writers are doing violence to English. Violence? Has Joyce not done more violence to

5183-586: 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

5256-540: Was illustrated by Ben Enwonwu . Brian Eno and David Byrne named their 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts after Tutuola's second novel . In 2015, the Society of Young Nigerian Writers, under the leadership of Wole Adedoyin, founded the Amos Tutuola Literary Society, aimed at promoting and reading Tutuola's works. In 2021, Will Alexander published a long poem – 'Based on

5329-465: Was sold in 1998 to Farrar, Straus and Giroux ("FSG"), where it remained as an imprint focused on arts, entertainment, media, and popular culture. In February 2015, Faber announced the end of its partnership with FSG. In June 2012, to coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, Faber launched a website – Sixty Years in Sixty Poems . Commissioned for The Space – the new digital arts platform developed by

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