Fula ( ),[Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh] also known as Fulani ( )
It is spoken as a first language by the Fula people ("Fulani", ) from the Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon, Nigeria, and Sudan and by related groups such as the Toucouleur people in the Senegal River Valley. It is also spoken as a second language by various peoples in the region, such as the Kirdi of northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria.
Nomenclature
Several names are applied to the language, just as to the
Fula people. They call their language
Pulaar or
Pular in the western dialects and
Fulfulde in the central and eastern dialects.
Fula,
Fulah and
Fulani in English come originally from Manding (esp. Mandinka, but also Malinke and Bamana) and
Hausa language, respectively;
Peul in French, also occasionally found in literature in English, comes from
Wolof language.
Status
Fula is a
lingua franca in
Guinea,
Guinea-Bissau,
Senegal,
Gambia, northeastern
Nigeria,
Cameroon,
Mali,
Burkina Faso, Northern
Ghana, Southern
Niger and Northern
Benin (in
Borgou Region, where many speakers are bilingual), and a local language in many African countries, such as
Mauritania,
Sierra Leone,
Togo,
CAR,
Chad, and
Sudan, numbering more than 95 million speakers in total.
Varieties
While there are numerous varieties of Fula, it is typically regarded as a single language. Wilson (1989) states that "travelers over wide distances never find communication impossible," and Ka (1991) concludes that despite its geographic span and dialect variation, Fulfulde is still fundamentally one language.
However,
Ethnologue has found that nine different translations are needed and it treats these varieties as separate languages. Fula dialects are also often split into 4 regions, the Western area, Central area, Niger and Nigeria, and the Eastern area.
The dialects are as follows:
Western Area
Central Area
Niger and Nigeria
-
Nigerian Fulfulde (also known as Hausa States Fulani)
-
Niger Lettugal Fulfulde
Eastern Area
Phonology
Consonants
The two sounds and , may be realized as affricate sounds and .
Vowels
Short // vowel sounds can also be realized as .
Morphology
Fula is based on verbonominal roots, from which verbal, noun, and modifier words are derived. It uses suffixes (sometimes inaccurately called
, as they come between the root and the inflectional ending) to modify meaning. These suffixes often serve the same purposes in Fula that prepositions do in English.
Noun classes
The Fula or Fulfulde language is characterized by a robust
noun class system, with 24 to 26 noun classes being common across the Fulfulde dialects.
Noun classes in Fula are abstract categories with some classes having semantic attributes that characterize a subset of that class' members, and others being marked by a membership too diverse to warrant any semantic categorization of the class' members.
For example, classes are for stringy, long things, and another for big things, another for liquids, a noun class for strong, rigid objects, another for human or humanoid traits etc. Gender does not have any role in the Fula noun class system and the marking of gender is done with adjectives rather than class markers.
Noun classes are marked by suffixes on nouns. These suffixes are the same as the class name, though they are frequently subject to phonological processes, most frequently the dropping of the suffix's initial consonant.
The table below illustrates the class name, the semantic property associated with class membership, and an example of a noun with its class marker. Classes 1 and 2 can be described as personal classes, classes 3–6 as diminutive classes, classes 7–8 as augmentative classes, and classes 9–25 as neutral classes. It is formed on the basis of McIntosh's 1984 description of Kaceccereere Fulfulde, which the author describes as "essentially the same" as David Arnott's 1970 description of the noun classes of the Gombe dialect of Fula. Thus, certain examples from Arnott also informed this table.
|
|
| laam-ɗo 'chief'; also loan words |
| laam-ɓe 'chiefs' |
| loo-ngel 'little pot' |
| con-al 'small quantity of flour' |
| laam-ngum/laam-kum 'worthless little chief' |
| ullu-kon/ullu-koy 'small cats/kittens' |
| loo-nde 'storage pot' |
| com-ri 'tiredness' |
| ullu-ndu 'cat' |
| nood-a 'crocodile' |
| nagg-e 'cow' |
| juu-ngo 'hand' |
| ɓow-ngu 'mosquito' |
| ɗem-ngal 'tongue' |
| ɓog-gol 'rope' |
| ɓog-gii/ɓog-gii 'big rope' |
| laan-a 'boat' |
| lek-ki 'tree' |
| haak-o 'soup' |
| ɲal-ol 'calf', mol-ol 'foal' |
| lam-ɗam 'salt', ndiy-am 'water' |
| maw-ɗum 'big thing' |
| juu-ɗe 'hands' |
| na'i 'cows' |
Voice
Verbs in Fula are usually classed in three voices: active, middle, and passive.
Not every root is used in all voices. Some middle-voice verbs are
reflexive verb.
A common example are verbs from the root -𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼 :
-
𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼𞤵𞤣𞤫 , to wash (something) active
-
𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼𞤢𞥄𞤣𞤫 , to wash (oneself) middle
-
𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼𞤫𞥅𞤣𞤫 , to be washed passive
Consonant mutation
Another feature of the language is initial consonant mutation between singular and plural forms of nouns and of verbs (except in Pular, no consonant mutation exists in verbs, only in nouns).
A simplified schema is:
-
w ↔ b ↔ mb
-
r ↔ d ↔ nd
-
y ↔ j ↔ nj
-
w ↔ g ↔ ng
-
f ↔ p
-
s ↔ c
-
h ↔ k
Pronouns
Fula has inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns. The inclusive pronouns include both the speaker and those being spoken to, while the exclusive pronouns exclude the listeners.
The pronoun that corresponds to a given noun is determined by the noun class. Because men and women belong to the same noun class, the English pronouns "he" and "she" are translated into Fula by the same pronoun. However, depending on the dialect, there are some 25 different noun classes, each with its own pronoun. Sometimes those pronouns have both a nominative case (i.e., used as verb subject) and an accusative or dative case (i.e., used as a verb object) as well as a possessive form. Relative pronouns generally take the same form as the nominative.
Writing systems
There were unsuccessful efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to create a unique script to write Fulfulde.
Adlam script
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, two teenage brothers, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry from the Nzérékoré Region of Guinea, created the
Adlam script, which accurately represents all the sounds of Fulani. The script is written from right to left and includes 28 letters with 5 vowels and 23 consonants.
Arabic script
Fula has also been written in the
Arabic script or
Ajami since before European colonization by many scholars and learned people including Usman dan Fodio and the early emirs of the northern Nigeria emirates. This continues to a certain degree and notably in some areas like
Guinea and
Cameroon.
Fula also has Arabic loanwords.
Latin alphabet
When written using the
Latin script, Fula uses the following additional special "hooked" characters to distinguish meaningfully different sounds in the language: Ɓ/ɓ , Ɗ/ɗ , Ŋ/ŋ , Ɲ/ɲ , Ƴ/ƴ . The letters c, j, and r, respectively represent the sounds , , and . Double vowel characters indicate that the vowels are elongated. An apostrophe (ʼ) is used as a glottal stop. It uses the five vowel system denoting vowel sounds and their lengths. In Nigeria ʼy substitutes ƴ, and in Senegal Ñ/ñ is used instead of ɲ.
Sample Fula alphabet
a, aa, b, mb (or nb), ɓ, c, d, nd, ɗ, e, ee, f, g, ng, h, i, ii, j, nj, k, l, m, n, ŋ, ɲ (ny or
ñ)
, o, oo, p, r, s, t, u, uu, w, y, ƴ or y,
The letters q, v, x, z are used in some cases for loan words.
|
| A | B | Nb | Ɓ | C | D | Nd | Ɗ | E | F | G | Ng | H | I | J | Nj | K | L | M | N | Ŋ | Ɲ | O | P | R | S | T | U | W | Y | Ƴ | |
|
| a | b | nb | ɓ | c | d | nd | ɗ | e | f | g | ng | h | i | j | nj | k | l | m | n | ŋ | ɲ | o | p | r | s | t | u | w | y | ƴ | |
|
| | | | | ~ | | | | ~ | | | | | ~ | ~ | ~
| | | | | | | ~ | | | | | ~ | | | | |
Long vowels are written doubled:
The standard Fulfulde alphabet adopted during the UNESCO-sponsored expert meeting in Bamako in March 1966 is as follows:
Sample text
The following is a sample text in Fula of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
See also
-
Pular grammar (a presentation for one variety of Fula)
-
David Whitehorn Arnott
Notes
External links
- Fula on the web
Below are some websites from different countries that use the Latin alphabet of Fula/Fulfulde:
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