Fula 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. It has 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 to make the Bible comprehensible for most Fula speakers, and it treats those varieties as separate languages. Fula dialects are also often split into four regions: the Western area, Central area, Niger and Nigeria, and the Eastern area. The dialects are as follows:

Western Area

• Pulaar
• Pular

Central Area

• Maasina Fulfulde
• Gorgal Fulfulde
• Borgu Fulfulde

Niger and Nigeria

• Nigerian Fulfulde (also known as Hausa States Fulani)
• Niger Lettugal Fulfulde

Eastern Area

• Adamawa Fulfulde
• Bagirmi Fulfulde

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 infixes, as they come between the root and the inflectional ending) to modify meaning. These suffixes often serve the same purposes in Fula that prepositions do in English.

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.

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.

A common example are verbs from the root -𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼 loot-:

• 𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼𞤵𞤣𞤫 lootude, to wash (something) [active voice]
• 𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼𞤢𞥄𞤣𞤫 lootaade, to wash (oneself) [middle voice]
• 𞤤𞤮𞥅𞤼𞤫𞥅𞤣𞤫 looteede, to be washed [passive voice]

Consonant mutation

Another feature of the language is initial consonant mutation between singular and plural forms of both nouns and verbs in most dialects. In Pular, however, only nouns experience consonant mutation, not verbs.

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

Five different scripts have been or are used to write Fula. It was historically written in a form of the Arabic script known as Ajami, and although not standardized, it is still used by some today.

During the colonial period and after independence, the Latin script began to be used to write Fula, leading to efforts facilitated by UNESCO to standardize transcription. This process also addressed other African languages, incorporating use of modified letters to represent sounds particular to these languages, and it has been the basis for Latin-based Fula orthographies since the mid-1960s.

There were two unsuccessful efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to create a unique script to write Fulfulde, namely Fula Dita and Fula Ba. In 1989, the Adlam script was created specifically for Fula.

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 the Ajami script 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 ʼy), ʼ

The letters q, v, x, z are used in some cases for loan words.

Long vowels are written doubled: <aa, ee, ii, oo, uu> The standard Fulfulde alphabet adopted during the UNESCO-sponsored expert meeting in Bamako in March 1966 is as follows: a, b, mb, ɓ, c, d, nd, ɗ, e, f, g, ng, h, i, j, nj, k, l, m, n, ŋ, ny (later ɲ or ñ), o, p, r, s, t, u, w, y, ƴ, ʼ.

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Fula of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first line is in Adlam, the second in Latin script, the third in IPA.

𞤋𞤲𞥆𞤢𞤥𞤢

Innama

/inːama

𞤢𞥄𞤣𞤫𞥅𞤶𞤭

aadeeji

aːdeːɟi

𞤬𞤮𞤬

fof

fof

𞤨𞤮𞤼𞤭,

poti,

poti,

𞤲𞤣𞤭𞤥𞤯𞤭𞤣𞤭

ndimɗidi

ⁿdimɗidi

𞤫

e

e

𞤶𞤭𞤦𞤭𞤲𞤢𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤫

jibinannde

ɟibinanⁿde

𞤼𞤮

to

to

𞤦𞤢𞤲𞥆𞤺𞤫

bannge

banᵑge

𞤸𞤢𞤳𞥆𞤫𞥅𞤶𞤭.

hakkeeji.

hakːeːɟi.

𞤉𞤩𞤫

Eɓe

eɓe

𞤽𞤮𞥅𞤣𞤭

ngoodi

ᵑgoːdi

𞤥𞤭𞥅𞤶𞤮

miijo

miːɟo

𞤫

e

e

𞤸𞤢𞤳𞥆𞤭𞤤𞤢𞤲𞤼𞤢𞥄𞤺𞤢𞤤

hakkilantaagal

hakːilantaːgal

𞤫𞤼𞤫

ete

ete

𞤫𞤩𞤫

eɓe

eɓe

𞤨𞤮𞤼𞤭

poti

poti

𞤸𞤵𞥅𞤬𞤮

huufo

huːfo

𞤲𞤣𞤭𞤪𞤣𞤫

ndirde

ⁿdirde

𞤫

e

e

𞤲𞤣𞤫𞤪

nder

ⁿder

𞤩

ɓ

ɓ

𞤭𞤴𞤽𞤵𞤴𞤵𞤥𞥆𞤢𞥄𞤺𞤵

iynguyummaagu.

ijᵑgujumːaːgu./

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."