Yoruba Language

Some observations about Yorùbá language

The Yorùbá language or, èdè Yorùbá, is a dialect continuum that is found in many variations in western Africa and there are found approximately 15 dialectic variations in Yorubaland. The language is defined as being tonal, this means that:

The first African Bishop for the Anglican Church, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, published the first Yoruba grammar in 1850 and is largely responsible for presenting a standardized Yoruba as we know it. His first major translation-task was the translation of the Bible and this certainly led to a wide range of translation errors occurring in the work with introducing a completely alien world view to the Yoruba speaking people. As such Crowther was to some extent responsible for importing ideas pertaining to a dualist worldview and Christianized ideas of ‘evil’, as well as similar Christian translations of terms, names an ideas that is highly dubious an at times completely meaningless. Still, Crowther contributed greatly to our understanding of Yoruba literary meaning.

It is therefore recommended that in order to understand the message the language aim to communicate that the student critically discern context and use of words and terms when seeking to understand the language. Yoruba is free from Latin influences, but there is found a number of Arabic loanwords, such as àlàáfíà, which indicates ‘blessing’. The idea of being blessed indicates ‘wealth’, ‘health’, ‘peace’ and ‘long life’, ideas we find in words such as ibùkún, sure and ìyín.  It is likely that these loanwords and Arabic influences came through the interaction with the Hausa

Because Yorùbá was written down by Crowther the Latin alphabet was used as the blueprint for the written language. Some specific peculiarities are the use of digraph, gb, which is a sound of two consonants pronounced at the same time and several diacritics, which are signified by the vertical line or underlining of certain letters. The letters c, q, v, x and z are not used in Yorùbá. The alphabet will therefore look like this and below you will find the possibilities for each of the vowels will present us with the following sequences:

A
B
D
E
Ẹ
F
G
Gb
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
Ọ
P
R
S
Ṣ
T
U
W
Y
a
b
d
e
ẹ
f
g
gb
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
ọ
p
r
s
ṣ
t
u
w
y
Á
À
Ā
É
È
Ā
Ẹ
/
E
̩
Gb
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
Ọ
P
R
S
Ṣ
T
U
W
Y
á
à
Ā
é
è
Ā
Ẹ
/
E
̩
gb
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
ọ
p
r
s
ṣ
t
u
w
y

Phonologically the language provides us with seven oral and five nasal vowels depending on the way the letter is marked.
Yoruba has three tones, they being low, middle and high. The tonality of a word can totally alter the meaning, take for instance the following example where we have examples of all three tonalities:

Oògùn – medicine, charm
Ogún – inheritance
Ogun – war
Ògún – God of Iron
Ògùn – Ògùn river

Another distinct feature in Yoruba language is the use of assimilation and elision. Elision is the deliberate omission of parts of the word, a form of contraction. This usually happens if one word ends with a vowel and the other word starts with a vowel, one then delete the vowel and make a contraction of the words. This generates a better flow of the language. One of an enormous amount of examples is Òrúnmilá,, which is an elision of Òrún – Mí – Elá and by realizing the parts of a name we also realize the meaning of the name. Likewise Yemoja is another example, an elision of Iya mo eja, ‘mother of fish’.

Often the use of elision seem to confuse people in the Diaspora who then engage into some misguided guesswork, free from original context and meaning when they analyse Yorùbá words and terms. Let us take one popular misconception as an example, the word laroye. This word is commonly used as a greeting for Exu in Brazil. This is actually a corrupted elision of Iya ero Oyé, which can means, ‘Mother descends with blessing or ‘Mothers are close’ as a reference to a manifestation of Èsú that brings the blessings of sweetness to mankind, through the aid of Osún.

Likewise, the same word can signify at the same time a thing, a person or an act. For instance the word Ifá can refer to Òrúnmilá, to the diviner, to the fundamental wisdom of the faith, to the divination being performed. In other words there is not always much difference between the act in question and the person or power that effectuates the act.

These are some particular features of the Yorùbá language that will aid the seeker to appreciate the richness of Ifá even more. Because the holistic richness and its all-connectedness is revealed even in the language!

In the western mind the idea of blessings and good things are automatically reflected by a whole range of diabolic ideas related to the realm of ‘evil’ which in the context of Yorùbá traditional world view is meaningless on its own. Every word in Yorùbá has colloquial implications and the meaning is found in the context it is utilized. This means that seemingly meaningful words such as adé, i.e. crown do gain additional and deeper meaning depending on in which context the word is utilized.

Another significant factor is that Yorúbá share common linguistic roots with proto sinaitic, namely the liturgical language gez – and share a similar mystical and spiritual dimension as we find in sinaitic. What these two languages have in common is the use of the power of the word for bringing into manifestation the spiritual realities of aiyé and òrún as encoded in the corpus of odù. The mystical approach towards the power of words and names as found in the Sephardic tradition evokes similarities in the use of words in Yorùbá to effectively manifest spiritual realities.