A Niger-Congo language spoken across the Sahel from Senegal to Sudan — the language of the historically pastoralist Fulani people, with about 65 million speakers.
Where it’s spoken
Fula (also called Fulani, Pulaar, Fulfulde, or Pular depending on region) is spoken across the entire West African Sahel and into Central Africa — a band stretching from Senegal and Mauritania in the west through Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon to Chad and Sudan in the east. It has many dialects, some only partially mutually intelligible.
What it sounds like
Fula features implosive consonants (ɓ, ɗ, ƴ) and a complex noun-class system with roughly two dozen classes — among the highest in the Niger-Congo family. It uses initial consonant mutation, where the first consonant of a word changes depending on grammatical category (singular vs plural, for example).
How it’s written
Modern Fula is written in a Latin alphabet using special letters for implosives (ɓ, ɗ, ƴ, ŋ). There is also a long tradition of writing Fula in Arabic script (Ajami), particularly for Islamic religious texts.
History
Fula spread across the Sahel through pastoral migration and through 18th–19th-century jihadist states like the Sokoto Caliphate, which used Fula as a language of administration and Islamic scholarship.
Find more languages by letter
Fula starts with F and ends with A. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Fula":