Yoruba

Where it’s spoken

Yoruba is the mother tongue of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria, with significant communities in Benin and Togo. Yoruba religious traditions traveled to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade, where they shape Cuban Santería, Brazilian Candomblé, and Haitian Vodou — with Yoruba liturgical vocabulary preserved in those contexts.

What it sounds like

Yoruba has three contrastive tones — high, mid, and low — marked in writing with acute, no mark, and grave accents. The vowel inventory includes seven oral and five nasal vowels. The combination of tones and vowel changes can completely transform a word’s meaning (the classic example: oko can mean farm, husband, vehicle, or hoe depending on tones).

How it’s written

Yoruba uses the Latin alphabet plus dotted ẹ, ọ, and ṣ to distinguish vowel quality and a fricative. Tones are marked in formal and pedagogical writing but often dropped in newspapers and online text.

History

Yoruba’s literary tradition begins in the 19th century with Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s 1843 translation work and grammars. The pre-colonial Oyo Empire’s cultural influence helped spread the language.