Fula language
Fula (/ˈfuːlə/ FOO-lə),[2] also known as Fulani (/fʊˈlɑːniː/ fuul-AH-nee)[2] or Fulah[3][4] (Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular; Adlam: 𞤊𞤵𞤤𞤬𞤵𞤤𞤣𞤫, 𞤆𞤵𞤤𞤢𞥄𞤪, 𞤆𞤵𞤤𞤢𞤪; Ajami: ࢻُلْࢻُلْدٜ, ݒُلَارْ, بُۛلَر), is a Senegambian language spoken by around 36.8 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stretches across some 18 countries in West and Central Africa.
Along with other related languages such as Serer and Wolof, it belongs to the Atlantic geographic group within Niger–Congo, and more specifically to the Senegambian branch.
It is also spoken as a second language by various peoples in the region, such as the Kirdi of northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria.
Mandinka, but also Malinke and Bamana) and Hausa, respectively; Peul in French, also occasionally found in literature in English, comes from Wolof.
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.
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.
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, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, numbering more than 95 million speakers in total.
[12][13][14] 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.
When written using the Latin script, Fula uses the following additional special "hooked" characters to distinguish meaningfully different sounds in the language: Ɓ/ɓ [ɓ], Ɗ/ɗ [ɗ ], Ŋ/ŋ [ŋ], Ɲ/ɲ [ ɲ], Ƴ/ƴ [ʔʲ].
[clarification needed] 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:
