Books on Fula Grammar:
Currently working on a Primer for teaching Fula. Come back in a month for the note.
Fula is the type language of the Senegambian branch (Fig. 1) of Niger-Congo Languages [cite, Wikipedia]. Other common Senegambian languages are Wolof and Serer, the latter been the closest relative to Fula. While most speakers of Senegambian languages are concentrated around the westernmost corner of West Africa -- Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau -- the 25-40 million speakers of Fula are spread out across the Sahel and Sudan belt of the region, from Senegal to Central African Republic [cite[
Over the last two centuries, Fula has occupied its fair share of space in the libraries of Western linguists. However, those extensive analyses of phonology (study of sounds) and morphosyntactic (study of word structure and grammar) aspects of their native language sound entirely Greek to the majority of Fulɓe[i] (Fula natives).
Yet, it is only by articulating those linguistic patterns formalized by a cadre of foreign academics can a Pular-speaking Fuutanke[1] effectively understand Adamawan Fulfulde or Mauritanian Pulaar. In essence, if a Haali-Fulfulde[2] can barely articulate the ubiquitous phenomenon of, say, consonant mutation[3], there is little chance that she can explain to an adult non-native speaker why windu and bindi refer to the same thing[4]. Granted understanding the theory of consonant mutation is not a requisite for acquiring any Fula dialect as a native language, it is required for mutual intelligibility of dialects that have preferential treatment for one consonant over another in a consonant mutation pair (e.g., b and w).
More important than teaching consonant mutation, I think, is the medium with which the phenomenon is taught. The fact that b and w are on opposite sides of the Latin alphabet and Arabic (Hijai order) inventory makes it even harder to drive the message home that the two letters are interchangeable at the initial position of many nouns and verbs in Fula, Biafada, Bedik, Konyagi, and perhaps other Senegambian Languages. Now, if only the b-w pair were the exception to the rule, one could overlook such a peculiarity, but consonant mutation 1) occurs in two out of every three Fula consonants, and 2) is the unifying theme of the Senegambian branch of Niger-Congo Languages.
Taken together, the complexity of consonant mutation, the large inventory of noun-classes and the lack of an appropriate model/alphabet system to intuit consonant mutation create an unnecessarily steep learning curve for non-native speakers of any Senegambian Language. So, with the exception of linguists (whose job it is to decode phonology and morphology), it is doubtful than any other non-native speaker would be willing to make the expensive temporal and financial investment to the study of an apparently less tractable language. In the case of Fula, its impracticality might as well drive away its native speakers to search for simpler languages to communicate with the diverse urban residents of Banjul, Conakry, Dakar, Freetown, and Kano. A harsher prognosis is that: Lest something be done, Fula (and perhaps, other Senegambian languages) will live and breathe its last in the blogs of caring language revivalists and the pdf files of specialized linguistics journals of Niger-Congo languages. But that shouldn’t happen!
A few orthographies for writing Senegambian Languages have been developed over the last millennium: A variety of Ajami by way of Islam; Latin alphabets by way of colonialism; novel scripts such as Fula Dita (c. 1960), Fula Ba (Mali, 1963), ADLaM (1987), Wolof Garay (1961), a Guinean Pular alphabet (19XX); and a non-Abugida Arabic-based alphabet system for Fulfulde (APESS, Burkina Faso, c. 1980s), [cite] etc. (These orthographic systems will be discussed further in chapter 3).
Like many native speakers of Senegambian Languages, I applaud the modern inventors for dedicating their time and energy to the revival of our culture. Yet, having surveyed the disparate scripts -- some more so than others -- I’ve come to the realization that even the most original of them confer no additional functionality over Latin or Ajami scripts. Some scripts are actually less practical than either Latin or Ajami, taking up more space and time to write.
It then begs the question: In the current era of globalization and language contact, is it justifiable to invent a writing system for the sake of originality?
If we must reinvent the wheel in a globalized world, we cannot afford to overlook the successes of Latin alphabets and Arabic Abugida. In the same vein, calling a novel script “native” Fula or Wolof doesn’t make it so if “foreign” Ajami or Latin does the job faster while consuming fewer pages. Along those lines, a literacy campaign is only as successful as the tools in place, primarily, the efficiency of the orthographic system. The fact that the average person uses more time and space to read and write the same sentences in UPPER CASE than in lower case letters [cite] convinces us that structure (writing system) has a huge impact on function (verbal communication). In an era of abundance, shouldn’t we hold our inventors and inventions to higher standards? Shouldn’t we demand better functionality? Shouldn’t we demand that the writing system model the complexity of the language(s) in question? Where consonant mutation is the rule rather than the exception, shouldn’t Senegambian languages be written in a script that obeys such a rule?
Mutually Intelligible is a compilation of what I, another hopeful revivalist, have decided to do about the aforementioned harsh prognosis. I am a graduate student of the life sciences by day, a self-taught linguist by night, and a 26-year old native speaker of Fuuta-Jalon Pular. I have lived most of my life in urban areas along the West African coast and in New York State surrounded by very few native Haali-Pular. And it is from the perspective of these diverse next-door neighbors and roommates that I fashion this pamphlet. I make the basic assumptions that my audience is an adult who may not speak any Fula dialect, but understands the basics of English language grammar. If I can explain the complex syntaxes of Fula to this hypothetical individual, then Fula native speakers -- irrespective of their age -- will have no problem following along, given they have had a head start to intuit Fula grammar.
When I began writing Mutually Intelligible I was primarily interested in providing a mechanism for increasing intelligibility among native speakers of various Fula dialects. But along the way, I learned that Fula is linguistically related and typologically similar to other Senegambian Languages. This finding led me to stress-test my initial proposal and output an adaptable writing system that can typographically model consonant mutations among the greater Senegambian Languages. Still, given my unfamiliarity with the other Senegambian Languages, I will focus my attention on Fula in this pamphlet, but will draw attention to typological similarities, and problems and solutions shared by the group as a whole.
It’s fair to say that I’m attempting to reinvent -- or better yet, reimagine -- the wheel. My overall hypothesis is that a simple script (known as Mbayle[5]) that models the ubiquitous rules of consonant mutation (Mbaylu) has the potential to lower the barrier to communicating in Fula and in the greater Senegambian languages.
[1] Demonym for people of Fuuta-Jalon or Fuuta Tooro.
[2] Haali-Fulfulde = speaker of the Fulfulde dialect cf. Pular and Pulaar dialects
[3] Consonant alternation is a common phenomenon among the Senegambian language. At the beginning of a word, 67% of Fula consonant can switch places with up to two other consonants. For instance the word windu and bindi both refer to the process of writing (windu = verb; bindol = noun). Sometimes between two dialects is as simple as choosing to say write starting with the letter b vs. the letter w.
[4] Both refer to the concept of writing - windu (verb), bindi (noun)
[5] A cognate noun of the verb “waylu” (change cf. mutation in “consonant mutation”).
[i] The “ɓ” consonant doesn’t exist in the English language. It’s an implosive stop that can be loosely pronounced as ‘b’. It is sometimes spelled as ‘bh’.
Basic Fula letters from the list.
Fula concept, called Mbayle, as in mutants.