Fula

Why Fula has so many names

The Fula people call their language Pulaar or Pular in the western dialects and Fulfulde in the central and eastern ones. The English names Fula, Fulah and Fulani came from Manding and from Hausa, and French Peul came from Wolof. It is a lingua franca in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, the Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria, among others. In Mali it is a trade language in the Mopti region and beyond.

Is Fula one language or several

Wilson wrote in 1989 that travellers over wide distances never find communication impossible, and Ka concluded in 1991 that Fulfulde is fundamentally one language. Ethnologue treats it as several, because nine Bible translations are needed to reach most speakers. The dialects fall into a western area, a central area with Maasina Fulfulde, a Niger and Nigeria area and an eastern one.

What the noun classes do

Each noun class carries its own suffix and its own pronoun, and some group things by shape or kind: long stringy things, big things, liquids. Men and women fall in the same class, so he and she are one pronoun. In most dialects nouns and verbs change their first consonant between singular and plural, w to b to mb, r to d to nd.

How five scripts came to be used

Fula was written in Arabic Ajami before colonial rule, by scholars including Usman dan Fodio. Latin spelling spread after independence and was standardised at a UNESCO meeting in Bamako in March 1966, with hooked letters such as ɓ, ɗ and ƴ. Fula Dita and Fula Ba failed in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1989 the brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry of Guinea created Adlam, 28 letters written right to left.