Learning Yorùbá with English Class 01

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So you decide to learn Yorùbá language with English. That is a great choice. We’ll try as much as possible to ensure you don’t regret your choice by eliminating anything that may seem ambiguous in the process. Have you ever heard the saying “French is a language of Love”? Well, Yorùbá is a language of Music, so follow me on this journey as we sing along the whole process and where best to start than the alphabet.

Yoruba Alphabets

A    B    D    E    Ẹ    F    G    GB    I    H    J    K    L    M    N    O    Ọ    P    R    S    Ṣ    T    U    W    Y

Yoruba language has 25 alphabets. Most of the letters are the same thing as English letters, but about five letters are omitted. These are C, Q, V, X and Z. They are replaced with four letters which are Ẹ, GB, Ọ and Ṣ

Sound:

The underlined English letters below illustrate the sound of the new Yoruba letter:

Ẹ as in Egg, Hell, End

GB as in Nigbati, Gbadamosi, Gboom

Ọ as in Orange, Onions, Onga

Ṣ as in Shade, Short, Shy, Shoot

I hope you are able to get the pronunciation with the above illustration.

 

Consonants

A    B    D    F    G    GB    H    J    K    L    M    N    P    R    S    Ṣ    T    W    Y

Vowels

A    E    Ẹ    I    O    Ọ    U

Sound:

A as in Hack, Action, Act, Hands, And

E as in Aim, Hate, Gate, Change

Ẹ as in Egg, Hell, End

I as in Eat, In, Kill, Feel

O as in Hope, Bowl, Owl, Roll, Own

Ọ as in Orange, Onions, Onga, On

U as in Food, Put, Rule, Bull, Fool

Please note that the underlined letters in English words illustrate the sound or pronunciation of the Yorùbá letter before it.

Tones

Next is the tonal mark. Remember, I told you earlier that Yoruba is a language of music. Here is where you will find out why.

Each of the letters mentioned earlier has three different tones that could change the meaning of a word when altered. The three tones are the first musical tones DO (À) RE (Ā) MI (Á). Please listen to the audio version of this article to get a full understanding of its pronunciation.

These tones are restricted to the seven vowels except the letter N which sometimes translates as “I” in Yorùbá without the MI mark, and with MI mark (Ń) it translates as the ing morpheme as in doing, singing, teaching.

So we can say that all the vowels are multiplied in 3:

À    Ā    Á

È    Ē    É

Ẹ̀    Ẹ̄    Ẹ́

Ì    Ī    Í

Ò    Ō    Ó

Ọ̀    Ọ̄    Ọ́

Ù    Ū    Ú

Professional writers don’t bother putting the RE mark in their writings. So in every Yorùbá text that you see its vowel missing the DO (À) or MI (Á) tone mark, it is safe to pronounce it as RE (Ā). Just like the Yorùbá here, the fully marked word will be Yōrùbá. I don’t know why or who first chose to cheat RE(Ā) in the club but all Yorùbá writers are doing it and we kinda prefer it that way.

Now there are other kinds of vowels called the Yoruba nasal vowels but we are skipping that for now not to complicate things from the beginning. Try to understand and pronounce these right first, then the rest will be easy to comprehend.

Hey, you can send a voice record of yourself pronouncing the vowels with the three tones to this email address: irismediaps@gmail.com or just click here to find yourself on our WhatsApp DM. I’ll tell you how much progress we are making with your Yorùbá pronunciation.

See you in the next class.