Fulani girl, Niger, by John Kelly

Can’t wait for summer to rock some Fulani braids ‍♀️⁣

⁣ ☼⁣

I lowkey want to make this a print! What do you think? ⁣

Fula(ni) (Fulfulde//الفولاني)

Basic facts

• Number of native speakers: 14.5 million
• Spoken in: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte dʼIvoire, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, The Gambia, Togo
• Script: Latin, 32 letters/Arabic, 39 letters/Adlam, 34 letters
• Grammatical cases: 0
• Linguistic typology: fusional, SVO
• Language family: Atlantic-Congo, Atlantic, Senegambian, Fula-Serer
• Number of dialects: 9

History

• 12th century - Fula words are first recorded by Arabs
• 17th century - first European records
• 1966 - establishment of Latin alphabet conventions
• 1989 - the Adlam script is created

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the Latin script: a b mb ɓ c d nd ɗ e f g ng h i j nj k l m n ŋ ñ/ɲ/ny o p r s t u w y ƴ ʼ.

These are the letters that make up the Arabic script: ق ڢ ݠ غ ع ظ ط ض ص ش س ز ر ذ د خ ح ج ث ت بٴ ب ا مب ند نْغ نج رّ ء ي۟ يٴ ي و ه نغ ن م ک ل.

These are the letters that make up the Adlam script: .

Fula is primarily written using the Latin alphabet, but the Arabic script remains in use in Cameroon and Guinea. The Adlam script is used in Guinea, Liberia, and Nigeria.

Long vowels are graphically represented by doubling the vowel.

Grammar

Nouns have two numbers (singular and plural). To form the pluralform, a suffixis added, and the initial consonant suffers a mutation. There are between 20 and 25 noun classes, some of which are only reserved for singular or plural.

First-person plural personal pronounshaveinclusive and exclusiveforms.Demonstrative and possessive pronounsfollow the noun.

Verbsareconjugated for tense, mood, aspect, voice, and object. There are also derivative conjugations that may express repetition, reciprocity, or an action opposite to that of the stem.

Dialects

Fula is considered a dialect continuum that includes ninemaindialects: Adamawa Fulfulde, Bagirmi Fulfulde, Borgu Fulfulde, Central-Easter Niger Fulfulde, Maasina Fulfulde, Nigerian Fulfulde, Pular, Pulaar, and Western Niger Fulfulde.

Neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible.

Recently found I am Nigerian

I’ve been inactive for a while, dealing with more important…more time consuming things. I’m currently on pace for a downtown apartment this March, potentially being hired on at my job within the next 2 weeks (I’ve been very busy), and working on some other stuff.

And yes, a nigga laptop screen is still cracked to this day. I just haven’t really made the time to fix it. With my apartment situation soon, I plan to finally get that fixed then and also buy an iMac. I have over 50 drafts right now and plenty more source material sitting around elsewhere (also thank you for 4,600 followers in less than a year of activity, appreciate yall). I’m also going to be starting a Patreon to help push this forward. I’ll have details on that within the next few months, so stay tuned.

Now, in regards to the title: I am Nigerian. Which region and ethnic group we come from, I don’t know this accurate of information yet. I have ancestry within the Senagambian region, Ghana and the Gold Coast. I’ve known a lot about/done a lot of research into genealogy, African archaeogenetics, ethnography, historiography, etc. over the years, and within most of what it happens to be related to, Nigeria has always been a main focus; Igbo, Hausa, Biafra, Sokoto (Usman dan Fodio/Nana Asma'u–two of my biggest interests), Fulani, and Tuareg berber-related things specificially. Among other things. So this came as no surprise to me. My friends I discuss this type of stuff with always joked that I was Nigerian, for w.e reason. I made it my educated guess several years ago, and I also correctly predicted my Y-DNA haplogroup as well maybe 4 years ago; it’s part of a huuuuuge archaeogenetics project I’ve helped a good friend on for years.

Basically, my father’s Y-DNA came back, as I was confident, haplogroup E-V38, subclade being E1b1a. E-V38 in ancient times is thought to have spread originated, in what I’d assume is paleolithic times, in East Africa, but later got to West Africa specifically from the Middle East/Levant. I haven’t gotten to my research projects regarding the anthropological landscape of the ancient Middle East, but now I will! This haplogroup is found primarily amongst Nigerians (Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, etc.), Tuareg Berbers of Niger and Libya specifically, Senegalese, and Ghanaians (Asante, etc.) among others albeit in smaller quantities. Also, from what I read recently from a study of Moorish remains in Northwest Africa, it was also present amongst the Moors of antiquity as well. E-V38 is also the haplogroup of Pharaoh Ramesses III, subclade also being E1b1a, iirc.

My mother on the other hand is an odd discovery! From her mtDNA I inhereted the maternal haplogroup L0a1a, which is common in Southeast Africa among people/regions such as Ethiopians and in southern Yemen (my guess is admixture with Ethiopians during the period throughout the kingdoms of D'mt and Saba/Sheba, and the Axumite empire), Mozambique, etc., but also present in small numbers throughtout Northwest/West among the likes of Tuaregs and something like 1 to 5% of Guineans. Oddly enough I grew up with a lot of Eritrean people (one of those “two families collide into one” type of deal that goes back generations; also by marriage). Grew up going to coffee ceremonies at elders’ homes and eating injera and mesir, lol. Still do once or twice a week to this day. Haplogroup L also happens to be the oldest mitochondrial lineage in human history, iirc, being the offshoot of Mitochondrial Eve in southern Africa. That and Nelson Mandela’s haplogroup.

Lastly, I want to be cultured more on where I come from. If anyone could assist me, this would be AMAZING! Fr family somebody get me hip.

Nigeria specifically my knowledge of Nigerian history and culture extends to topics/specific subjects like: food ofc, the region’s archaeology, indigenous architecure, a lot about Igbo people/culture, Ile-Ife (but not much more than that about Yoruba), Fula people, Shehu Usman dan Fodio+Nana Asma'u and the Sokoto Caliphate, Hausa people, Asante/Ashanti people/empire (Ik a but on the Gold Coast century long conflict with the British), some northern politics relating to Shaykh Ibrahim Zakzakay/etc., the civil war and Biafra, Songhai Empire (Askia, Sonni Ali, etc.), ik a lot of Tuareg berbers in the north, the Benin empire (bronzes, Walls of Benin, etc.), Kanem-Bornu, etc.

Idk much about recent history, culture, society or any of that. Nothing political much either (aside from Shaykh Zakzakay’s situation, memes from Nigerian films, and Big Man Tyrone on youtube).