Alagba Ibrahim Abdullah,
Many grateful thanks for your very informative, and for me thrilling account of those good old days of the Yoruba people of Sierra Leone.
However, (and no professional sceptic am I) I hesitate to take your word for it that "The last Yoruba speaker in Fourah Bay was a woman—Aunty Amina Alharazim who passed away in 1990. There are no Yoruba speakers in Foulah Town or Aberdeen."
It should be easy to smoke them out. These hard times in Sierra Leone, I'm sure that if you were to offer a $10,000 reward for each Yoruba speaker that reports himself/herself at the nearest police station, you would soon have to be dishing out hundreds of thousands, maybe, millions of American dollars.
It's an intriguing hypothesis that in Sierra Leone, Yoruba as a language "disappeared because the missionaries equated Yoruba with "fetish"; the fought everything and anything "African".
Those evil missionaries. So in which language did the popular Adeleke Adejobi and the "Aladura" cults do their preaching and proselytizing?
Thank God they were not able to wipe out ( God forbid) the Yoruba Language in Yoruba Land.
True: Sadly, the Yoruba identity has been subsumed or merged with a more general Creole/ Krio identity perhaps when it comes to language but not when it comes to the DNA of biological and cultural ethnicity / roots.
True also, sadly and oddly enough, it seems that it is no longer the case that the Creoles/ krio give their children Yoruba names.
Should Professor Stephen Akintoye 's inspiring conclusion be taken to heart, it would solve the problem of
"Ultimately, what is important about a nation is not its name but its record of contributions to human civilization. On such a basis, the Yoruba nation has a very great deal to be proud of, and the name Yoruba deserves to ring out proudly on the earth. My message to every Yoruba person: Your nation's Yoruba name is a great and noble name in the world; bear it proudly everywhere, and, by your conduct, always strive to enhance its greatness and nobility."
To begin with, Yoruba should be an important language in the school curriculum, not only in order to access some of Tunde Kelani , Nollywood, the Great Yoruba Music and lyrics…
On Saturday, 26 October 2019 21:45:14 UTC+2, Ibrahim Abdullah wrote:
Baba Cornelius:When I grew up at no. 9 First Street off Mountain Cut in the early 60s Yoruba was a lingua franca around that area. The Victorian house we lived was peopled by Nigerian immigrants predominantly from "Yorbaland". There were all sorts—from Illesha to Ibadan to Ede to Ogbomosho and Lagos. In the early 60s the Khutba in all the masjid among the Oku was delivered in Yoruba. Yoruba was not widely spoken among the Aku in the 60s. Those who spoke Yoruba were the immigrants from Nigeria.Yes the language survived; chant-like among those who did Egungun and Odelay—masquerade. But that language is not intelligible. Only initiates understood what those chants are. As a Yoruba speaker myself I struggle to understand what they are saying. Those who understood the language passed away in the 60s/70s. Today there are hardly any Yoruba speakers amongst these secret society members or the Aku community.I have often wondered, and still do, why the language died in Sierra Leone but survived in Brasil and Cuba. I heard Yoruba spoken in Bahia when I visited. The last Yoruba speaker in Fourah Bay was a woman—Aunty Amina Alharazim who passed away in 1990. There are no Yoruba speakers in Foulah Town or Aberdeen.Yoruba was a lingua france in nineteenth century Freetown, ; used in most public functions after 1850. From churches to school to everyday gatherings. Ajayi Crowther delivered his inaugural sermon in Yoruba in 1840 in Freetown.Why did the language disappear? It disappeared because the missionaries equated Yoruba with "fetish"; the fought everything and anything "African". The result an hybridity that slowly became creoled. It is significant that creolisation emerged in the twentieth century at a time when Yoruba as a language was being pushed to the periphery.On Oct 26, 2019, at 3:04 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:Alagba Ibrahim Abdullah,
Not being a linguist, Cornelius Ignoramus is aware that he may be wading into dangerous waters.
Re - "the Yoruba language which curiously survived in far away Brazil and Cuba but not in nearby Sierra Leone"
Some time ago, here in Stockholm, at home with my Sanitaria friends from Cuba, they were trying to impress me, talking with awe and veneration about their Nigerian Babalawo and - with all respect, I believe that they were babbling some liturgy/incantations in what sounded to my ears as nothing less than some kind of pidgin Yoruba, there at their altar shrine with candles burning bright and effigies including one that was supposed to represent Oya and another the Mother of Jesus…
Barring Divine intervention, how do you account for that kind of miracle in faraway Brazil and Cuba, but not in nearby, contingent Sierra Leone? Many reasons of course, but I do know this (was told so by Professor Jack Berry when I was briefly a Krio language informant to him, in Ghana) it takes a few hundred people to keep a language alive, hence, one of Sierra Leone's indigenous languages, Krim, has either died a natural death or disappeared from the radar because there are/were not enough native speakers to maintain it as a speech community.
( One of my Judaic tutors marvels at what he calls the greatest miracle of all, he said, greater than the Children of Israel crossing the Red Sea leaving the Pharaoh and his charioteers far behind, finding their final resting places in their watery graves and that miracle is the resurrection of what was once exclusively the holy language, the Hebrew tongue as a modern language which is today the official language of Israel)
Tomorrow, I'm going to ask Baba Kadiri :
"Is Yoruba a holy language"
"Is Yoruba the official language in Yorubaland – and if not, why not?"
I suspect that he will have an axe to grind with "Colonialism" and "language imperialism" when dealing with question 2. I also suspect that facing a similar question in part 1 of his final exam for the B.A. Hons. Yoruba, if he started any upstart kind of answer and that paper was being marked by Lord Winterbottom, Baba Kadiri would most probably be robbed of his 1st class Honours in Yoruba, Magna cum laude tabi summa cum laude…Amen.
But Alagba Abdullah, are you sure that the Yoruba language, a rich language, is not very much alive and evolving, growing wings in contemporary Sierra Leone?
My grandmother ( Yoruba) and her generation were very Yoruba, especially my grandmother's younger sister Gertrude ( the mother of Cyril Bunting Roger-Wright // C.B. Rogers-Wright) was very Yoruba, with all of the cultural paraphernalia and for her, it was a big deal, even if it was my soft-spoken grandmother Jemimah also called Tenneh that was the ultimate authority. This is just one of hundreds of Yoruba families and their many, many descendants….
But seriously, I'm thinking of the Hunting societies such as Ojeh , all the Yoruba loan words that have been assimilated into Sierra Leone Creole/ Krio – especially in the proverbial areas such as music (Goombay ) the cuisine, wedding, naming, out-dooring, funeral ceremonies, in the area of loan words, I had to phone Baba Kadiri to ascertain the meaning of Emmerson's song title " Swegbe" and a few other contemporary Yoruba slang imported by the Yoruba ECOMORG peace-keeping soldiers who I'm told were warmly received in the East End of Freetown with welcoming greetings of "Caboh" and "ekusheh"
On Friday, 25 October 2019 18:25:53 UTC+2, Ibrahim Abdullah wrote:Cornelius:Oku and Aku are the same: singular and plural. Those who erroneously claim that Aku is the anglicized version of Oku are ignorant of its etymology/and the Yoruba language which curiously survived in far away Brazil and Cuba but not in nearby Sierra Leone.Sent from my iPhoneThank you Uyi. Its good to know we both served our tutelage under the same Adeagbo Akinjogbin that great professor of history.
Professors of history do not necessarily know all there is to know about any history topic unless it is their field of specialization and then it depends on which books and documents they have access to.
I did not have access to the publication on the origins of the name Yoruba until I was doing my second graduate studies in the US more than 15 years after my first degree.
Even as we write millions of Yoruba living in Yoruba land do not know the origins of the word Yoruba. They think it has always existed since the time of Oduduwa as I thought by the time I completed my first degree.
I have spoken of lots of diasporic movements between Ekiti East and Edo country for centuries. The name Yoruba came about circa 1400s according to my own research and there is plenty of time between that time and the 20th century for the trading classes ( who are often the vanguard of diasporic movements) to carry the name to Edo land. It would be limited to the elites and the trading classes until the post colonial period when the usage became widespread.
OAA.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Uyilawa Usuanlele <big...@hotmail.com>Date: 25/10/2019 11:43 (GMT+00:00)Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: ABOUT THE NAME 'YORUBA'
Permit me to contribute my five cowries as a Benin- Edo neighbour who was taught history by Yoruba Professors at "the source" - Ife I have a few questions on Prof. Akintoye's take viz: (1.) How come the neighbouring Benin-Edo people still identified the Yoruba with the names of the subgroups-Ekue (Akure), Ekhiri (Ekiti), Izesa (Ijesha) Uhe (Ife) and did not know of the name Yoruba until the 20th C? This is attested by Chief Eghobamien, the Osuma of Benin (who was already adult and servant to Crown Prince Idugbowa who became Oba Ovonramwen 1888-1897 and visited North East Yorubaland in the late 19th C) told Bradbury in the 1950s that they did not know of the name Yoruba until the British came.Monsignor Oguntuyi informed that his Ekiti people ( who had suffered vassalage of the Ibadan) were hostile to an Egba missionary Rev. Sowumi because he was speaking in the "Yoruba" - language of the oppressor Ibadan, and had to use an Ekiti interpreter. How come the Ekiti in the last decade of the 19th and early 20th C did not identify with the language and name Yoruba, if it had been a generic name of people who spoke closely related language?As a student of Yoruba history under Yoruba Professor Adaegbo Akinjogbin and Islam in Yoruba land under Professor Dada Adelowo at University Ife, they never mentioned "Yoruba" migrant traders in Mali or Upper Niger as early as 5th C? They only taught us about the Dyula traders (Imale) who brought Islam to Yorubaland. Is it not more plausible that these Dyula carried information about the Oyo to Songhay, rather than the other way around of Yoruba trading to Upper Niger or Mali in the 5th C?
Uyilawa Usuanlele.
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2019 8:55 AM
To: Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>; dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ABOUT THE NAME 'YORUBA'
ABOUT THE NAME 'YORUBA'Professor Stephen AkintoyeA curious debate is going on about the group name of the Yoruba nation, the name 'Yoruba'. All sorts of strange and fanciful things are being said about this name. Also, many people are calling on me to intervene in the debate. I therefore hereby intervene. But I cannot participate in the more flippant levels of debate over this or any matter; I can only make known the results of my serious research. I might add that what I reveal here is a small peep into a very important body of research on the Yoruba nation, a body of research that will, hopefully, soon appear as a book on the profile of the Yoruba nation.In modern times, the Yorùbá people in Nigeria have exhibited a remarkable degree and quality of unity as a people. Such strong unity is engendered primarily by their common love of, and pride in, their culture, their strong emphasis on development and modernization, and in their civilizational achievements in history and in modern times. It is also reinforced by their common identity with such ideals as love of freedom, respect for the individual, accountability of leadership and governance, the servanthood of rulers, religious tolerance and accommodation, hospitality towards all other peoples, tenacity in fighting for ideals, and a unique fixation, as a people, on progress in all facets of modern development and transformation.However, the question is sometimes raised in modern times whether the Yorùbá did have a common national name for themselves in their early history – before modern times (specifically before the mid-19th century). The question how long in the past a people have had a common group name is, of itself, not a major or important question. Worldwide, many a nation in its early history had no common group name, though its members roughly recognized themselves as belonging to the group and as different from others beyond the group. However, in the context of the kinds of inter-ethnic relationships that are characteristic of Nigeria's political and intellectual life, the question about lack of an early group name is repeatedly raised about the Yorùbá. The intention of such questions, often, is to cast some aspersion on Yorùbá claims and demonstrations of unity as a nation in Nigeria today. For instance, Idris S. Jimada, a Nupe author, in his book The Nupe and the Origins and Evolution of the Yorùbá, c.1275-1897, attaches interesting importance to the point. He wrote, "The name 'Yorùbá' was not an identity, for those who came later to be called Yorùbá, since the time of creation, or anytime before the mid-nineteenth century, as is so often misconceived nowadays". Even though this point bears no real significance, I think the Yoruba people need to be given information that will mold their answers and attitudes to things like this.It is known that from the middle of the 19th century, the rising literate class of the people now known as the Yorùbá began to popularize the name Yorùbá for their nation. But before then, did their nation have a common group name?In the literature of the Atlantic trade (16th to early 19th century), we see some inclusive names for those members of this nationality that were involved in the trade, but "Yorùbá" was not one of such names. In some parts of the New World, some of them were identified with subgroup names such as Eo (Ọ̀yo) ̣́ or Euba (Ẹ̀gbá), etc. Others were identified in other places with group names coined from their cultural peculiarities – names such as Aku (coined from the phrase Ẹ kú which occurs in most Yorùbá greetings), or Lucumi (apparently from the affectionate Yorùbá phrase Olùkù mi, my dear friend). Still another identifying group name in some parts of the New World was Nago (probably derived initially from the name of the far western Yorùbá subgroup, Ànàgó, from among whom some of the earliest Yorùbá entrants into the Atlantic slave trade probably originated).Yet, we also find that the name Yorùbá existed all that time. In the present state of our knowledge, the basic outline of what we know about the name Yorùbá would be as follows: First, there is some evidence strongly indicating that the name Yorùbá was in use in parts of the West African interior in reference to a people before the 16th century. That is, though the name did not occur in the records of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the New World or in Europe or on the West African coast, it did exist in the West African interior – in the Upper Niger territories in the Western Sudan where the Yorùbá had been going in large numbers since about the 5th century AD as long-distance traders. A written use of the name in reference to the group appears in a book published in Timbuktu in the Songhai Empire in 1615, written by an indigenous Songhai Arabic scholar, Ahmed Baba – author of many books, probably the most prolific Black West African scholar before the 19th century. The name Yorùbá was very probably in use there for the group before Ahmed Baba's time.Secondly, it is known that, during the era of the greatness of the Ọ̀yọ́ Empire (from the 17th to the early 19th century), the name Yorùbá was used by many peoples in West Africa, as well as by some sections of the group themselves, as a sort of second subgroup name for their Ọ̀yọ́ subgroup. Thirdly, there is good evidence that the name became common in the Western Sudan in general as the name, definitely, for the people who now bear it, the large Yorùbá nation inhabiting the country south of the Middle Niger. The information for this is from the travel journal of the English explorer Hugh Clapperton, the first European to visit the interior of Yorùbáland. In 1825-6, Clapperton's team traversed Yorùbáland from Badagry on the coast, through Ẹ̀gbádò and Ọ̀yọ́ towns, and reached Ọ̀yọ́-Ilé. They then crossed the River Niger and reached Sokoto. In their general travel through these interior countries, they first came in contact with the name Yorùbá. In Sokoto, Sultan Bello of Sokoto talked with Clapperton's team at length about the people whom he, Sultan Bello, called the Yorùbá, the people south of the Middle Niger who were regularly coming to do a lot of trade in Hausaland.Following the Clapperton exploration, the name Yorùbá became gradually widely known among European traders and missionaries on the West African coast as the common name for the people who had been known in the Atlantic world by various other names for about three centuries. The name then spread in the hands of the Christian missionaries working on the coast and other parts of West Africa. Then it was received and spread by the freed slaves returning home from the New World and Sierra Leone, and thereafter by the generality of the growing class of literate Yorùbá – and then by all of the Yoruba people.Thus, we do have hundreds of years of history of the existence of the name Yorùbá in the history of the Yorùbá nation. Still, it is important to ask the question whether there is any indigenous Yorùbá tradition concerning the name Yorùbá in the group's early history before the 19th century.Some indigenous traditions answer that question in the affirmative. While doing research in Yorùbá history in the 1960s, I interviewed the then Ṣaṣẹrẹ of Ọ̀wọ̀, Chief Adétulà, who was widely revered at the time as one of the oldest living literate Yorùbá. In fact, I was told about him at the Western Regional Ministry of Information in Ìbàdàn, and I went to interview him at his home in Ọ̀wọ̀ a number of times in 1963-4. During one of those interviews, Chief Adétulà stated that Yorùbá was the original common name for all Yorùbá people. He added that he had never inquired into the meaning of the name, but that all the traditions known to him on the subject affirmed that Yorùbá was the common group name of the Yorùbá nation in the early eras of Yorùbá history, when the Yorùbá kingdoms were young and few and some more were still being founded – in times when Ife had been "all things to all of us", before Ọ̀yọ́ and Benin became notable kingdoms in the land, and before any white traders came to the Yorùbá and Benin coasts at all. (The first European explorers and traders came to the coast of Benin and Yorùbá around 1470).4In 1963 also, in the course of an interview of a group of Ìkìrun chiefs and elders in Ìkìrun (mostly about Ìkìrun's role in the 19th century Yorùbá wars), I learnt about an old local ruler, Ọba Adékaǹṣọ́lá, the Ọlọ́baagun of Ọbaagun, near Ìkìrun. Ọba Adékànṣólá was locally reputed to be much informed about Yorùbá history and traditions. Next morning, I went to interview the Ọlọbaagun. He was a man of advanced age, mentally alert, well-travelled, and remarkably knowledgeable about Yorùbáland and Yorùbá traditions.In the course of a long and richly informative interview, we came to the issue of the name Yorùbá. The Ọlọ́baagun stated that this name was the common name for the entire Yorùbá people from ancient times. He added that according to traditions that were still alive in some parts and among some traditional elite elements in Yorùbáland, the name was first applied to the early Yorùbá traders who used to go and trade in the countries of the Upper Niger (roughly modern Mali). Most of those early traders were from the early group of settlements in the Ife area – before all the settlements in that area merged together to form the town of Ile-Ife and the kingdom of Ife. The name, he said, became, in the marketplaces of the Upper Niger, the name for all traders who spoke various dialects of what we now call the Yorùbá language and who came from the same distant forest homeland in the southeast of the Upper Niger. Over time, the name came home with the traders. He added that by the time, later, when Arab traders began to come south across the Middle Niger to trade directly with Yorùbá people in the ancient settlements of the Ifẹ̀ area, Yorùbá people in general were already loosely known as Yorùbá or Yariba – and that that is why Yorùbá people call the Arabs Lárúbáwá.Asked to explain the point about Lárúbáwá, he answered, "We were known as Yorùbá, but when the Arab traders came, they called us Yárúbáwá which means 'Yorùbá people' in their language. In our marketplaces, our people turned that around and called them Alárúbáwá or Lárúbáwá. – meaning 'the ones who say Yárúbáwá', or 'the ones who call us Yárúbáwá'. We still call the Arabs Lárúbáwá today, and I have been told that we are the only people in the world who call them so".To elucidate the Ọlọ́baagun's statements, the following is a basic outline of what we know about the history of the Trans-Saharan Trade as it related to what is now Yorùbáland. The trade was started, probably before the 4th century AD, by the Berbers of Northwest Africa, who traveled south across the Sahara Desert to trade with the Black African peoples of the territories of the Upper Niger, in the area that is now the Republic of Mali. There, a trading town called Gao early arose, followed later by others like Djene and Timbuktu. Some Yorùbá traders (mostly from the early Ifẹ̀ settlements) early found their way to Gao to trade, probably from as early as the 5th century. From the 7th century, following the rise of Islam in Arabia, Arabs came in large numbers to settle in Northwest Africa (the country of the Berbers), and many Arabs joined the Berbers in the trans-Saharan trade. Their entry expanded the trade greatly. More routes developed across the desert, and some of these
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