Talk:Fula language/Archive 1

Official status?
This article says that the language has official status in 9 countries. Yet the CIA World Factbook seems to disagree. If you look up the language section for each of these countries, they all show an official language (two for Cameroon), but in every case this is French (6 countries), English (3), or Arabic (1).

Perhaps in some countries the official language isn't widely spoken and the Factbook shows the word "official" only for the purpose of explaining why it's listed at all, without meaning to imply that other languages are not also official. But I find it hard to believe that they would have done this for all 9 countries, which makes me suspicious of this part of the Wikipedia article. I know practically nothing about African languages myself, though, let alone their official status. I just suggest that some checking would be desirable.

66.96.28.244 06:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

The CIA World Factbook for the US shows no official language, but rather just lists a section "Languages". While the CIA World Factbook for Senegal shows the same, just a heading entitled "Languages", of which "Pulaar" is indicated (which is given as per this article, as an alternate name of the Fula Language).

Why do I bring up the US situation. I'm certain you're already likely aware that the US does not have an official federal language, although some states do have an official language, or languages. New Mexico is such a state, where both English and Spanish are official languages of the state. Thus, all political and governmental material must be made accessible to speakers of both languages. So, "Official" status is reasonably difficult to pin down precisely. I imagine that determining the true official status of the Fula Language in these regions would require quite exhaustive fact checking, and may be unfeasible.

Fula is not an official language of any country; it's a national language of several, but that's not the same thing. - Mustafaa 22:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Mustafaa is right. I would add that the terms "official" and "national" are often used very imprecisely with regard to languages, even in some ostensibly authoritative literature. A12n 00:27, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Strategy for pages on Fula language?
I wrote something on another corner of the Wikipedia that refers to the Fula language page and potential for other pages relating to varieties of the language. See --A12n 01:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * See WikiProject_Languages/Fula --A12n 01:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I have posted a question there about which term to use, Fula or Fulfulde. &mdash; mark &#9998; 19:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Tonal?
Is it a tonal language? Badagnani 20:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * No, it is not a tonal language.--A12n (talk) 23:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Alphabets & orthographies
I made some modifications to the section on writing systems and created a new article on Fula orthographies to facilitate expanded treatment.--A12n (talk) 23:57, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Ejective y?
I was under the impression from p14 of the textbook here: http://ibamba.net/pular/default.htm that the "funky y" it describes, the Ƴ/ƴ, is also an implosive, a palatal implosive following on the pattern from the implosive Ɓ/ɓ, Ɗ/ɗ. I'm only a beginner without any audio samples, so I can't tell for sure, but I just wanted to check this out with anyone else who might be surer. Cheers. Candrodor (talk) 22:55, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as I understand, Ƴ|Ƴ/ƴ is technically not an implosive like Ɓ|Ɓ/ɓ or Ɗ|Ɗ/ɗ, though I also have heard it described as an implosive. I've heard it compared to the Hausa Ƙ|Ƙ/ƙ (Velar ejective) as an "ejective" consonant - certainly from its pronunciation now that I'm more familiar with the latter, it seems more ejective than implosive. At least as I understand the terms. The article on Ƴ|Ƴ/ƴ describes it as a palatalized glottal stop.--A12n (talk) 17:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Description of features of the language
I've moved some information from "Classification" to a new section just below it called "Description." This is still very simple. My thought with this article is that it can describe the general features of the language, and link out to two different kinds of articles: (1) Articles on the variant forms (languages as described by Ethnologue, dialects by some others), which can focus on particularities in each variant rather than duplicating material; and (2) articles on specific features of the language such as noun classes and infixes, which may also have comparative tables by language/dialect/variant. --A12n (talk) 00:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Fula Wikipedia
Not directly about this article, but can someone look at http://ff.wikipedia.org/ and tell me if the current state of the article is actually in Fula? It looks like spam about Kenyan elections and probably should be reverted back a few months, but I don't have the language facility to be sure. Thanks! -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 18:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

As is stated in the article, there could be as many as seven! different versions on some articles, what is described here is something like Chinese in West Africa there are so many different spoken varieties in chinese also. 80.186.55.176 (talk) 19:59, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

To Kwamikagami please remove Serer from this article
It is evident that you have added Fula-Serer in both the Serer-Sine language article and Fula language article. That was after I've removed them both. Not only is Serer the progentitor of Fula, the Fula just like the Wolof tend to borrow wherever they settle. Fula may be similar to Serer just like Wolof may be similar to Serer with Serer as the "root" (see Serer people this issue has been addressed there) but Serer is not Fula and has nothing to do with Fula and vice-versa. Please remove "Fula" from the Serer-Sine infobox and remove "Serer" from the Fula language infobox. Further, to put Fula before Serer (i.e. Fula-Serer) in both infoboxes appears rather patronising and implies that the Serer language derives from Fula when in fact it is the other way round. I know perhaps that was not your original intention but that's what it implies. Please remove them both. Thank you. Tamsier (talk) 02:43, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, Kwami is quite correct. Linguists are in complete agreement that Fula, Serer, and Wolof is a tight little group of close-related languages.  --Taivo (talk) 13:48, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


 * "Not only is Serer the progentitor of Fula [it] has nothing to do with Fula". You're contradicting yourself.
 * Please provide a single reliable ref that Fula descends from Serer.
 * As for them being related, pick up any ref on African languages. Or the sources I provided. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Started the page
I decided to name this entry "Fula language". "Fula" appears to be the typical English language term used by linguists. (Peul maybe more common with French linguists?) Fufulde and Pulaar apparently only refer to certain dialects. I used "language" rather than "languages" as a couple sources state the dialects are generally mutually comprehensible. (I hate mucking around in the dialect vs. language morass.) It seems to generally be treated as one language.

There seem to be more alternate names and some complicated language vs. ethnic group stuff (non-Fula ethnic groups speaking varieties of Fula as their native languages and such).

There's a lot of room for expansion; I'll tryh to get to a library in the next few days. I wanted to get a stub up quickly and fix up the various links to Fula (under various names.--Chris Johnson 00:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I've been wondering when someone would write this. Thanks! I look forward to seeing it expand... - Mustafaa 05:38, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)