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Fula belongs to the northern branch of West Atlantic. ... Technically, Fulfulde or Pulaar is the name of this language, while fulɓe (ful'be; singular = pullo) is the name of the people who speak Fulfulde. Fulani is derived from the the Hausa designation for these people, while Fula is from the Manding term, and Peul is from the Wolof (via French). (Webbook, with modifications)
Ethnologue lists the classification as: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Atlantic, Northern, Senegambian, Fulani-Wolof, Fula, ... [Pulaar, Pular, Maasina Fulfulde and Borgu Fulfulde are Western or West Central; all the others are Eastern or East Central]
Fula is spoken throughout West Africa. Most speakers are found within a band running from Senegal to northern Cameroon, including the countries of Senegal, Mauritania, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali, Burkina Faso, northern Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. (Webbook)
According to information compiled from Ethnologue:
Ethnologue also mentions 7,611,000 speakers includes all Fulfulde in Nigeria (1991 SIL). These include Adamawa dialect speakers, which would raise the number above.
Arnott (1970, p. 3) reports the following dialect areas: "Fuuta Tooro (Senegal), Fuuta Jalon (Guinea), Maasina (Mali), Sokoto and western Niger, 'Central' northern Nigeria (roughly Katsina, Kano, Zaria, Plateau, Bauchi, and Bornu Provinces and eastern Niger), Adamawa." All dialects of Fula are mutually intelligible. (Webbook)
Fulfulde dialects are sometimes considered in two groups: western, which goes about as far east as eastern Mali, and eastern which extends from Nigeria and Niger eastwards. There is a high degree of interintelligibility among dialects. However, Pular of Fuuta Jalon in the west and Aadamawa Fulfulde in the east have enough particularities to make them in some ways outliers even with respect to other varieties of Fula spoken in geographic proximity, meaning that interintelligibility with other dialects is not so high.
See the SIL "Fulfulde Language Family Report" by Annette Harrision at http://gamma.sil.org/silesr/2003/silesr2003-009.htm (it includes some excellent maps).
SIL International calls Fula a "macrolanguage" under which nine languages are listed. According to information compiled from Ethnologue the dialects for these nine are:
There are five Fulfulde varieties in Guinea-Bissau (Ethnologue)
Fula is an officially recognized national language in the following countries: Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Gambia. ... Each country where it is an official language has (1) a government office responsible for adult literacy in Fula and (2) a section in the Department of Education responsible for introducing national languages into the school system and radio broadcasts in Fula (Fagerberg-Diallo, personal communication, 1985) (Webbook)
Notes from Ethnologue:
Ka (1991 a&b) discusses aspects of standardisation in Fula.
One might say that the writing of Fula in the Latin script has been "semi-standardised," based on the 1966 Bamako conference on harmonisation of orthographies. That is, a standard alphabet has been adopted in all of West Africa and beyond, with some minor variations. As a general rule, it uses the following additional special "hooked" characters to distinguish meaningfully different sounds in the language: Ɓ/ɓ, Ɗ/ɗ, Ŋ/ŋ, Ɲ/ɲ, Ƴ/ƴ (i.e. implosive B, implosive D, velar N [sounds like "ng" in "king'], palatal N, ejective Y). The apostrophe (ʼ) is used as a glottal stop. Transcription of the palatal n varies by country: Senegal uses ñ; Nigeria and Niger use ny; Mali uses ɲ (the n with left hook). (elements from Webbook and Wikipedia)
Ajami was historically used to write Fula and is still frequently used in some places, such as the Futa Jalon region of Guinea. This also varies on some particulars from one region to another.
A project on Arabic transliteration of Fula on computers was begun several years ago. See http://www.shoalhaven.net.au/~kjpercival/transliteration.html [seeking updated info]
A summary of Latin extended characters for Fula and their Unicode code points is given at http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/FulUnicode.htm
A list of Fula orthographies by country is given on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_orthographies
Latin alphabets as reported by Hartell (1993) and presented in Systèmes alphabétiques:
Alphabet fulfulde (arrété 211-99 de la République du Niger): http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/info/perso/permanents/enguehard/recherche/Afrique/alphabet_fulfulde.htm
"Language Museum" samples (NB- These may not be standard or "official" orthographies:
Unicode: most Unicode fonts with extended Latin ranges would include the necessary extended characters (Arial Unicode MS, Code 2000, Doulos SIL, Gentium, Lucida Sans Unicode).
8-bit legacy fonts (it is not recommended to used these for new documents):
Andrew Cunningham has developed several keyboard layouts for Fula (Latin script) using Tavultesoft Keyman 5&6. See http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/files/
The CNRS/LLACAN "AFRO" Tavultesoft Keyman keyboard (for AZERTY) is intended to support this language: http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/downloads/keyboards/details.php?KeyboardID=377&FromKeyman=0
Ramon Mathias Soares Pontes has developed a Fulfulde Ajami keyboard layout using MSKLC.
(See also 7.1, above)
Lancor's "KỌNYIN" keyboard for Windows includes all needed characters for Fula (minus the n with left hook which is not used for the palatal n in Nigeria and Niger) - http://www.konyin.com/
Universal Declaration of Human Rights versions:
Wikipedia in "Peul" at http://ff.wikipedia.org/ (not much content as of 11-2007)
None known of.
Fulah/Peul
Fulfulde, Adamawa
Fulfulde, Bagirmi
Fulfulde, Borgu
Fulfulde, Central-Eastern Niger
Fulfulde, Maasina
Fulfulde, Nigerian
Fulfulde, Western Niger
Pulaar
Pular
The African Language Materials Archive has some "Pular Language Ebooks" (probably Pulaar, not Pular?) at http://www.aiys.org/aodl/public/access/alma_ebooks/index.php
An manual for Pular of Guinea entitled "Miɗo waawi Pular!" is available at http://ibamba.net/pular/manual.letter.pdf
Companies:
Non-profits:
Governmental agencies:
A short list of proposed computer terms in Fula is given at http://www.jamtan.com/jamtan/fulani.cfm?chap=8&linksPage=332
Edition en langue nationale de Burkina Faso http://www.abcburkina.net/sedelan/contenu/services/edition.html
Correcteur d'orthographe Fulfulde http://www.abcburkina.net/sedelan/contenu/services/linguistique.htm
"Computing with Fula" (TLT, Penn State Univ.) http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/fula.html [NB- this page erroneously calls Ɗ/ɗ "implosive G" instead of "implosive D"; also the palatal-n characters Ñ/ñ are used in Senegal only, cf. http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/FulUnicode.htm ]
Character pickers:
Fula represents a special challenge for localisation as there is both dialect variation and a wide geographic distribution of speakers. If software localisation is attempted for diverse dialects (probably done on a country by country level), an effort should be made to harmonize the translations and terminologies as much as possible.
Chanard, Christian (2006), Systèmes alphabétiques des langues africaines, LLACAN, CNRS, http://sumale.vjf.cnrs.fr/phono/
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Fula (Fulfulde/Pulaar)," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Fula_root.htm )
Hartell, Rhonda L., ed. (1993), The Alphabets of Africa. Dakar: UNESCO and SIL. (The French edition, published the same year, is entitled Alphabets de Langues Africaines).
Ka, Fary (1991a), "Problématique de la standardisation linguistique : Le cas du pulaar/fulfulde." In N. Cyffer et al, Language Standardization in Africa. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Pp. 35-38.
______ (1991b), "Élements de dialectologie peule - variations dialectales et problèmes de standardisation." In N. Cyffer et al, Language Standardization in Africa. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Pp. 39-59.
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Fulfulde, Adamawa," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fub
______, "Fulfulde, Bagirmi," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fui
______, "Fulfulde, Borgu," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fue
______, "Fulfulde, Central-Eastern Niger," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fuq
______, "Fulfulde, Maasina," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ffm
______, "Fulfulde, Nigerian," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fuv
______, "Fulfulde, Western Niger," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fuh
______, "Pulaar," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fuc
______, "Pular," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fuf
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
______, "ISO 639-3 Macrolangauge Mappings," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Fula language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_language
______, "Fula orthographies," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_orthographies
______, "Fulfulde," http://ff.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulfulde
______, "Língua fula," http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADngua_fula
______, "Peul," http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peul
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