Pular language
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Pular Pular |
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Spoken in: | Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali | |
Region: | Fouta Jalon (in Guinea), Africa | |
Total speakers: | 10–16 million | |
Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Atlantic Northern Senegambian Fula-Wolof Fula Pular |
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Writing system: | Fula alphabet | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | ff | |
ISO 639-2: | ful | |
ISO 639-3: | fuf – [[Pular]] | |
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. |
Pular is a Fula language spoken primarily by Fula people in the Fouta Jalon, in the West African state of Guinea and also into Guinea Bissau and Sierra Leone, with a small number of speakers in Mali. It is spoken by 3 million Guineans and is the most widely spoken indigenous language in the country. It can be written in Roman and Arabic script.
[edit] Linguistic features
There are some particularities to this version of Fula, including:
- Use of plural form for politeness (such as in German or French, unlike other varieties of Fula)
- A number of a number of separate verbal roots for politeness (these may exist only in Pular)
- There is no initial consonant mutation from singular to plural verb forms as is the case in other varieties of Fula (there is in nominal forms, however)
- In addition to the more standard long-form pronouns of Fula there are alternate forms in Pular (= hi(l) + pronoun). The table below summarizes these (question marks where the info is not complete):
Person / number | Standard long-form pronoun | Alternate form in Pular |
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1st / sing | miɗo | hilan |
2nd / sing | aɗa | hiɗa |
3rd / sing | omo | himo |
1st /pl (excl) | miɗen | (?) hiɗen |
1st / pl (incl) | enen | (?) |
2nd / pl | oɗon | (?) |
3rd / pl | eɓe | hiɓe |
[edit] Writing
Like other varieties of the Fula language, Pular was written before colonization in an Arabic-based orthography called "Ajami." Although this is still used particularly in rural areas of Fuuta Jalon, Pular is mainly written in a Latin-based orthography that is basically the same as that used for Fula throughout the region.
Up until the mid-1980s, Pular in Guinea was written with an orthography set by the Guinean government that differed from that used in other countries.
[edit] External links
- Pular Greetings
- The Fulɓe of Guinea
- Miɗo Waawi Pular! Learner's guide to Pular (Fuuta Jallon) by Herb Caudill and Ousmane Diallo
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