| Also Known As: Yariba,Ede-yoruba,Yooba,Yoruba
Description:
Yoruba (native name èdè Yorùbá, 'the Yoruba language') is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 25 million speakers. The native tongue of the approximately 28 million Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil, Sierra Leone (where it is called Oku), northern Ghana (where it is spoken by urban migrant Yoruba communities alongside Hausa and local languages) and Cuba (where it is called Nago). Yoruba is an isolating, tonal language with SVO syntax. Apart from referring to the aggregate of dialects and their speakers, the term Yoruba is used for the standard, written form of the language. Yoruba is classified as a Niger-Congo language of the Yoruboid branch of Defoid, Benue-Congo. Yoruba is the third most spoken native African language.
The traditional Yoruba area — currently comprising the southwestern portion of Nigeria, the republics of Benin and Togo — is commonly called Ìlẹ-Yorùbá or Yorubaland. The Nigeria component comprises today's Ọyọ, Ọsun, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, and Lagos states as well as the western part of Kogi state. Geophysically, Yorubaland forms part of a plateau..... full article at Wikipedia |
