CHIEF DÉLÉ ÀJÀYÍ
1. Preamble[1]
For
well over a century now, some language scholars and enthusiasts have been
making efforts to make their views known about the Yorùbá orthography – past
and present. An in-depth study of such works seems to give one the impression
that orthography is regarded as being synonymous with the alphabet of a
language. Hence, no efforts, to the best of our knowledge, were made (until
very recently, when Olútóyè (1979) observed the need to modify the Yorùbá
language alphabet) to focus attention on the study of the Yorùbá language
alphabet as an entity, which although forms the bedrock of Yorùbá orthography
but by no means equivalent to it.
The Yorùbá
alphabet is only an aspect of Yorùbá orthography. The orthography consists of
the symbols and the rules that are used in writing a language, whereas, an alphabet
consists of the symbols that are used in writing the sounds of a language. The
Yòrùbá language, as at today, by convention, has twenty five of such symbols.
These symbols are individually the letters which are collectively called the
alphabet of the language. From the fore-going, it is apparent that where-as
orthography implies the system of spelling in a language, alphabet means the
letters used in writing a language.
This short
paper attempts to discuss the trends and historical developments of the
alphabet of “accepted” Yorùbá and its present conventional composition; after
which a critical analysis of the alphabet vis-à-vis its present day use will be
made from linguistic and pedagogical points of view. It is envisaged that
whatever conclusions are drawn from the paper will illuminate the problems
still existing around the Yorùbá alphabet vis-à-vis Yorùbá orthography after
over one and a half century has passed since the language was reduced to writing.
We also hope that the short paper will subsequently encourage language scholars
or enthusiasts to do further research on the present composition of the Yorùbá
language alphabet and/or the current Yorùbá orthography.`
2. The Yorùbá Language Alphabet: Its Developmental
Stages
The
Yorùbá language became of in interest to the Missionaries – CUM – linguists in
the 19th Century not for the sake of teaching-learning processes that are now
being exerted on it, but because of religious circumstances. As a result of this,
no pains were taken by the early scholars of enthusiasts of the language to
maximize phonetic and/or phonemic adequacy of the language with the simplicity
of its alphabet. This situation has led, in part, to the problems confronting
students of the language up till today, and has given birth to confusion in the
minds of scholars, teachers, students, enthusiasts and writers of the language
at large.
Although
Bowdich (1819) was the first person to put Yorùbá into writing when he put
Yorùbá numerals into writing in his book: Mission
to Ashantee, postulation
of ideas about the Yorùbá language alphabet started with Kilham (1828) who was
the first known scholar of Yorùbá language in far away Sierra-Leone. She
proposed the following Yorùbá vowels: a, e, i, o, u, which were pronounced ah,
ai, ee, o, uu. There were no ẹ and ọ and
the nasal vowels, as we have them today, in her list of vowels. The
consonants she made use of in her writings were: n, d, j, t, r, g, and m.
In 1841,
Norris came up with his own proposal. His own alphabet of the Yorùbá language
was: a, a, e, i, o, u, ai, au, ow, j, ng, ch, i, p, w, b, h, r, k, g, and hh.
In 1843, Samuel
Ajayi Crowther – the first native speaker of Yorùbá who worked on the
orthography of the language, came up with his own proposal on the Yorùbá
alphabet. His own alphabet of the language was: a, b, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l,
m, n, o, ọ, kp, r, s, t, u, w, y, and gb, which he later abandoned for bh.
Although, by virtue of being a native speaker of the language, Crowther
recognised the need for tone marking the Yorùbá words, it probably never
occurred to him that each of the vowels of the language, oral and nasalized,
should bear three different tones – high, mid, and low, which make the vowels
contrastive/phonemic, and as a result of which all such vowels should have
appeared in his proposal on the Yorùbá alphabet. What occurred to him was that
the vowels in his proposed alphabet - a, e, i, o, ọ and u - could either be
long or short. The long one occurs always before or after a single consonant
and the short one occurs before or after double consonants or h. In effect,
Crowther had ten vowel sounds in his proposed Yorùbá alphabet. In addition to
the vowels, he proposed what he called accents (present day tone-marks). The
accents were three - the acute, the grave and the circumflex - used to
represent long vowels.
In 1847,
Gollmer came up with his own idea of the consonantal sounds of the Yorùbá
language. The consonantal sounds were: b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, r, s, t,
w, y, b for present day gb, ṛ, for present day r, sh for present day ṣ, n for
( ŋ ) velar nasal and allophone of alveolar nasal /N/ and ‘p’. He recognised fourteen
vowel sounds in the language - seven open and seven close. The open ones were:
a, e, i, o, u, ẹ and ọ while the close vowels are the same as the open ones,
but with variation in pronunciation (no doubt, he was aware of tone changes in
the language but perhaps did not know how to express himself better on the
issue).
A year later,
1848, saw the emergence of what is commonly referred to as ‘Venns Rules” -
which resulted from the debate on Yorùbá orthography in London. In the rules,
the scheme of the vowels and the consonants which form the Yorùbá alphabet were
set down as follows: i, e, ẹ, a, a, ọ,
o, u, b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p. r, t, v, w, y, j, s, z, kp and gb. Also,
Bowen, in the same year, suggested that the following letters with diacritics -
ṣ, ọ and ẹ - earlier proposed by some other scholars on Yorùbá language,
should be replaced by r, o, and s, respectively, and the compounded letter ‘gb’
to be replaced by q. His argument was that diacritics are unnecessarily
too numerous in Yorùbá language and are often omitted by the writer and thus
the printer is misled. He proposed q for the compounded letter ‘gb’ probably
because he observed that its counterpart ‘kp’ is represented by only one letter
‘p’ in writing. There is no record at our disposal to support this view
however.
Arising from
the joint efforts of the scholars and/or enthusiasts of Yorùbá language
mentioned above, by 1854, at a meeting held at Aké Abẹ̀ókúta, between Novermber
21 and 25, on Yorùbá orthography, the letters of the Yorùbá alphabet were
proposed to be named: a, b, d, e, ẹ, f, g, gb, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, ọ p,
r, s, ṣ, t, u, w, y. The letters were to be pronounced as follows: á, bí, dí,
é, ẹ́, fí, gí, gbì, hì, i, jé, ké, lí, mí, ní, ó, ọ́, pí rí, sí, shí, tí ú, wí,
yí.
Up till 1969,
when the letter ‘sh’ was replaced by ‘ṣ’, the letters of the Yorùbá language
alphabet remained as shown above. Since 1969, when the report of the committee
set up the Western Nigeria Government, on Yorùbá orthography was published, the
conventional Yorùbá alphabet has remained as follows: a, b, d, e, ẹ, f, g, gb,
h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, ọ, p, r, s, ṣ, t, u, w, y.
From the
works of a few of the various scholars and enthusiasts of Yorùbá language,
cited above, between 1828 and 1969, simple calculation reveals that forty
various types of symbols have been proposed for the Yorùbá language alphabet
made up of thirteen vowels and twenty-seven consonants, viz, a, e, i, o, u, ọ,
ạ, ai, au, aw, Ʒ, a, ḅ, d, f, g, gb, h, hh, ch, j, k, l, m, n, ṇ, ng, kp, p,
ṛ, r, s, sh, ṣ, t, w, y, z.
Out of these
forty symbols, twnty-five of them are now regarded as the conventional letters
of the Yorùbá language alphabet. The reason for the various proposed symbols is
perhaps not far-fetched. It can be traced to the fact that except for Crowthe,
all others that worked on the orthography of the language were non-natives, and
the sounds of their own native language must have influenced the
impressionistic transcription of the information they received from their
informants on the sound system of the Yorùbá language. Moreover, it appears
that some of the Missionaries were concerned with an orthography that will meet
the phonetic requirements of every language. For instance, in January 1854, at
a conference called “Alphabetical Conference” which was convened by Bunsen, a
Prussian Minister then, in London, and a scholar of comparative philology and
History of Religion, Lepsius presented what he called “Standard Alphabet” which
was later published in the same year, and got approved by the C.M.S. Committee
the following year. The alphabet, based upon the articulatory possibilities of
the human speech, consists of Roman and Greek letters varied by the addition of
diacritic marks, seventeen of which are used above and fourteen below the
letters. It was an ambitious effort to design an orthography which would meet
all the requirements of all nations, but Lepsius alphabet had little or no
impact on the conventional Yorùbá language alphabet.
2.1. The Status of the Yorùbá Language Alphabet
Today
It
is glaring from the present day use of the conventional Yorùbá language
alphabet that the composition of the alphabet has some short-comings, and, it
is in view of this that this paper will now examine and analyse the
conventional composition of the alphabet critically from linguistic,
pedagogical and logical points of view.
The
linguistic principle that governs alphabetic writing is that of using one
single simple arbitrary sign as a symbol to represent each sound. The letters
of the convenvional Yorùbá language alphabet today are all symbols of arbitrary
signs. Each symbol having been associated with a particular sound. A striking
but not peculiar feature of the alphabet is that it can be said to have been
composed through the use of four different methods, viz: unmodified Latin
letters: a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, r, s, t, u, w, y; Latin
letters modified with diactrics: ẹ, ọ, ṣ; a single Latin letter with an
unusual value: p; and a digraph which is two separate letters forming one
single symbol: gb. Although this sort of situation obtains in the alphabet of
some other languages, what really bothers one in the case of the Yorùbá
language is the representation of the voiceless labial-velar plosive /kp/ and
its counterpart the voiced labial-velar /gb/ that, though they differ as to a
single phonetic property (voicing), one is represented by a single letter /p/
and the other by a digraph /gb/ in the alphabet. We regard this as a linguistic
flaw in the conventional composition of the alphabet. It is to our mind better
to represent each of the two sounds with a digraph, viz: /kp/, /gb/ since both
sounds are double articulation consonants that are phonetically similar.
It is worthy
of note that Crowther included the symbol /kp/ in his 1843 proposed alphabet of
the language, and /kp/ appeared in the scheme of the vowels and consonants of
Yorùbá in “Venns Rules” of 1848. It was Gollmer, who in 1848, though noted that
/kp/ is like /gb/ in articulation, suggested that /p/ should be used instead of
/kp/ since according to him, “there is no simple /p/ sound in the Yorùbá
language – an argument which the present writer considers as illogical.
However, /p/ has been retained in the Yorùbá alphabet since that time.
But,
considering the situation from another point of view, one may argue in favour
of the retention of /p/ to represent /kp/ which is what is really articulated
in Yorùbá, when one realizes that /w/, which is also a double articulation
consonant like /kp/; is represented in the alphabet of the language with only
one letter. The argument may be buttressed further when one considers the unpalatable
manner in which the counterpart of /kp/, i.e., /gb/ is usually written when it
begins a sentence. One expects that when a digraph is used as a symbol to
represent a sound, the two letters forming the digraph should be written in
capital letters when the digraph begins a sentence. This is never the case with
/gb/ in Yorùbá. When the symbol begins a sentence; it is always written as “Gb”
and not ‘GB’which ought to be the case. For an example, “GBogbo” should be
written at the beginning of a sentence and not “Gbogbo”, in which half of the
symbol /gb/ is written in capital letter and the other half written in small
letter! To avoid this anomaly, henceforth, one would like to suggest that a new
single letter “ɋ” be introduced to replace /gb/ in the Yorùbá alphabet. If the
suggestion is acceptable, then the argument against writing /p/ instead of /kp/
will die a natural death.
The reason
for suggesting the symbol “ɋ” is perhaps obvious. In the first place, except
for the tail of the symbol, the shape is similar but not identical with that of
/p/. Secondly, the symbol is a slight modification of “q” which Bowen suggested
in 1848, to replace /gb/. Thirdly, the use of the symbol will support the
linguistic principle that governs alphabetic writing which is the use of one
simple single symbol to represent a sound. Fourthly, the symbol does not
conflict with the representation of any sound in the language as evidenced by
the composition of the present conventional alphabet of the language. Moreover,
the use of the symbol will reduce to three, the number of methods used to
compose the Yorùbá alphabet, and, lastly, there will be no problem about
writing the capital of the symbol since it can be conveniently written as “ɋ”
above the line to indicate that it is a capital letter, and, finally the typing
or printing of the symbol will be the typing/printing of figure ɋ with a dash
underneath it to the right hand side.
Looking at
the present conventional composition of the Yorùbá language alphabet from the
linguistic - CUM - pedagogical points of view, one is tempted to begin with a
conclusion. The conclusion is that the conventional Yorùbá language alphabet is
inadequate and misleading. Not all the phonetic/phonemic sounds of the language
are represented in the alphabet. As clearly revealed in classroom situations,
there should be fifty-three letters/symbols altogether in the Yorùbá language
alphabet today! The letters/symbols are: a, ã, á, an, àn, án, b, d, e, è, é,
ẹ, ẹ̀, ẹ́, ẹn, f, g, gb, or q, h, i, ì, í, in, ìn, ín, j, k, l, m, n, o, ò,
ó, ọ, ọ̀, ọ́, ọn, ọ̀n, ọ́n, p, or kp, r, s, ṣ, t, u, ù, ú, un, ùn, ún, w, y.
The
fifty-three symbols above represent the phonetic/phonemic sounds of the
accepted form of the Yorùbá language as being practically used nowadays, as
against the twenty-five symbols which we have in the conventional alphabet of
the language. The alphabet proposed above include twenty-one phonetic and
phonemic oral vowels; fourteen phonetic nasal vowels, (e, è, é, ẹ́n, o, ò, ó)
having been excluded because of their non-occurrence in the accepted form of
the language, eleven of which are phonemic
- because “an, àn, án” are in free variation with “ọn, ọ̀n, ọ́n”; and
eigbteen phonetic and phonemic consonants. Oyèláran (1971)[2]
had earlier recognised something similar to this.
The logical
inference that one can draw from the above observations is that, though the
conventional Yorùbá language alphabet has not totally outlived its usefulness,
its composition has been so because the alphabet is not truly representative of
what really obtains in the phonetics and phonemics of accepted form of the
language. It follows, therefore, that the present alphabet must be recomposed
in such a way that teachers, students, scholars, and enthusiasts of the
language are really exposed to an alphabet that truly represents the sound
system of the language.
3 Conclusion
Our findings
in this paper have clearly revealed that there is too much disparity in the
present conventional alphabet of the Yorùbá language vis-à-vis the linguistic
principles that govern alphabetic writing and the teaching-learning processes
that are now being vigorously exerted (on the phonetic and phonemic actualities
of the sounds that exist in the accepted form of the language) at the various
levels of learning where Yorùbá is studied as a subject.
This
situation, undoubtedly, has created a lot of confusion in learners and scholars
of Yorùbá language. In order to prevent the confusion from spreading too far
amidst the existing generation of people interested in Yorùbá studies, and in
order to guard against a possible transfer of the problem to generation yet
unborn, the Government, in collaboration with Yorùbá subject associations,
individual scholars and enthusiasts of the Yorùbá language should re-visit the
composition of the Yorùbá language alphabet and make available for use, an
alphabet that befits the true nature of the language from linguistic,
pedagogical and logical points of view. There is no doubt that such an achievement
will go a long way to alleviate some of the “orthography problems” that now
confront, and which may continue to be faced by, learners of the language
particularly the beginners.
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[1] This paper was published as Dele,
Ajayi Chief (1989), ‘The Yorùbá language Alphabet: A Critical Analysis of its
Conventional Composition Vis-à-vis its Presnt Day Use’, Seminar Series 2, edited by T.M. Ilesanmi, L.O. Adewole and B.A.
Oyetade, pp 160-175. Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Department of African Languages and
Literatures, Obafemi Awolowo University.
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