Fulfulde
The language of the Fulani, the common language of the North
Family : Niger-Congo, Atlantic branch (Fula)
Speakers : About 3 million native speakers and 2.7 million second-language speakers across all countries, according to Ethnologue (2019 figures)
Also called : Peul, Foulfouldé, Peul de l'Adamaoua, Fulfulde de l'Adamaoua
Where and by whom it is spoken
The Fulfulde spoken in Cameroon is Adamawa Fulfulde, the eastern variety of the language of the Fulani, or Fulɓe, also spoken in Nigeria, Chad and Sudan. It is the lingua franca of the Adamawa, North and Far North regions, where speakers of many other languages use it as a second language. Its dialects include those of Maroua, Garoua and Ngaoundéré, which are very close, and Mbororoore, spoken by nomadic herders.
History and writing
The language reached Cameroon in the early nineteenth century with the jihad launched from northern Nigeria by Usman dan Fodio, whose commander Modibo Adama founded the Adamawa Emirate, named after him. Fulfulde has long been written in Arabic script, in the Ajami tradition; the Latin alphabet is more recent and came with Christian missionaries. In 1998 a conference held in Ngaoundéré adopted the Arabic-script orthography developed in Cameroon as a standard for writing Fulfulde.
Where to hear it today
- The lingua franca of the three northern regions, used at home, among neighbours and at work, and learnt as a second language by many other peoples.
- A broadcasting language: Radio Sawtu Linjiila, founded in 1964 and based in Ngaoundéré, broadcasts in French and sixteen local languages, including Fulfulde.
- Written mostly in Arabic script: two to three times as many people read it in that alphabet as in Latin, thanks to French–Arabic schools.
A few words
- kosam
- milk
- ladde
- bush, forest, wilderness
- noy
- how? how many?
- nassara
- a white person; a word that has passed into Cameroonian French
What sources disagree on
The Ethnologue figure covers every country where Adamawa Fulfulde is spoken: Cameroon's share is not given separately. French Wikipedia presents Fulfulde as the country's most common mother tongue (21% of the population), but its source, an Afrobarometer survey, is no longer available. George Echu (2002) traces the use of Fulfulde in Islam in northern Cameroon back to the seventeenth century, earlier than the language's arrival with the nineteenth-century jihad.