Yoruba

Also known as: Yoruba

Yoruba (Èdè Yorùbá) is one of West Africa's major languages, with ~45M speakers — primarily in southwestern Nigeria (~40M across Lagos, Ibadan, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, and Kwara States), with sizable communities in Benin (~3M) and Togo (~1M), plus a strong Atlantic diaspora through Cuban Lucumí, Brazilian Candomblé, and Trinidadian Orisha religious practice. Linguistically, it is part of the Volta-Niger subgroup (sister to Itsekiri and Igala), with 3 phonemic tones (high á / mid a / low à) and a 7-vowel inventory (i e ɛ a ɔ o u) plus 5 nasal vowels. The orthography uses Latin with sub-dot for /ɛ ɔ ʃ/ and acute/grave for tone. Yoruba is the carrier of one of Africa's most urbanized pre-colonial civilizations (the Oyo Empire, c. 14th-19th c.), and the Ifá divination corpus — over 256 odu chapters codified and memorized by babalawo priests — is recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Atlantic diaspora forms helped preserve African religious philosophy in the Americas.