Pular language

Pular
Fuuta Jalon
Native to	Guinea; minor: Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali
Region	Fouta Djallon, Guinea
Ethnicity	Fula people
Native speakers	(3 million cited 1991–2006)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Senegambian Fula–Serer Fula Pular
Writing system	Fula alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	fuf
Glottolog	pula1262[2]

Pular is a Fula language spoken primarily by the Fula people of Fouta Djallon, Guinea. It is also spoken in parts of Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. There are a small number of speakers in Mali. Pular is spoken by 2.5 million Guineans, about 28% of the national population.^[3] This makes Pular the most widely spoken indigenous language in the country. Substantial numbers of Pular speakers have migrated to other countries in West Africa, notably Senegal.

Pular is not to be confused with Pulaar, another Fula language spoken natively in Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, and western Mali (including the Futa Tooro region).

Pular is written in the Ajami script and the Latin script.

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 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 (as in Pulaar)	Corresponding form in Pular
1st / sing	miɗo	miɗo hilan (non-standard alternate form)
2nd / sing	aɗa	hiɗa
3rd / sing	omo	himo
1st /pl (excl)	miɗen, amin	meɗen himen (non-standard alternate form)
1st / pl (incl)	eɗen	hiɗen
2nd / pl	oɗon	hiɗon
3rd / pl	eɓe	hiɓe

Writing

Like other varieties of the Fula language, Pular was written before colonization in an Arabic-based orthography called "Ajami." Today, while Ajami remains prevalent in rural areas of Fouta Djallon, but Pular is mainly written in a Latin-based orthography, the so-called UNESCO orthography. Pular Latin orthography is basically the same as that used for Fula languages throughout West Africa.

Up until the mid-1980s, Pular in Guinea was written with the Guinean languages alphabet that differed from that used in other countries.

Grammar

References

1. Pular at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Pular". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. ethnologue.org. "Ethnologue report for Guinea". Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Retrieved 25 April 2011.

External links

• Miɗo Waawi Pular! Learner's guide to Pular (Fuuta Jallon) by Herb Caudill and Ousmane Diallo