₦airaland Forum

Sammy07:
Brazil Independence Day 2019

GBOKASINCHA:
[s]sade adu is not a slave descendant she is half Yoruba half white

DuwaRepublic:
Lol it pain am! You didn’t answer my question, is she igbo? Since only you people are allowed to be light skinned, is she igbo? Nonsense!

pazienza:
1963 was annulled for a good reason. It was the year of Yoruba Ewedu Yemi Oluwale magic numbers

2006 had no ethnicity attached, Igbos are all over Nigeria and I don't see how own figures in SE in 2006 despite MASSOB boycott order was too bad.

GBOKASINCHA:
oga. I am not arguing about half Yoruba half white here or light skin people I am arguing about slaves and their descendants

pazienza:
Lol!

Whatever floats your boat.

Yorubas are only found in Benin republic.

DuwaRepublic:
It’s actually confirmed, that his father is of Yoruba descent.

https://www.blackenterprise.com/ten-facts-about-nas/

GBOKASINCHA:
looking at them you want to tell me those people are Yoruba people re you mad ?? These people are just practicing Yoruba culture show me any Yoruba that look like that just 1... there are countless pictures of white people wearing Igbo attire and celebrating yam festival

bigfrancis21:
It is not confirmed. His father was given the name, Oludara, by a Yoruba priest. Some African Americans adopt African names for that ancestral connection but his Yoruba ancestry, if any, isn’t confirmed. I’ve met a few African Americans with Igbo names like Chinua, Nnamdi etc but these names were given to them by their parents, but no Igbo ancestry was medically confirmed.

The musician, Ne-Yo, has an Igbo middle name, Chimere, given to him by his parents. However it is not confirmed if he has Igbo ancestry or not.
https://books.google.com/books?id=qN6fAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA593&lpg=PA593&dq=neyo+chimere+igbo&source=bl&ots=hkenjc8sQj&sig=ACfU3U0a9FH6jC-2paSNbv1nprZb6cFj9w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXwKPQ39npAhUrlHIEHcqoCcsQ6AEwDnoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=neyo%20chimere%20igbo&f=false

DuwaRepublic:
They are actually. I met a Brazilian at an American bank once, he was a manager there. He came to have a chat with me when he heard my name and mind you, he does not look African at all. The only African feature he had was curly hair, he came to ask me where I was from, I told him Nigeria, then he asked if I was Yoruba, and all of a sudden started speaking Yoruba to me, I was in shock! I asked him if he had been to Nigeria and he said he handn’t but his family retained the Yoruba language as part of their heritage, he told me how much he loves the culture and that he would like to visit Lagos in the near future, I told him he should. This Brazilian man named Enrique identifies as a Yoruba man by culture.

Sometimes, I feel like you Igbos like to be dense on purpose, in hopes that it will make you win an argument but, we are too smart for you people, we won’t relent and we will keep bombarding you all with facts!

Below is a picture of Sade Adu, is she igbo?

Michael004:
They are very small there. Just 30 thousand.

forgiveness:
This is Yorubas in Togo. You don't need to lie here again.


And these fellow is lying saying Yorubas are only in Togo. Lie small small now.

SPECIAL FEATURES
In Togo, Atakpame keeps Yoruba language alive
Published December 30, 2015


An ethnic group in Atakpame, Togo, hold on to a distinct brand of Yoruba they inherited from their forefathers, writes AKEEM LASISI, just back from the West African country

Denisef Fantchede would have been a Nigerian but for an accident of history. She would, most likely, have been an indigene of Ile-Ife in Osun State. But she is a native of Atakpame, a community in Togo and one of those whose ancestors migrated to the West African country when tribal wars raged in the 17th century.


Yet, the same history that changed the course of her descent has made her multilingual. Fantchede speaks French, which is Togo’s official language. She speaks English, which she learnt in school and in neighbouring Ghana. She is also fluent in Ewe, one of the indigenous languages in Atakpame. Most importantly, her mother tongue is Ife, which some scholars would call Ife Togo, an ‘independent’ Yoruba dialect spoken by the majority of Atakpame indigenes, who trace their origins to Ile-ife.

Like Atakpame, like Idanre


In terms of landmark, Atakpame shares some similarities with Ibadan and Abeokuta. While the capital cities of Oyo and Ogun States flaunt the Olumo Rock and Oke Ibadan as their ancestral symbols, respectively, Atakpame, a settlement town that is about 160 kilometres away from Lome, the Togolese capital, defines its origin by seven mountains that surround it.

Just like many other towns in Yorubaland, where myths are explored to trace the people’s roots, Atakpame’s history is not complete without reference to the mountains. According to some elders of the town, the rocks played supernatural roles when the natives were engaged in battles with other ethnic groups. This is how Atakpame also shares topographical and historical similarities with Idanre, Ondo State, a town famed for the huge and acrobatic mountains that surround it.

According to Fantchede, Ife Togo is widely used in Atakpame because the people, who trace their descent to ile-Ife, are the dominant group there. She, however, expresses concern over the future of the language because not many young people speak it.

She says, “The number of young people who speak Ife here is decreasing because of changes in the society and the fact that it is not taught in schools. But I speak it any time I have the opportunity to do so. Our elders also use it constantly.”


Strange bed fellows

As a result of the entrenched cross-fertilisation that Ife Togo has had with French, Ewe, et cetera, it is easier for the Yoruba in Lome, Cotonou and Ajase, among others, to understand one another than for the immigrant Yorubas in Lome to understand Ife Togo speakers in Atakpame – and vice versa. A Yoruba scholar, Dr. Felix Fabunmi, notes that a language that is spoken by many people, such as Yoruba, usually has dialects that may differ from one another.


In a research he conducted on Ife numerals, the lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, acknowledges Ife Togo, Ife Benin, Tsabe, Ajase and Idaatsa, all of which he describes as Yoruboid, as being “the mother tongues of speech communities whose forefathers migrated from Nigeria to Dahomey, now Republic of Benin.”

This invariably covers the brand spoken in Togo, too. Fabunmi notes in a study titled ‘Vigesimal Numerals on Ife (Togo) and Ife (Nigeria) Dialects of Yoruba’, “Today, the capital of Ife (Togo) is Atakpame. The Ifè (Togo) dialect of Yoruba is spoken by approximately 90,000 people in Atakpame and the speakers stretch from the Benin boundary up to Atakpame in Togo.


“The majority of these Ife settlers migrated from Ija-Oku in former Dahomey into the Togolese territory and subsequently founded the city of Atapkame. There are several other early settlers or ethnic groups in Atakpame, such as Fon, Ewe, Aposo, Kabrelosso and Ketokoli, but the people of Seti, Jama and Igberiko are predominantly Ife. Other Ife (Togo) villages include Alabata, Okutaya, Efujaye, Oko Asade, Asoko Ayepada and Yanmosile.”

Ife Togo is well tone-marked

Yoruba is a tonal language, comprising the high, mid and low tones. That is how a word such as ‘odo’ can mean different things as the tone changes. These include odo (mortar), odo (river) and odo (zero). Also, ‘ere’ can be translated as play, sculpture and profit in different contexts and with different tonal marks, just as ‘agbon’ can be a word for a basket, coconut or wasp.


Investigation by our correspondent reveals that the Ife Togo dialect retains the tonal property of the Yoruba language. Apart from the inflexions that the natives interviewed demonstrate in their speeches, words in the books that our correspondent bought in Atakpame are duly tone-marked. Perhaps the only difference is that the mid tone, which is no more marked in the modern Nigerian Yoruba language, is still marked in Ife Togo. Indeed, our observation also shows that Ife Togo has not responded to the series of orthographical changes that the standard Yoruba has experienced, especially since the early 1970s. As a result, while Yoruba grammar now forbids the collocation of two consonants in a word, which makes Offa, Otta, Oshogbo and Ogbomosho to be written nowadays as Ofa, Ota, Osogbo and Ogbomoso, Ife Togo still flaunts words such as nwon (they), itsu (yam) and Atakpame itself!

The bible
As another Yoruba scholar, Mr. Mudasir Alabi, however, notes that Ife Togo is as rich as any other dialect of the language. Based on his observation in some of the books that our correspondent brought from Atakpame, he notes that what it may also have lost in terms of the words that the standard Yoruba borrowed from English and other Nigerian languages, it has gained through its relationship with French and other languages in Atakpame and Togo in general.


“But I could also see that Ife Togo uses phonological symbols in its writing of Yoruba vowels and consonants like ‘o’ and ‘j’,” Alabi says.

Highly imagistic

Our correspondent further observes that the Atakpame variant of Yoruba is also imagistic. A review of the Ife Togo Bible and other story books bought by our correspondent shows that it is deep enough to produce a rich literature and writers the way the Yoruba Language has produced great works and writers that include Wole Soyinka, Niyi Osundare, Amos Tutuola, Olawuyi Ogunniran and Lanrewaju Adepoju


Our investigation does not reveal any major writer in Ife Togo, but we came across artistes, especially singers, who have popularised the language in their works. Among them is Victor Star, who has released several albums, including ‘Nonu-Etse-Yeesu’, which can be translated as ‘Thank You Jesus’.

“She is a very popular singer in Atakpame. Many people like her and she uses Ife in most of her songs,” Fanchede says.

Our correspondent also visited a pharmacy shop operated by Kujo Akpo, where Ife is his medium of communication with customers.


Like the Red Sea Nagbe Kotannoa is very proud of the exploits of the forefathers of the Ife people of Atakpame. A historian, culture promoter and musician, Kotannoa, in Atakpame, is synonymous with the Tchebe traditional art, whose features are largely traceable to what obtains among the Yoruba in Nigeria. Particularly, he promotes the pole dance, a variant of what the Yoruba call ‘ageere’. In different parts of South-West Nigeria, ageere dancers entertain people at socio-cultural events, just as some of them work with masqueraders.


Kotannoa, who worked in collaboration with Emmanuel Lambert to produce ‘Thebe: Danse Traditional au Togo’, a book that documents activities of Tchebe dancers, agrees with the authorities that trace the history of Ife Togo to Ile-Ife, Nigeria. According to Kotannoa, he and his people were, in the past, referred to as ‘Anago’. But they rejected the term because they believe it is derogatory. So, they opted for Ife, which describes both the people and the variant of the Yoruba they speak.

He says, “Ife people came from Egypt. But our ancestors and scholars also noted that we first got to Ile-Ife in Nigeria. Our fathers lived in Ile-Ife for many years. Many of them werebabalawos (native doctors) and hunters. The tribal wars sacked them from Ile-Ife.”

forgiveness:
Now, you and the world will know. Take am.

This is 1952 and 1963 census. Igbo is second most populous in 1952 but Yoruba took over and became the second in 1963. Gbam!

Like you said, until you bring another census after 1963, Yorubas remains populous than Ndigbo Amaka.

darfay:
Can you please provide the link for the 1963, thanks

Michael004:
[s][/s]Trash list.

Magrebes is the most populous tribe. Where did your Hausa get 78million. Where ijaw get 15million, who dash igbo 44million. Igbo is 34 million in population why Hausa and Yoruba are 43 and 40 million respectively.

Michael004:
That Ekiti babe Sade Adu

pazienza:
Igbo is officially recognized as an ethnic group in Equatorial guinea.
Yoruba is not officially recognized in Togo , Ghana or Sierra Leone.
Only Nigeria and Benin Republic is Yoruba recognized as an indigenous ethnic group.

Cherez:
I'm � Igbo but whoever wrote this is not high but mad
How can the Igbos be more populous than the Yorubas?
Is the writer aware that Yorubas are found in Benin Republic and some other countries?

darfay:
I heard that ile Ife dialect of Yoruba is very distinct from standard Yoruba. I think further studies should be carried on the atakpame language, Ife dialect (nigeria) and old Ife(uhe) formally used as one of but not the only dialect by benin preist to determine the level of intelligibility et al

darfay:
Can you please provide the link for the 1963, thanks

Juliusmalema:
For where?

Make I hear if these guys will provide even a single proof.

forgiveness:
No I can't because I will be banned. You can do the research yourself.

GBOKASINCHA:
looking at them you want to tell me those people are Yoruba people re you mad ?? These people are just practicing Yoruba culture show me any Yoruba that look like that just 1... there are countless pictures of white people wearing Igbo attire and celebrating yam festival

Cosbyrich:
I do not know why small Igbos are competing with Yoruba in population. Yorubas are everywhere in the world.Most black Africans are Yoruba while a few number of them are from others.
African Americans are beautiful people just like the beautiful and widely travelled Yoruba people.
American Yorubas are more than American Igbos.

Even Yoruba Canadians are more than Igbo Canadians.

Yorubas dominate the UK.

forgiveness:
This is Yorubas in Togo. You don't need to lie here again.


And these fellow is lying saying Yorubas are only in Togo. Lie small small now.

SPECIAL FEATURES
In Togo, Atakpame keeps Yoruba language alive
Published December 30, 2015


An ethnic group in Atakpame, Togo, hold on to a distinct brand of Yoruba they inherited from their forefathers, writes AKEEM LASISI, just back from the West African country

Denisef Fantchede would have been a Nigerian but for an accident of history. She would, most likely, have been an indigene of Ile-Ife in Osun State. But she is a native of Atakpame, a community in Togo and one of those whose ancestors migrated to the West African country when tribal wars raged in the 17th century.


Yet, the same history that changed the course of her descent has made her multilingual. Fantchede speaks French, which is Togo’s official language. She speaks English, which she learnt in school and in neighbouring Ghana. She is also fluent in Ewe, one of the indigenous languages in Atakpame. Most importantly, her mother tongue is Ife, which some scholars would call Ife Togo, an ‘independent’ Yoruba dialect spoken by the majority of Atakpame indigenes, who trace their origins to Ile-ife.

Like Atakpame, like Idanre


In terms of landmark, Atakpame shares some similarities with Ibadan and Abeokuta. While the capital cities of Oyo and Ogun States flaunt the Olumo Rock and Oke Ibadan as their ancestral symbols, respectively, Atakpame, a settlement town that is about 160 kilometres away from Lome, the Togolese capital, defines its origin by seven mountains that surround it.

Just like many other towns in Yorubaland, where myths are explored to trace the people’s roots, Atakpame’s history is not complete without reference to the mountains. According to some elders of the town, the rocks played supernatural roles when the natives were engaged in battles with other ethnic groups. This is how Atakpame also shares topographical and historical similarities with Idanre, Ondo State, a town famed for the huge and acrobatic mountains that surround it.

According to Fantchede, Ife Togo is widely used in Atakpame because the people, who trace their descent to ile-Ife, are the dominant group there. She, however, expresses concern over the future of the language because not many young people speak it.

She says, “The number of young people who speak Ife here is decreasing because of changes in the society and the fact that it is not taught in schools. But I speak it any time I have the opportunity to do so. Our elders also use it constantly.”


Strange bed fellows

As a result of the entrenched cross-fertilisation that Ife Togo has had with French, Ewe, et cetera, it is easier for the Yoruba in Lome, Cotonou and Ajase, among others, to understand one another than for the immigrant Yorubas in Lome to understand Ife Togo speakers in Atakpame – and vice versa. A Yoruba scholar, Dr. Felix Fabunmi, notes that a language that is spoken by many people, such as Yoruba, usually has dialects that may differ from one another.


In a research he conducted on Ife numerals, the lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, acknowledges Ife Togo, Ife Benin, Tsabe, Ajase and Idaatsa, all of which he describes as Yoruboid, as being “the mother tongues of speech communities whose forefathers migrated from Nigeria to Dahomey, now Republic of Benin.”

This invariably covers the brand spoken in Togo, too. Fabunmi notes in a study titled ‘Vigesimal Numerals on Ife (Togo) and Ife (Nigeria) Dialects of Yoruba’, “Today, the capital of Ife (Togo) is Atakpame. The Ifè (Togo) dialect of Yoruba is spoken by approximately 90,000 people in Atakpame and the speakers stretch from the Benin boundary up to Atakpame in Togo.


“The majority of these Ife settlers migrated from Ija-Oku in former Dahomey into the Togolese territory and subsequently founded the city of Atapkame. There are several other early settlers or ethnic groups in Atakpame, such as Fon, Ewe, Aposo, Kabrelosso and Ketokoli, but the people of Seti, Jama and Igberiko are predominantly Ife. Other Ife (Togo) villages include Alabata, Okutaya, Efujaye, Oko Asade, Asoko Ayepada and Yanmosile.”

Ife Togo is well tone-marked

Yoruba is a tonal language, comprising the high, mid and low tones. That is how a word such as ‘odo’ can mean different things as the tone changes. These include odo (mortar), odo (river) and odo (zero). Also, ‘ere’ can be translated as play, sculpture and profit in different contexts and with different tonal marks, just as ‘agbon’ can be a word for a basket, coconut or wasp.


Investigation by our correspondent reveals that the Ife Togo dialect retains the tonal property of the Yoruba language. Apart from the inflexions that the natives interviewed demonstrate in their speeches, words in the books that our correspondent bought in Atakpame are duly tone-marked. Perhaps the only difference is that the mid tone, which is no more marked in the modern Nigerian Yoruba language, is still marked in Ife Togo. Indeed, our observation also shows that Ife Togo has not responded to the series of orthographical changes that the standard Yoruba has experienced, especially since the early 1970s. As a result, while Yoruba grammar now forbids the collocation of two consonants in a word, which makes Offa, Otta, Oshogbo and Ogbomosho to be written nowadays as Ofa, Ota, Osogbo and Ogbomoso, Ife Togo still flaunts words such as nwon (they), itsu (yam) and Atakpame itself!

The bible
As another Yoruba scholar, Mr. Mudasir Alabi, however, notes that Ife Togo is as rich as any other dialect of the language. Based on his observation in some of the books that our correspondent brought from Atakpame, he notes that what it may also have lost in terms of the words that the standard Yoruba borrowed from English and other Nigerian languages, it has gained through its relationship with French and other languages in Atakpame and Togo in general.


“But I could also see that Ife Togo uses phonological symbols in its writing of Yoruba vowels and consonants like ‘o’ and ‘j’,” Alabi says.

Highly imagistic

Our correspondent further observes that the Atakpame variant of Yoruba is also imagistic. A review of the Ife Togo Bible and other story books bought by our correspondent shows that it is deep enough to produce a rich literature and writers the way the Yoruba Language has produced great works and writers that include Wole Soyinka, Niyi Osundare, Amos Tutuola, Olawuyi Ogunniran and Lanrewaju Adepoju


Our investigation does not reveal any major writer in Ife Togo, but we came across artistes, especially singers, who have popularised the language in their works. Among them is Victor Star, who has released several albums, including ‘Nonu-Etse-Yeesu’, which can be translated as ‘Thank You Jesus’.

“She is a very popular singer in Atakpame. Many people like her and she uses Ife in most of her songs,” Fanchede says.

Our correspondent also visited a pharmacy shop operated by Kujo Akpo, where Ife is his medium of communication with customers.


Like the Red Sea Nagbe Kotannoa is very proud of the exploits of the forefathers of the Ife people of Atakpame. A historian, culture promoter and musician, Kotannoa, in Atakpame, is synonymous with the Tchebe traditional art, whose features are largely traceable to what obtains among the Yoruba in Nigeria. Particularly, he promotes the pole dance, a variant of what the Yoruba call ‘ageere’. In different parts of South-West Nigeria, ageere dancers entertain people at socio-cultural events, just as some of them work with masqueraders.


Kotannoa, who worked in collaboration with Emmanuel Lambert to produce ‘Thebe: Danse Traditional au Togo’, a book that documents activities of Tchebe dancers, agrees with the authorities that trace the history of Ife Togo to Ile-Ife, Nigeria. According to Kotannoa, he and his people were, in the past, referred to as ‘Anago’. But they rejected the term because they believe it is derogatory. So, they opted for Ife, which describes both the people and the variant of the Yoruba they speak.

He says, “Ife people came from Egypt. But our ancestors and scholars also noted that we first got to Ile-Ife in Nigeria. Our fathers lived in Ile-Ife for many years. Many of them werebabalawos (native doctors) and hunters. The tribal wars sacked them from Ile-Ife.”

Cosbyrich:
She is from Ibadan.

pazienza:
Olukumi in Anioma speak Yoruboid language and acknowledge descending from Owo, but are they Yorubas?
Same is applicable to those Ife people in Togo.
They are Ife descendants, but they are not Yorubas. They have evolved a new identity of their own.
Ijebu are supposed to be descendants of Sudan and not Ife ,It took them time to accept the Yoruba tag, but they are Yorubas today, thanks to Awolowo emergence as Yoruba leader.

There are many Edoid speaking groups in Akoko SE in Ondo, but they are Yorubas today because they have forged a bond with the rest of Yoruboid tribes around them.
The Usen people in Ovia SW in Edo are basically Yorubas, I have been there, they speak a Yoruboid language, their King is called Elawure(a clearly Yoruba word) and not Ovie/Ogie/Ojie as found amongst Edoids. But they are proud of their Edo identity, because for some reason, they were not involved in the formation of Yoruba as an ethnic group from the beginning and have always flown with the Edos. My good friend from Usen is named Olarenwaju.

You will never be able to convince anyone that those Togolese are Yorubas. We can accept they migrated from groups that formed Yoruba and have now evolved their own distinct entities.

Michael004:
Oga go sleep. Olukumi are Yoruba.

pazienza:
Olukumi in Anioma speak Yoruboid language and acknowledge descending from Owo, but are they Yorubas?
Same is applicable to those Ife people in Togo.
They are Ife descendants, but they are not Yorubas. They have evolved a new identity of their own.
Ijebu are supposed to be descendants of Sudan and not Ife ,It took them time to accept the Yoruba tag, but they are Yorubas today, thanks to Awolowo emergence as Yoruba leader.

There are many Edoid speaking groups in Akoko SE in Ondo, but they are Yorubas today because they have forged a bond with the rest of Yoruboid tribes around them.

Sammy07:
Guy Wetin you dey yarn

Before the British intervention each sub of Yoruba has her own dialect and distinct name.

Each sub group of Yorubas originated from Ife.
Oyo people were originally called Yoruba b4 the British came.

How can you tell me Owo people are not Yoruba?

I'm from Ondo, if an Ondo person speak or an ijebu person speaks or Owo person speaks you won't know as an outside that they are speaking different dialects.

Only the Osun, Oyo people can say they are speaking different dialects but they don't understand them. (if they pay attention, they'll get at least 40%)

As an Ondo guy, I understood Owo and ijebu.
Even if I don't understand everything, I'll grab a bit cos we're eastern Yorubas, our Vowels is a bit different.

Stop saying what you don't know

About Akoko, you don't know anything about akoko.
So let's not go there
It's only in Akoko that you'll find different dialects of Yoruba spoken in the same streets.
About 100 dialects are in Akoko land, Any random Ondo guy or Ekiti will quickly grab.