Meaning of Yoruba | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Alternative spelling of Yoruba.
   alt-of, alternative, plural, plural-only
2. A member of an ethnic group or tribe living mainly in southwest Nigeria, southern Benin, and eastern Togo and, as well as in communities elsewhere in West Africa, United States, Brazil and Cuba.
   in-plural
3. A sub-Saharan language. It belongs to the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family, and has nearly 40 million speakers in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Sierra Leone, as well as communities in The United States, Brazil and Cuba.
4. An African traditional religion which spawned various offshoots in the Americas in the 15th to 19th centuries, including santería and Lucumí. (See Yoruba religion.)

Equivalents

Examples

“Approximately 40 percent of Yorubas in Nigeria are Muslim and 60 percent are Christian. […] Its members express a strong preference for being among Yorubas during their worship service: “Since I am a Yoruba and we Yorubas have our own Church. . . ."”

“In the parlour, she could hear Aunty Biola attempting to teach her father Yoruba, collapsing into helpless giggles whenever he mispronounced his vowels, giving them the flat English sound instead of lifting them upwards with the slight outward puff of breath that was required.”

“Comparative wordlists of two dialects of Yoruba with Igala.”

“The Yoruba practitioner describes it as a condition where a man's semen will flow out of the vagina before fertilization can take place.”

“The Yoruba practitioner has no difficulty in knowing the difference between what we have classified as magic, medicine or sorcery.”

“This is because when the Yoruba practitioner heals a stomach ache, he uses medicine, when he protects someone from accident, he uses magic, and when he invokes for the purpose of harming or killing a person, he uses sorcery.”

“She was not a Yoruba practitioner but nevertheless had asked for a “birth reading” for her newborn daughter.”

“From the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, merchants raided Yorùbá towns, captured men and women from large Yorùbá-speaking regions, and sold them, mainly to Portuguese traders.”

“Unlike in the past, the Yorùbá are showing they are ready to accept those who profess Awoist ideals and ideas – and are therefore proper Yorùbá – joining different political parties, an almost heretical practice until the last few years.”

“The piano was supported by indigenous musical instruments like the ekwe (slab and stick of the Igbo people) and the gangan (of the Yorùbá people—the talking drum) (Modfestivals Marktoberdorf, 2016b and 2016c).”

“From the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, merchants raided Yorùbá towns, captured men and women from large Yorùbá-speaking regions, and sold them, mainly to Portuguese traders. Yorùbá-speaking men and women, more than any other West African ethnic and linguistic group, were enslaved and exported to North America, Cuba, and Brazil in large numbers.”

“An analysis of the Lucumí subclassifications associated with Yorùbá-speaking kingdoms and places indicates that over 75 percent had Yorùbá names, compared to less than 25 percent from other non-Yorùbá-speaking ethnonyms. This analysis confirms how the largest concentrations of Yorùbá speakers left Ouidah and Lagos, while non-Yorùbá-speaking groups generally departed to the east and west of those two ports.”

“The use of the gangan, or “talking drum,” was particularly unique because it enunciated Igbo words. What makes this special is that the drum is poised to pronounce Yorùbá words with its various distinctive tones and inflections. […] The inculcation of the drum to pronounce Igbo words draws attention to an intercultural and linguistic dimension to the talking drum’s beats where there is the superimposition of indigenous Yorùbá rhythms on the Igbo language.”

CEFR level