Dr. Yoruba .

GENERAL YORUBA LANGUAGE How Abeokuta and Lagos Created Standard Yoruba The Egba-Lagos Revolution The Printing Press (1854-1913) Language does not become general because it is old. It becomes general because it is printed. The First Machine: Ake, Abeokuta 1854 On November 1854, Rev. Henry Townsend unpacked a wooden hand-press at Ake, Abeokuta. It was the first printing press in the interior of what is now Nigeria. Its product, Ìwé Ìròhìn fún Ẹ̀gbá ati Yorùbá (Newspaper for Egba and Yoruba), is the first archaeological site for the Yoruba language. Before the press, Yorùbá was handwritten in Roman letters with dots. After the press, it had to be cast in lead type. The CMS printers, led by Saro returnees like Andrew Wilhelm and Joseph Johnson, faced a practical problem: The Ọ̀yọ́ dialect writes "yẹn" as "yun" [y-u-n with underdot]. The Ifẹ dialect writes it as "yẹni". The lead type imported from London had no character for Oyo's compressed nasal `un` sound that is neither `an` nor `un`. In order to print, they made a decision that changed Yoruba history: they leveled it to yen. Who's that? Crowther's manuscript, 1852: Oyo:Tani yun? (handwritten) Ife:Tani yeni Standard YORUBA:Tani yen What is that? Oyo:Tani yun Ife:Tani yeni Yoruba standard:Tani yen Are you the one? Oyo:Se iwo nun-un Ife:Se iwo niyeni Yoruba proper:Se/she iwo niyen Iwe Irohin, December 1859, page 3: Tani yen? (printed) That one letter change from `u` to `e` is the birth of Standard Yoruba. It happened not in Oyo, but in Egba. The Second Machine: Lagos 1859-1867 In 1859, the press moved its intellectual center to Lagos. Lagos had three advantages Oyo did not have: 1.Port: New type and paper from London 2. Population:Saro, Egba, Ijebu, Oyo, Ilaje living in one street — they needed a common written form 3. Schools:CMS Grammar School Lagos (1859) — the first secondary school — taught reading from printed books, not oral dialect. The men who edited those books were not Oyo men. They were: Henry Johnson (Ekiti-Egba) - E. M. Lijadu (Egba) - Obadiah Johnson (Saro) - Edward Blyden (Liberia-Sierra Leone based in Lagos) All of them spoke Egba or Lagos Yoruba at home, which already says `yen`, not `yun`. So when they edited Crowther's Bible, they kept his Oyo sentence structure, but replaced his Oyo words with their Lagos-Egba words the Yoruba standard the whole Yoruba is using today. The Committees That Made It Law Two committees cemented Abeokuta-Lagos as the general Yoruba: Yoruba Orthography Committee, Lagos, 1875: Agreed to use `ẹ, ọ, ṣ` with dots, and to write demonstratives as `yẹn, yìí, yì` instead of Oyo `yun, yii, yi`. Dictionary Committee, Lagos, 1913: Published _Dictionary of the Yoruba Language_ (CMS Bookshop Lagos). Preface states: _"The dialect chosen as standard is not strictly that of any one tribe, but that form which is most generally understood, being the language as spoken and written in Lagos and Abeokuta."_ That sentence is the archaeological proof you are looking for. Lagos and Abeokuta admitted in 1913 that what they printed became the standard. Therefore, Standard Yoruba is not "Ọ̀yọ́ language." it is a grammar printed through an Egba-Lagos machine. Without the Abeokuta-Lagos press, it would never have become general. There's nothing in Ọ̀yọ́ dialect that makes it general, Ọ̀yọ́ dialect is a very distinct language from Yoruba proper,a lot of differences. Nobody can use Ọ̀yọ́, Èkìtì, Òndó, Ifẹ, Ìjèṣà, Ìjẹ̀bú to write WAEC in today's Nigeria,they are all local,those who argue we use Ọ̀yọ́ as a general language have not been to Ọ̀yọ́ to hear their language. We deceive ourselves a lot in this part of the world. Ọ̀yọ́ people themselves know that their language is not the language we all speak today. #highlightseveryonefollowers #yorubaculture – at Lagos, Nigeria