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Yoruba language
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== Literary Yoruba == [[File:WIKITONGUES- Olaniyan speaking Yoruba.webm|thumb|A Yoruba speaker, recorded in [[South Africa]]]] Literary Yoruba, also known as ''Standard Yoruba'', ''Yoruba koiné'', and ''common Yoruba'', is a separate member of the dialect cluster. It is the written form of the language, the standard variety learned at school, and that is spoken by newsreaders on the radio. Standard Yoruba has its origin in the 1850s, when [[Samuel A. Crowther]], the first native African Anglican bishop, published a Yoruba grammar and started his translation of the Bible. Though for a large part based on the [[Oyo Empire|Ọyọ]] and [[Ibadan]] dialects, Standard Yoruba incorporates several features from other dialects.<ref>Cf. for example the following remark by Adetugbọ (1967, as cited in Fagborun 1994:25): "While the orthography agreed upon by the missionaries represented to a very large degree the phonemes of the Abẹokuta dialect, the morpho-syntax reflected the Ọyọ-Ibadan dialects".</ref> It also has some features peculiar to itself, for example, the simplified [[vowel harmony]] system, as well as foreign structures, such as [[calque]]s from English that originated in early translations of religious works. Because the use of Standard Yoruba did not result from some deliberate linguistic policy, much controversy exists as to what constitutes 'genuine Yoruba', with some writers holding the opinion that the Ọyọ dialect is the "pure" form, and others stating that there is no such thing as genuine Yoruba at all. {{Citation needed|date=May 2020}} Standard Yoruba, the variety learned at school and used in the media, has nonetheless been a decisive consolidating factor in the emergence of a common Yoruba identity.
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