What becomes quite evident in attempting to characterize the complexity of Yoruba as a tonal language is that there has to be, within the culture, simply must be some mechanism to manage recursion. I have no diactrics, with this editor, but you'll get it. Ogun. Ogun. Ogun. Ogun. Ogun. Five words with the same structure but different tones meaning different things. Once I was honored to have lunch with Dan Jurafsky, a Computational Linguist and McArthur fellow and I informed him that I was attempting to build a Yoruba speech recognizer. "A daunting task" he called it, and hearing a McArthur fellow use such words to describe what then to me was fun and games was quite disconcerting. Jurafsky's suggested that certain African languages use tone as grammatic functionaries, causing the entropy of adjudication to skyrocket towards chaos. Now I understand it. Yoruba, for beginners, will only be as complex as tonal ambiguity can be within the aolean scale within which Yoruba is firmly situation, from Ijebu Yoruba all the way down to the funny Yoruba Thomas Ojo used to teach us from "the interior." In that Yoruba they repeat almost every syllable if the word contains certain hard letters. "Akpotafugurenge sa re re lo lo gb0-gbo gbogbo owo." According to Ojo, this was Yoruba of Ancient Ibadan. Ibrahim, he used to tell us about how life was during "the Yoruba wars." Said he, you had to know the other family by the number of tribal marks on their face, so war was very precise. A series of highly sophisticates lynchings I'd suspect. Samuel Johnson, he had very little good to say about Yoruba warfare, until you read carefully what he was saying. Note to military tacticians, I'd be very wary of anyone who understands Yoruba warfare. It is deadly attrition beyond what a civilization can bear. I pray we cease moving towards it.
Merin-dilogun. What does that mean? Four has reached iron. Or four squared. That is merin-dilogun, 16, is a hint about a certain sort of mathematics. What is mathematics? The skills of justice. Axiology, basically. In Yoruba, determination, not divination, is known as IFA. It is a subtle misconception sourced from the similarity of the concepts in European tradition. Divination requires no foreknowledge. Determination, however, uses the equality symbol in all cultures, so it requires foreknowledge with a finite number of things unknown within the domain. The supposition is that if the observed relationships hold, then inferences can be made to determine the value of a single object in the axiological constitution of the people. The market.
"nKan" is "the one." It is the sound of a bata hit at the tip. Sounds almost like a conga.
"Eji" is not two. It is "the image of me" or "emi-eji" the other me. It can also be used for counting, for example. "One me yam. The other (another) me yam".
"eta" is not three but can be thought to be "maat" or as it is called "meta"--the third person perspective, in European tradition, that produces consent.
"Erin" is where counting may start. It is four. All it is, according to Baba Arugbo Allao (Alao Agba) is an observation of why the thumb is different from the four other fingers.
But why "eji, eta, erin" and "meji, meta, merin" What is the m for? It is an observable pattern. I have yet to find a linguistic explanation so I have mine. Yoruba is concerned about the wealth of self, immanently. So the m is for "me" or "emi." So that "meji" is "emi eji", "meta" is emi eta", "merin" is "emi erin" etc. BUT... Yoruba IS complex, as I have found. So that "emi"--me--in this recursive language is also "oma" and "ama". "Oma" is individual spirit in the larger Nibantu dialect sourced from Ilesha and Akoko Edo and "ama" is "the people of" sourced from southern Bantu. The Urhobo would say "oma wen ganre?" which many feel to mean "is your individual spirit fine?" Subtle Urhobo "readers" might say "ama wen ganre", "is the entirety of your race fine?" which would preclude, in Urhobo dialog protocol, the need for further such pleasantries. Language is often about expediency.
Why is Yoruba such a prevalent language? Because it was the language of determination of value, thus it was the language to trade and commerce. It has declined, as has Yoruba civilization, because there are no men today of such character as would necessitate the renaissance of deeper (and more ticklish) Yoruba Semantics as we study in Yoruba Theater. I am a scholar of Hubert Ogunde the Yoruba filmmaker of the classic "Aiye." He it was who introduced me, in Atlanta, to the world council of witches. Just thought I'd throw that in so that you might ask me how it is that a putatively dead man remains my professor in Yoruba theather. Yoruba gods are just that. Gods. They do not die.
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