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July 21, 2004

Fulfulde noun classes

Fulfulde has more than twenty noun classes, all with different sets of endings. One class for people, another for four-legged animals, and a separate one for larger-than-average four-legged animals. Another for liquids, another for trees, another for crops. One class for long thin things (turban, road, sentence) and another for roundish things (eye, star, testicle). A class for large things, a class for small things, and a class for slimy things. And so on.

There are hundreds of exceptions, of course. Hunnduko (mouth) is in the class for crops, lamδam (salt) is in the class for liquids and choffal (chicken) is in a class for wooden things. And interestingly, there is one class (nge) which has only three nouns in it: nagge nge (cow), naange nge (sun) and yiite nge (fire). The Fulani like nothing better than to philosophise about possible connections between the nge nouns while passing round a bowl of kosam (milk).

Posted by sahelsteve at July 21, 2004 05:03 PM