Crowther was himself a Yoruba and compiled the first Yoruba dictionary as well as introducing a standard for Yoruba orthography.

The Yoruba still use the name Eko to refer to Lagos.

good evening ) has survived in certain parts of their diaspora as a self descriptive, especially in Sierra Leone Language The Yoruba culture was originally an oral tradition, and the majority of Yoruba people are native speakers of the Yoruba language.

Igala and Yoruba have important historical and cultural relationships.

History Dictionaries Grammars and sketches The first grammar of Yoruba.

As the North West Yoruba dialects show more linguistic innovation, combined with the fact that Southeast and Central Yoruba areas generally have older settlements, suggests a later date of immigration for Northwest Yoruba.

Its people are of the Yoruba ethnic group, one of the largest ethnolinguistic groups in Africa and its diaspora.

This seems to be the formative period of the Yoruba people as reflected in oral tradition and due to it, Ife continues to be seen as the spiritual homeland of the Yoruba.

Literary Yoruba, the standard variety learnt at school and spoken by newsreaders on the radio, has its origin in the Yoruba grammar compiled in the 1850s by Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther.

Yoruba settlements are often described as primarily one or more of the main social groupings called generations The first generation includes towns and cities known as original capitals of founding Yoruba kingdoms or states.

The area where North West Yoruba (NWY) is spoken corresponds to the historical Oyo Empire.

South East Yoruba (SEY) was probably associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c. 1450.

Ife (, also Ilé Ifẹ ) is an ancient Yoruba city in southwestern Nigeria.

The Yoruba religion comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practices of the Yoruba people.

The alternative name Akú , apparently an exonym derived from the first words of Yoruba greetings (such as Ẹ kú àárọ?

The historical Yoruba develop in situ , out of earlier Mesolithic Volta Niger populations, by the 1st millennium BCE.

The city was surpassed by the Oyo Empire as the dominant Yoruba military and political power in the 17th century.

See also List of rulers of Ife References Further reading Ojuade, J. S., 'The issue of 'Oduduwa' in Yoruba genesis the myths and realities', Transafrican Journal of History , 21 (1992), 139 158.

The Osun Osogbo Grove is among the last of the sacred forests which usually adjoined the edges of most Yoruba cities before extensive urbanization.

Oral history recorded under the Oyo Empire derives the Yoruba as an ethnic group from the population of the older kingdom of Ile Ife.

Central Yoruba forms a transitional area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY, whereas it shares many ethnographical features with SEY.

The extension of the term to all speakers of dialects related to the language of the Oyo (in modern terminology North West Yoruba) dates to the second half of the 19th century.

The languages of the two ethnic groups bear such a close resemblance that researchers such as Forde (1951) and Westermann and Bryan (1952) regarded Igala as a dialect of Yoruba.

Yoruba is classified within the Edekiri languages, which together with the isolate Igala, form the Yoruboid group of languages within the Volta Niger branch of the Niger Congo family.

History As of the 7th century BCE the African peoples who lived in Yorubaland, were not initially known as the Yoruba, although they shared a common ethnicity and language group.

The Yoruba often demanded slaves as a form of tribute of subject populations, who in turn sometimes made war on other peoples to capture the required slaves.

Traditional religions include local animistic religions in the Atakora (Atakora and Donga provinces), and Vodun and Orisha veneration among the Yoruba and Tado peoples in the center and south of the nation.

Etymology As an ethnic description, the word Yoruba was first recorded in reference to the Oyo Empire in a treatise written by the 16th century Songhai scholar Ahmed Baba.

What if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music, talented people singing in English and Pidgin, and Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo, mixing influences from Jay Z to Fela to Bob Marley to their grandfathers.

The major introduced religions are Christianity, followed throughout the south and center of Benin and in Otammari country in the Atakora, and Islam, introduced by the Songhai Empire and Hausa merchants, and now followed throughout Alibori, Borgou and Donga provinces, as well as among the Yoruba (who also follow Christianity).