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Yoruba Studies

Yoruba is a language of West Africa with over 25 million speakers. It is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil, Sierra Leone, northern Ghana and Cuba.  Learn more about the FLL – African Languages Specialization here.

Currently, we offer language classes to meet undergraduate students’ foreign language requirement and cultural classes to prepare Africanist graduate students ready for their research stay in any Yoruba speaking community. Below is a list of courses that we offer at the moment:

  • YOR 1130: Beginning Yoruba 1
    5 credits
    available fall and summer A (good for foreign language requirement)
  • YOR 1131: Beginning Yoruba 2
    5 credits
    available spring and summer B (good for foreign language requirement)
  • YOR 2200: Intermediate Yoruba 1
    3 credits
    good for heritage students and Africanist graduate students
  • YOR 2201: Intermediate Yoruba 2
    3 credits
    good for heritage students and Africanist graduate students
  • YOR 3300: Advanced Yoruba 1
    3 credits
    good for heritage students and Africanist graduate students
  • YOR 3301: Advanced Yoruba 2
    3 credits
    good for heritage students and Africanist graduate students
  • YOW 4130: Readings in Yoruba Literature
    3 credits
    good for students aspiring to reach superior level in Yoruba
  • YOT 3500: Yoruba Diaspora and the New World
    3 credits

Study Abroad

Dr Akintunde Akinyemi currently directs the Intensive Advanced Yorùbá Group Project Abroad (GPA) held every summer at the campus of Obáfémi Awólówò University (OAU) in Ilé-Ifè, Nigeria. The program includes: five to six hours of intensive daily Yorùbá language instruction and interaction, cultural activities, excursions to historical and cultural sites on weekends, home-stay with a Yorùbá family for eight consecutive weeks, six-hour credit transfer by OAU to participants’ universities in the U.S. The Yorùbá GPA in Nigeria is part of the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Program of the U.S. Department of Education and is coordinated by the Center for African Studies, University of Florida in Gainesville for the Association of African Studies Programs and the African Language Teachers Association in the U.S. For Application materials and additional information please visit http://www.africa.ufl.edu/pal/yoruba-gpa.html or by mail:

Dr. Akintunde Akinyemi (Program Director)
University of Florida
PO Box 115560
348 Pugh Hall, Gainesville FL 32611-5565
Phone: 352-392-7082
akinyemi@ufl.edu

About African Languages

The African languages track offers a unique opportunity when it comes to seeking employment in multi-national corporations or research undertakings based on the African continent. Our track also prepares students for the rigors of graduate studies in the humanities and for fields such as comparative literature, religious/ diaspora studies, African cinema, developmental practices, humanitarian services, language learning businesses, translations & interpretation for United Nations organizations and other international agencies, to mention just a few.

The track is committed to enabling students develop the critical, analytical, and interpretive tools essential for successfully and productively working and living in today’s increasingly globalizing world. It focuses on a selected group of languages that function as languages of wider communication (lingua franca) in their sub-Saharan African regions. This list includes Akan/Twi (Ghana – West Africa), Amharic (Ethiopia- the Horn of Africa), Swahili (eastern and central Africa), Wolof (Senegal and the Gambia – West Africa), Yoruba (Nigeria and Benin – West Africa and the Diaspora), and Zulu (South Africa). Through studying these selected languages students not only gain communicative proficiency in the language(s) of their choice, but also a great understanding of the diverse literary and cultural traditions that make Africa such a fascinatingly unique and complex continent today.

Our faculty brings together scholars with diverse research interests, ranging from African oral literature through post-colonial African women writers, from language documentation to languages of urban Africa as well as contemporary African film, pop-culture and media. These nationally and internationally recognized researchers are also dedicated and innovative teachers who draw on their own scholarship to offer a variety of courses in literature, cinema, linguistics, and language.  Moreover, our courses are chosen not just by majors and minors in African languages but by students in fields such as anthropology, religion, history, art history, political science, other languages and literatures, and European and Asian studies, as well as by students in linguistics, business and the sciences, who participate in our program in order to enrich their own. Indeed, the training we provide gives our graduates an important advantage as they pursue careers in an increasingly competitive global environment.