A Tale of Two Isolates-Ainu Paradigm

Abstract

“I hope, however, it will be a long time before any other supersedes the MUSICAL Yoruban tongue” [1] REV. R. H. STONE. ‘Yoruba is a tonal language. The same combination of vowels and consonants has different meanings depending on the pitch of the vowels. For example, the same word -ARO can mean ‘cymbal’, ‘indigo dye’, ‘lamentation’ and ‘granary’ depending on intonation’. -Junior World mark Encyclopaedia of World Cultures. In linguistics there is a phenomenon called a “language isolate”. This is when a group of people speak a language which is totally unrelated to the language or languages spoken by the peoples surrounding them. Usually people in each area speak related languagesoften because they are of the same or similar genetic stock. [2] Yoruba is a language isolate [3]. It is totally unrelated to all other languages within Nigeria and in North, Central, Western, Eastern and Southern Africa.