abusuaman.com

An online crowdsourced resource for African Languages, made by you -- Add, Vote or Search for words in African Languages. All words are defined by users 🙂

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

Oh hey there!👋 We just added Sesotho, Lingala, Ndebele and Shona to our language sections. Go add some words at https://t.co/qBjDFxyiZ8!

[Afronalia @afronalia]

Important to note that it is pronounced:
AS-HANTI, which denotes emphasis on the second syllable.

[Patricia’s Daughter @AnitaDamina]

Translated this to Hausa. I’m hoping to see more versions in a lot more Nigerian languages soon. I hope we win this time.

[Afronalia @afronalia]

This week, we found another cool Twi-Yorùbá cross-lingual homophone: ɔdɔ and ọ̀dọ́!

Please like and share so we can have fun exploring more of these!
#langtwt #yorùbá #twi

[Wunpini F. Mohammed, Ph.D @wunpini_fm]

“To control people’s wealth… the domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonizing nations are crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized.”

-Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature.

[Afronalia @afronalia]

We found a trove of similar words between Éʋe and Yorùbá by Tobi Igbenoba! A few of the words are mispronounced so similarity is in question 😅 You might also find that some of these words appear in your language with different meanings. Enjoy!

#afronalia #langtwt #yoruba #ewe

[Duchess of Brixton ❤️🖤💚☭ @fufuisonme]

Also there is a village in Jamaica called Abeokuta named so by Yoruba indentured Labours brought over after emancipation. They call the area this because it reminded them so much of Abeokuta in Nigeria 🇳🇬 x🇯🇲

[Wunpini F. Mohammed, Ph.D @wunpini_fm]

Ni ti yuun palli ✨️
Naawuni pahi mi ti yuun bong. 🎉🎊

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

Yeah, sure, “love/desire” in Hausa can be so, soyayya or ƙauna but do we know WHY it is these words? Do we wonder about the origins or etymologies of certain words? I would love an academic look into this.

[Osono Dakadjalan @SonofNiani]

A Yorùbá tattoo artist from Ibadan and his tattoo chart 1971

[Afronalia @afronalia]

Agya Kwapaa is the title of an Akan tongue twister. There's more to it that involves a crocodile 🫢.
Look cool while reminiscing a classic Akan literary device!

#afronalia #twi #fante #akan #africanlanguages #africa #casual #fall #autumn #mampam #NFL

[Bantu Languages @BantuLanguages]

How do you say "pregnancy" in your Ntu language?

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

Pidgins are also an easy way to tell which languages are dominant. How many Guan words are in Ghanaian Pidgin?

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

Yup! Also interesting what is borrowed depending on area. “Evening tee” and “gbɛkɛ” will be used interchangeably in Ghanaian pidgin, depending on where you are.

[joy boy @FCTamakloe]

Ghanaian pidgin has loan words from Ga, Hausa, Twi, Ewe etc. The nature of pidgin is to borrow. It makes sense that we'd also borrow from other places. There was even a time when hearing someone say "I dey feel très bien" wasn't uncommon.

[Afronalia @afronalia]

Yitso taashi ni kanto abu fai.

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

isiXhosa, isiZulu, kiSwahili, tshiVenda, luGanda…see where this is going?

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

Hey, does anyone know why a LOT of words in Bantu languages end in vowels?
Nkosi, wewe, upenda, siyabonga, khalayi, umhle, hlano, umfundi, vhona.

These are all words from different Bantu languages. Additionally, the names of these Bantu languages also mostly end with vowels.

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

The word, susu, is cool because it appears in 3 African languages we know of. It might be appearing in more!

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

Homonyms across African languages are so intriguing. Like it’s so funny knowing that Gari in KiSwahili means car but also means flour or powder in Hausa.

[abusuaman.com @abusuaman]

We all know of the famous Asante in KiSwahili which is also a surname and ethnic group of one of the Akan peoples, the Asantes.