Product Description

This unique bilingual dictionary gives English speakers and other non-Yoruba a tool with which to learn one of the national languages of Nigeria, while simultaneously giving Yoruba scholars, students, and educators a voice to reach each other and the rest of the world in their native language.

A comprehensive review of the Yoruba alphabet and tonal system
More than 26,000 total word-to-word dictionary entires-- no definitions-- which include medical terms, the basic elements, and plant and animal taxonomy
Examples and idiomatic expressions that provide a context for new vocabulary words
A grammar section that includes part of speech and sentence structure
A list of Yoruba and English word roots, prefixes, and suffixes
An appendix of scientific measurements and rudimentary mathematical terminology

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69969 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 500 pages

About the Author
Kayode J. Fakinlede is a Yoruba born in Nigeria. He works as a research chemist and is currently based in the United States.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book!
This dictionary has it all. It is very good and basically can replace the need of a grammer book. In the beginning pages, it teaches you some of the grammar used in the Yoruba langauge. Tone patterns, the vowels, question types, greetings, verb conjuctions and word roots.

Besides that, this dictionary contains the meaning of just about any word you could think of in the English or the Yoruba language. Really, it has some odd and wierd words in here that you would never think you would even say in a sentence. Also, the dictionary itself doesnt just give the definition, it also defines small variances of the word. (Ex: See: lati ri (nkan); Let me see: Je ki nriran; To understand: lati ye; I see: O ye mi.) It also translates the English word to Yoruba. (Ex: Shout [A loud cry] or Fox [Doglike wild animal])

This book is a must-have for anyone trying to learn Yoruba. It contains so many words, even primitive Yoruba word such as Ireti which means Hope or Gbimo which means Plan. It contains over 26,000 entries.

The only thing I would advise anyone to do, is to learn the Yoruba alphabet if you do not already know it. That will immensely help you pronouce the words correctly, because of course, there is no audio that comes with this book to help you. (...)

I recommend this is any and everybody.

Better than the average Hippocrene dictionary, but not perfect
Hippocrene often offers American readers dctionaries of foreign languages by rebranding those published abroad. The YORUBA MODERN PRACTICAL DICTIONARY is one example. Compiled by Kayode J. Fakinlede, the dictionary is cleared aimed at a Nigerian audience, both Yoruba speakers working with English and non-Yoruba learning this major national language.

Fakinlede is not a professional lexiconographer, but a research scientist and, as we are told, "avowed Yoruba nationalist." One of the key aims of this dictionary seems to be facilitating the development of Yoruba scientific terminologies. There's a 10-page listing of English to Yoruba wood roots (e.g. "bio-", "cardio-", "quadri-"), and the English-Yoruba portion of the dictionary contains an usual amount of specialized scientific terms for such a relatively small dictionary. There's also some example texts of mathematical operations in Yoruba at the end, such as "To divide D in a ratio of A to B, find the sum of the ratios: A + B".

That the dictionary was written for a Nigerian audience is evident in the glossing of each English listing in the English-Yoruba portion. Listings such as "nosegay [a small bouquet, a bunch of flowers] or. idi ododo" are clearly meant to help out readers whose English might be shaky. And, of course, the preface written by attorney-general and civil rights activist Bola Ige, shortly before he was assassinated, is the sort of thing that would attract a local Nigerian audience.

However, the dictionary can still be useful for English-speaking students of Yoruba outside of Nigeria. A 13-page grammar gives a good sketch of the language, and the dictionary itself contains 26,000 entries with few noticeable lacunae. I'm not aware of any better dictionary that is widely available in the United States. However, the dictionary does suffer from a fault common to all of Hippocrene's dictionaries: extremely amateur typesetting. The bulk of this dictionary, a trade paperback reaching nearly 700 pages, could have been lessened had so much space not been wasted on each page.

Good one
I am so happy I bought this dictionary. It has almost those words you need. Hope there can be more words in future editions though. Anyone know how to get yoruba fonts work on the computer with those accent marks?