At first glance, it may look like the linguistic landscape of Africa is composed of colonial languages—French, English, and Portuguese account for the official languages of most sub-Saharan African nations. But this view is deceptive—these languages are simply lingua francas, used for interethnic communication among the incredibly diverse populations of African countries. Most people in sub-Saharan Africa speak an indigenous language, often a minority one spoken in only a portion of the country. Fula—of which Western Niger Fulfulde is a dialect—is one of these hidden African languages, and a major one at that.
Fula is one of Africa’s bigger indigenous languages, with more than 37 million native speakers stretching across 18 different countries in the Sahel region. The transnational nature of Fula has given rise to many different (but mutually intelligible) dialects in the different areas it’s spoken. One such dialect is Western Niger Fulfulde, spoken not only in western Niger but also in northern Burkina Faso. Few dedicated translation services exist for Western Niger Fulfulde, so we at TranslationServices.com decided to take matters into our own hands and create our own Western Niger Fulfulde translation team.
For a free quote for our Western Niger Fulfulde translation services, just message us and ask!
Let us give you a brief overview of Western Niger Fulfulde.
Western Niger Fulfulde is, of course, spoken in western Niger, where around 450,000 people are native speakers. But Burkina Faso boasts many more speakers of the language, with the country’s roughly 6.5 million native speakers of Western Niger Fulfulde accounting for more than 29% of the population. The language belongs to the Niger–Congo language family, specifically the Senegambian branch, making it related to Wolof, Serer, and, of course, other Fula dialects. It’s also related to Swahili, albeit extremely distantly.
Grammar in Western Niger Fulfulde can be complicated for a learner, largely due to the language’s massive noun class system. With around 20 different classes that affect the obligatory suffix a noun must take, as well as the form the definite article takes, Western Niger Fulfulde and other Fula dialects require a large degree of memorization, especially considering that there often aren’t clear distinctions to determine which class a noun belongs to. Other complications include the language’s three voices for verbs: active, passive, and middle. The middle voice is in between the active and the passive and in some—but only some—verbs includes a reflexive meaning (i.e., an action one does to oneself). These characteristics of Western Niger Fulfulde grammar can be tricky if you don’t work with a native speaker for translation—but don’t worry, our team members are proud native speakers!
Western Niger Fulfulde translation services tailored to meet your needs
We’ve built our Western Niger Fulfulde translation team to be as diverse and flexible as possible, catering to the varied needs of our broad clientele from across West Africa and the wider world. We’ve recruited expert translators from different areas of western Niger and northern Burkina Faso, so we can accommodate translation needs for different subdialects of Western Niger Fulfulde. And don’t worry about the translation direction: we offer translation services both to and from the language.
Our team includes translation experts from a wide range of domains—everything from academic translation and business translation to literary translation and localization. We also have many translators on our team who have expertise in other fields, so if you need a translator with familiarity in a specific discipline, just let us know. If you have any special requests, you need only notify us—we’ll work with our large and highly flexible Western Niger Fulfulde translation team to find the best translator for you.
Let us serve your Western Niger Fulfulde translation needs—place your first order today!