A Basic Lucumí-Standard Yoruba Translation Aid

There has been a lot of confusion surrounding the differences between written Lucumí and what is found in Yoruba dictionaries. This is due to a number of factors: the use of Spanish orthography in written Lucumí, the consolidation of a number of different dialects in Cuba, different paths of evolution as well as changes made to the language over time in both Cuba and Africa.

Early on the Lucumí language was considered to be nothing more than extremely deteriorated remnants of the language brought to Cuba by the Slave Trade. But as knowledge of different Yoruba dialects became available to researchers, combined with a better grasp of how the Spanish form of writing was used to express Yoruba words, this view has been steadily losing ground. The Lucumí language, often referred to as anagó, is now seen more as an amalgamation of the various dialects that made their way to the island that evolved naturally much in the way the mother tongue is likely to have evolved in Africa. And while the Spanish language certainly influenced the Lucumí language, it was not nearly as much as was once thought. It should also be remembered the written Lucumí was never intended to be a final form, but instead as a quick reference to be used by people who were at least somewhat familiar with the spoken version of the language.

Meanwhile, Christian missionaries created a Yoruba alphabet as well as the first 'Yoruba' dictionaries as part of their attempts to create a 'Yoruba identity' out of the disparate city-states. Since then, almost all the Yoruba dictionaries are based on the Egba dialect with Oyó grammar.

Many attempts have been made to literally translate various prayers and songs and reconcile them with what is now referred to as Standard Yoruba, with varying amounts of accuracy, much of it due to difficulties with the Spanish orthography. This basic guide will hopefully help persons get over the first hurdles of this process by giving the Lucumí letters and their most common equivalents.

It should be noted that Yoruba is a tonal language with no stressed or accented syllables, like Chinese and many mesoamerican languages, and the use of accents was sometimes a means of expressing those tones since accented syllables often have a change in tone in the Spanish language. There is also a lot of elision used in Yoruba where letters are 'swallowed' as one word runs into another and a letter (usually a vowel) get's lost. Thus you get Yemoja from Ye(ye) (o)mo (e)ja, meaning Mother Whose Children are the Fish (the letters that are 'swallowed' or elided are in parenthesis).

This guide is by no means conclusive, but is designed to give a leg up to those wishing to gain extra insight into the meanings of Lucumí songs and prayers by comparing them to Yoruba. Also, many times the songs and prayers are a form of poetry with the literal words only alluding to their real meaning. This is why elders often will tell a person what the song or prayer means as opposed to a literal word for word translation.