Pular
Pular
Spoken in	Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali
Region	Fouta Jalon (in Guinea), Africa
Total speakers	10–16 million
Language family	Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Senegal-Guinea Senegambian Fula-Wolof Fula Pular
Writing system	Fula alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ff
ISO 639-2	ful
ISO 639-3	fuf – [[]]
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Pular is a Fula language spoken primarily by Fula people in the Fouta Jalon, in the West African state of Guinea and also into Guinea Bissau, and Sierra Leone, and with a small number of speakers in Mali. It is spoken by 3 million Guineans and is the most widely spoken indigenous language in the country. Some number of native speakers of this variety of Pular also have migrated to other countries in the region, notably Senegal.

Pular is not to be confused with Pulaar, another variety spoken natively to the north in Senegambia, Mauritania, and western Mali (including the Futa Toro region).

It can be written in Roman and Arabic script.

[edit] Linguistic features

There are some particularities to this version of Fula, including:

• Use of plural form for politeness (such as in German or French, unlike other varieties of Fula)
• A number of separate verbal roots for politeness (these may exist only in Pular)
• There is no initial consonant mutation from singular to plural verb forms as is the case in other varieties of Fula (there is in nominal forms, however)
• In addition to the more standard long-form pronouns of Fula there are alternate forms in Pular (= hi(l) + pronoun). The table below summarizes these (question marks where the info is not complete):

Person / number	Standard long-form pronoun (as in Pulaar)	Corresponding form in Pular
1st / sing	miɗo	miɗo hilan (non-standard alternate form)
2nd / sing	aɗa	hiɗa
3rd / sing	omo	himo
1st /pl (excl)	miɗen, amin	meɗen himen (non-standard alternate form)
1st / pl (incl)	eɗen	hiɗen
2nd / pl	oɗon	hiɗon
3rd / pl	eɓe	hiɓe

[edit] Writing

Like other varieties of the Fula language, Pular was written before colonization in an Arabic-based orthography called "Ajami." Although this is still used particularly in rural areas of Fuuta Jalon, Pular is mainly written in a Latin-based orthography, the so called UNESCO orthography, that is basically the same as that used for Fula throughout the region.

Up until the mid-1980s, Pular in Guinea was written with an orthography set by the Guinean government that differed from that used in other countries.

[edit] External links

• Pular Greetings
• The Fulɓe of Guinea
• Miɗo Waawi Pular! Learner's guide to Pular (Fuuta Jallon) by Herb Caudill and Ousmane Diallo

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