(also Peul, Pullo, Fulbe, Foulah, Ful, Fellata, Fellani, Filani), a people living in various countries of West Africa, including Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, and Cameroon. According to a 1975 estimate, the Fulani number 12 million. They are related to the peoples of the Ethiopian race. When the Europeans began colonizing Africa in the 19th century, the Fulani lived under feudal forms of government. The majority of them profess Islam, but some cattle-raising tribes practice ancestor and nature worship. The Fulani chiefly engage in nomadic cattle raising, although those who have settled among the Negroid population of the western Sudan also engage in farming; the chief crops are sorghum, rice, legumes, and peanuts.
(also Fula, Fulbe, Fulfulde, Peul), the language of the Fulani people, spoken in West Africa from the Atlantic coast to Lake Chad. According to a 1975 estimate, there are approximately 12 million speakers of Fulani. In certain areas, the language is used as a means of intertribal communication, especially in northern Cameroon. Fulani belongs to the West Atlantic branch of the Congo-Kordofanian languages. Its principal dialects are Fouta Toro (Senegal), Fouta Djallon (Guinea), Masina (Mali), Western Nigerian (Nigeria), and Adamawa (Cameroon and eastern Nigeria).
Fulani consonants exhibit voicing opposition, and they may be preceded by glottalization or nasalization (for example, mb, nd, nj, ng). Vowels show the opposition between long and short. An important feature is the morphophonemic alternation of initial consonants in singular and plural forms (for example, w–b–mb, r–d–nd, s–c, and f–p). Fulani has a highly developed system of more than 20 nominal classes that governs agreement between nouns and attributive forms (adjectives, numerals, participles, demonstratives, possessives, and articles) and anaphoric forms (pronouns). Noun classes are distinguished by suffixes and by the degree of alternation of the initial consonant.
The verb is marked for voice (active, medial, and passive) and form (for example, causation, intensity, instrumentality, reciprocity, and simulation of action). Fulani has a highly developed system of forms for indicating tense and aspect. Aspectual opposition is also expressed in pronouns in subject position. Negative forms follow a special paradigm.
The Fulani script, known as Adjame, was developed from the Arabic alphabet. Since the 1970’s, Fulani has been written in Latin script.
A. I. KOVAL’