Yoruba
Yorùbá Language Learning Resources (Updated 1/25)
Updated January, 2025
Leah Entenmann
There are few resources for Yorùbá self-instruction in comparison even to Swahili. However, there are several good sources for getting started. Agoke’s and Mosádomi’s books are both available online for free, and Agoke’s dictionary includes recordings of vocabulary words pronounced by a native speaker. Copies of Bamgboṣe’s grammar and a few of Schleicher’s books are available in the African Languages Pedagogy Library at UW-Madison’s African Cultural Studies Department.
Consider the following options.
Beginner Textbooks
Agoke, A. (2024). Yorùbá dictionary: For foreign and second language learners. Pressbooks. https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/yorubadictionary/
Mosádomi, F. (2012). Yorùbá yé mi: A beginning Yorùbá textbook. The University of Texas at Austin. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/250.
Schleicher, A. Y. F. (1998). Jẹ́ k’á ka Yorùbá. Yale University Press.
Schleicher, A. Y. F. (2018). Colloquial Yoruba: The complete course for beginners. Routledge.
Intermediate and Other Resources
Bamgboṣe, A. (1966). A grammar of Yoruba. Cambridge University Press.
Schleicher, A. Y. F. (1998). Jẹ́ k’á ka Yorùbá. Yale University Press.
Schleicher, A. Y. F. (1998). Yoruba newspaper reader. Dunwoody Press.
Additional Tools: Yorùbá Keyboards
It is very helpful to be able to type with the necessary diacritics in Yorùbá so you can distinguish between similar words like ilé (home, house) and ilẹ̀ (earth, land) that would otherwise look identical.
- Online: The most straightforward tool is a web app from Lexilogos, a website that offers dozens of keyboards for different languages. You can find the Yorùbá keyboard here.
- iPhones: A free app called Yoruba Keyboard is available on the App Store.
- Macs: There are a couple options—Yorùbá 8 and Yorùbá Ìrọ̀rùn for example—but I can’t figure out where I got the keyboard I use that I really like.
- Other operating systems: I suggest Googling “Android Yoruba keyboard” (or whatever other operating system instead of Android) to see what you come up with. You might have to dig.
