It has been said by many eminent linguists that of the 7,000 or so languages currently in existence, only about half will survive to the end of this century (some even predict a figure as low as 10%). When I first heard this on the BBC in 2010 my mind instantly went to my beloved Fulfulde. I was convinced at the time that it was amongst the terminally ill (forgive the expression) languages. Of course I was wrong as I was later to find out that Fulfulde in general was not considered an endangered language, at least not at the moment. But I also found out that because of how widespread Fulfulde is (it is spoken by indigenous populations in nineteen countries spread across West, East, and Central Africa), it does not all have the same destiny. In some countries it is strong, swallowing up other languages even. In…
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