The religious divide in the Yoruba terminology for God: A linguistic perspective

Abstract

This paper has addressed the issue of the reflection of religious affiliation in the use of language. It specifically set out to ascertain whether the use any of the Oòlóòrun/ Oòlóòhun variant, in reference to ‘God’ has any religious connotation. In addition it sought to find out which of the variants correctly serves as the underlying form of the reduced form ‘Oòlóòun’. The paper adopted a two-pronged methodological approach, first, through a phonological analysis of consonant deletion in Yoruba, and secondly, through a questionnaire based data collection. The phonological analysis focused specifically on the possibility of the deletion of [r] and [h] in Yoruba. The linguistic analysis showed that the reduced form could not have been derived from the variant with [r] but from that with [h]. The analysis from the results from the questionnaire showed that though the Oòlóòrun variant is predominant in the language community, the Muslim origin of the Oòlóòhun variant is not in doubt. The study found that Christians and Muslims use the reduced variant without regard to its decidedly Muslim origin. The paper concluded by observing that linguistics and language use are veritable instruments of breaking down the barriers of religious divide.