Yoruba is allegedly an official language in Brazil. Brazil’s minister of culture has announced that Yoruba will become one of their official languages and African history will be added school curriculum. Brazil has accumulated quite a number of Yoruba speakers and Orisha worshippers.

Most spoken language in Africa-Top10+

Other versions say that there’s some certain Arabic influence on the development and lexicology of the Yoruba language. The point is that there are several Arabic words that do resemble Yoruba ones, and vice versa. However, this hypothesis has no good grounds, either. Finally, there’s evidence that there has been an ancient dialect called Kanuri, which has once borrowed a lot of Arabic words. This dialect later transformed into Hausa and also gave a part of the Arabic borrowings to the Yoruba language. These interactions between the languages happened as early as the 9th century. Image source: buzznigeria.com Today, we can find four big groups of dialects and languages in Africa. These are the languages that belong to the Niger-Congo family (which is Yoruba family), Afro-Asiatic languages and dialects (Hausa is a bright representative), Nilo-Saharan ones, and a separate group – Khoisan languages that are located in the southern Africa only and nowhere else. The existing dialects of Yoruba language at present.