About the Dictionary

Wiktionary's crowdsourced Yorùbá dictionary is one of the best resources online for learning Yorùbá. Not only does it have more defined words than most Yorùbá dictionaries, but it also includes details of how longer words are constructed from shorter words. Learning to recognize these compound words is a core part of learning the language. The Wiktionary website itself, though, is poorly matched to language learners, whether in terms of quick single-word lookups or language exploration. This project keeps the data and rebuilds the user experience.

Why care about etymology?

We can build a deep, comprehensive, and growing dictionary through the use of Wiktionary. We hope to not only make it easier to navigate, but encourage people to contribute — if you can't find a word in our dictionary, add it to Wiktionary! Beyond that, Yorùbá is fundamentally different from English in how it builds larger words out of smaller building-block words. People often think of etymology as an academic curiosity, but in languages like Yorùbá, being able to recognize compound words is part of fluency. Wiktionary is not comprehensive in these breakdowns, but it's a better source for them than anywhere else online. We make it easier to find and explore these links — Language of connections is the long answer, with three sample vocabulary units built out of the ones this dictionary records.

Where Wiktionary falls short

Wiktionary's own site is difficult to use. To reliably find a word in Yorùbá, you generally want to type it without tone marks, but with underdots. Other combinations generally don't work. Wiktionary will then search every one of its languages for words with that spelling, and present every single result, with definitions, etymology, informative tables, and other details for every matching word in every language. Yorùbá, starting at Y, will be down at the bottom of that page. Not very fun for language learners! Furthermore, because Wiktionary is crowdsourced, it can be messy. Key details like etymology links between words are incredibly valuable to language learners but inconsistent in their entry and presentation. Sometimes a parent word documents the words derived from it, sometimes only the derived word documents where it came from, sometimes both, sometimes neither, depending entirely on which page a contributor happened to edit. Tracing a family of related words means guessing which page has the link and searching for it by hand.

What we changed

• Cleaned and reorganized. We start from Kaikki's already-cleaned extraction of Wiktionary's raw wikitext, then apply a light additional layer of our own processing. With crowdsourced data, this will always be a work in progress, so let us know if you spot any quirks.
• Searchable. With or without tone marks, with or without underdots, in English or Yorùbá.
• Restructured relationships. Whichever side of a relationship Wiktionary happens to document — parent or derived word — we automatically synthesize the missing reverse link, turning its inconsistent, crowdsourced etymology links into a real, two-way, navigable path through the language.

Part of Speak Nigeria

This dictionary is a project of Speak Nigeria, a nonprofit building free games and resources so children can learn and keep Nigerian heritage languages. If you're learning Yorùbá, our structured courses might also be a good fit.

Read next

• Key building block words — the 25 roots that build the most other words in this dictionary.
• Language of connections — how words are built from words, three sample vocabulary units, and how to teach from them.
• About Speak Nigeria — the nonprofit behind this.