Yulu language

Yulu (also known as Youlou, pronounced [yuːluː]) is a Central Sudanic language spoken by the Yulu people of South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR). It is estimated that in total the language has about 7,000 speakers, in both CAR and Sudan.

Yulu is classified as a Central Sudanic language of the Bongo–Bagirmi branch. It is written using Latin script (with adjustments for sounds with no corresponding letters), after the Rejaf Language Conference in 1928 attempted to standardize a writing system for the region's indigenous languages. Yulu is not the dominant indigenous language in the region within which it is spoken, however it is used over a wide geographic area. This has made it difficult to find out the number of people who use Yulu. An axiomatic functionalistic analysis of the phonology of the lanuguage (Doctoral dissertation, University of St Andrews) has found it to be very similar to the language Binga, another local language, used by the Binga People. with some linguists arguing that they are dialects of the same language, as opposed to different ones.

Many Sudanese people prefer to speak Arabic, however there is a new movement to promote the instruction of local languages in school. This is particularly because a large proportion of speakers are not literate in Yulu. Between 30 to 50 languages are spoken in South Sudan; Yulu was not recommended by the Rejaf Language Conference to be taught in schools, possibly contributing to its endangerment.

Yulu has four tones in speech; high, mid, low and extra-low. One of its defining features is the use of compound verbs. Compound verbs are a cluster of between two and four related verbs which create meaning when combined. Some of the most comprehensive linguistic information on Yulu was written by Stefano Santandrea, a Catholic priest from Rome who lived in Bahr al-Ghazal for several decades.