FSI Yoruba Basic Course
Master the Yoruba Language Today
Everything you need to learn Yoruba is now with the Foreign Service Institute's course.
Get the most comprehensive Yoruba course ever created by the FSI and actually learn the language with hours of audio, mp3s, workbooks and PDFs.
Here’s What You Get
Plenty of audio, structured lessons, and clear learning units — everything you need to stay on track and make real progress.
What Language Students Say
Michael R.
Diplomat
"The FSI course materials are incredibly comprehensive. The audio lessons and workbooks helped me achieve fluency much faster than I expected."
Sarah L.
Language Enthusiast
"The bundle download made everything so convenient. Having all materials organized and instantly accessible has been fantastic for my learning journey."
James T.
Business Professional
"The quality of these FSI materials is outstanding. The structured approach and thorough explanations have made learning a new language much more manageable."
What is the FSI Yoruba Basic Course?
This FSI Yoruba course begins with an extensive collection of tone drills to help the learner master this challenging aspect of the language. Following this, there are a further 49 units consisting of dialogs that introduce vocabulary and new aspects of the Yoruba language.
Unfortunately, the student text that is supposed to accompany the audio recordings is not currently available, making this course less practical to use in its current form than it would otherwise have been.
How was FSI Yoruba Basic originally used?
FSI Yoruba was originally created for US diplomatic staff who were preparing for postings in areas where Yoruba is spoken.
They attended around six hours of classes per day, during which they spoke only Yoruba, and this was followed up by a further two hours of individual study.
Even outside of class, they were encouraged to speak Yoruba among themselves, so that after only around six months of learning, they were able to acquire a sufficiently advanced level in the language to perform the duties necessary for their roles abroad.
How can you use FSI Yoruba Basic?
Since the text accompanying the course is currently unavailable, the audio recordings alone will be of limited use, and if you have no other coursebook to refer to, you won’t be able to make much progress using just these materials.
However, if you have other resources to study, the tone drills may be useful in helping you master the pronunciation of Yoruba, and if you already have some basic Yoruba, the dialogs can also be used to work on your listening skills.
Hopefully, in the future, I will be able to locate the accompanying text and upload it to the site, which will make this course more useful to those who have no access to any other Yoruba course materials.
Taking it further
If you want to learn Yoruba, whether with this free Yoruba course or with any other resources you have available, you will need to take your language skills out into the real world and try them out.
Look for native Yoruba speakers who can help you practice and make sure you take every opportunity to practice your Yoruba. Above all, make using Yoruba a part of your daily life, because when you do this, you will see that your abilities in this language really start to improve.
Pronunciation
Pronunciation Discussion
Pronunciation Drill b vs. gb
Pronunciation Drill gb vs. p
Tones
Tone Discussion
- The Tones of Yoruba, pXVI
- Tonal Differences Among Speakers of Yoruba, pXIX
- Vowel Length, pXIX
- Condensation', pXXI
- Tone Drills, pXXI
Tone Drills Series I
- 1. Low Rise vs. Low Low, p1
- 2. High Fall vs. High High, p2
- 3. Low Rise vs. High Fall, p3
- 4. High High vs. Mid High, p5
- 5. High Mid vs. Mid Mid, p7
- 6. Mid Mid vs. Low Mid, p9
- 7. High High vs. High Mid, p11
- 8. Mid High vs. Mid Mid, p13
- 9. Mid Mid vs. Mid Low, p15
- 10. Low Mid vs. Low Low, p17
- 11. Mid High vs. Low Rise, p19
- 12. High Fall vs. Mid Low, p22
- 13. Mid Low vs. Low Low, p24
- 14. High Mid vs. High Fall, p26
- 15. Low Rise vs. Low Mid, p28
- 16. Mid High vs. Low Mid, p30
- 17. High Mid vs. Mid Low, p32
- 18. High High vs. Mid Mid, p34
- 19. Mid Mid vs. Low Low, p36
- 20. Review, p39
- 21. One mora vs. two, level pitch, p40
- 22. One mora vs. two, glides, p42
- 23. High Mid vs. High Second, p44
- 24. Rise vs. Fall in larger context, p46
- 25. High Rise High vs. High Mid High, p47
- 26. High Mid High vs. High Second High, p47
- 27. High High Fall vs. High X Low, p48
- 28. Low vs. Fall, p48
- 29. High Mid vs. High X, p48
- 30. Alternating Rises and Falls, p49
Tone Drills Series II
- Tone contrasts on two-more vowels
- 1. Low-RISE LOW-Mid vs. Low-LOW LOW-Mid, p53
- 2. Low-HIGH LOW-Mid vs. Low-MID LOW-Mid, p53
- 3. Combination of Drills 1 and 2, p54
- 4. Extension of Drill 3 to segmentally diverse utterances, p54
- 5. Mid-HIGH LOW-Mid vs. Mid-MID LOW-Mid, p55
- 6. Mid-MID LOW-Mid vs. Mid-LOW LOW-Mid, p55
- 7. Extension of Drills 5 and 6 to segmentally diverse utterances, p55
- 8. Combination of all preceding drills, p56
- 9. High-HIGH LOW-Mid vs. High-MID LOW-Mid, p56
- 10. High-FALL LOW-Mid vs. High-MID LOW-Mid, p57
- 11. High-HIGH LOW-Mid vs. High-FALL LOW-Mid, p57
- 12. Combination of Drills 9, 10 and 11, p57
- 13. Extension of Drill 12 to segmentally diverse utterances, p58
- 14. Mid-HIGH MID-Mid vs. Mid-MID MID-Mid, p58
- 15. Mid-MID MID-Mid vs. Mid-LOW MID-Mid, p58
- 16. Combination of Drills 14 and 15, p58
- 17. Mid-HIGH MID-Low vs. Mid-MID MID-Low, p59
- 18. Mid-MID MID-Low vs. Mid-LOW MID-Low, p59
- 19. Extension of Drills 17 and 18 to segmentally diverse utterances, p59
- 20. Mid-MID LOW-Mid vs. Mid-MID MID-Low, p60
- 21. Mid-HIGH LOW-Mid vs. Mid-HIGH MID-Low, p60
- 22. Extension of Drills 20 and 21, p60
- 23. Low-RISE MID-Low vs. Low-MID MID-Low, p61
- 24. High-SECOND MID-Mid vs. High-SECOND SECOND-Mid, p61
- 25. High-MID MID-Low vs. High-SECOND SECOND-Low, p61
- 26. High-HIGH MID-Low vs. High-MID MID-Low, p62
- 27. High-SECOND LOW-Mid vs. High-MID LOW-Mid, p62
- 28. High-SECOND MID-Low vs. High-MID MID-Low, p63
- 29. High-SECOND Low-Mid vs. High-FALL LOW-Mid, p63
Tone Drills Series III
Unit 1
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p73
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p73
- C. Exercises, p75
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p75
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p76
Unit 2
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p77
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p77
- C. Exercises, p79
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p80
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p80
- D. Supplementary Material Part 3, p80
Unit 3
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p81
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p81
- C. Exercises, p83
- D. Supplementary Material, p84
Unit 4
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p85
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p85
- C. Exercises Part 1, p87
- C. Exercises Part 2, p87
- D. Supplementary Material, p89
Unit 5
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p90
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p90
- C. Exercises Part 1, p93
- C. Exercises Part 2, p93
- D. Supplementary Material, p94
Unit 6
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p95
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p95
- C. Exercises Part 1, p97
- C. Exercises Part 2, p97
- D. Supplementary Material, p98
Unit 7
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p99
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p99
- C. Exercises Part 1, p101
- C. Exercises Part 2, p102
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p103
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p103
- D. Supplementary Material Part 3, p104
Unit 8
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p104
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p104
- C. Exercises Part 1, p106
- C. Exercises Part 2, p106
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p107
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p108
Unit 9
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p108
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p108
- C. Exercises Part 1, p110
- C. Exercises Part 2, p111
- D. Supplementary Material, p111
Unit 10
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p112
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p112
- C. Exercises Part 1, p114
- C. Exercises Part 2, p115
- C. Exercises Part 3, p116
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p116
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p118
Unit 11
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p120
- A. Basic Diague for Fluency, p120
- C. Exercises Part 1, p121
- C. Exercises Part 2, p122
- C. Exercises Part 3, p122
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p123
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p124
Unit 12
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p125
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p125
- C. Exercises Part 1, p127
- C. Exercises Part 2, p127
- C. Exercises Part 3, p128
- C. Exercises Part 4, p128
- D. Supplementary Material, p129
Unit 13
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p130
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p130
- C. Exercises Part 1, p132
- C. Exercises Part 2, p133
- C. Exercises Part 3, p133
- C. Exercises Part 4, p133
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p134
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p135
Unit 14
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p136
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p136
- C. Exercises, p138
- D. Supplementary Material, p138
Unit 15
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p139
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p139
- C. Exercises, p141
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p142
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p142
Unit 16
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p143
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p143
- C. Exercises Part 1, p145
- C. Exercises Part 2, p145
- C. Exercises Part 3, p146
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p147
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p147
Unit 17
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p148
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p148
- C. Exercises Part 1, p149
- C. Exercises Part 2, p150
- D. Supplementary Material, p150
Unit 18
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p157
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p157
- C. Exercises Part 1, p159
- C. Exercises Part 2, p160
- D. Supplementary Material Part 1, p160
- D. Supplementary Material Part 2, p161
Unit 19
Unit 20
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p166
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p166
- C. Exercises, p167
- D. Supplementary Material, p168
Unit 21
Unit 22
Unit 23
Unit 24
Unit 25
Unit 26
Unit 27
Unit 28
Unit 29
Unit 30
Unit 31
Unit 32
Unit 33
Unit 34
Unit 35
Unit 36
Unit 37
Unit 38
Unit 39
Unit 40
Unit 41
Unit 42
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p242
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p242
- C. Exercises, p244
- C. Exercises (cont'd), p244
Unit 43
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p247
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p247
- List of Monetary Terms, p249
- C. Exercises, p250
Unit 44
- A. Basic Dialogue for Learning, p252
- A. Basic Dialogue for Fluency, p252
- Names of some kinds of edible animals, p254
- C. Exercises, p254
Unit 45
Unit 46
Unit 47
Unit 48