Finally a Japanese-authored English-Fulfulde Dictionary is here in my library.
A Japanese, Paul Kazuhisa Eguchi, wrote the English-Fulfulde dictionary in 1986. He works at the Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
Another one, in three volumes, published in 1995 by a German, Paul W. de Wolf, is on its way from Amazon.
These are the only two I can find. (Please, I am not talking about Fulfulde-English dictionary but English-Fulfulde).
You will wonder what we have been doing over the past 100 years... Sai dibgar tuwo da haihuwa. Our life, including that of our academics, has been reduced to the level of survival, you may argue.
However, when you realise that the books and poems written by the triumvirate 1800s jihadi scholars were actually written in period of perpetual battles and without aminities like electricity or internet, the excuse of any difficulty today will simply vanish into the thin air.
The fact is one: few Africans give knowledge its due recognition. Most of us go the school in order to find something to eat - including yours sincerely. And unless we change from the commercial perspective of knowledge and shift from the primitive thinking that the stomach is the raison d'etre of existence, nothing of this hard fact will change.
In scholarship, there is more than the stomach can contain. Scholarship feeds also the brain, the mind and the spirit.
Allah ya kyauta.
My immense gratitude goes to Professors Ibrahim Mukoshy and Aminu Mika'ilu for all arrangements to ensure that a photocopy of Eguchi's dictionary reached me this morning.
I am also grateful to Umma Aliyu of Hamburg for finding the de-Wolf collection which I am purchasing through her, in sha Allah. De-Wolf's collection will be an essential reference material for any researcher and composer of Fulfulde literature, while Eguchi's dictionary should be committed to memory.
Allah mar sumpo. Allah bar zumunci.
Aliyu
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