Tweet Yoruba Day aka “Ọjọ Sísọ Yorùbá Ní Túítà“

As begun on March 1, 2012, Tweet Yoruba Day (aka #tweetYoruba day) is one day set aside to tweet all day in Yoruba, a language spoken by over 30 million people worldwide. It began first as a means to pressure Twitter to include Yoruba on the list of languages into which the platform is being translated. This goal hasn’t yet been achieved, but the aim of the day has shifted mainly to celebrating the beauty of the language yearly. The latest #tweetYoruba Day took place on Friday, March 1, 2013 with maximumparticipation. The next one will take place on Saturday, March 1, 2014.

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More than a celebration of culture, #tweetYoruba is also a sociolinguistic experiment in the strength, pride, use, communicative ability, and viability of Yoruba as a language in the 21st Century in the face of technological advancement, globalization, and the spread of English as an international language. As long as it can serve communicative and cultural roles among young people who dominate Twitter, it might yet last forever. Every year shows the new ways in which the language has changed to fit the changes in global tech language use. This yearly events will provide a chance to document and observe these changes.

Linguists and translators willing to keep the pressure on Twitter to include Yoruba in the lists of the languages on its translation desk may do so by directing their tweets to twitter at @twitter and @translator.. I will update this page as soon as anything changes.

Other relevant posts and news links on #tweetYoruba days are here listed, and will be updated as necessary:

1. KTravula (15/02/2011) | Twitter in Yoruba

2. Techloy (02/03/2012 | Twitter Supports Yoruba

3.  KTravula (18/01/2013) | Re-Translating Twitter

4. KTravula (19/02/2013) | Tweet Yoruba Day 2013

5. Techloy (28/02/2013) | Gbogbo Aye, March 1…

6. Global Voices Online (06/03/2013) | Nigerians Shake Up Twitter

7. Hyperland (22/03/2013) | Nigerianer Promoten Ihre Muttersprache