For the purpose of this presentation we would adopt the definition of culture in Webster’s dictionary as ‘the total pattern of human behaviour and its products embodied in thought, speech, action, and artifacts and dependent upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations through the use of tools, language, and systems of abstract thought'. In this presentation we intend to show how culture has provided the basis for bringing Anago-Lucumi (Cuba), Gullah (South Carolina and Georgia), Trinidad-Yoruba (Trinidad), and Krio (Sierra Leone) together with Yoruba-English-English-Yoruba (Nigeria) in an electronic world/global dictionary of the Yoruba language. The dictionary project, funded by the Linguistic Data Consortium of the University of Pennsylvania, started in September 1996, and is going into completion. Today, the form of Yoruba that has survived in Cuba, known as Anago-Lucumi, has become essentially the liturgical language of santeria and many cultural songs. Also, while the Gullah language of today has words from English, French and many African languages, yet, Turner (1949/1969) has shown a heavy Yoruba content of the vocabulary. The amazing fact about Gullah, as recorded by Turner, is that the Yoruba words were strategically used in a hostile environment as proper names by generations of the Gullah people, despite the fact that their original Yoruba meanings might have been lost to them. Warner-Lewis (1996)’s lexicon of Trinidad Yoruba has clearly shown how culture has enabled Yoruba words to survive the onslaught of the colonial English language in Trinidad. It is a fact that the Yoruba language, especially by an accident of history, can be considered one of the global languages of the world, such that we now have ‘continental’ and ‘diaspora’ forms of Yoruba. For years until now, the two forms have existed almost independent of each other, their separate existence being further compounded by the intervention of ‘colonial languages’ such as English, Spanish and Portuguese, and their impact on diaspora Yoruba can be readily seen. Secondly, while continental Yoruba has remained the vibrant mother

tongue of several millions in West Africa, what has survived as diaspora Yoruba has become essentially a language of liturgy and songs. While one type is growing and changing with the modern times, the growth of the other has faced the monumental drawback of limited or secretive use. Yet because of the influence of santeria and candomble ceremonies especially, and in many types of songs, the undercurrent of diaspora Yoruba has run on for centuries in places such as Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Trinidad, Jamaica, South Carolina, Georgia, etc. Without culture, there would have been no basis for us to relate the two forms of the Yoruba language to one another, given their geographical and time separation. The present dictionary will be the first electronic type in a multilingual format encompassing Yoruba-English-English-Yoruba (about 120,000 Yoruba headwords), AnagoLucumi-Spanish-English-Yoruba (about 10,000 entries, based on Cabrera (1970)), Gullah-English-Yoruba (about 3000 entries, based on Turner (1949/1969)) and TrinidadYoruba-English-Yoruba (about 1000 entries, based on Warner-Lewis (1996)). It is hoped that in future, the work will include Anago-Portuguese-English-Yoruba from Brazil and Krio-English-Yoruba from Sierra Leone. For cultural reasons, the design of the complete dictionary is encyclopedic. Apart from definitions of words, the Yoruba-English-English-Yoruba part has incorporated existing Yoruba dictionaries and new words, thousands of plant names (Fatumbi (1995), Gill (1992), Gbile (1984), Abraham (1958), Iwu (1993)), hundreds of proverbs and riddles (Delano (1966), Adesua (1978), Abraham (1958)), many idioms (Fabunmi (1972)), proper and place names, as example sentences, clauses and phrases, among others. When completed, the electronic dictionary will be online and will be one of the major reference points on Yoruba language and culture in modern times, especially for students of language, anthropology, history, literature, and sociology. We will sample words in their cultural categories across the full dictionary to demonstrate what aspects of Yoruba culture have been retained, modified or lost in diaspora Yoruba.