Dagbani language
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| Dagbani | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Ghana | |
| Total speakers: | ~800,000 | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Volta-Congo North Gur Central Gur Northern Oti-Volta Western Southeast Dagbani |
|
| Writing system: | Latin alphabet | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | nic | |
| ISO 639-3: | dag | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Dagbani is a Gur language spoken by about 800,000 people in Ghana. Its native speakers are primarily of the Dagomba people, but Dagbani is also widely known as a second language in north-eastern Ghana. Dagbani has two dialects, corresponding to the two principal centers Tamale (Western Dagbani) and Yendi (Yendi or Eastern Dagbani). Dagbani is a member of the Oti-Volta group of Gur.
Contents |
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Low | a |
[edit] Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labial-velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | Voiceless | p | t | k | k͡p | ||
| Voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡ͡b | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ŋ͡m | ||
| Fricative | Voiceless | f | s | ||||
| Voiced | v | z | |||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximant | ʋ | j | |||||
[edit] Tone
Dagbani is a tonal language in which pitch is used to distinguish words, as in gballi [gbál:ɪ́] (High-High) 'grave' vs. gballi [gbál:ɪ̀] (High-Low) 'zana mat'.[1] The tone system of Dagbani is characterized by two level tones and downstep (a lowering effect occurring between sequences of the same phonemic tone).
[edit] Writing system
Dagbani is written in an extended version of the Latin alphabet, but the literacy rate is only 2–3%. The orthography currently used represents a number of allophonic distinctions; tone is not marked.
[edit] Grammar
Dagbani is agglutinative, but with some fusion of affixes. The constituent order in Dagbani sentences is usually Agent Verb Object.
[edit] References
- ^ Olawsky 1997
- Blench, Roger (2006) 'Dagbani plant names' (unpublished circulation draft)
- Olawsky, Knut J. (1999). Aspects of Dagbani grammar, with special emphasis on phonology and morphology. München: LINCOM Europa.
- Olawsky, Knut J. (2003). "What is a word in Dagbani?", in R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald: Word: A Cross-Linguistic Typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 205–226.
- Olawsky, Knut (1997) 'Interaction of tone and morphology in Dagbani' (unpublished)
