Ligbi language

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Ligbi
Spoken in:	Ghana
Region:	Brong-Ahafo region, adjacent part of Côte d'Ivoire
Total speakers:	10,000
Language family:	Niger-Congo Mande Western Mande Central Jogo Ligbi
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`nic`
ISO 639-3:	`lig`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Ligbi (or Ligby) is a Mande language spoken in Ghana in the north-west corner of the Brong-Ahafo region. Ligbi is spoken by approximately 10 000 speakers (1988 GILLBT/SIL). It is a geographical outlier to its language family, fairly closely related to Bambara/Jula and to Vai and Kono. A small population of Ligbi speakers (4 000) is reported to live in Cote d'Ivoire (Vanderaa 1991). Ligbi is also known as Wela, Hwela or Numu. The latter of these refers to a subsection of the Ligbi people; Numu is Dyula for 'blacksmith'.

The Ligbi area in Ghana is bordered to the west by Nafaanra, the Senufo language of the Nafana people. The Ligbi people have come to the area of Begho (Bighu), an ancient trading town on the Tain river in Ghana, in the early 17^th century before the Nafana.^[1]

Ligbi has seven oral and seven nasal vowels. It is a tonal language with two level tones, High and Low. Syllables are of the form (C₁)V(C₂) or N (a syllabic nasal), where CV is the most common syllable type. C₁ can be any of the consonants, whereas the optional C₂ slot can have only nasals homorganic with the following consonants, e.g., gbám mádáánè "nine houses," gbán táà "ten houses." V (a vowel) alone occurs word-initial only in personal pronouns, some loan words, and names, e.g., á jádɛ̀ "we have come."

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] Notes

^ Jack Goody, "The Mande and the Akan Hinterland", in: The Historian in Tropical Africa, J.Vansina, R.Mauny and L.V.Thomas eds., 1964, London, Oxford University, 192-218