| Ewe | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Èʋe / Èʋegbe | ||||
| Spoken in | Ghana, Togo, Benin | |||
| Region | Southern Ghana east of the Volta River, southern Togo, southwest Benin | |||
| Ethnicity | Ewe people | |||
| Native speakers | 3.1 million, (1991 and 2003) (date missing) | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Writing system | Latin | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | ee | |||
| ISO 639-2 | ewe | |||
| ISO 639-3 | ewe | |||
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Ewe (Èʋe or Èʋegbe IPA: [èβeɡ͡be])[1] is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately three million people.[2] Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja. Like other Gbe languages, Ewe is a tonal language.
The German Africanist Diedrich Hermann Westermann published many dictionaries and grammars of Ewe and several other Gbe languages. Other linguists who have worked on Ewe and closely related languages include Gilbert Ansre (tone, syntax), Herbert Stahlke (morphology, tone), Nick Clements (tone, syntax), Roberto Pazzi (anthropology, lexicography), Felix K. Ameka (semantics, cognitive linguistics), Alan Stewart Duthie (semantics, phonetics), Hounkpati B. Capo (phonology, phonetics), Enoch Aboh (syntax), and Chris Collins (syntax).
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Traditional Ewe stories speak of a migration of the Ewe people from an area in present-day Benin, a town called Ketu, to the currently inhabited southeastern region of Ghana. Ketu was populated by other peoples as well and Ewe migration was due to the flourishing group, the Yoruba. It is believed that the Ewe settled in Togo and later moved to southeastern Ghana.
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Labial-velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | k͡p | ||||
| voiced | m ~ b | d | n ~ ɖ | ɲ ~ j | ŋ ~ ɡ | ɡ͡b | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | |||||||
| voiced | d͡z | ||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | ɸ | f͈ | s | x | ||||
| voiced | β | v͈ | z | ɣ ~ w | ʁ/ɦ | ||||
| Approximant | l ~ l̃ | ||||||||
H is a voiced fricative which has been described as uvular, [ʁ], pharyngeal, [ʕ], or glottal [ɦ].
The nasal consonants [m, n, ɲ, ŋ] are not distinctive, as they only appear before nasal vowels. Ewe is therefore sometimes said to have no nasal consonants. However, it is more economical to argue that nasal /m, n, ɲ, ŋ/ are the underlying form, and are denasalized before oral vowels. (See vowels below.)
[ɣ] occurs before unrounded (non-back) vowels and [w] before rounded (back) vowels.
Ewe is one of the few languages known to contrast [f] vs. [ɸ] and [v] vs. [β]. The f and v are stronger than in most languages, [f͈] and [v͈], with the upper lip noticeably raised, and thus more distinctive from the rather weak [ɸ] and [β].[3]
/l/ may occur in consonant clusters. It becomes [ɾ] (or [ɾ̃] after coronals.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i, ĩ | u, ũ |
| Close-mid | e, ẽ | o, õ |
| Open-mid | ɛ, ɛ̃ | ɔ, ɔ̃ |
| Open | a, ã | |
The tilde (~) marks nasal vowels, though the Peki dialect lacks /õ/. Many varieties of Ewe lack one or another of the front mid vowels, and some varieties in Ghana have the additional vowels /ə/ and /ə̃/.
Ewe does not have a nasal–oral contrast in consonants. It does, however, have a syllabic nasal, which varies as [m n ŋ], depending on the following consonant, and which carries tone. Some authors treat this as a vowel, with the odd result that Ewe would have more nasal than oral vowels, and one of these vowels has no set place of articulation. If it is taken to be a consonant, then there would be the odd result of a single nasal consonant which could not appear before vowels. If nasal consonants are taken to underlie [b ɖ ɡ], however, then there is no such odd restriction; the only difference from other consonants being that only nasal stops may be syllabic, a common pattern cross-linguistically.
Ewe is a tonal language. In a tonal language, pitch differences are used to distinguish one word from another. For example, in Ewe the following three words differ only in their tones:
Phonetically, there are three tone registers, High, Mid, and Low, and three rising and falling contour tones. However, in most Ewe dialects only two registers are distinctive, High and Mid. These are depressed in nouns after voiced obstruents: High becomes Mid (or Rising), and Mid becomes Low. Mid is also realized as Low at the end of a phrase or utterance, as in the example 'buffalo' above.
The Ewe language uses phrases of overt politeness, such as “Please” and Thank you.” A common, friendly greeting extended to an individual of a European descent is “White person.”
The African Reference Alphabet is used when Ewe is represented orthographically, so the written version is a bit like a combination of the Latin alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet.
| A a | B b | D d | Ɖ ɖ | Dz dz | E e | Ɛ ɛ | F f | Ƒ ƒ | G g | Gb gb | Ɣ ɣ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /a/ | /b/ | /d/ | /ɖ/ | /d͡z/ | /e/, /ə/ | /ɛ/ | /f/ | /ɸ/ | /ɡ/ | /ɡ͡b/ | /ɣ/ |
| H h | I i | K k | Kp kp | L l | M m | N n | Ny ny | Ŋ ŋ | O o | Ɔ ɔ | P p |
| /h/ | /i/ | /k/ | /k͡p/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /ɲ/ | /ŋ/ | /o/ | /ɔ/ | /p/ |
| R r | S s | T t | Ts ts | U u | V v | Ʋ ʋ | W w | X x | Y y | Z z | |
| /l/ | /s/ | /t/ | /t͡s/ | /u/ | /v/ | /β/ | /w/ | /x/ | /j/ | /z/ |
An n is placed after vowels to mark nasalization. Tone is generally unmarked, except in some common cases which require disambiguation, e.g. the first person plural pronoun mí 'we' is marked high to distinguish it from the second person plural mi 'you', and the second person singular pronoun wò 'you' is marked low to distinguish it from the third person plural pronoun wó 'they/them'
Ewe is a subject–verb–object language.[4] The possessive precedes the head noun.[5] Adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and relative clauses follow the head noun. Ewe also has postpositions rather than prepositions.[6]
Ewe is well known as a language having logophoric pronouns. Such pronouns are used to refer to the source of a reported statement or thought in indirect discourse, and can disambiguate sentences that are ambiguous in most other languages. The following examples illustrate:
In the second sentence, yè is the logophoric pronoun.
Ewe also has a rich system of serial verb constructions.
Ewe is a national language in Togo and Ghana.
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