Dangme language

Dangme
Adangme
Region South-eastern Ghana, east of Accra
Ethnicity Adangbe
Native speakers
 800,000  (2004)[1]
Latin (Adangme alphabet)
Official status
Official language in
 Ghana
Language codes
ISO 639-2 ada
ISO 639-3 ada
Glottolog adan1247[2]

The Dangme language, Adangme, is a Kwa language spoken in south-eastern Ghana by 800,000 people.

Classification

Adangme is a Kwa language, part of the Niger–Congo family. It is very closely related to Ga, and together they form the Ga–Dangme branch within Kwa.

Geographic distribution

Adangme is spoken in Ghana by over 800,000 people.

It is the aboriginal language spoken in Ghana, Togo, Benin by the people of Ada, Osudoku, Manya Krobo, Yilo Krobo, Shai, Ningo, Prampram and Kpone. It is true to say that at Kpone, though a Dangme town, the people speak both Ga and the Adangme language. However, this enigma brought about by their close association with the Gas is being solved gradually with the introduction of Adangme as a school subject in the Dangme areas. The land of these different tribes stretched from the coast northward to the Akwapim hills and has all the Dangmeland on the east and the Ga villages to the west of it. Bawaleshi, which is about 4.8 kilometers southwest of Dodowa, is the last Dangme town which is close to the Akwapim and the Ga boundaries. There are six main dialects which coincide with political divisions. The coastal dialects are Ada, Ningo and Prampram (Gbugbla). The inland dialects are Shai (Sɛ), Krobo (Klo) and Osudoku.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes
  Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Alveolar Postalveolar
/ palatal		 Velar Labial-velar Glottal
Plosives &
affricates		 p b     t d t͜ʃ d͡ʒ k ɡ k͜p ɡ͡b  
Nasals   m       n   ɲ   ŋ   ŋ͡m  
Fricatives     f v s z              
Approximants           l   j       w  

Vowels

Adangme has 7 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels.

Monophthongs
Front Central Back
Close i  ĩ u  ũ
Close-mid e o
Open-mid ɛ  ɛ̃ ɔ  ɔ̃
Open a  ã

Tones

Adangme has three tones: high, mid and low. Like many West African languages, it has tone terracing.

Phonotactics

The possible syllable structures are V, CV, or CCV where the second consonant is /l/.

Writing system

Adangme is written in the Latin script. Tones and nasalisation are not normally written.

Orthographic and phonemic correspondences include the following:

References

  1. ↑ Dangme at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Adangme". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

External links

Dangme language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator