Dagbani language

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Dagbani language

Dagbani is a Gur language

Gur languages

The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur, belong to the Niger-Congo languages. There are about 70 languages belonging to this group. They are spoken in southeast Mali, Burkina Faso, northern C?te d'Ivoire, Ghana, northern Togo, Benin and southwestern Niger....
spoken by about 800,000 people in Ghana

Ghana

The Republic of Ghana is a country in West Africa. It borders C?te d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south....
. Its native speakers are primarily of the Dagomba

Dagomba

The Dagomba are a people of Northern Ghana. They inhabit the sparse West African savanna region below the Sahel belt, known as the Sudan . They speak the Dagbani language language which belongs to the More-Dagbani sub-group of Gur languages....
people, but Dagbani is also widely known as a second language in north-eastern Ghana. Dagbani has three dialects, corresponding to the two principal centers Tamale, Ghana

Tamale, Ghana

Tamale is the capital of the Northern Region of Ghana, with a population of 305,000 . It is mostly populated by Dagomba people who speak Dagbani language and are followers of Islam....
(Western Dagbani), Yendi

Yendi

Yendi is a town in the northeastern quadrant of Ghana in the Dagbon territory. As of 2000, it has a population of 40,336 people. Yendi is the traditional capital of the Dagbon Kingdom with the Ya Na as the Overlord....
(Yendi or Eastern Dagbani), and Nanuni, the dialect spoken by the Nanumba ethnic group. Dagbani is a member of the Oti-Volta group of Gur

Gur languages

Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso , also known by its short-form name Burkina, is a landlocked nation in West Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the south east, Togo and Ghana to the south, and C?te d'Ivoire to the south west....
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Phonology
Vowels
Dagbani has eleven phonemic vowels: six short and five long vowels:

Olawsky (1999) has the schwa in place of /?/, unlike other researchers on the language who use the more articulatorily higher /?/.

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Encyclopedia

Dagbani is a Gur language

Gur languages

Ghana

Dagomba

Tamale, Ghana

Yendi

Gur languages

Burkina Faso

Phonology

Vowels

Dagbani has eleven phonemic vowels: six short and five long vowels:

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel....	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
High
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel....
Low

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel....	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
High
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel....
Low

Olawsky (1999) has the schwa in place of /?/, unlike other researchers on the language who use the more articulatorily higher /?/. Allophonic variation based on tongue-root advancement is well attested for 4 of these vowels: [i] ~ [?]/[?], [e] ~ [?], [u] ~ [?] and [o] ~ [?].

Consonants

		Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants Place of articulation with the lower lip and the upper teeth. The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....	Labial-velar Labial-velar consonant Labial-velar consonants are Doubly articulated consonant at the Soft palate and the lips. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term which can also refer to labialization velars, such as and the approximant ....
Stop Stop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....	Voiceless
	Voiced
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...	Voiceless
	Voiced
Lateral Lateral consonant Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue....
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....

Tone

Dagbani is a tonal language

Tonal language

A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words. Tone is a Phonology common to many languages around the world . Various Chinese language languages such as Mandarin, Min Nan/Taiwanese Minnan and Cantonese are perhaps the most well-known of such languages....
in which pitch is used to distinguish words, as in gballi (High-High) 'grave' vs. gballi (High-Low) 'zana mat'. The tone system of Dagbani is characterized by two level tones and downstep (a lowering effect occurring between sequences of the same phonemic tone).

Writing system

Dagbani is written in an extended version of the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
, but the literacy

Literacy

The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to Reading , Writing, Listening, and Speech communication....
rate is only 2–3%. The orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Orthography is derived from Greek language ????? orth?s and ???fe?? gr?phein ....
currently used represents a number of allophonic

Allophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
distinctions; tone is not marked.

Alphabet

a	b	ch	d	dz	e	?	f	g	gb	?	h	i	j	k	kp	l	m	n	ny	?	o	?	p	r	s	sh	t	u	w	y	z	?	’

Grammar

Dagbani is agglutinative

Agglutinative language

An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphology point of view....
, but with some fusion

Fusional language

A fusional language is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment....
of affixes. The constituent order in Dagbani sentences is usually Agent Verb Object

Agent Verb Object

In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements....
.

Dagbani language

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Tone

Writing system

Alphabet

Grammar

External links