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Gbe Languages
The Gbe languages (pronounced ) form a cluster of about twenty related languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe language is Ewe (10.3 million speakers in Ghana and Togo), followed by Fon (5 million, mainly in Benin). The Gbe languages were traditionally placed in the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo languages, but more recently have been classified as Volta–Niger languages. They include five major dialect clusters: Ewe, Fon, Aja, Gen (Mina), and Phla–Pherá. Most of the Gbe peoples came from the east to their present dwelling-places in several migrations between the tenth and the fifteenth century. Some of the Phla–Pherá peoples however are thought to be the original inhabitants of the area who have intermingled with the Gbe immigrants, and the Gen people probably originate from the Ga-Adangbe people in Ghana. In the lat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Africa
West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo, as well as Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom Overseas Territories, United Kingdom Overseas Territory).Paul R. Masson, Catherine Anne Pattillo, "Monetary union in West Africa (ECOWAS): is it desirable and how could it be achieved?" (Introduction). International Monetary Fund, 2001. The population of West Africa is estimated at around million people as of , and at 381,981,000 as of 2017, of which 189,672,000 were female and 192,309,000 male.United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017). World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, custom data acquired via webs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niger–Congo Languages
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger–Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area.Irene Thompson"Niger-Congo Language Family" "aboutworldlanguages", March 2015 Austronesian has almost as many member languages, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by '' Ethnologue'' is 1,540. The proposed family would be the third-largest in the world by number of native speakers, with around 600 million people as of 2025. Within Niger–Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volta River
The Volta River (, , ) is the main Drainage system (geomorphology), river system in the West African country of Ghana. It flows south into Ghana from the Bobo-Dioulasso Department, Bobo-Dioulasso highlands of Burkina Faso. The three main parts of the river are the Black Volta, the White Volta, and the Red Volta. In the northwest, the Black Volta forms the international borders of the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. The Volta flows southward along the Akwapim-Togoland highlands, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean at the Gulf of Guinea at Ada Foah. One of its smaller tributaries, the Oti River, Oti River, enters Ghana from Togo in the east. The Volta River has been dammed at Akosombo for generating hydroelectricity. The reservoir named Lake Volta stretches from Akosombo Dam in the south to the northern part of the country, and is the largest man-made reservoir by area in the world. The country of Burkina Faso was formerly called Republic of Upper Volta, Upper Volta, after ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isolating Language
Social isolation, Isolation is the near or complete lack of social contact by an individual. Isolation or isolated may also refer to: Sociology and psychology *Social isolation *Isolation (psychology), a defense mechanism in psychoanalytic theory *Emotional isolation, a feeling of isolation despite a functioning social network *Isolation effect, a psychological effect of distinctive items more easily remembered Mathematics * Real-root isolation * Isolation lemma, a technique used to reduce the number of solutions to a computational problem. * Isolated point, a topological notion of having no points near a given point Natural sciences *Electrical or galvanic isolation, isolating functional sections of electrical systems to prevent current flowing between them *An isolated system, a system without any external exchange *Isolating language, a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio *Isolation (microbiology), techniques to separate microbes from a sample containing mixt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tonal Language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with ''phoneme''. Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific. Tonal languages are different from pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that is more prominent than the others. Mechanics Most languages use pitch as intonation to convey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonology
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' [''obsolescent''] 1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often preferred by the American Structuralists and reflecting the importance in structuralist work of phonemics in sense 1.": "phonematics ''n.'' 1. [''obsolete''] An old synonym for phonemics (sense 2).") is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages systematically organize their phonemes or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but now it may relate to any Linguistic description, linguistic analysis either: Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages. The buil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hounkpati B Christophe Capo
Hounkpati B Christophe Capo (born January 1, 1953 at ''lccn.loc.gov'') is a Beninese , and professor of at the University of Abomey-Calavi in the . Biography Hounkpati B Christophe Capo has a humanities degree (1974) and a master's degree in linguistics (1977 ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diedrich Hermann Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann (24 June 1875 – 31 May 1956) was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly. Westermann is seen as one of the founders of modern African linguistics. He carried out extensive linguistic and anthropological research in the area ranging from Senegal eastwards to the Upper Nile. His linguistic publications cover a wide range of African languages, including the Gbe languages, Nuer, Kpelle, Shilluk, Hausa, and Guang. Westermann's comparative work, begun in 1911, initially brought together much of today's Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan language phyla under the name Sudanic languages. His most important later publication ''Die westlichen Sudansprachen'' 1927a divided these into East and West Sudanic languages and laid the basis for what would become Niger–Congo. In this book and a series of associated arti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sranan Tongo
Sranan Tongo (Sranantongo, "Surinamese tongue", Sranan, Surinamese Creole) is an English-based creole language from Suriname, in South America, where it is the first or second language for 519,600 Surinamese people (approximately 80% of the population). It is also spoken in the Netherlands and across the Surinamese diaspora. It is considered both an unofficial national language and a ''lingua franca''. Sranan Tongo developed among enslaved Africans from Central and West Africa, especially along the Caribbean coastline, after contact with English planters and indentured workers from 1651–67. Its use expanded to the Dutch colonists who took over the territory in 1667 and decided to maintain the local language as a ''lingua franca''. Because the number of English colonists was massively reduced following the arrival of the Dutch, later additions to the language and the presence of African influences have made it distinct from other Afro-Caribbean creoles based on English. Hist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole (; , ; , ), or simply Creole (), is a French-based creole languages, French-based creole language spoken by 10 to 12million people worldwide, and is one of the two official languages of Haiti (the other being French), where it is the native language of the vast majority of the population. It is also the most widely spoken creole language in the world. Northern, Central, and Southern dialects are the three main dialects of Haitian Creole. The Northern dialect is predominantly spoken in Cap-Haïtien, Central is spoken in Port-au-Prince, and Southern in the Les Cayes, Cayes area. The language emerged from contact between French settlers and enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the 17th and 18th centuries. Although its vocabulary largely derives from 18th-century French, its grammar is that of a West African Volta-Congo languages, Volta-Congo language branch, particularly the Fon language, Fongbe and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
