Anyin, also known as Agni, Agny, and Anyi, is a
Niger-Congo language spoken mainly in
Côte d'Ivoire
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest city and ...
and
Ghana
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...
. It is a
Kwa language of the
Central Tano branch, forming a
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
with
Baoulé, and is closely related to
Nzema and
Sehwi.
Its dialects, divided into Northern and Central dialect areas, include Sannvin, Abé, Ano, Bona, Bini, and Barabo in the Northern area and Ndenye and Juablin in the Central area. In Côte d'Ivoire, there are approximately 1.45 million native speakers of Anyin, along with 10,000 second-language users; in Ghana, there are approximately 66,400 speakers.
Morofo, spoken by 300,000 in southeastern Côte d'Ivoire, is sometimes classified as a dialect of Anyin, but may also be classified as a separate language.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Of these vowels, five may be nasalized: /ĩ/, /ɪ̃/, /ã/, /ũ/, and /ʊ̃/.
Tones
Anyin has two level tones, high and mid; two contour tones, high-low and low-high; and one neutral tone.
Tones are distinguished orthographically only to distinguish minimal pairs and grammatical constructions, or when two otherwise identical vowels with differing tones co-occur: cf. ⟨baá⟩ (
à á "child") vs. ⟨ba⟩ (
á "to arrive", "to come").
Grammar
Pronouns
Anyin uses the following pronouns:
See also
*
Baoulé language
*
Nzema language
Nzema, also known as Nzima or Appolo, is a Central Tano language spoken by the Nzema people of southwestern Ghana and southeastern Ivory Coast. It is partially intelligible with Jwira-Pepesa and is closely related to Baoulé.
Being a Bia l ...
*
Sehwi language
References
External links
PanAfriL10n page on Anyi & Baule
Central Tano languages
Languages of Ivory Coast
Languages of Ghana
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