The Ayizo languages (Ayizɔ) are
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 widel ...
spoken in
Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the nort ...
. They are Ayizo,
Kotafon, and
Gbesi.
Distribution
The Ayizo languages are spoken in Benin across and near the
Mono River
The Mono River is the major river of eastern Togo.
Approximately long, and draining a basin of about , it rises between the town of Sokodé and the border with Benin, and flows south. Along the southern portion of the river towards its mouth, ...
, in the Departments of
Atlantique,
Kouffo,
Mono
Mono may refer to:
Common meanings
* Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease"
* Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono
* Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single
Music Performers
* Mono (Japanese ...
,
Oueme, and parts of the
Zou Department
Zou is one of the twelve departments of Benin, named for the Zou River which travels through the department before emptying into the Atlantic in the south of the country. The department of Zou was split in two in 1999, with the northern territor ...
.
Classification
The Ayizo languages are classified in the
Phla–Phera languages, a group of the Gbe languages.
The Ayizo languages are:
* Ayizo
*
Kotafon
*
Gbesi
The
Saxwe language
Saxwɛ, also spelled Tsáphɛ, is a Gbe language of Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by To ...
was previously classified as an Ayizo language.
Additionally, the Ayizo languages can also be known as the Ayizo–Kotafon–Gbesi languages to distinguish it with the Ayizo language proper.
Orthography
The Ayizo alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters
Ɖ/ɖ,
Ɛ/ɛ, and
Ɔ/ɔ, and the
digraphs gb, hw, kp, ny, and xw.
Tone marking
Tones are marked as follows:
*
Acute accent marks the rising tone: xó, dó
*
Grave accent marks the falling tone: ɖò, akpàkpà
*
Caron
A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...
marks falling and rising tone: bǔ, bǐ
*
Circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
accent marks the rising and falling tone: côfù
*
Macron
Macron may refer to:
People
* Emmanuel Macron (born 1977), president of France since 2017
** Brigitte Macron (born 1953), French teacher, wife of Emmanuel Macron
* Jean-Michel Macron (born 1950), French professor of neurology, father of Emmanu ...
marks the neutral tone: kān
Tones are fully marked in reference books, but not always marked in other writing. The tone marking is phonemic, and the actual pronunciation may be different according to the syllable's environment.
References
Gbe languages
{{VoltaNiger-lang-stub