The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of
Ivory Coast
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 List of ci ...
, across southern
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 ...
, and in central
Togo
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to Ghana–Togo border, the west, Benin to Benin–Togo border, the east and Burkina Faso to Burkina Faso–Togo border, the north. It is one of the le ...
. The Kwa family belongs to the
Niger-Congo phylum. The name was introduced in 1895 by
Gottlob Krause and derives from the word for 'people' (''Kwa'') in many of these languages, as illustrated by
Akan names. This branch consists of around 50 different languages spoken by about 25 million people. Some of the largest Kwa languages are
Ewe,
Akan and
Baule.
Languages
See the box at right for a current classification.
The various clusters of languages included in Kwa are at best distantly related, and it has not been demonstrated that they are closer to each other than to neighboring Niger–Congo languages.
Stewart distinguished the following major branches, which historical-comparative analysis supports as valid groups:
*
Potou–Tano (including
Akan)
*
Ga–Dangme
*
Na-Togo
*
ormerly Gbe (inclusion doubtful, as they show more features of Kwa the closer one moves to Akan)
The
Lagoon languages of southern Ivory Coast are not particularly close to any of these, nor to each other, so they are left ungrouped:
*
Avikam–
Alladian
*
Attié
*
Abé
*
Adjukru
*
Abidji
*
Ega
An
Esuma language, extinct ca. 1800, remains unclassified.
Since Stewart, Ega has been tentatively removed, the Gbe languages reassigned to
Volta–Niger, and
Apro added. Some of the Na-Togo and Ka-Togo languages have been placed into separate branches of Kwa.
[Williamson & Blench 2000:29] See the infobox at right for the resulting branches.
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...
divides the Kwa languages into two broad geographical groupings: Nyo and Left bank, but this is not a genealogical classification. The Nyo group collapses Stewart's Potou–Tano and Ga–Dangme branches and also includes the ungrouped languages of southern Ivory Coast, while the Ka/Na-Togo and Gbe languages are called ''Left bank'' because they are spoken to the east of the
Volta River.
History of the proposal
The word 'Kwa' was used by
Gottlob Krause in 1885 for the Akan (or perhaps
Tano), Gã, and Gbe languages, which have ''kwa'' or ''kua'' as their word for 'human being'. Since then the proposal has been dramatically expanded, only to revert to something approaching its initial conception.
In 1952
Westermann and Bryan expanded Kwa to the various Lagoon languages of southern Ivory Coast and to what are now called the
Volta–Niger languages of southern Nigeria.
Greenberg (1963) added the
Kru languages of Liberia, the
Ghana–Togo Mountain languages
The Ghana–Togo Mountain languages, formerly called Togorestsprachen (''Togo Remnant languages'') and Central Togo languages, form a grouping of about fourteen languages spoken in the mountains of the Ghana–Togo borderland. They are part of t ...
which Westermann and Bryan had specifically excluded, and
Ijaw of the Niger delta; West Kwa included the languages from Liberia to Dahomey (Republic of Benin), and East Kwa the languages of Nigeria. Bennett & Sterk (1977) proposed that the
Yoruboid and
Igboid languages belonged in
Benue–Congo rather than in Kwa. Stewart (1989) removed Kru, Ijaw, and Volta–Niger (East Kwa), but kept the Ghana–Togo Mountain and Lagoon languages, as well as adding a few obscure, newly described languages. Stewart's classification is the basis of more recent conceptions. To disambiguate this from Greenberg's influential classification, the reduced family is sometimes called "New Kwa".
Comparative vocabulary
Sample basic vocabulary of Kwa and related languages from Dumestre (1971) and other sources:
[Dumestre, Gérard. 1971. Atlas linguistique de Côte-d'Ivoire: les langues de la région lagunaire. Abidjan: Institut de Linguistique Appliquée (ILA).]
Numerals
Comparison of numerals in individual languages:
See also
*
Proto-Potou-Akanic reconstructions (Wiktionary)
*
Gbe languages
*
Kru languages
*
Gur languages
The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. They are spoken in the Sahelian and savanna regions of West Africa, namely: in most areas of Burkina Faso, and in south-central Mali, northeastern Ivor ...
References
Footnotes
Notations
*Bennett, Patrick R. & Sterk, Jan P. (1977) 'South Central Niger–Congo: A reclassification'. ''Studies in African Linguistics'', 8, 241–273.
*
Hintze, Ursula (1959) ''Bibliographie der Kwa-Sprachen und der Sprachen der Togo-Restvölker (mit 11 zweifarbigen Sprachenkarten)''. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
*Stewart, John M. (1989) 'Kwa'. In: Bendor-Samuel & Hartell (eds.) ''The Niger–Congo languages''. Lanham, MD: The University Press of America.
*Westermann, Diedrich Hermann (1952) ''Languages of West Africa'' (Handbook of African Languages Part II). London/New York/Toronto: Oxford University Press.
*Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger (2000) 'Niger–Congo', in Heine, Bernd and Nurse, Derek (eds) ''African Languages - An Introduction.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University press, pp. 11–42.
External links
Journal of West African Languages: Kwa languages
{{Authority control
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Volta–Congo languages