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Mprε or Mpra is an
extinct language An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of r ...
spoken in the village of Butei () in central
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 ...
, located between the towns of
Techiman Techiman (Akan language, Akan: ''Takyiman'') is a city and the capital of the Techiman Municipal District, Techiman Metropolitan District and the Bono East Region of Ghana. The city is located about from Sunyani and about away from Kumasi. I ...
and
Tamale A tamale, in Spanish language, Spanish , is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of ''masa'', a dough made from nixtamalization, nixtamalized maize, corn, which is steaming, steamed in a corn husk or Banana leaf, banana leaves. The wrapping ...
near the confluence of the
Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...
and
White Volta The White Volta or Nakambé ( French: ''Volta blanche'') is the headstream of the Volta River, Ghana's main waterway. The White Volta emerges in northern Burkina Faso, flows through Northern Ghana and empties into Lake Volta in Ghana. The White V ...
s. Mprε has been difficult to classify due to its divergent vocabulary. It is known only from a 70-word list given in a 1931 article. Blench (2007) considers it to be a possible
language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
. A poorly attested language spoken in the nearby village of Tuluwe, Mpur, may also turn out to be yet another language isolate. Both Butie and Tuluwe are located near the village of Mpaha. Painter (1967) briefly states that " has died" and that the ethnic group ("the Nnyamase-mprɛ") have "become Nnyamase-Gonja"; he appears to regard it as having been a dialect of Gonja. However, this is based only on the numerals, which are clearly related to Gonja. The rest of the vocabulary is "hard to recognise" (Williamson & Blench, 2000:36). Blench (2010) presents it as a possible
Kwa language 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, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo. The Kwa family belongs to the Niger-Congo ...
; Blench (2012) notes that it "may either be an isolate with waborrowings or a highly divergent branch of Kwa".Roger Blench
Niger-Congo: an alternative view
/ref>


Bibliography

* Blench, Roger. 2010. "Why is Africa so Linguistically Undiverse?

''Language Isolates in Africa'' workshop, Lyon, December 3–4 * Cardinall, A.W. 1931. "A survival". '' Gold Coast (British colony), Gold Coast Review'', V,1:193-197. * Painter, Colin. 1967. "The Distribution of Guang in Ghana, and a Statistical Pre-Testing on Twenty-Five Idiolects," ''The Journal of West African Languages'', Vol. 4, No. 1, Cambridge University Press, Ibadan, pp. 25–78.


References


External links

*Blench, Roger (1999)
Recent Field Work in Ghana: Report on Dompo and a note on Mpre
'. {{Niger-Congo branches Languages of Ghana Unclassified languages of Africa Languages extinct in the 20th century