Everything about Dagbani Language totally explained
Dagbani is a
Gur language spoken by about 800,000 people in
Ghana. Its native speakers are primarily of the
Dagomba people, but Dagbani is also widely known as a second language in north-eastern Ghana. Dagbani has three dialects, corresponding to the two principal centers
Tamale (Western Dagbani),
Yendi (Yendi or Eastern Dagbani), and Nanuni, the dialect spoken by the Nanumba ethnic group. Dagbani is a member of the
Oti-Volta group of
Gur and is
mutually intelligible with the
Mossi language spoken in
Burkina Faso.
Phonology
Vowels
Dagbani has eleven phonemic vowels: six short and five long vowels:
Olawsky (1999) has the schwa in place of /ɨ/, unlike other researchers on the language who use the more articulatorily higher /ɨ/. Allophonic variation based on tongue-root advancement is well attested for 4 of these vowels: [i] ~ [ɪ]/[ə], [e] ~ [ɛ], [u] ~ [ʊ] and [o] ~ [ɔ].
Consonants
Tone
Dagbani is a
tonal language in which pitch is used to distinguish words, as in
gballi [gbál:ɪ́] (High-High) 'grave' vs.
gballi [gbál:ɪ̀] (High-Low) 'zana mat'. The tone system of Dagbani is characterized by two level tones and
downstep (a lowering effect occurring between sequences of the same phonemic tone).
Writing system
Dagbani is written in an extended version of the
Latin alphabet, but the
literacy rate is only 2–3%. The
orthography currently used represents a number of
allophonic distinctions; tone isn't marked.
Grammar
Dagbani is
agglutinative, but with some
fusion of affixes. The constituent order in Dagbani sentences is usually
Agent Verb Object.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dagbani Language'.
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