Adangme language Totally Explained

Everything about Adangme Language totally explained

Adangme (also called Dangme), is a Kwa language spoken in south-eastern Ghana by 800,000 people.
Some sources list Adangbe as another name for the same language whereas Ethnologue

lists it as a different language in the Left bank branch of the Kwa family, and it has a separate ISO 639-3 code of 'adq'.

Classification

Adangme is a Kwa language, part of the Niger-Congo family. It is very closely related to Ga, and together they form the Ga-Dangme branch within Kwa.

Geographic distribution

Adangme is spoken in Ghana by 800,000 people.
There are six main dialects which co-incide with political divisions. The coastal dialects are Ada, Ningo and Prampram (Gbugbla). The inland dialects are Shai (Sɛ), Krobo (Klo) and Osudoku.

Phonology

Consonants

/l/ has allophones [l] and [r]
/j/ has an allophone [ʒ]

Consonant phonemes>

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Alveolar		Postalveolar / palatal		Velar		Labial-velar
Plosives & affricates	p	b			t	d	tʃ	dʒ	k	ɡ	kp	ɡb
Nasals		m				n		ɲ		ŋ		ŋm
Fricatives			f	v	s	z
Approximants						l		j				w

Vowels

Adangme has 7 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels.

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back
Close	ĩ		ũ
Close-mid
Open-mid	ɛ̃		ɔ̃
Open		ã

Tones

Adangme has three tones: high, mid and low. Like many West African languages, it has tone terracing.

Phonotactics

The possible syllable structures are V, CV, or CCV where the second consonant is /l/.

Writing system

Adangme is written with a form of the Latin alphabet. Tones and nasalisation are not normally written.
Orthographic and phonemic correspondences include the following:

j - /dʒ/

ng - /ŋ/

ngm - /ŋm/

ny - /ɲ/

ts - /tʃ/

y - /j/

ɛ - /ɛ/

ɔ - /ɔ/Further Information

Get more info on 'Adangme Language'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://adangme_language.totallyexplained.com">Adangme language Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.