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Anii
The Anii or Basila language (''Bassila, Baseca,'' also known as ''Oji-Ouji, Ouinji-Ouinji, Winji-Winji,'' though this is derogatory) is spoken in Benin, and central eastern Togo and central eastern Ghana. It is part of the geographic group of Ghana Togo Mountain languages (formerly known as the ''Togorestsprachen'' or Togo Remnant languages) of the Kwa branch of Niger–Congo. There are four major dialect groups in Anii, which are quite different from each other, even to the point that some of the dialects are not mutually intelligible. These differences may include variation in phonology (including tonology), lexicon, syntax, and semantics. There are significant differences from village to village within groups, particularly regarding pronunciation. The name "Anii" was chosen in May 1979 by the Anii people as the official name for the language because it is a word that is common to all the Anii dialects. It is an interjection meaning roughly ‘do you hear?’, or ‘do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo family. History of classification Bernhard Struck, in 1912, was the first to group together these languages under the label ''Semibantu von Mitteltogo''. Westermann, in his classification of the then Sudanic languages, adopted the grouping but called it ''Togorestsprachen''. This was mainly a loose geographical-typological grouping based on the elaborate noun class systems of the languages; lack of comparative data prevented a more definitive phylogenetic classification. Bernd Heine (1968) carried out comparative research among the group, establishing a basic division between ''Ka-Togo'' and ''Na-Togo'' based on the word for 'flesh' in the languages. Dakubu and Ford (1988) renamed this cluster the Cen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bassila
Bassila is a town, arrondissement, and commune located in the Donga Department of Benin. The commune covers an area of 120 square kilometres and as of 2013 had a population of 130,770 people. The RNIE 3 highway of Benin passes through the town of Bassila and the commune. The main ethnic groups in the commune are in the order of significance: Yoruba/Nagot who are the native dwellers, as well as smaller migrant communities of Anii and Tem people otherwise known as 'Kotokoli'. The Nagots historically migrated from Nigeria during a westward Yoruba expansion. The town of Bassila is largely Anii, and is the largest Anii-speaking village. Given that Bassila is located in proximity to the border with Togo, a significant proportion of the population are of Togolese origin (Anii and Kotokoli migrants). Bassila is the second largest arrondissement in Benin by land area. Mont Sokbaro, widely cited as the highest point of Benin, lies in Bassila commune, on the border with Togo. Towns and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kwa Languages
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 name was introduced 1895 by Gottlob Krause and derives from the word for 'people' (''Kwa'') in many of these languages, as illustrated by Akan names. 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, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Latin-script Digraphs
This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. Capitalisation involves only the first letter (''ch'' becomes ''Ch'') unless otherwise stated (''ij'' becomes ''IJ''). Letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetic order according to their base: is alphabetised with , not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Substantially-modified letters, such as (a variant of ) and (based on ), are placed at the end. Apostrophe (capital ) is used in Bari for . (capital ) is used in Bari for . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for when it appears in a dark or ''yin'' tone. It is also often written as . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark (capital ) is used in Bari and Hausa (in Nigeria) for , but in Niger, Hausa is replaced with . A is used in Taa, where it represents the glottalized or cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kp (digraph)
This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. Capitalisation involves only the first letter (''ch'' becomes ''Ch'') unless otherwise stated (''ij'' becomes ''IJ''). Letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetic order according to their base: is alphabetised with , not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Substantially-modified letters, such as (a variant of ) and (based on ), are placed at the end. Apostrophe (capital ) is used in Bari for . (capital ) is used in Bari for . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for when it appears in a dark or ''yin'' tone. It is also often written as . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark (capital ) is used in Bari and Hausa (in Nigeria) for , but in Niger, Hausa is replaced with . A is used in Taa, where it represents the glottalized or creaky ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gb (digraph)
This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. Capitalisation involves only the first letter (''ch'' becomes ''Ch'') unless otherwise stated (''ij'' becomes ''IJ''). Letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetic order according to their base: is alphabetised with , not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Substantially-modified letters, such as (a variant of ) and (based on ), are placed at the end. Apostrophe (capital ) is used in Bari for . (capital ) is used in Bari for . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for when it appears in a dark or ''yin'' tone. It is also often written as . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark (capital ) is used in Bari and Hausa (in Nigeria) for , but in Niger, Hausa is replaced with . A is used in Taa, where it represents the glottalized or crea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
G (letter)
G, or g, is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''gee'' (pronounced ), plural ''gees''. History The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ' C' to distinguish voiced from voiceless . The recorded originator of 'G' is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, who added letter G to the teaching of the Roman alphabet during the 3rd century BC: he was the first Roman to open a fee-paying school, around 230 BCE. At this time, ' K' had fallen out of favor, and 'C', which had formerly represented both and before open vowels, had come to express in all environments. Ruga's positioning of 'G' shows that alphabetic order related to the letters' values as Greek numerals was a concern even in the 3rd century BC. According to some records, the original seventh letter, 'Z', had been purged from the Latin alphabet somewhat e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
O (letter)
O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plural ''oes''. History Its graphic form has remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. The name of the Phoenician letter was '' ʿeyn'', meaning "eye", and indeed its shape originates simply as a drawing of a human eye (possibly inspired by the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph, cf. Proto-Sinaitic script). Its original sound value was that of a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the cognate Arabic letter ع ''ʿayn''. The use of this Phoenician letter for a vowel sound is due to the early Greek alphabets, which adopted the letter as O "omicron" to represent the vowel . The letter was adopted with this value in the Old Italic alphabets, including the early Latin alphabet. In Greek, a variation of the for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ny (digraph)
Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as Catalan, Ganda, Filipino/Tagalog, Hungarian, Swahili and Malay. In most of these languages, including all of the ones named above, it denotes the palatal nasal (). To represent the palatal nasal in other languages, the letter nj is used, such as in Albanian and the countries using Gaj's Latin alphabet and the countries that make up the former Yugoslavia. It has had widespread use for languages of West Africa, though in some countries, the IPA letter '' ɲ'' is now used. It is sometimes used in modern Spanish where ''ñ'' cannot be used, such as in earlier computer programming or Internet domain names. FAQ about .es domain names: . ''N'' and ''ny'' are mentioned as substitutes for ''ñ''. Aragonese The writing of the palatal nasal in Aragonese has been a matter of debate since the first orthographic codification of the language (''grafía de Uesca'') in 1987 by the '' Consello d'a Fabla Aragonesa'' at a convention in Huesca. M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
N (letter)
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like the English , because the Egyptian word for "snake" was ''djet''. It is speculated by many that Semitic people working in Egypt adapted hieroglyphics to create the first alphabet, and that they used the same snake symbol to represent N, because their word for "snake" may have begun with that sound. However, the name for the letter in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic alphabets is ''nun'', which means "fish" in some of these languages. The sound value of the letter was —as in Greek, Etruscan, Latin and modern languages. Use in writing systems represents a dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
M (letter)
M, or m, is the thirteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''em'' (pronounced ), plural ''ems''. History The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu (Μ, μ). Semitic Mem is most likely derived from a " Proto-Sinaitic" ( Bronze Age) adoption of the "water" ideogram in Egyptian writing. The Egyptian sign had the acrophonic value , from the Egyptian word for "water", ''nt''; the adoption as the Semitic letter for was presumably also on acrophonic grounds, from the Semitic word for "water", '' *mā(y)-''. Use in writing systems The letter represents the bilabial nasal consonant sound in the orthography of Latin as well as in that of many modern languages, and also in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In English, the Oxford English Dictionary (first edition) says that is sometimes a vowel, in words like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L (letter)
L, or l, is the twelfth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''el'' (pronounced ), plural ''els''. History Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested a shepherd's staff. Use in writing systems Phonetic and phonemic transcription In phonetic and phonemic transcription, the International Phonetic Alphabet uses to represent the lateral alveolar approximant. English In English orthography, usually represents the phoneme , which can have several sound values, depending on the speaker's accent, and whether it occurs before or after a vowel. The alveolar lateral approximant (the sound represented in IPA by lowercase ) occurs before a vowel, as in ''lip'' or ''blend'', while the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA ) occurs in ''bell'' and ''milk''. This velarization does not occur in many European lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
