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Ditammari
Tammari is a language which is spoken in Benin and Togo. It is also known as Ditammari. The Tammari people, who live in Benin and Togo, mostly speak the language. There are about 47.000 speakers. About half live in Togo, the other half in Benin. Ditammari is one of the Gur languages. There are two versions of the language, Eastern Ditammari and Western Ditammari. Western Ditamari is also called Tamberma or Taberma. Alphabet The tones are indicated using the acute accent (high tone) and grave accent (low tone) on the vowel or the nasal consonant . The nasalization is indicated with the tilde on the vowels . The accent indicating tone can be combined above these vowels. See also * Tamprusi language * Mamprusi language * Kusasi language * Gourmanché language * Berba language * Bariba language * Mòoré * Gurene language References Oti–Volta languages Languages of Benin Languages of Togo {{gur-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tammari People
The Tammari people, or Batammariba, also known as Otamari or Ottamari, are an Oti–Volta-speaking people of the Atakora Department of Benin where they are also known as Somba and neighboring areas of Togo, where they are officially known as ''Ta(m)berma.'' They are famous for their two-story fortified houses, known as ''Tata Somba'' ("Somba house"), in which the ground floor houses livestock at night, internal alcoves are used for cooking, and the upper floor contains a rooftop courtyard that is used for drying grain, as well as containing sleeping quarters and granaries. These evolved by adding an enclosing roof to the clusters of huts, joined by a connecting wall that is typical of Gur-speaking areas of West Africa. The Tammari are mostly animists. Tammari language is in the Gur family. The Batammariba are agronomic herdsmen who inhabit the hills and valleys. Being clannish by nature, they oppose any form of domination and servitude. Historical research has traced thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 Ivory Coast, the northern halves of Ghana and Togo, northwestern Benin, and southwestern Niger. A few Gur languages are spoken in Nigeria. Additionally, a single Gur language, Baatonum, is spoken in Benin and in the extreme northwest of Nigeria. Three other single Gur languages, the Tusya, Vyemo and Tiefo languages, are spoken in Burkina Faso. Another unclassified Gur language, Miyobe, is spoken in Benin and Togo. In addition, Kulango, Loma and Lorhon, are spoken in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. Additionally, a few Mossi speakers are in Senegal, and speakers of the Dagaare language are also found in Cameroon. The Samu languages of Burkina Faso are Gur languages. Typological features Like most Niger–Congo languages, the ancest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oti–Volta Languages
The Oti–Volta languages form a subgroup of the Gur languages, comprising about 30 languages of northern Ghana, Benin, and Burkina Faso spoken by twelve million people. The most populous language is Mooré, the national language of Burkina Faso, spoken by over 55% of Burkina Faso’s 20 million population and an additional 1 million in neighboring countries such as Ghana, Ivory Coast, Niger, and Mali. The family is named after the Oti and Volta rivers. Languages The internal classification of Oti–Volta, as worked out by Manessy 1975–79 and Naden 1989 (Williamson & Blench 2000) is as follows: Native Dagbani speakers assert that Dagbani is mutually intelligible with Dagaare, Frafra, Mamprusi, and Wali, but in the case of Dagaare, Frara and Wali it is rather the case that many people can understand some of a language which is not their mother tongue. These languages are not mutually intelligible with Mõõré or Kusaal (a language spoken in Bawku West District and adja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its population lives on the southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Porto-Novo, and the seat of government is in Cotonou, the most populous city and economic capital. Benin covers an area of and its population in was estimated to be approximately million. It is a tropical nation, dependent on agriculture, and is an exporter of palm oil and cotton. Some employment and income arise from subsistence farming. The official language of Benin is French, with indigenous languages such as Fon, Bariba, Yoruba and Dendi also spoken. The largest religious group in Benin is Sunni Islam (27 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
T (letter)
T, or t, is the twentieth 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 ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/, Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ) via the Greek letter τ (tau). In English, it is most commonly used to represent the voiceless alveolar plosive, a sound it also denotes in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most commonly used letter in English-language texts. History ''Taw'' was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets. The sound value of Semitic ''Taw'', Greek alphabet Tαυ (''Tau''), Old Italic and Latin T has remained fairly constant, representing in each of these; and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets. Use in wr ... [...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] |
P (letter)
P, or p, is the sixteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''pee'' (pronounced ), plural ''pees''. History The Semitic Pê (mouth), as well as the Greek Π or π ( Pi), and the Etruscan and Latin letters that developed from the former alphabet, all symbolized , a voiceless bilabial plosive. Use in writing systems In English orthography and most other European languages, represents the sound . A common digraph in English is , which represents the sound , and can be used to transliterate ''phi'' in loanwords from Greek. In German, the digraph is common, representing a labial affricate . Most English words beginning with are of foreign origin, primarily French, Latin and Greek; these languages preserve Proto-Indo-European initial *p. Native English cognates of such words often start with , since English is a Germanic language and thus has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R (letter)
R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars'', or in Ireland ''or'' . The letter is the eighth most common letter in English and the fourth-most common consonant (after , , and ). The letter is used to form the ending "-re", which is used in certain words such as ''centre'' in some varieties of English spelling, such as British English. Canadian English also uses the "-re" ending, unlike American English, where the ending is usually replaced by "-er" (''center''). This does not affect pronunciation. Name The name of the letter in Latin was (), following the pattern of other letters representing continuants, such as F, L, M, N and S. This name is preserved in French and many other languages. In Middle English, the name of the letter changed from to , following a pattern exhibited in many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S (letter)
S, or s, is the nineteenth 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 ''ess'' (pronounced ), plural ''esses''. History Origin Northwest Semitic šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative (as in 'ip'). It originated most likely as a pictogram of a tooth () and represented the phoneme via the acrophonic principle. Ancient Greek did not have a phoneme, so the derived Greek letter sigma () came to represent the voiceless alveolar sibilant . While the letter shape Σ continues Phoenician ''šîn'', its name ''sigma'' is taken from the letter '' samekh'', while the shape and position of ''samekh'' but name of ''šîn'' is continued in the '' xi''. Within Greek, the name of ''sigma'' was influenced by its association with the Greek word (earlier ) "to hiss". The original name of the letter "sigma" may have been ''san'', but due to the compli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Y (letter)
Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth (or seventh if including W) vowel letter of the English alphabet. In the English writing system, it mostly represents a vowel and seldom a consonant, and in other orthographies it may represent a vowel or a consonant. Its name in English is ''wye'' (pronounced ), plural ''wyes''. Name In Latin, Y was named ''I graeca'' ("Greek I"), since the classical Greek sound , similar to modern German ''ü'' or French ''u'', was not a native sound for Latin speakers, and the letter was initially only used to spell foreign words. This history has led to the standard modern names of the letter in Romance languages – ''i grego'' in Galician, ''i grega'' in Catalan, ''i grec'' in French and Romanian, ''i greca'' in Italian – all meaning "Greek I". The names ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
U (letter)
U or u, is the twenty-first and sixth-to-last letter and fifth vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''u'' (pronounced ), plural ''ues''. History U derives from the Semitic waw, as does F, and later, Y, W, and V. Its oldest ancestor goes to Egyptian hieroglyphics, and is probably from a hieroglyph of a mace or fowl, representing the sound v.html"_;"title="Voiced_labiodental_fricative.html"_;"title="nowiki/>Voiced_labiodental_fricative">v">Voiced_labiodental_fricative.html"_;"title="nowiki/>Voiced_labiodental_fricative">vor_the_sound_[Voiced_labial–velar_approximant.html" ;"title="Voiced_labiodental_fricative">v.html" ;"title="Voiced_labiodental_fricative.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Voiced labiodental fricative">v">Voiced_labiodental_fricative.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Voiced labiodental fricative">vor the sound [Voiced labial–velar approximant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
W (letter)
W, or w, is the twenty-third and fourth-to-last letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. It represents a consonant, but in some languages it represents a vowel. Its name in English is ''double-u'',Pronounced in formal situations, but colloquially often , , or , with a silent ''l''. plural ''double-ues''. History The classical Latin alphabet, from which the modern European alphabets derived, did not have the "W' character. The "W" sounds were represented by the Latin letter " V" (at the time, not yet distinct from " U"). The sounds (spelled ) and (spelled ) of Classical Latin developed into a bilabial fricative between vowels in Early Medieval Latin. Therefore, no longer adequately represented the labial-velar approximant sound of Germanic phonology. The Germanic phoneme was therefore written as or ( and becoming distinct only by the Early Modern period) by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
