The Ayizo languages (Ayizɔ) are

Gbe languages The Gbe languages (pronounced ) form a cluster of about twenty related languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widel ...

spoken in

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 ...

. They are Ayizo, Kotafon, and Gbesi.

Distribution

The Ayizo languages are spoken in Benin across and near the

Mono River The Mono River is the major river of eastern Togo. Approximately long, and draining a basin of about , it rises between the town of Sokodé and the border with Benin, and flows south. Along the southern portion of the river towards its mouth, i ...

, in the Departments of Atlantique, Kouffo,

Mono Mono may refer to: Common meanings * Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease" * Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono * Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single Music Performers * Mono (Japanese b ...

, Oueme, and parts of the

Zou Department Zou is one of the twelve departments of Benin, named for the Zou River which travels through the department before emptying into the Atlantic in the south of the country. The department of Zou was split in two in 1999, with the northern territor ...

Classification

The Ayizo languages are classified in the Phla–Phera languages, a group of the Gbe languages. The Ayizo languages are: * Ayizo * Kotafon * Gbesi The

Saxwe language Saxwɛ, also spelled Tsáphɛ, is a Gbe language of 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 Tog ...

was previously classified as an Ayizo language. Additionally, the Ayizo languages can also be known as the Ayizo–Kotafon–Gbesi languages to distinguish it with the Ayizo language proper.

Orthography

The Ayizo alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters Ɖ/ɖ, Ɛ/ɛ, and Ɔ/ɔ, and the digraphs gb, hw, kp, ny, and xw.

Tone marking

Tones are marked as follows: *

Acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

marks the rising tone: xó, dó *

Grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...

marks the falling tone: ɖò, akpàkpà *

Caron A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...

marks falling and rising tone: bǔ, bǐ *

Circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

accent marks the rising and falling tone: côfù * Macron marks the neutral tone: kān Tones are fully marked in reference books, but not always marked in other writing. The tone marking is phonemic, and the actual pronunciation may be different according to the syllable's environment.

References

Gbe languages {{VoltaNiger-lang-stub