Gen (also called Gɛ̃, Gɛn gbe, Gebe, Guin, Mina, Mina-Gen, and Popo) is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of

Togo Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to Ghana–Togo border, the west, Benin to Benin–Togo border, the east and Burkina Faso to Burkina Faso–Togo border, the north. It is one of the le ...

in the Maritime Region. Like the other Gbe languages, Gen is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...

. It was misidentified as the 'Arda' language isolate of South America.

History

The Gen-Mina originated from

Accra Accra (; or ''Gaga''; ; Ewe: Gɛ; ) is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , had a population of ...

and Elmina in Ghana. The Mina from Elmina migrated because of the Denkyira wars of aggression, while the Gen came over from Accra after their defeat in the

Akwamu The Akwamu Empire was a powerful Akan state that rose to prominence in the 17th century in what is now southeastern Ghana. According to oral tradition, the Akwamu traced their origins to the Twifo-Heman area, but the earliest historical records p ...

wars. The two groups intermingled with the indigenous Ewe, resulting in their Ewe dialect having words borrowed from Fanti, Ga-Adangbe and various European languages. The Gen language is

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

with Ewe and is considered to be one of the many dialects of Ewe. There were 476,000 Gen-speakers in Togo in 2019, and 144,000 in Benin in 2021.

Orthography

The orthography is defined in the '' Alphabet des langues nationales'' of Benin. In the 1990 edition, Gen shared its alphabet with Waci. In the 2008 edition, Gen has its own alphabet (without F with hook ).

Nasalisation In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . ...

is indicated with a n after the vowel ().

References

Sources

*Kangni, Atah-Ekoué (1989) ''La syntaxe du Gẽ: étude syntaxique d'un parler Gbe: le Gẽ du Sud-Togo.'' Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Gbe languages Languages of Togo Languages of Benin Languages of Ghana {{VoltaNiger-lang-stub