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 (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...

in the

Maritime Region Maritime is the southernmost of Togo's five regions, with the country's only shoreline on the Bight of Benin. Tsévié serves as the regional capital. It is the smallest region in terms of area, but it has the largest population. Other major c ...

. 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 verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

History

The Gen-Mina originated from Accra 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 wars. The two groups intermingled with the indigenous Ewe, resulting in their Ewe dialect having words borrowed from

Fanti Fanti is an Italian surname. Notable people with this name include: *Bartolomeo Fanti (1428–1495), beatified Italian Carmelite priest *Fausto Fanti (1978–2014), Brazilian actor, comedian and musician *Franco Fanti (1924–2007), Italian Olympic ...

, Ga-Adangbe and various European languages. The Gen language is mutually intelligible with Ewe and is considered to be one of the many dialects of Ewe. There were 200,000 Gen-speakers in Togo in 1991, and 130,000 in Benin in 2006.

References

*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 {{VoltaNiger-lang-stub