The Ligbi (or Ligby) people speak a
Mande language
The Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples and include Maninka, Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Dioula, Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are "60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 million ...
in
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
, in the north-west corner of the
Brong-Ahafo Region. Ligbi is spoken by approximately 10,000 speakers (1988 GILLBT/
SIL
SIL, Sil and sil may refer to:
Organizations
* Servis Industries Limited, Pakistan
* Smithsonian Institution Libraries
* SIL International, formerly Summer Institute of Linguistics
* Apex Silver Mines (former American Stock Exchange ticker symb ...
). It is fairly closely related to
Jula,
Vai and
Kono. A small population of Ligbi speakers (around 4,000) is reported to live in Ivory Coast (Vanderaa 1991). Ligbi is also known as Wela (Hwela) or Numu. The latter of these refers to a subsection of the Ligbi people; is Dyula for 'blacksmith'. (See
blacksmiths of western Africa
Blacksmiths emerged in West Africa around 1500 BCE. They are feared in some societies for their skill in metalworking, considered a form of magic. They are also much admired and hold high social status. Because the trade is so specialised and da ...
.)
The Ligbi area in Ghana is bordered to the west by
Nafaanra
Nafaanra (sometimes written Nafaara, pronounced ), also known as Nafanan or Nafana, is a Senufo language spoken in northwest Ghana, along the border with Ivory Coast, east of Bondoukou. It is spoken by approximately people. Its speakers call th ...
, the
Senufo language of the
Nafana
The Nafana are a Senufo people living in the central north-west of Ghana and the north-east of Côte d'Ivoire, in the area east of Bondoukou. They number about 45, 000 (SIL/GILLBT 1992) and they speak Nafaanra, a Senufo language. They are surro ...
people. The Ligbi people have come to the area of
Begho
Bono State (or Bonoman) was a trading state created by the Bono people, located in what is now southern Ghana. Bonoman was a medieval Akan kingdom in what is now Bono, Bono East and Ahafo region respectively named after the ( Bono and Ahafo) a ...
(Bighu), an ancient trading town on the Tain river in Ghana, in the early 17th century before the Nafana.
[Jack Goody, "The Mande and the Akan Hinterland", in: The Historian in Tropical Africa, J.Vansina, R.Mauny and L.V.Thomas eds., 1964, London, Oxford University, 192-218]
Ligbi has seven oral and seven nasal vowels. It is a tonal language with two level tones, High and Low. Syllables are of the form (C
1)V(C
2) or N (a
syllabic nasal
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...
), where CV is the most common syllable type. C
1 can be any of the consonants, whereas the optional C
2 slot can have only nasals
homorganic
In phonetics, a homorganic consonant (from ''homo-'' "same" and ''organ'' "(speech) organ") is a consonant sound that is articulated in the same place of articulation as another. For example, , and are homorganic consonants of one another since ...
with the following consonants, e.g., "nine houses," "ten houses." V (a vowel) alone occurs word-initial only in personal pronouns, some loan words, and names, e.g., "we have come."
Notes
References
*Persson, Andrew and Janet (1976) 'Ligbi', in Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu (ed.) ''West African Linguistic Data Sheets'', vol 1.
Mande languages
Languages of Ghana
Blacksmiths
{{Mande-lang-stub