Wobé (Ouobe) is a
indigenous Kru language spoken in
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest List of ci ...
. It is one of several languages in a
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
called ''Wèè (Wɛɛ)''.
Phonology
Typical of Western Kru languages, Wobé has sixteen vowel phonemes, with nine oral vowels and seven nasal vowels, and seventeen consonant phonemes. Wobé words tend not to have diphthongs, but rather the (up to) three vowels in a native non-compound word are pronounced separately.
Tone
Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of
tones (fourteen) of any language in the world.
[ (see als]
abstract
/ref> However, other researchers has not confirmed this, many of whom believe that some of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects,[Newman believes Singler is a valuable counterweight to Bearth & Link, but does not accept all his criticism; he accept the Wobe 43 toneme, for example, but believes it should be analyzed as /32/ (all tones being off by 1 compared to related dialects).] though the Wèè languages in general do have extraordinarily large tone systems.
The fourteen posited tones are:
Numerals
Wobe has a quinary, decimal system, and it is one of the only two Kru languages which have adopted the decimal system.[Hofer, Verena]
External links
A brief description of the Northern Wè/Wobé language
References
Languages of Ivory Coast
Wee languages
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