Ifè (or Ifɛ) is a
Yoruboid language spoken by some 271,000 ethnic
Ana-Ife people in
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 ...
,
Benin
Benin, officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It was formerly known as Dahomey. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its po ...
and
Ghana
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...
. It is also known as Ana, Ana-Ifé, Anago, Baate and Ede Ife. It has a
lexical similarity
In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...
of 87%–91% with
Ede Nago.
In Togo, there are three major varieties based on the towns of Atakpame (Djama variant), the Dassa variant is spoken in Dadja town, and a third one is based in Kamina. In Benin, the language is based on the dialect of
Tchetti.
Like all the other dialects of
Yoruba, Ife has three tones; (High, Mid and Low). Many speakers of Ife are bilingual in Ewe in the south of Togo and Standardized Yoruba (SY) in the North.
On the converse, Ede Ife is in turn used as a second language (L2) by speakers of;
Bago-Kusuntu and Kpessi in Togo, those of
Anii in Benin, as well as the Northern Nago and
Aguna speakers in both countries.
The Yoruboid dialect spoken in the
Cantons
A canton is a type of administrative division of a country. In general, cantons are relatively small in terms of area and population when compared with other administrative divisions such as counties, departments, or provinces. Internationally, th ...
of Goubi and
Kaboli in the
Tchamba Prefecture of the
Central Region, although sometimes erroneously considered to be one and same with Ife, is simply another Yoruba linguistic community of the Manigri-Kambole variety located to the north of the Ifes with which it shares 87-91% lexical similarity.
Media
The Ife language enjoys vigorous use as first language among all members of its ethnic community and geographic region. It is used on the local radio based in
Tchetti,
'Radio FM Ore Ọ̀fẹ́''102.1 Mhz, disseminating news to the surrounding region.
Written works began to be produced in the language in the 1980s, published by the Comité Provisoire de Langue Ifɛ̀ and
SIL. An Ifè–French dictionary (''Oŋù-afɔ ŋa nfɛ̀ òŋu òkpi-ŋà ŋa nfãrãsé''), edited by Mary Gardner and Elizabeth Graveling, was produced in 2000.
[Gardner, Mary and Elizabeth Graveling, editors. 2000. Oŋù-afɔ ŋa nfɛ̀ òŋu òkpi-ŋà ŋa nfãrãsé (Dictionnaire Ifè - Français). Atakpamé, Togo: SIL Projet Ifè. 126 p.]
References
Yoruboid languages
Languages of Togo
Languages of Benin
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