The Mampruli language is a

Gur language The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. They are spoken in the Sahelian and savanna regions of West Africa, namely: in most areas of Burkina Faso, and in south-central Mali, northeastern Iv ...

spoken in northern

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 ...

, Northern

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 ...

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to ...

, Ivory Coast and

Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mal ...

by the

Mamprusi people Mamprusis are an ethnic group in northern Ghana and Togo. Estimates are that there are about 200,000 Mamprusis living in the Northern Regions of Ghana as of 2013, They speak Mampruli, one of the Gur languages. In Ghana, the Mamprusis live mainl ...

. It is partially mutually intelligible with Dagbani. The Mamprusi language is spoken in a broad belt across the northern parts of the Northern Region of Ghana, stretching west to east from Yizeesi to Nakpanduri and centred on the towns of Gambaga,

Nalerigu Nalerigu is the largest town in the East Mamprusi Municipal Assembly in the North East Region of Ghana as well as the traditional capital of the Mamprusi people, the seat of the Paramount Chief A paramount chief is the English-language desig ...

and

Walewale Walewale is a town and the capital oMamprusi West Municipalin the Northeast Region of Ghana. It lies on the main road from Bolgatanga to Tamale, at the junction of the road west to Nalerigu, the capital of the newly created Northeast Region. It wa ...

. The language belongs to the Gur family which is part of the Niger–Congo language family, which covers most of Sub-Saharan Africa (Bendor-Samuel 1989). Within Gur it belongs to the Western Oti–Volta subgroup, and particularly its southeastern cluster of six to eight languages ( Naden 1988, 1989). Closely related and very similar languages spoken nearby are Dagbani, Nanun, Kamara and Hanga in the Northern Region, and Kusaal,

Nabit Nabit (Nabt), or Nabdem (also ''Nabde, Nabte, Nabdam, Nabdug, Nabrug, Nabnam, Namnam''), is a Gur language of Burkina Faso and Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts t ...

and Talni in the

Upper East Region The Upper East Region is located in north Ghana and is the third smallest of the 16 administrative regions in Ghana. It occupies a total land surface of 8,842 square kilometers or 2.7 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. The Upper East regi ...

. Not quite so closely related are Farefare, Waali, Dagaari, Birifor and Safalaba in the Upper East and

Upper West Region The Upper West Region of Ghana is located in the north-western corner of Ghana and is bordered by Upper East region to the east, Northern region to the south, and Burkina Faso to the west and north. The Upper West regional capital and largest se ...

s and southwest of the Northern Region. Comparatively little linguistic material on the language has been published; there is a brief sketch as an illustration of this subgroup of languages in Naden 1988. A collection of Mampruli proverbs has been published by R.P. Xavier Plissart, and a translation of the New Testament is in print, a sample of which can be read and heard online. There are also beginning Mampruli lessons in which the spoken language can be heard.

Names

The general and accepted name for the language is Mampruli. The name Mamprusi Is mostly used to refer to the ethnic group who speak the language, and it is not accepted by native speakers to refer to the language.

Other countries

Mampruli is also spoken at the border in the Savanes Region of

, across the Ghanaian border. It is also spoken by some emigrated communities in parts of

, Ivory Coast, and

Dialects

There is comparatively little dialect variation. The western (Walewale to the

White Volta The White Volta or Nakambé is the headstream of the Volta River, Ghana's main waterway. The White Volta emerges in northern Burkina Faso, flows through North Ghana and empties into Lake Volta in Ghana. The White Volta's main tributaries are the ...

) and Far Western (west of the White Volta, area have some variant pronunciation standards. The far Eastern dialect (Durili) is most notable for pronouncing '' ' and '' ' where the rest of Mampruli pronounces '' ' and '' ' respectively, and for some characteristic intonation patterns.

Phonology

Vowels

Mampruli has ten phonemic vowels: five short and five long vowels:

Consonants

Writing system

Mampruli is written in a

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

, but the

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...

rate is fairly low. The

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

currently used represents a number of

allophonic In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

distinctions. There is a description of the process of formulating the orthography.

Alphabet

Grammar

Mampruli has a fairly conservative Oti-Volta grammatical system. The constituent order in Mampruli sentences is usually agent–verb–object. There is a simple, non-technical grammatical study <>

Lexicon

The rather unusual trilingual (Mampruli-Spanish-English) dictionary was superseded by the more-reliable simple glossary: a full-featured Mampruli dictionary is in course of preparation. A hundred-word sample can be seen on the Kamusi project site

References

{{Authority control Languages of Ghana Oti–Volta languages Mamprusi people