The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of

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 ...

, across southern

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 ...

, and in central

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 ...

. The Kwa family belongs to the Niger-Congo phylum. The name was introduced in 1895 by

Gottlob Krause Gottlob Adolf Krause (January 5, 1850 in Ockrilla near Meissen – February 19, 1938 in Zürich)''Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft'', Vol. 93, Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Kommissionsverlag F. Steiner, 1966, ...

and derives from the word for 'people' (''Kwa'') in many of these languages, as illustrated by

Akan names The Akan people of Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo frequently name their children after the day of the week they were born and the order in which they were born. These "day names" have further meanings concerning the soul and character of the person ...

. This branch consists of around 50 different languages spoken by about 25 million people. Some of the largest Kwa languages are Ewe,

Akan Akan may refer to: People and languages *Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire *Akan languages, a language group within the wider Central Tano languages *Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan *Central Tano language ...

and Baule.

Languages

See the box at right for a current classification. The various clusters of languages included in Kwa are at best distantly related, and it has not been demonstrated that they are closer to each other than to neighboring Niger–Congo languages. Stewart distinguished the following major branches, which historical-comparative analysis supports as valid groups: * Potou–Tano (including

) * Ga–Dangme * Na-Togo * ormerly Gbe (inclusion doubtful, as they show more features of Kwa the closer one moves to Akan) The Lagoon languages of southern Ivory Coast are not particularly close to any of these, nor to each other, so they are left ungrouped: *

Avikam The Avikam are an Akan people who live predominantly in Ivory Coast. History The Avikam people of southern Cote d 'Ivoire live in a tropical rainforest fringed by a coastal lagoon. The nearby city of Abidjan, the country's economic capital, i ...

– Alladian * Attié * Abé * Adjukru * Abidji * Ega An

Esuma language Esuma (Essouma) is an extinct language of uncertain classification within the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo family, once spoken in the villages of Assinie (Asini) and Mafia in Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and o ...

, extinct ca. 1800, remains unclassified. Since Stewart, Ega has been tentatively removed, the Gbe languages reassigned to Volta–Niger, and Apro added. Some of the Na-Togo and Ka-Togo languages have been placed into separate branches of Kwa.Williamson & Blench 2000:29 See the infobox at right for the resulting branches.

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

divides the Kwa languages into two broad geographical groupings: Nyo and Left bank, but this is not a genealogical classification. The Nyo group collapses Stewart's Potou–Tano and Ga–Dangme branches and also includes the ungrouped languages of southern Ivory Coast, while the Ka/Na-Togo and Gbe languages are called ''Left bank'' because they are spoken to the east of the

Volta River The Volta River (, , ) is the main Drainage system (geomorphology), river system in the West African country of Ghana. It flows south into Ghana from the Bobo-Dioulasso Department, Bobo-Dioulasso highlands of Burkina Faso. The three main part ...

History of the proposal

The word 'Kwa' was used by

in 1885 for the Akan (or perhaps Tano), Gã, and Gbe languages, which have ''kwa'' or ''kua'' as their word for 'human being'. Since then the proposal has been dramatically expanded, only to revert to something approaching its initial conception. In 1952 Westermann and Bryan expanded Kwa to the various Lagoon languages of southern Ivory Coast and to what are now called the

Volta–Niger languages The Volta–Niger family of languages, also known as West Benue–Congo or East Kwa, is one of the branches of the Niger–Congo language family, with perhaps 70 million speakers. Among these are the most important languages of southern Nigeria ...

of southern Nigeria.

Greenberg Greenberg is a surname common in North America and Anglosphere, with anglicized spelling of the German Grünberg (''green mountain'') or the Jewish Ashkenazi Yiddish Grinberg, an artificial surname.Beider, Alexander (1993). ''A Dictionary of Jewi ...

(1963) added the

Kru languages The Kru languages are spoken by the Kru people from the southeast of Liberia to the west of Ivory Coast. Classification According to Güldemann (2018), Kru lacks sufficient lexical resemblances and noun class resemblances to conclude a relatio ...

of Liberia, the

Ghana–Togo Mountain languages The Ghana–Togo Mountain languages, formerly called Togorestsprachen (''Togo Remnant languages'') and Central Togo languages, form a grouping of about fourteen languages spoken in the mountains of the Ghana–Togo borderland. They are part of t ...

which Westermann and Bryan had specifically excluded, and

Ijaw Ijaw may refer to: *Ijaw people The Ijaw people, also known as the Izon people, are an ethnic group found in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria, with primary Population, population clusters in Bayelsa State, Bayelsa, Delta State, Delta, and River ...

of the Niger delta; West Kwa included the languages from Liberia to Dahomey (Republic of Benin), and East Kwa the languages of Nigeria. Bennett & Sterk (1977) proposed that the Yoruboid and

Igboid languages Igboid languages constitute a branch of the Volta–Niger language family. Kay Williamson, Williamson and Roger Blench, Blench conclude that the Igboid languages form a "language cluster" that are somewhat mutually intelligible. Igboid languag ...

belonged in Benue–Congo rather than in Kwa. Stewart (1989) removed Kru, Ijaw, and Volta–Niger (East Kwa), but kept the Ghana–Togo Mountain and Lagoon languages, as well as adding a few obscure, newly described languages. Stewart's classification is the basis of more recent conceptions. To disambiguate this from Greenberg's influential classification, the reduced family is sometimes called "New Kwa".

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary of Kwa and related languages from Dumestre (1971) and other sources:Dumestre, Gérard. 1971. Atlas linguistique de Côte-d'Ivoire: les langues de la région lagunaire. Abidjan: Institut de Linguistique Appliquée (ILA).

Numerals

Comparison of numerals in individual languages:

References

Footnotes

Notations

*Bennett, Patrick R. & Sterk, Jan P. (1977) 'South Central Niger–Congo: A reclassification'. ''Studies in African Linguistics'', 8, 241–273. * Hintze, Ursula (1959) ''Bibliographie der Kwa-Sprachen und der Sprachen der Togo-Restvölker (mit 11 zweifarbigen Sprachenkarten)''. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. *Stewart, John M. (1989) 'Kwa'. In: Bendor-Samuel & Hartell (eds.) ''The Niger–Congo languages''. Lanham, MD: The University Press of America. *Westermann, Diedrich Hermann (1952) ''Languages of West Africa'' (Handbook of African Languages Part II). London/New York/Toronto: Oxford University Press. *Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger (2000) 'Niger–Congo', in Heine, Bernd and Nurse, Derek (eds) ''African Languages - An Introduction.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University press, pp. 11–42.

External links

Journal of West African Languages: Kwa languages
{{Authority control * Volta–Congo languages