Ewe language - WikiHQ

Ewe (endonym: or ) or Togolese is a language spoken by approximately 5 million people in West Africa, mainly in Ghana and Togo. the Ewe varieties Gbin, Ho, Kpelen, Kpesi, and Vhlin might be considered a third cluster of Western Gbe dialects between Ewe and Gen, but Kpesi is as close or closer to the Waci and Vo dialects, which remain in Ewe in that scenario. Waci intervenes geographically between Ewe proper and Gen; Kpesi forms a Gbe island in the Kabye area.

Ewe is itself a dialect cluster of the Gbe languages, which include Gen, Aja, Kotafon, Mina and Xwla and are spoken from the southern part of Ghana to Togo, Benin and Western Nigeria. All Gbe languages share at least some intelligibility with one another. Some coastal and southern dialects of Ewe include Aŋlɔ, Tongu (Tɔŋu), Avenor, Dzodze, and Watsyi. Some inland dialects indigenously characterized as Ewedomegbe include: Ho, Kpedze, Hohoe, Peki, Kpando, Aveme, Liati, Fódome, Danyi, and Kpele. Though there are many classifications, distinct variations exist between towns that are just miles away from one another.

Phonology

thumb|[[file:Grace in Ewe (language).ogg Grace in Ewe (translation)]]

Consonants

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

! colspan="2" |

! Bilabial

! Labio dental

! Dental

! (Post-) alveolar

! Palatal

! Velar

! Labial- velar

! Glottal

! rowspan="2" | Plosive

! voiceless

! voiced

| ~

! rowspan="2" | Affricate

! voiceless

| colspan=2|

! voiced

| colspan=2|

! rowspan="2" | Fricative

! voiceless

| colspan=2|

! voiced

| colspan=2|

| colspan="2" rowspan="2" | ~ ~

| ~ ~

! colspan="2" | Approximant

| ~

! colspan="2" |Trill

! colspan="2" | Tap

| ( ~ )

H is a voiced fricative, which has also been described as uvular, , pharyngeal, , or glottal .

is typically alveolar as , but can also be dental as .

The nasal consonants are not distinctive since they appear before only nasal vowels; therefore, Ewe is sometimes said to have no nasal consonants. However, it is more economical to argue that nasal are the underlying form and so are denasalized before oral vowels.

occurs before unrounded (non-back) vowels and before rounded (back) vowels.

Palatalization of alveolar consonants before a high-front vowel occur in the Southern dialect, and are heard as .

may occur in consonant clusters. It becomes (or ) after coronals.

Vowels

{| class="wikitable"

! align="center"|Front

!Central

! align="center"|Back

! align="left"|Close

| align="center"| ,

! align="left"|Close-mid

| align="center"| ,

| rowspan="2" align="center"| ,

| align="center"| ,

! align="left"|Open-mid

| align="center"| ,

! align="left"|Open

| align="center"|

| align="center"|,

The tilde (˜) marks nasal vowels, though the Peki dialect lacks . Many varieties of Ewe lack one or another of the front mid vowels, and some varieties in Ghana have the additional vowels and .

Ewe does not have a nasal–oral contrast in consonants. It does, however, have a syllabic nasal, which varies as , depending on the following consonant, and carries tone. Some authors treat it as a vowel, with the odd result that Ewe would have more nasal than oral vowels, and one of these vowels has no set place of articulation. If it is taken to be a consonant, there is the odd result of a single nasal consonant that cannot appear before vowels. If nasal consonants are taken to underlie , however, there is no such odd restriction, and the only difference from other consonants is that only nasal stops may be syllabic, a common pattern cross-linguistically.

Tones

Ewe is a tonal language. In a tonal language, pitch differences are used to distinguish one word from another. For example, in Ewe the following three words differ only by tone:

to ‘ear’ (High tone)
to ‘report/gossip’(High tone)
to ‘pound’ (High tone)
tó 'mountain' (High tone)
tǒ 'mortar' (Rising tone)
tò 'buffalo' (Low tone)

Phonetically, there are three tone registers, High, Mid, and Low, and three rising and falling contour tones. However, most Ewe dialects have only two distinctive registers, High and Mid. These are depressed in nouns after voiced obstruents: High becomes Mid (or Rising), and Mid becomes Low. Mid is also realized as Low at the end of a phrase or utterance, as in the example 'buffalo' above.

In writing, tones are marked by acute accent, grave accent, caron, and circumflex. They may be used along with the tilde that marks nasal vowels.

Pragmatics

Ewe has phrases of overt politeness, such as meɖekuku (meaning "please") and akpe (meaning "thank you").

Orthography

The African Reference Alphabet is used when Ewe is represented orthographically, so the written version is somewhat like a combination of the Latin alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet. The possessive precedes the head noun. Adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and relative clauses follow the head noun. Ewe also has postpositions rather than prepositions. though most linguists stated that Ewe is an "aspect-prominent language".

Negation in Ewe, according to Agbedor (1994), uses a pattern that attaches a “me-“ prefix to the verb while simultaneously adding a stand-alone “o” at the end of the sentence, akin to French negation.

Kofi de suku.

(K. go school)

“Kofi went to school.”

Kofi mede suku o.

(K. NEG-go school NEG)

“Kofi did not go to school.”

Status

Ewe is a national language in Togo. It is also a government-backed regional language in Ghana.

Literature

Scholars have identified The Tragedy of Agbezuge () by Sam J. Obianim as the first novel written in Ewe.

The Fifth landing stage, by Ferdinand Kwasi Fiawoo, a play depicting a part of the history of the Ewe people is a notable literary work as well.

References

General sources

Ansre, Gilbert (1961) The Tonal Structure of Ewe. MA thesis, Kennedy School of Missions of Hartford Seminary Foundation.
Ameka, Felix Kofi (2001). "Ewe". In Garry and Rubino (eds.), Fact About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present. New York/Dublin: The H. W. Wilson Company. pp. 207–213.
Clements, George N. (1975). "The logophoric pronoun in Ewe: Its role in discourse". Journal of West African Languages. 10(2): 141–177.
Collins, Chris. (1993) Topics in Ewe Syntax. Doctoral Dissertation, MIT.
Capo, Hounkpati B. C. (1991). A Comparative Phonology of Gbe, Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, 14. Berlin/New York: Foris Publications & Garome, Bénin: Labo Gbe (Int).
Pasch, Helma (1995). Kurzgrammatik des Ewe. Köln: Köppe.
Westermann, Diedrich Hermann (1930). A Study of the Ewe Language. London: Oxford University Press.

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120917000001/http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/afrikanistik/down/publikationen/basic_ewe.pdf] Institut für Afrikanistik der Universität zu Köln
https://web.archive.org/web/20111118234109/http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/afrikanistik/sprachen/ewe/ Ewe being taught at University of Cologne (Institute for African Studies Cologne)
Ewe Basic Course by Irene Warburton, Prosper Kpotufe, Roland Glover, and Catherine Felten (textbook in Portable Digital Format and audio files in MP3 format) at Indiana University Bloomington's Center for Language Technology and Instructional Enrichment (CELTIE).
Articles on Ewe (Journal of West African Languages)
The Ewe language at Verba Africana
Ewe alphabet and pronunciation page at Omniglot
Free virtual keyboard for Ewe language at GhanaKeyboards.Com
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060318005230/http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Language/EWE/EWE.html] Recordings of Ewe being spoken.
My First Gbe Dictionary Online Gbe(Ewe)-English Glossary
PanAfriL10n page
Ewe IPA
Ewe online grammar; in French. Apparently the text of Grammaire ev̳e: aide-mémoire des règles d'orthographe de l'ev̳e by Kofi J. Adzomada, 1980.
Biblia Le Internet Dzi; online bible in Ewe language by Jehovah's Witnesses
Ewe Bible (Èʋegbe Biblia) Nublabla Xoxo and Yeye