Fante dialect
| Fante | |
|---|---|
| Fante | |
| Native to | Ghana |
| Ethnicity | Fante people |
Native speakers | 2.8 million (2013)[1] |
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | Akan Orthography Committee |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | fat |
| ISO 639-3 | fat(see [aka] forEthnologuedescription) |
| Glottolog | fant1241 |
Fante(Fanti:[ˈfɑnti]), also known asFanti,Fantse,orMfantse,is one of the four principal members of theAkandialect continuum,along withAsante,BonoandAkuapem,the latter three collectively known asTwi,with which it ismutually intelligible.[2][3]It is principally spoken in the central and southern regions of Ghana as well as in settlements in other regions in western Ghana, Ivory Coast, as well as in Liberia, Gambia and Angola.[1]
Fante is the commondialectof theFante people,whose communities each have their ownsubdialects,namely Agona, Anomabo, Abura and Gomoa,[4]all of which are mutually intelligible. Schacter and Fromkin describe two main Fante dialect groups: Fante 1, which uses a syllable-final /w/ and thus distinguisheskaw( "dance" ) andka( "bite" ); and Fante 2, where these words are homophonous.[2]A standardized form of Fante is taught in primary and secondary schools.[1]Many Fantes arebilingualorbidialectaland most can speakTwi.[5]
Notable speakers includeCardinal Peter Appiah Turkson,[6]Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang,[7]former United Nations Secretary GeneralKofi Annan,[8][9]and former Ghanaian presidentsKwame NkrumahandJohn Atta Mills.[10][11]Maya Angelou[12][13]learned Fante as an adult during her stay in Ghana.
Today Fante is spoken by more than 6 million people in Ghana primarily in the Central and Western Regions. It is also widely spoken in Tema, where majority of the people in that city are native Fante speakers who were settled after the new port was built.
One striking characteristic of the Fante dialect is the level ofEnglishinfluence, including English loanwords andanglicizedforms of native names, due both to British colonial influence and "to fill lexical and semantic gaps, for reasons of simplicity and also for prestige". Examples of such borrowings includerɛkɔso( "records" ),rɔba"rubber",nɔma( "number" ),kolapuse"collapse", anddɛkuleti"decorate".[14]Native names are occasionally anglicized, such as "Mεnsa" becoming "Mensah" or "Atta" becoming "Arthur".[15]
Etymology
[edit]The name "Fante" has two possible etymologies, both in reference to the neighbouringAsante people.The first states that the Fante were named for their custom of eating spinach, orefan,while the Asante ate another herb calledsan;the second, that the Fante split from the Asante, receiving the nameofa-tew,"the half that separated". However, as well as being phonetically inconsistent, any connection these etymologies propose with the Asante is anachronistic: the Asante rose to power in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and the Fante-Asante dichotomy only developed in the latter part of the 18th century, while the name "Fante" is much older.[16]The true etymology is unknown.[citation needed]
Phonology
[edit]Consonants
[edit]| Labial | Alveolar | (Alveolo-) palatal |
Velar | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | ||
| Nasal | m | n | nʷ | ɲ | ɲʷ | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | pʷ | t | tʷ | k | kʷ | ʔ | |||
| voiced | b | bʷ | d | dʷ | ɡ | gʷ | |||||
| Affricate | voiceless | ts | tɕ | tɕʷ[tɕᶣ] | |||||||
| voiced | dz | dʑ | dʑʷ[dʑᶣ] | ||||||||
| Fricative | f | s | sʷ | ɕ | ɕʷ[ɕᶣ] | h | hʷ | ||||
| Approximant | r | j | w | ||||||||
Vowels
[edit]| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Near-close | ɪ | ʊ | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Of these vowels, five may be nasalized: /ĩ/, /ɪ̃/, /ã/, /ũ/, and /ʊ̃/.[17][18]
Fante exhibitsvowel harmony,where all vowels in a word belong to one of the two sets /i e o u a/ or /ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ a/.[18]
Tones
[edit]Fante, like all other varieties of Akan, has two contrastive tones, high tone (H) and low tone (L).[19]
Orthography
[edit]Fante has a relatively phonemic orthography. It uses the following letters to indicate the following phonemes:[18]
| Uppercase | A | B | D | E | Ɛ | F | G | H | I | K | M | N | O | Ɔ | P | R | S | T | U | W | Y | Z |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lowercase | a | b | d | e | ɛ | f | g | h | i | k | m | n | o | ɔ | p | r | s | t | u | w | y | z |
| Phoneme | /a/ | /b/ | /d/ | /e/,/ɪ/ | /ɛ/ | /f/ | /g/ | /h/ | /i/ | /k/ | /m/ | /n/ | /o/,/ʊ/ | /ɔ/ | /p/ | /r/ | /s/ | /t/ | /u/ | /w/ | /j/ | /z/ |
Consonants
[edit]Fante makes heavy use ofdigraphs,includingky(/tɕ/),gy(/dʑ/),hy(/ɕ/),tw(/tɕʷ/),dw(/dʑʷ/),hw(/ɕʷ/), andkw(/kʷ/). However, labialization is symbolized in other labialized consonants either with ⟨u⟩, e.g.pue(/pʷei/),bue(/bʷei/),tue(/tʷei/),hue(/hʷei/),huan(/hʷan/),guan(/gʷan/),nua(/nʷia/), andsua(/sʷia/); or with ⟨o⟩, e.g.soer(/sʷer/),soe(/sʷei/), andnoa(/nʷia/). Furthermore, the digraphsnyandnwmay represent /ɲ/ and /ɲʷ/, respectively, as innya(/ɲa/) ( "get" ), andnwin(/ɲʷin/) ( "leak" ), parallelling the use of other digraphs in Fante; or they may represent two individual phonemes, /nj/ and /nw/ respectively, as innwaba(/nwaba/) "snail".
Fante also uses the digraphstsanddz,which represent /ts/ and /dz/ in Fante subdialects that distinguish the plosives /t/ and /d/ and the affricates /ts/ and /dz/, but are allophonic withtanddin those subdialects which do not distinguish them. Fante is the only dialect of Akan to distinguish /ts/ and /dz/ from /t/ and /d/, and is therefore the only dialect whose alphabet contains the letter ⟨z⟩.[18]
Vowels
[edit]Although ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ can represent multiplephonemeseach, Fante orthography uses two strategies to distinguish them. First, Fante vowel harmony means /e/ and /ɪ/ are not likely to appear together in a word, nor are /o/ and /ʊ/. Second, if disambiguation is necessary, vowel digraphs may be used: ⟨ie⟩ to mean /e/ and ⟨uo⟩ to mean /o/. Thus /moko/ "pepper" is spelledmuoko,while /mʊkʊ/ "I sit" is spelledmuko.
Nasalization is marked with the diacritic ⟨ ̃⟩, but is only used when distinguishing "one of two or more words of the same spelling but different meanings which contain a nasal vowel",[20]and is omitted when there is no danger of ambiguity. The diacritic may also be included on the wrong vowel, as in the wordkẽka,where it is the second syllable that actually receives the nasalization.[18]
References
[edit]- ^abcAkanatEthnologue(25th ed., 2022)
- ^abSchacter, Paul; Fromkin, Victoria (1968).A Phonology of Akan: Akuapem, Asante, Fante.Los Angeles: UC Press. p. 3.
- ^Arhin, Kwame; Studies, University of Ghana Institute of African (1979).A Profile of Brong Kyempim: Essays on the Archaeology, History, Language and Politics of the Brong Peoples of Ghana.Afram.
- ^Fante dialectatEthnologue(25th ed., 2022)
- ^Abakah, Emmanuel Nicholas (2004)."Elision in Fante"(PDF).Africa & Asia:181–213.
- ^Jones, Sam;Afua Hirsch(2013-02-11)."Who will be the next pope? The contenders for Vatican's top job".The Guardian.ISSN0261-3077.Retrieved2019-12-22.
- ^"Make no mistake, Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang is a courageous Fante!".GhanaWeb.2020-07-18.Retrieved2023-10-02.
- ^"William Shawcross - UK: official personal website".2014-01-14. Archived fromthe originalon 2014-01-14.Retrieved2019-12-22.
- ^"Kofi Annan | Biography & Facts".Encyclopedia Britannica.Retrieved2019-12-22.
- ^Welmers, William Everett (1946).A Descriptive Grammar of Fanti.Linguistic Society of America. p. 7.
- ^Sunday, Eno-Abasi; Andrew Oyafemi (2012-07-25)."John Atta Mills: Death of an African leader".The Guardian.Archived fromthe originalon 2013-06-01.Retrieved2019-12-22.
- ^Hambleton, Laura (2011-10-24)."Celebrated poet Maya Angelou speaks about a life well and creatively lived".Washington Post.ISSN0190-8286.Retrieved2019-12-22.
- ^Drezen, Anna; Angelou, Maya (2018)."American Masters - The Poet: Dr. Maya Angelou".www.pbs.org.PBS.Retrieved2019-12-22.
- ^Apenteng, Monica Amoah; Amfo, Nana Aba Appiah (2014)."The Form and Function of English Loanwords in Akan".Nordic Journal of African Studies.23:219–240.
- ^Agyekum, Kofi (2006-12-31)."The Sociolinguistic of Akan Personal Names".Nordic Journal of African Studies.15(2).ISSN1459-9465.
- ^Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past: Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias.BRILL. 2018-07-26.ISBN978-90-04-38018-9.
- ^Dolphyne, Florence (1988).The Akan (Twi-Fante) language: Its sound systems and tonal structure.Accra: Ghana University Press.
- ^abcdeAdjaye, Sophia A. (1985). "Fante: the orthography versus speech".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.15(2): 23–33.doi:10.1017/S0025100300002954.ISSN0025-1003.JSTOR44525932.S2CID145592307.
- ^Abakah, Emmanuel Nicholas (2005)."Tone Rules in Akan"(PDF).Journal of West African Languages.XXXII:109–134.
- ^Mu, Ngyiresi Kasa (1900).Mfantse nkasafua nkyerekyerease = Fante-English dictionary(in Fanti). Cape Coast: Methodist Book Depot.OCLC8344473.
External links
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