Fon | |
---|---|
fɔ̀ngbè | |
Native to | Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Gabon |
Ethnicity | Fon people |
Native speakers | 2.3 million (2019–2021)[1] |
Dialects |
|
Latin, Gbékoun | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Benin |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | fon |
ISO 639-3 | fon |
Glottolog | fonn1241 Fon language |
Gbe languages. Fon is purple. | |
Fon (fɔ̀ngbè, pronounced [fɔ̃̀ɡ͡bē][2]) also known as Dahomean is the language of the Fon people. It belongs to the Gbe group within the larger Atlantic–Congo family. It is primarily spoken in Benin, as well as in Nigeria, Togo, Ghana and Gabon, by approximately 2.28 million speakers.[1] Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an isolating language with a SVO basic word order.
YouTube Encyclopedic
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1/5Views:10 2724 9324405971 505
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Film en langue Fon, English captions: "Premiers pas" (Global Dialogues)
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60 expressions en fon pour débutants (🇫🇷➡🇧🇯)
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Fon language: numbers eleven to twenty
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Fon language - Numbers One to Ten (revision)
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The Fon People of West Africa
Transcription
Global Dialogues www.globaldialogues.org Yuba! Celine! Don't be late, huh! Bye, Mum. Bye bye. Bye, Mummy. Bye, Celine. One of the children must have dropped it. What's this? Grrrr. Tell me, how do you let things like this go on here in my house? Oh yes. It's always MY fault. Sorry about your uncle. Oh yes, thanks. He didn't even believe in AIDS. Not at all. How old was he? About 25. When it comes to AIDS, the world is upside down: Older people bury their kids, and kids are often better informed than their parents. Do you think they know everything that we learn about AIDS at school? I doubt it! Therefore, kids must educate their parents! Imagine it: "Dad, Mum! Open your notebooks! Take dictation. Quickly!" I just cannot believe that you haven't had that talk with your kids yet about sex and AIDS! It can't be right. Tell me you're joking. The right time hasn't come up yet. The right time is NOW! What if your son tells you he's HIV positive? And if your 16-year-old daughter tells you she's pregnant? Huh? I believed she'd learn all that from her husband, like me. Oh, I don't believe my ears! That attitude leads to young girls becoming mothers, girls who don't have the slightest idea how their own bodies function! We were never told about those things by our mothers, you know. That is just a lame excuse. The real truth is simple, as you know well: It concerns your children's health, their lives, and you're feeling nervous. I don't know how to do it. Listen. I'll tell you how I went about it, talking to my kids. It's not nearly as difficult as you think. I know you have all the courage and the creativity necessary to talk successfully with your children. Hey young man! Yes? I'd like some petrol, please. Serve yourself. Getting up early, is better than running. Getting up early, better than running. [Radio:] You say that more than half of all Africans living with the AIDS virus were infected before the age of 25. Why is that? There are many factors. One is that those who should provide young people with the necessary information just aren't doing so. Especially parents. Young people want their parents to talk to them about AIDS, but that's very rare. Right. A long voyage begins with just one step. But why are boys like that? For that, you'd better ask your father. Global Dialogues www.globaldialogues.org
Cultural and legal status
In Benin, French is the official language, and Fon and other indigenous languages, including Yom and Yoruba, are classified as national languages.[3]
Dialects
The standardized Fon language is part of the Fon cluster of languages inside the Eastern Gbe languages. Hounkpati B Christophe Capo groups Agbome, Kpase, Gun, Maxi and Weme (Ouémé) in the Fon dialect cluster, although other clusterings are suggested. Standard Fon is the primary target of language planning efforts in Benin, although separate efforts exists for Gun, Gen, and other languages of the country.[4]
Phonology
Vowels
Fon has seven oral vowel phonemes and five nasal vowel phonemes.
Oral | Nasal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
front | back | front | back | |
Close | i | u | ĩ | ũ |
Close-Mid | e | o | ||
Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | ɛ̃ | ɔ̃ |
Open | a | ã |
Consonants
Labial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | Labial -velar | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
"Nasal" | m ~ b | n ~ ɖ | ||||||||
Occlusive | (p) | t | d | tʃ | dʒ | k | ɡ | kp | ɡb | |
Fricative | f | v | s | z | x | ɣ | xʷ | ɣʷ | ||
Approximant | l ~ ɾ | ɲ ~ j | w |
/p/ occurs only in linguistic mimesis and loanwords but is often is replaced by /f/ in the latter, as in cɔ́fù 'shop'. Several of the voiced occlusives occur only before oral vowels, and the homorganic nasal stops occur only before nasal vowels, which indicates that [b] [m] and [ɖ] [n] are allophones. [ɲ] is in free variation with [j̃] and so Fong can be argued to have no phonemic nasal consonants, a pattern rather common in West Africa.[a] /w/ is nasalized (to [ŋʷ]) before nasal vowels, and may assimilate to [ɥ] before /i/. /l/ is sometimes also nasalized.[clarification needed]
The only consonant clusters in Fon have /l/ or /j/ as the second consonant. After (post)alveolars, /l/ is optionally realized as [ɾ]: klɔ́ 'to wash', wlí 'to catch', jlò [d͡ʒlò] ~ [d͡ʒɾò] 'to want'.
Tone
Fon has two phonemic tones: HIGH and LOW. High is realized as rising (low–high) after a voiced consonant. Basic disyllabic words have all four possibilities: HIGH–HIGH, HIGH–LOW, LOW–HIGH, and LOW–LOW.
In longer phonological words, such as verb and noun phrases, a high tone tends to persist until the final syllable, which, if it has a phonemic low tone, becomes falling (high–low). Low tones disappear between high tones, but their effect remains as a downstep. Rising tones (low–high) simplify to HIGH after HIGH (without triggering downstep) and to LOW before HIGH.
Hwevísatɔ́,
/xʷèví-sà-tɔ́
[xʷèvísáꜜtɔ́‖
fish-sell-agent
é
é
é
s/he
ko
kò
kó
PERF
hɔ
xɔ̀
ꜜxɔ̂
buy
asón
àsɔ̃́
àsɔ̃́
crab
we.
wè/
wê‖]
two
"The fishmonger, she bought two crabs."
In Ouidah, a rising or falling tone is realized as a mid tone. For example, mǐ 'we, you', phonemically high-tone /bĩ́/ but phonetically rising because of the voiced consonant, is generally mid-tone [mĩ̄] in Ouidah.
Orthographies
Roman alphabet
The Fon alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters Ɖ/ɖ, Ɛ/ɛ, and Ɔ/ɔ, and the digraphs gb, hw, kp, ny, and xw.[6]
Majuscule | A | B | C | D | Ɖ | E | Ɛ | F | G | GB | H | HW | I | J | K | KP | L | M | N | NY | O | Ɔ | P | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | XW | Y | Z |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Minuscule | a | b | c | d | ɖ | e | ɛ | f | g | gb | h | hw | i | j | k | kp | l | m | n | ny | o | ɔ | p | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | xw | y | z |
Sound (IPA) | a | b | t͡ɕ | d | ɖ | e | ɛ | f | ɡ | ɡb | ɣ | ɣʷ | i | d͡ʑ | k | kp | l | m | n | ɲ | o | ɔ | p | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | xʷ | j | z |
Tone marking
Tones are marked as follows:
- Acute accent marks the rising tone: xó, dó
- Grave accent marks the falling tone: ɖò, akpàkpà
- Caron marks falling and rising tone: bǔ, bǐ
- Circumflex accent marks the rising and falling tone: côfù
- Macron marks the neutral tone: kān
Tones are fully marked in reference books, but not always marked in other writing. The tone marking is phonemic, and the actual pronunciation may be different according to the syllable's environment.[7]
Gbékoun script
Speakers in Benin also use a distinct script called Gbékoun that was invented by Togbédji Adigbè.[8][9] It has 24 consonants and 9 vowels, as it is intended to transcribe all the languages of Benin.
Sample text
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- Acɛ, susu kpo sisi ɖokpo ɔ kpo wɛ gbɛtɔ bi ɖo ɖò gbɛwiwa tɔn hwenu; ye ɖo linkpɔn bɔ ayi yetɔn mɛ kpe lo bɔ ye ɖo na do alɔ yeɖee ɖi nɔvinɔvi ɖɔhun.
- Translation
- All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Use
Radio programs in Fon are broadcast on ORTB channels.
Television programs in Fon are shown on the La Beninoise satellite TV channel.[10]
French used to be the only language of education in Benin, but in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the government is experimenting with teaching some subjects in Benin schools in the country's local languages, among them Fon.[11][12][13]
Machine translation efforts
There is an effort to create a machine translator for Fon (to and from French), by Bonaventure Dossou (from Benin) and Chris Emezue (from Nigeria).[14] Their project is called FFR.[15] It uses phrases from Jehovah's Witnesses sermons as well as other biblical phrases as the research corpus to train a Natural Language Processing (NLP) neural net model.[16]
Notes
- ^ This is a matter of perspective; it could also be argued that [b] and [ɖ] are denasalized allophones of /m/ and /n/ before oral vowels.
References
- ^ a b Fon at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)
- ^ Höftmann & Ahohounkpanzon, p. 179
- ^ "Language data for Benin". Translators without Borders. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
- ^ Kluge, Angela (2007). "The Gbe Language Continuum of West Africa: A Synchronic Typological Approach to Prioritizing In-depth Sociolinguistic Research on Literature Extensibility" (PDF). Language Documentation & Conservation: 182–215. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-11-11. Retrieved 2018-07-05.
- ^ a b Claire Lefebvre; Anne-Marie Brousseau (2002). A Grammar of Fongbe. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 15–29. ISBN 3-11-017360-3.
- ^ Höftmann & Ahohounkpanzon, p. 19
- ^ Höftmann & Ahohounkpanzon, p. 20
- ^ Teddy G. (May 5, 2021). "Vulgarisation de l'alphabet: Gbékoun sur tout le territoire national Bilan de la première phase de sensibilisation". Matin libre (in French).
- ^ "Alphabet " Gbékoun ": Un outil d'éveil de la conscience des peuples africains". La Nation (in French). June 21, 2021. p. 13.
- ^ "BTV - La Béninoise TV - La Béninoise des Télés | La proximité par les langues". www.labeninoisetv.net (in French). Archived from the original on 2018-07-03. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
- ^ Akpo, Georges. "Système éducatif béninois : les langues nationales seront enseignées à l'école à la rentrée prochaine". La Nouvelle Tribune (in French). Archived from the original on 2019-06-21. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
- ^ "Reportage Afrique - Bénin : l'apprentissage à l'école dans la langue maternelle". RFI (in French). 2013-12-26. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
- ^ "Langues nationales dans le système scolaire : La phase expérimentale continue, une initiative à améliorer - Matin Libre" (in French). Archived from the original on 2018-07-03. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
- ^ "AI in Africa: Teaching a bot to read my mum's texts". BBC News. 2020-04-29. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
- ^ "Project website". ffrtranslate.com. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
- ^ Emezue, Chris Chinenye; Dossou, Femi Pancrace Bonaventure (2020). "FFR v1.1: Fon-French Neural Machine Translation". Proceedings of the Fourth Widening Natural Language Processing Workshop. Seattle, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics: 83–87. arXiv:2003.12111. doi:10.18653/v1/2020.winlp-1.21.
Bibliography
- Höftmann, Hildegard; Ahohounkpanzon, Michel (2003). Dictionnaire fon-français : avec une esquisse grammaticale. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 3896454633. OCLC 53005906.
External links
- A Facebook application to use and learn the Fon language, developed by Jolome.com
- The first blog totally in Fongbe. An access to a Fongbe forum is given
- Journal of West African Languages: Articles on Fon
- Manuel dahoméen : grammaire, chrestomathie, dictionnaire français-dahoméen et dahoméen-français, 1894 by Maurice Delafosse at the Internet Archive (in French)