Akan (/əˈkæn/[2]) is a group of several closely related languages within the wider Central Tano languages. These languages are the principal native languages of the Akan people of Ghana, spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana.[3] About 80% of Ghana's population can speak an Akan language as a first or second language,[3] and about 44% of Ghanaians are native speakers.[3] There are populations of polyglots in Ghana who speak an Akan language as a third language.[4] They are also spoken in parts of Côte d'Ivoire.[3]
With the Atlantic slave trade, Akan languages were introduced to the Caribbean and South America, notably in Suriname, spoken by the Ndyuka, and in Jamaica, spoken by the Jamaican Maroons, also known as the Coromantee.[7] The cultures of the descendants of escaped slaves in the interior of Suriname and the Maroons in Jamaica still retain Akan influences, including the Akan naming practice of naming children after the day of the week on which they are born, e.g. Akwasi/Kwasi for a boy or Akosua for a girl born on a Sunday. In Jamaica and Suriname, the Anansi spider stories are still well-known.[7][8]
History
In history, the Akans who live in Ghana migrated in successive waves between the 11th and 18th centuries. Others inhabit the eastern part of Côte d'Ivoire and parts of Togo.[10] They migrated from the north to occupy the forest and coastal areas in the south in the 13th century. The Akans have a strong oral history tradition of their past and they're also known in the art history world for symbolic artifacts of wood, metal and terracotta.[7] Their cultural ideas are expressed in stories and proverbs and also in designs such as symbols used in carvings and on clothes.[7] The cultural and historic nature of the Akans in Ghana makes it an area of research for various disciplines such as folklore, literary studies, linguistics, anthropology and history.[7]
A map of Ghana's ethno-linguistic areas. Akan areas (light green) extend west about halfway into Côte d'Ivoire.
Relationship to other Central Tano languages
Akan is a dialect continuum that includes Twi, Fante, and Wasa.[11] Ethnologue, whose classification is based on studies of mutual intelligibility and lexical similarity from a multitude of sources,[12] classifies the varieties of Akan as dialects of the overarching Akan language, which belongs to the Central Tano language family. Glottolog makes basically the same analysis, with the exception that the Akan dialect continuum is labeled "Akanic".[13]
According to work done by P. K. Agbedor, Fante, Twi (Bono, Asante and Akuapem), Sefwi, Wassa, Asen, Akwamu, and Kwahu belong to Cluster 1 of the speech forms of Ghana, defined as in Ethnologue by the level of mutual intelligibility.[14][8] Cluster 1 may better be termed r-Akan, which do not have /l/ as a phoneme, while l-Akan refers to the Akan cluster comprising Nzema, Baoulé, Anyin and other dialects spoken mainly in Côte d'Ivoire, which have /l/ in place of /r/.[citation needed]
Before front vowels, all Asante consonants are palatalized (or labio-palatalized), and the stops are to some extent affricated. The allophones of /n/ are quite complex. In the table below, palatalized allophones which involve more than minor phonetic palatalization are specified, in the context of the vowel /i/. These sounds do occur before other vowels, such as /a/, though in most cases not commonly.
In Asante, /ɡu/ followed by a vowel is pronounced /ɡʷ/, but in Akuapem it remains /ɡu/. The sequence /nh/ is pronounced [ŋŋ̊].
A word final /k/ can be heard as a glottal stop [ʔ]. There is also a nasalization of /h/ and of /jw/ as [h̃] and [j̃w̃], when occurring before nasal vowels.
The transcriptions in the tables below are in the order /phonemic/, [phonetic]. Note that orthographic ⟨dw⟩ is ambiguous; in textbooks, ⟨dw⟩ = /ɡ/ may be distinguished from /dw/ with a diacritic: d̩w. Likewise, velar ⟨nw⟩ (ŋw) may be transcribed n̩w. Orthographic ⟨nu⟩ is palatalized [ɲᶣ].
The Akan dialects have fourteen to fifteen vowels: four to five "tense" vowels (advanced tongue root, or +ATR), five "lax" vowels (retracted tongue root, or -ATR), which are adequately but not completely represented by the seven-vowel orthography, and five nasal vowels, which are not represented at all. All fourteen were distinguished in the Gold Coast alphabet of the colonial era. An ATR distinction in orthographic a is only found in some subdialects of Fante, but not in the literary form; in Asante and Akuapem there are harmonic allophones of /a/, but neither is ATR. The two vowels written e (/e̘/ and /i/) and o (/o̘/ and /u/) are often not distinguished in pronunciation.
Akan vowels engage in a form of vowel harmony with the root of the tongue.
-ATR vowels followed by the +ATR non-mid vowels /i̘ a̘ u̘/ become +ATR. This is generally reflected in the orthography: That is, orthographic eɛaɔo become i e a o u. However, it is no longer reflected in the case of subject and possessive pronouns, giving them a consistent spelling. This rule takes precedence over the next one.
After the -ATR non-high vowels /e a o/, +ATR mid vowels /e̘ o̘/ become -ATR high vowels /i u/. This is not reflected in the orthography, for both sets of vowels are spelled ⟨e o⟩, and in many dialects this rule does not apply, for these vowels have merged.
Tones
Akan has three phonemic tones, high (/H/), mid (/M/), and low (/L/). Initial syllable may only be high or low.
Tone terracing
The phonetic pitch of the three tones depends on their environment, often being lowered after other tones, producing a steady decline known as tone terracing.
/H/ tones have the same pitch as a preceding /H/ or /M/ tone within the same tonic phrase, whereas /M/ tones have a lower pitch. That is, the sequences /HH/ and /MH/ have a level pitch, whereas the sequences /HM/ and /MM/ have a falling pitch. /H/ is lowered (downstepped) after a /L/.
/L/ is the default tone, which emerges in situations such as reduplicated prefixes. It is always at bottom of the speaker's pitch range, except in the sequence /HLH/, in which case it is raised in pitch but the final /H/ is still lowered. Thus /HMH/ and /HLH/ are pronounced with distinct but very similar pitches.
After the first "prominent" syllable of a clause, usually the first high tone, there is a downstep. This syllable is usually stressed.[5]
Morphology
Formation of plural nouns in Akan
Akan forms some plural nouns by adding the prefixes 'm' or 'n' to the original word and removing the first sound of the noun. Example include nouns like abofra (child), which forms its plural by removing the 'ab' from the word and adding 'mm' to form its plural: mmofra (children). Same goes for aboa (animal) to mmoa (animals), abusua (family) to mmusua (families), abirekyie (goat) to mmirekyie (goats) etc. in the Twi dialect.
The nouns which use the 'n' prefix include; adaka (box) to nnaka (boxes), adanko (rabbit) to nnanko (rabbits), aduro (medicine) to nnuro (medicines), atare (dress) to ntare (dresses), odwan (sheep) to nnwan (sheep plural), aduane (food) to nnuane (food plural), kraman (dog) to nkraman (dogs), kanea (light) to nkanea (lights), safoa (key) to nsafoa (keys).
Akan can create plural nouns by adding the suffix nom to the original word. Examples include; agya (father) to agyanom (fathers), nana (grandparent/grandchild) to nananom (grandparents/grandchildren), nua (sibling) to nuanom (siblings), yere (wife) to yerenom (wives).
Some Akan nouns are the same in both singular and plural. Nouns such as nkyene (salt), ani (eye), sika (money), etc., are written the same in both singular and plural.[15]
Literature
The Akan languages have a rich literature in proverbs, folktales, and traditional drama, as well as a new literature in dramas, short stories, and novels.[16] This literature began to be documented in written form in the late 1800s.[17] Later, Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia collected a number of proverbs and folktales, including Funeral Dirges of the Akan People (1969), Folk Songs of Ghana (1963), and Akan Poetry (1958). Some of the important authors in the language are A. A. Opoku (dramatist), E. J. Osew (dramatist), K. E. Owusu (novelist), and R. A. Tabi (dramatist and novelist).[16] The Bureau of Ghana Languages has been unable to continue printing novels in the language, and the following are out of print: Obreguo, Okrabiri, Afrakoma, Obeede, Fia Tsatsala, and Ku Di Fo Nanawu.[18]
Education
Primary
In 1978 the AOC established a common orthography for all of Akan, which is used as the medium of instruction in primary school.[19][20] The Akan language is recognized for literacy, from at least the lower primary level (primary 1–3).[7]
^ abNina Pawlak, “Akan Folk Literature and the Beginning of Writing in Twi,” Literatures in African Languages: Theoretical Issues and Sample Surveys by B. W. Andrzejewski and S. Pilaszewicz, 128-157 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
^J G Christaller, Twi mmebuse̲m, mpensã-ahansĩa mmoaano. A collection of three thousand and six hundred Tshi proverbs, in use among the Negroes of the Gold Coast speaking the Asante and Fante language, collected, together with their variations, and alphabetically arranged, The Basel German Evangelical Missionary Society, 1879.
Dolphyne, Florence Abena (1988). The Akan (Twi-Fante) Language: Its Sound Systems and Tonal Structure. Accra: Ghana Universities Press. ISBN9964-3-0159-6.
Dolphyne, F. A. (1996). A Comprehensive Course in Twi (Asante) for the Non-Twi Learner. Accra: Ghana University Press. ISBN9964-3-0245-2.
Schacter, Paul (1968). A Phonology of Akan: Akuapem, Asante, Fante. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Nketia, William (2004). Twi für Ghana: Wort für Wort (in German). Bielefeld: Reise Know-How Verlag. ISBN3-89416-346-1.
Obeng, Samuel Gyasi (2001). African anthroponymy: An ethnopragmatic and norphophonological study of personal names in Akan and some African societies. LINCOM studies in anthropology. Vol. 08. München: LINCOM Europa. ISBN3-89586-431-5.
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