Kwa Languages
Kwa languages form a significant linguistic group within the Niger-Congo family, encompassing approximately fifty languages spoken by around twenty-five million people predominantly in West Africa. This family includes several distinct groups, with the largest being the Potou-Tano languages, spoken mainly in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. Additionally, the Gbe group, found east of Ghana's Volta River, contributes a substantial number of speakers. The term "Kwa" translates to "man" or "person" in various Kwa languages, highlighting a cultural connection to identity.
These languages exhibit unique linguistic features such as vowel harmony and tonal distinctions, meaning the pitch used can alter the meaning of words—a characteristic that enriches their expressive capacity. While the Kwa languages are primarily oral, some have developed writing systems based on the Latin script, with specific adaptations to capture unique sounds.
Geographically, Kwa languages are concentrated in several West African nations, including Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and parts of Nigeria, reflecting a diverse cultural tapestry. Understanding Kwa languages offers insights into the rich heritage and complex histories of the communities that speak them.
Kwa Languages
The Kwa languages are a group of about fifty languages spoken by various peoples in the southern coastal area of the western bulge of Africa. Used by an estimated twenty-five million people, the languages are considered part of the Niger-Congo family, one of the largest language families in the world and the largest in Africa, with more than 1,500 distinct languages.
The Kwa languages are divided into several groups based on geography and indigenous usage. The largest is the Potou-Tano group comprising twenty languages spoken by more than fourteen million people in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. The Gbe group, located east of Ghana's Volta River, has the second-largest number of speakers with about eight million. The word Kwa means "man" or "person" in several of the Kwa languages.
The inclusion of individual languages in the Kwa family has fluctuated over the years. At one point, Liberian and Nigerian were categorized as Kwa but are no longer considered part of the group.
History and Classification
The Kwa languages are part of the Niger-Congo language family, which encompass about 60 percent of the languages of Africa. Many of the indigenous peoples of Africa relied on a long oral history and did not use a written system to keep records. As a result, it is difficult to determine the exact origin of Kwa and the Niger-Congo languages. The first Europeans to encounter the African peoples made reference to their language in sixteenth-century writings. Missionaries working among the African population often tried to record the indigenous languages in dictionaries and works of grammar, but did not have the linguistic training to make reliable translations.
Little is also known about the origins of the indigenous peoples who speak the Kwa languages. Ancient people often migrated, forced to move by conflicts or climatological changes. For example, the Ewe people of Ghana, Togo, and Benin are thought to have come from western Nigeria. The Akan people are believed to have migrated to Ghana from the Sahara region of north-central Africa.
While scholars have engaged in considerable debate about the categorization of languages in the Kwa family, a 2000 classification by linguists Roger Blench and Kay Williamson divides the Kwa languages into five groups, further broken down into their respective dialects.
- Lagoon Languages: A group of seven dialects spoken in HYPERLINK "http://www.britannica.com/place/Cote-dIvoire" Côte d’Ivoire
- Potou-Tano: Twenty dialects combined from the Potou and Tano subgroups used in HYPERLINK "http://www.britannica.com/place/Cote-dIvoire" Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana
- Ga-Dangme: Two dialects spoken in southeastern Ghana
- Central Togo: Fourteen dialects composed of two subgroups. Also called the Togo Mountain Languages
- Gbe: Six dialects spoken east of the Volta River in eastern Ghana, Benin, Togo, and western Nigeria.
Kwa languages use a vowel harmony system, in which the tongue’s position is changed in the mouth to contrast sets of vowels during speech. The system also governs which vowels can be used together in the same word. The languages are tonal in nature, meaning the same word can have two distinct definitions depending on the pitch or accent used in pronunciation. Kwa languages usually use between two and five tones. The predominant sentence order is subject-verb-object, with modifiers such as adjectives following the noun.
Because Kwa languages have been predominantly spoken languages, the use of writing systems is rare. What alphabets do exist are relatively recent inventions and use a variation based on the Latin script. The alphabet of the Ewe people uses a thirty-five-character script that includes symbols and certain letter combinations, such as Dz and Gb, to represent additional sounds. It also uses a tilde (~) to indicate a nasal sound.
The Akan people use several alphabets depending on the dialect. The Twi dialect, for example, uses a Latin-based script of thirty-one consonants and ten vowels. Like Ewe, Twi uses symbols and letter combinations, such as gyi and kyi, to represent additional sounds.
Many Kwa languages have the names of the people who speak them. For example, the Ga people of southeastern Ghana speak the Ga dialect, and the Nzema of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana speak Nzema. Since Kwa dialects are similar, most languages can be understood by speakers of another.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
Kwa languages are spoken by twenty-five million people in the West African nations of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and the southwestern corner of Nigeria.
The Akan people of Ghana have the most Kwa speakers, with about ten million. They are followed by the Ewe of eastern Ghana and western Togo with about four million, and the Baule of Côte d’Ivoire with about three million. The Fon of Benin, Anyi of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and Dangme of southeastern Ghana also have more than one million speakers each.
Bibliography
"Akan." Omniglot. Simon Ager, 2015. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/akan.htm>.
Ameka, Felix K., and Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, eds. Aspect and Modality in Kwa Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Print.
"Ewe." Omniglot. Simon Ager, 2015. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ewe.htm>.
"Kwa Languages." Language Gulper. Alejandro Gutman and Beatriz Avanzati, 2013. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. <http://www.languagesgulper.com/eng/Kwa.html>.
"Niger-Congo Language Family." About World Languages. About World Languages, 2015. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. <http://aboutworldlanguages.com/niger-congo-language-family>.
"Twi." Omniglot. Simon Ager, 2015. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/twi.htm>.