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Fon (fɔ̀ngbè, pronounced [fɔ̃̀ɡ͡bē][2]) is spoken in Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana and Gabon by approximately 1.7 million speakers, and is the language of the Fon people. Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an isolating language with an SVO basic word order.

Fon
fɔ̀ngbè
Native to	Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Gabon
Ethnicity	Fon people
Native speakers	2.2 million (2000–2006)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Volta–Niger Gbe Fon
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Benin
Language codes
ISO 639-2	fon
ISO 639-3	fon – inclusive code Individual codes: guw – Gun mxl – Maxi
Glottolog	fonn1241  Fon language
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Cultural and legal status

In Benin, French is the official language, while Fon and other indigenous languages, including the Yom and Yoruba languages, are classified as national languages.[3]

Grammar

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]

To date, there are about 53 different dialects of the Fon language spoken throughout Benin.

Phonology

Vowels

Fon has seven oral vowel phonemes and five nasal vowel phonemes.

Vowel phonemes of Fon[5]

	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

Consonant phonemes of Fon[5]

	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/ only occurs in linguistic mimesis and loanwords, though often it is replaced by /f/ in the latter, as in cɔ́fù 'shop'. Several of the voiced occlusives only occur before oral vowels, while the homorganic nasal stops only occur before nasal vowels, indicating that [b] [m] and [ɖ] [n] are allophones. [ɲ] is in free variation with [j̃]; Fongbe therefore can be argued to have no phonemic nasal consonants, a pattern rather common in West Africa.[lower-alpha 1] /w/ and /l/ are also nasalized before nasal vowels; /w/ may be assimilated to [ɥ] before /i/.

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; if that syllable has a phonemic low tone, it 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.

/ xʷèví-sà-tɔ́	é	kò	xɔ̀	àsɔ̃́	wè /
[ xʷèvísáꜜtɔ́ ‖	é	kó	ꜜxɔ̂ |	àsɔ̃́	wê ‖ ]
fish-sell-aɡent	s/he	PERF	buy	crab	two

Hwevísatɔ́, é ko hɔ asón we.

"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.

Orthography

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]

Fon alphabet

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]

Sample text

From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

GBETA GBƐ Ɔ BI TƆN EE ƉƆ XÓ DÓ ACƐ E GBƐTƆ ƉÓ KPODO SISI E ƉO NA ƉÓ N'I LƐ KPO WU E WEXWLE

Ee nyi ɖɔ hɛnnu ɖokpo mɛ ɔ, mɛ ɖokpoɖokpo ka do susu tɔn, bɔ acɛ ɖokpo ɔ wɛ mɛbi ɖo bo e ma sixu kan fɛn kpon é ɖi mɛɖesusi jijɛ, hwɛjijɔzinzan, kpodo fifa ni tiin nu wɛkɛ ɔ bi e ɔ, ...

Use

Radio programs in Fon are broadcast on ORTB channels.

Television programs in Fon is shown on the La Beninoise satellite TV channel.[8]

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.[1][9][10][11]

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).[12] Their project is called FFR.[13] 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.[14]

Notes

References

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)

На других языках

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[de] Fon (Sprache)

Fon (Eigenbezeichnung Fɔngbè) ist eine Sprache aus der Gruppe der Gbe-Sprachen, die zur Unterfamilie der Kwa-Sprachen innerhalb der Familie der Niger-Kongo-Sprachen gehören.

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- [en] Fon language

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[es] Idioma fon

El fon o gun (autoglótnimos: fon gbè [fɔ̃̄ɡb͡e] y gun gbè [ɡũɡb͡e]) es una lengua de subgrupo gbe de la rama Volta-Níger de las lenguas Níger-Congo y la lengua del pueblo fon. El fon se habla principalmente en Benín y áreas adyacentes de Togo y tiene más de 2 millones de hablantes. Como otras lenguas gbe, es una lengua altamente analítica y fonológicamente es una lengua tonal.

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[fr] Fon (langue)

Le fon ou fon-gbe (nom local : fɔ̀ngbè[1]) est une langue véhiculaire employée au Bénin, au Nigeria et au Togo. Elle a fait l’objet de plusieurs études linguistiques (phonologie, lexique et syntaxe). Elle appartient au groupe des langues gbe de la famille des langues nigéro-congolaises.

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[it] Lingua fon

La lingua fon o fon-gbe (nome locale : Fɔngbè), è una lingua veicolare parlata nel Benin, in Nigeria e nel Togo. È stata fatta oggetto di molti studi linguistici (fonologia, lessico e sintassi).

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[ru] Фон (язык)

Фон — язык народа фон, относится к вольто-нигерским языкам. Число носителей — около 1 435 000 человек, из них: 1,4 млн чел. — в Бенине (центральные и южные районы страны) и около 35 тыс. чел. — в Того. Как и другие языки гбе, фон — изолирующий язык с порядком слов SVO.

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