Dan/ˈdæn/[2] is a Southern Mande language spoken primarily in Ivory Coast (~800,000 speakers) and Liberia (150,000–200,000 speakers). There is also a population of about 800 speakers in Guinea. Dan is a tonal language, with 9 to 11 contour and register tones, depending on the dialect.
Alternative names for the language include Yacouba or Yakubasa, Gio, Gyo, Gio-Dan, and Da. Dialects are Gio (Liberian Dan), Gweetaawu (Eastern Dan), Blowo (Western Dan), and Kla. Kla is evidently a distinct language.
Phonology
Vowels
^ a b cOnly in Eastern Dan when in the position of extra-high tone
^ a bOnly in Liberian Dan
Consonants
^Not in Liberian Dan
^Only in Liberian Dan
^Not in Western Dan
/l/ is heard as [r] when preceded by alveolar or palatal consonants.
Consonant combinations /sl,zl/ are heard as lateral fricative sounds [ɬ,ɮ].[3]
Writing system
The orthography of Liberia includes this alphabet:[4][5]
Tones are marked as follows:
extra high tone: a̋;
high tone: á;
medium tone: ā;
low tone: à;
extra low tone: ȁ;
high drop tone: â;
extra low hanging tone: aʼ.
The digraphs ⟨bh, dh, gb gw, kp, kw⟩ keep the same values as in the spelling of 1982, and the nasal vowels are also indicated by appending the letter n after the letter of the vowel ⟨an, æn, ʌn, ɛn, in, ɔn, œn, un⟩.
References
^Dan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) Kla at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh[relevant?]
^ a b c dVydrin, Valentin (2020). "Dan". In Vossen, Rainer; Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of African Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 451–462. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199609895.013.66. ISBN 9780199609895.
^"Dan". ScriptSource.
^"Proposal to Encode Additional Latin and Cyrillic Characters" (PDF).
Further reading
Roberts, David; Boyd, Ginger; Merz, Johannes; Vydrin, Valentin (2020). "Quantifying written ambiguities in tone languages: A comparative study of Elip, Mbelime, and Eastern Dan". Language Documentation & Conservation. 14: 108–138. hdl:10125/24915.
External links
Dan language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
