Dagbani language

The form Dagbani is the most common in English, dating from the colonial and missionary period. These anglicized spellings were adopted by the Ghanaian education system and the Bureau of Ghana Languages. In the language itself it is Dagbanli: Dagbamba refers to the people, Dagbanli to the language, and Dagbaŋ to the land. The suffix ‑li, used to derive language names, is common across the Mabia languages. ==Dialects==

Dagbanli has a major dialect split between Eastern Dagbanli (Nayahali), centred on the traditional capital town of Yendi (Naya), and Western Dagbanli (Tomosili), centred on the administrative capital of the Northern Region, Tamale. The dialects are, however, mutually intelligible, and mainly consist of different root vowels in some lexemes, and different forms or pronunciations of some nouns, particularly those referring to local flora. ==Phonology==

Vowels Dagbanli has eleven phonemic vowels – six short vowels and five long vowels: Some researchers transcribe the mid-central vowel as . Allophonic variation based on tongue-root advancement is well attested for 4 of these vowels: ~ , ~ , ~ and ~ . Consonants • [] mainly occurs phonemically among other Western dialects. • debuccalizes as a glottal when in intervocalic position. debuccalizes as a glottal stop post-vocalic position. • Sounds are realized as when preceding front vowels. • can be heard as when in post-vocalic positions. The tone system of Dagbanli is characterised by two-level tones and downstep (a lowering effect occurring between sequences of the same phonemic tone). ==Orthography==

Dagbanli was first written in Ajami script. In contemporary times it is mostly written in a Latin alphabet with the addition of the apostrophe, the letters ɛ, ɣ, ŋ, ɔ, and ʒ, and the digraphs ch, gb, kp, ŋm, sh and ny. Many of these distinctions are not phonemic, but are retained under the influence of neighboring languages. The literacy rate used to be only 2–3%. This percentage is expected to rise as Dagbanli is now a compulsory subject in primary and junior secondary school all over Dagbaŋ. The orthography currently used (Orthography Committee /d(1998)) represents a number of allophonic distinctions. Tone is not marked. ==Grammar==

Dagbanli is agglutinative, but with some fusion of affixes. The constituent order in Dagbanli sentences is usually agent–verb–object. Lexicon There is insight into a historical stage of the language in the papers of Rudolf Fisch, reflecting data collected during his missionary work in the German Togoland colony in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, especially the lexical list, though there is also some grammatical information and sample texts. A more modern glossary was published in 1934 by a southern Ghanaian officer of the colonial government, E. Foster Tamakloe, in 1934, with a revised edition by British officer Harold Blair. Various editors added to the wordlist and a more complete publication was produced in 2003 by an indigenopus scholar, Ibrahim Mahama. Meanwhile, the data was electronically compiled by John Miller Chernoff and Roger Blench (whose version is published online), and converted into a database by Tony Naden, on the basis of which the Dagbanli-to-English bilingual lexicon with explanations is ongoing and can be viewed online.. In February 2026, the Foundation for Indigenous & Oral Knowledge Archives (IOKA) launched a full-fledged online dictionary featuring a native Dagbanli interface and monolingual definitions. Moving beyond earlier bilingual lexicons, this Wikidata-powered platform established a sovereign digital infrastructure that documents Dagbanli independent of an English-language framework. Noun class system Pronouns Each set of personal pronouns in Dagbanli is distinguished regarding person, number and animacy. Besides the distinction between singular and plural, there is an additional distinction between [+/- animate] in the 3rd person. Moreover, Dagbanli distinguishes between emphatic and non-emphatic pronouns and there are no gender distinctions. While there is no morphological differentiation between grammatical cases, pronouns can occur in different forms according to whether they appear pre- or postverbally. Non-emphatic pronouns Preverbal Preverbal pronouns serve as subjects of a verb and are all monosyllabic. The relative pronouns in Dagbanli are not obligatory present and can also be absent depending on the context, as the following example illustrates. Interrogative pronouns in Dagbanli make a distinction between human and non-human. Additionally, interrogative pronouns inflect for number, but not all of them. Those inflecting for number belong to the semantic categories [ +THING], [ +SELECTION], [ +PERSON]. Demonstrative pronouns Demonstrative pronouns in Dagbanli make a morphological difference between the singular and plural form. The demonstrative pronoun ŋɔ moves to the specifier of the functional NumP and if Num is plural, then the plural morphem -nímá attaches to the demonstrative pronoun. If Num is singular, there is a zero morphem, such that the demonstrative pronoun does not differ in its morphological form. Indefinite pronouns Dagbanli distinguishes not only between singular and plural for indefinite pronouns, but also between [+/-animate]. Therefore, there are two pairs of indefinite pronouns. Indefinites are basically used in the same way as adjectives, as their morphological form is similar to that of nouns and adjectives. To express an indefinite like "something", the inanimate singular form is combined with the noun bini ("thing"). ==Syntax==

Word order Dagbanli has a rigid SVO word order. In the canonical sentence structure, the verb precedes the direct and indirect object as well as adverbials. The clause structure exhibits varying functional elements projecting various functional phrasal categories including tense, aspect, negation, mood and the conjoint/disjoint paradigm. Verb phrase The VP in Dagbanli consists of a preverbal particle encoding tense, aspect and mood, the main verb, and a postverbal particle which marks focus. Preverbal particles Major particles Main verb Each verb in Dagbanli has two forms, a perfective and an imperfective form with very few exceptions. In general, the perfective form is the unmarked form, whereas the imperfective form corresponds to the progressive form, or in other words it refers to an action, which is still in progress. ==Dagbanli language scholars==

• Roger Blench • Fusheini Hudu • Tony Naden • Knut Olawsky ==References==