Gun language

Gun
	gungbe
Native to	Benin, Nigeria
Ethnicity	Gun people
Native speakers	1,139,000[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Volta–Niger Gbe Gun; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Benin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	guw
Glottolog	gunn1250

Gun language (Gun: gungbe) is a language in the Gbe languages group. It is spoken by the Gun people in Benin and Nigeria.[2] This language is close to Fon, as well as to Agbome, Kpase, Maxi and Weme (Ouémé) languages. It is the second most spoken language of Benin. It is used in some schools in the Ouémé Department of Benin.[3]

It is mainly spoken in south Benin in Porto-Novo, Sèmè-Kpodji, Bonou, Adjarra, Avrankou, Dangbo, Akpro-Missérété, Cotonou, and other cities where Gun people live. Gun is also spoken by a minority of people in southwest Nigeria near the border with Benin.

The language has been written with three orthographies, all of them based on the Latin alphabet. In Nigeria, it has been written with an orthography similar to that of Yoruba and some other languages of Nigeria, and using the dot below diacritic to indicate sounds. In Benin, another orthography was developed for publishing a Bible translation in 1923, and it was updated in 1975, and is now used for teaching literacy in some schools in Benin; it is similar to the orthography of Fon, using letters such as ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨ɔ⟩.[4] There are proposals to unify the orthographies, for example the one made by Hounkpati Capo in 1990.[5]

References

Gun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
"Gun". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2021-01-10.
Kluge, Angela (2007). "The Gbe Language Continuum of West Africa: A Synchronic Typological Approach to Prioritizing In-depth Sociolinguistic Research on Literature Extensibility" (PDF). Language Documentation & Conservation: 182–215.
Iyetunde Ofulue, Christine (2015). Orie, Ọlanikẹ Ọla (ed.). Bilingualism and Language Maintenance in Small Language Communities: The Case of Gungbe. Current Research in African Linguistics : Papers in Honor of Ọladele Awobuluyi. Ilọri, Johnson F., Yuka, Lendzemo Constantine. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-4438-8142-5. OCLC 954254260.
Capo, Hounkpati B. C. (1990). "Towards a Viable Orthography for Egungbe". African Languages and Cultures. 3 (2): 109–125. ISSN 0954-416X.

Bibliography

Saulnier, Pierre (1968). Manuel progressif de conversation en langue goun. Porto-Novo : Centre Catéchétique.
Aboh, Enoch (1996). "A propos de la syntaxe du Gungbe". Rivista di Grammatica Generativa.

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[e18-1] Gun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

[2] "Gun". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2021-01-10.

[3] Kluge, Angela (2007). "The Gbe Language Continuum of West Africa: A Synchronic Typological Approach to Prioritizing In-depth Sociolinguistic Research on Literature Extensibility" (PDF). Language Documentation & Conservation: 182–215.

[4] Iyetunde Ofulue, Christine (2015). Orie, Ọlanikẹ Ọla (ed.). Bilingualism and Language Maintenance in Small Language Communities: The Case of Gungbe. Current Research in African Linguistics : Papers in Honor of Ọladele Awobuluyi. Ilọri, Johnson F., Yuka, Lendzemo Constantine. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-4438-8142-5. OCLC 954254260.

[5] Capo, Hounkpati B. C. (1990). "Towards a Viable Orthography for Egungbe". African Languages and Cultures. 3 (2): 109–125. ISSN 0954-416X.