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Nanun

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WOT, NO ARRDVARK? 

A word for 'aardvark' is not recorded in our sources!

Nanun is the  language of the Nanumba people whose head town is Bimbilla in the southeast corner of the Northern Region of Ghana.

My data is a very small sample from a brief exploratory visit. It is clear that the linguistic differences from Yendi Dagbani are such that would normally lead to its being recognised as a Dagbani dialect. The most distinctive feature is the realization of the ancestral phoneme generally realised as a palatal voiced sibilant [z] in the other languages of the group is here represented by a labiovelar [ʤ] (usually represented in orthographies of the area as 'j' (in common, incidentally, with the languages of the diametrically opposite corner of the area, Birifor and Dagaare).  More data from Nanun to compare with those languages might be helpful in distinguishing how many separate historic consonants might need to be recognised in this phonetic area, and what their modern reflexes might imply as to their phonetic form.  

As is the case in various parts of this area, however, the sociological distinctiveness of the ethnic group, in this case the hierarchical equivalence of the Nanumba chief Bimbilla Naa to the YaNa of Dagbong and the NaYiri of Mampurugu might provide a reason to regard Nanun as a third member of a very tight cluster of languages.

The 110 words for which I have a reliable Nanun transcription are found in the Comparative Dictionary. I will endeavour to add a listing linked to this page as soon as possible.

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The Nanun wordlist can be downloaded here:

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