Wobé language
Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wobé (Ouobe) is an indigenous Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum called Wèè (Wɛɛ).
| Wobé | |
|---|---|
| Northern Wèè | |
| Native to | Ivory Coast |
| Ethnicity | Krahn people |
Native speakers | (160,000 cited 1993)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wob |
| Glottolog | weno1238 |
Phonology
Typical of Western Kru languages, Wobé has sixteen vowel phonemes, with nine oral vowels and seven nasal vowels, and seventeen consonant phonemes. Wobé words tend not to have diphthongs, but rather the (up to) three vowels in a native non-compound word are pronounced separately.
Tone
Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of tones (fourteen) of any language in the world.[2] However, other researchers have not confirmed this, and many of them believe that some of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects,[3][4][5] though the Wèè languages in general do have extraordinarily large tone systems.
The fourteen posited tones are:[2]
| IPA | ˥ | ˦ | ˧ | ˨ | ˧˥ | ˧˦ | ˨˥ | ˨˦ | ˨˧ | ˥˩ | ˦˩ | ˧˩ | ˨˩ | ˨˧˩ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B&L tone numbers | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 31 | 32 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 15 | 25 | 35 | 45 | 435 |
| Newman adjustment | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 20 | 21 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 04 | 14 | 24 | 34 | 324 |
Numerals
Wobe has a quinary, decimal system, and it is one of the only two Kru languages which have adopted the decimal system.[6]
