Gun language

This article is about the West African language in the Gbe language group. For the South American language with the language code "gun", see Mbyá Guaraní language. For the terminology of guns, see Firearms terminology.

Gun (Gun: gungbe) is a language in the Gbe languages group. It is spoken by the Ogu people in Benin, as well as in south-western Nigeria.^[2] Gun is part of the Fon dialectal cluster within the Eastern Gbe languages; it is close to other Fon dialects, especially its Agbome and Kpase varieties, as well as to the Mahi and Weme (Ouémé) languages. It is used in some schools in the Ouémé Department of Benin.^[3]

Gun
gungbe
Native to	Benin, Nigeria
Ethnicity	Gun people
Native speakers	1.5 million (2020–2021)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Kwa Gbe Fon Gun
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Benin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	guw
Glottolog	gunn1250
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Video in Gun language introducing Gungbe Wikipedia

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

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Laminal- alveolar	(Post-) alveolar	Palatal	Labial- velar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m ~ b			n ~ ɖ	(ɲ)
Plosive/ Affricate	voiced			d		d͡ʒ	ɡ͡b	ɡ
	voiceless	(p)		t		t͡ʃ	k͡p	k
Fricative	voiceless	f ~ ɸ		s		(ʃ)	xʷ	x ~ χ ~ h
	voiced	v ~ β		z		(ʒ)	ɣʷ	ɣ ~ ʁ
Approximant					l ~ l̃	j [j̃]	w [w̃]
Trill					(r ~ r̃)
Tap					(ɾ)

• Voiced plosives /b, ɖ/ fluctuate to voiced nasals [m, n] exclusively before nasal vowels, however; as a result of more recent loanwords, /b, ɖ/ also tend to not fluctuate when preceding nasal vowels.
• In the case of the sounds /x ~ χ ~ h/, /ɣ ~ ʁ/; /f ~ ɸ/, /v ~ β/; /tʃ ~ ʃ/, /dʒ ~ ʒ/; these sounds are strictly realizations of individual sounds due to dialectal variation, and not as contrasting phonemes.
• /p/ is mainly phonemic as a result of loanwords and ideophonic terms.
• /ɖ/ is heard as a tap [ɾ] when in intervocalic position and followed by an oral vowel.
• /j/ when occurring before nasal vowels can be heard as either [ɲ] or [j̃] in free variation. /l, w/ are nasalized as [l̃, w̃] when before nasal vowels.
• /l/ is also realized as a trill [r] when occurring after laminal alveolars, palato-alveolars, and palatal consonants. It may also be nasalized as [r̃] when before nasal vowels in that position.^[4]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ĩ		u ũ
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ ɛ̃		ɔ ɔ̃
Open		a ã

Orthography

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.^{[clarification needed]} 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⟩.^[5] There are proposals to unify the orthographies, for example the one made by Hounkpati Capo in 1990.^[4]

References

1. Gun at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)
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. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-11-11. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
4. Capo, Hounkpati B. C. (1990). "Towards a Viable Orthography for Egungbe". African Languages and Cultures. 3 (2): 109–125. doi:10.1080/09544169008717715. ISSN 0954-416X. JSTOR 1771717.
5. Iyetunde Ofulue, Christine (2015). Orie, Ọlanikẹ Ọla (ed.). Bilingualism and Language Maintenance in Small Language Communities: The Case of Gungbe. Ilọri, Johnson F., Yuka, Lendzemo Constantine. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-4438-8142-5. OCLC 954254260. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

Bibliography

• Saulnier, Pierre (1968). Manuel progressif de conversation en langue goun. Porto-Novo : Centre Catéchétique.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Aboh, Enoch (1996). "A propos de la syntaxe du Gungbe". Rivista di Grammatica Generativa. Archived from the original on 2021-11-11. Retrieved 2019-03-25.