Dan language
Mande language of West Africa
Dan is a Southern Mande language spoken primarily in Ivory Coast (~800,000 speakers) and Liberia (150,000–200,000 speakers). There is also a population of about 800 speakers in Guinea. Dan is a tonal language, with 9 to 11 contour and register tones, depending on the dialect.
Alternative names for the language include Yacouba or Yakubasa, Gio, Gyo, Gio-Dan, and Da. Dialects are Gio (Liberian Dan), Gweetaawu (Eastern Dan), Blowo (Western Dan), and Kla. Kla is evidently a distinct language.
Phonology
A syllable is minimally /V/ or /ŋ/, and maximally /ClVV/ or /ClVŋ/.
Vowels
Color coding:
Only in Eastern Dan when in the position of extra-high tone
Only in Liberian Dan
Consonants
Only in Liberian Dan
Not in Western Dan
Not in Liberian Dan
all consonants are nasalized in nasal feet
/ŋ/ occurs only as a syllable or a syllable coda and has been treated as a vowel. it carries tone.
/l/ is heard as [r] when preceded by alveolar or palatal consonants.
The public source identifies “Dan language” as mande language of West Africa. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around language, Mande and West.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dan language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.