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Concept
Fon language
Summary
Fon (fɔ̀ngbè, fɔ̃̀ɡ͡bē) is spoken in Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana and Gabon by approximately 1.7 million speakers, and is the language of the Fon people. Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an isolating language with a SVO basic word order.
In Benin, French is the official language, and Fon and other indigenous languages, including Yom and Yoruba, are classified as national languages.
The standardized Fon language is part of the Fon cluster of languages inside the Eastern Gbe languages. Hounkpati B Christophe Capo groups Agbome, Kpase, Gun, Maxi and Weme (Ouémé) in the Fon dialect cluster, although other clusterings are suggested. Standard Fon is the primary target of language planning efforts in Benin, although separate efforts exists for Gun, Gen, and other languages of the country.
To date, there are about 53 different dialects of the Fon language spoken throughout Benin.
Fon has seven oral vowel phonemes and five nasal vowel phonemes.
/p/ occurs only in linguistic mimesis and loanwords but is often is replaced by /f/ in the latter, as in cɔ́fù 'shop'. Several of the voiced occlusives occur only before oral vowels, and the homorganic nasal stops occur only before nasal vowels, which indicates that [b] [m] and [ɖ] [n] are allophones. [ɲ] is in free variation with [j̃] and so Fong can be argued to have no phonemic nasal consonants, a pattern rather common in West Africa. /w/ and /l/ are also nasalized before nasal vowels, and /w/ may be assimilated to [ɥ] before /i/.
The only consonant clusters in Fon have /l/ or /j/ as the second consonant. After (post)alveolars, /l/ is optionally realized as [ɾ]: klɔ́ 'to wash', wlí 'to catch', jlò [d͡ʒlò] ~ [d͡ʒɾò] 'to want'.
Fon has two phonemic tones: and . is realized as rising (low–high) after a voiced consonant. Basic disyllabic words have all four possibilities: –, –, –, and –.
In longer phonological words, such as verb and noun phrases, a high tone tends to persist until the final syllable, which, if it has a phonemic low tone, becomes falling (high–low).
Official source
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