Wobé
Northern Wèè
Native toIvory Coast
Native speakers
(160,000 cited 1993)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3wob
Glottologweno1238

Wobé (Ouobe) is a Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum called Wèè (Wɛɛ).

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 has not confirmed this, many of whom 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 1234313241424315253545435
Newman adjustment 0123202130313204142434324

Numerals

Wobe has a quinary, decimal system, and it is one of the only two Kru languages which have adopted the decimal system.[6]

References

  1. Wobé at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Singler, John Victor (1984). "On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 15 (1): 59–75.
  3. Newman, Paul (1986). "Contour Tones in Grebo". In van der Hulst, Harry; Bogers, Koen; Mous, Marten (eds.). The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics (Book 4). De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 190–191 (notes 12 and 14).
  4. Newman believes Singler is a valuable counterweight to Bearth & Link, but does not accept all his criticism; he accept the Wobe 43 toneme, for example, but believes it should be analyzed as /32/ (all tones being off by 1 compared to related dialects).
  5. Hofer, Verena, Numerals in Wobé language.



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