Revision as of 16:43, 13 August 2009 by Rosbot(talk | contribs)(New page: <table valign=top> <tr> <td valign=top align=left width="50%"> <table valign=top> <tr><td><b>Also Known As:</b> Akan language <b>Description:</b> Akan is a language ...)
Akan is a language group spoken by related peoples in mainly Ghana and eastern Côte d'Ivoire. All Akan languages are mutually intelligible. The main languages comprise:
The Bureau of Ghana Languages has compiled a unified orthography of 20,000 words.
The adinkra symbols are old ideograms.
The language came to South America, notably Suriname and Jamaica: Kromanti, with the slaves. The descendants of escaped slaves in the interior of Suriname and the Maroons in Jamaica still use a form of this language, including Akan naming convention, in which children are named after the day of the week on which they are born, e.g. Akwasi (for a boy) or Akosua (girl) born on a Sunday. In Jamaica and Suriname the Anansi spider stories are well known.
According to work done by P K Agbedor of CASAS, Mfantse and Twi (together known as Akan) belong to Cluster 1 of the speech forms of Ghana. Clusters are defined by the level of mutual intelligibility. The Abron(Bono) and Wasa dialects are considered part of this cluster.
Cluster 1 comprises:
Cluster 1 may better be named r-Akan (mainly Akuapem, Akyem, Fante, Wasa, Bono, Asen, Akwamu, Twi, Kwahu spoken mainly in Ghana, parts of Togo) which do not..... full article at Wikipedia
