Fon language

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Fon
Fon gbè
Spoken in	Benin, Togo
Total speakers	1.7 million
Language family	Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Volta-Niger Gbe Fon
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	fon
ISO 639-3	fon
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Fon (native name Fon gbè, pronounced [fɔ̃̄ɡ͡bè]) is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Volta-Niger branch of the Niger-Congo languages. Fon is spoken mainly in Benin by approximately 1.7 million speakers, by the Fon people. Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an analytic language with an SVO basic word order.

[edit] Phonology

Fon has seven oral vowel phonemes and seven nasal vowel phonemes.

Vowel Phonemes of Fon^[1]

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

While /ẽ/ and /õ/ are phonemes, they are always realized as [ɛ̃] and [ɔ̃], respectively.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Ethnologue report for Fon
• Fon is Fun!
• La langue Fongbe du Bénin
• Fon.eu - The Fon People
• The first blog totally in Fongbe. An access to a Fongbe forum is given

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