Nafaanra is a Senufo language spoken in northwest Ghana, along the
border with Côte d'Ivoire, east of Bondouko. It is spoken by
approximately 61,000 people who call themselves Nafana; others call
them Banda or Mfantera. Like other Senufo languages, Nafaanra is a
tonal language with three distinct tones. It is somewhat of an outlier
in the Senufo language group, with the geographically closest
relatives, the Southern Senufo Tagwana-Djimini languages, approximately
200 kilometres (120 mi) to the west, on the other side of Comoé
National Park. The basic word order is Subject Object Verb, similar to
Latin and Japanese. Like other Niger-Congo languages it has a noun
class system where nouns are classified according to five different
genders, which also affects pronouns, adjectives and copulas. The
phonology features a distinction between the length of vowels and
whether they are oral or nasal (as in French or Portuguese). Nafaanra
grammar features both tense and aspect which are marked with particles.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafaanra>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1500:
Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral and his crew became the first
Europeans to sight Brazil when they spotted Monte Pascoal.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_%C3%81lvares_Cabral>
1864:
The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act, authorizing the minting of a
two-cent coin, the first U.S. coin to bear the phrase "In God We
Trust".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust>
1915:
The Germans released chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in the Second
Battle of Ypres, killing over 5,000 soldiers within ten minutes by
asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of poison gas in
World War I.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_gas_in_World_War_I>
1951:
Korean War: The People's Volunteer Army of China attacked positions
occupied mainly by Australian and Canadian forces, starting the Battle
of Kapyong.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kapyong>
2000:
In a predawn raid, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents
seized six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami,
Florida, and returned him to his Cuban father.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%C3%A1n_Gonz%C3%A1lez_affair>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
apparatchik (n):
A blindly loyal bureaucrat
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apparatchik>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good
for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it
will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good
for the world will be good for us. ... We must recover the sense of the
majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its
presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence
before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
--Wendell Berry
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry>
Show replies by date