Mpre language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mpre is an unclassified language once spoken in the village of Butie (8°52′N 1°15′W / 8.867°N 1.25°W) in Ghana, near the confluence of the Black and White Voltas. It is known only from a 70-word list given in a 1931 article. It bears no close resemblance to its neighbours; it may be a Niger-Congo language, or a language isolate.
Painter (1967) briefly states that "ḿpŕ̩ɛ̀ has died" and that the ethnic group ("the Nnyamase-mprɛ") have "become Nnyamase-Gonja"; he appears to regard it as having been a dialect of Gonja. This is based only on the numerals, which are clearly related to Gonja. The rest of the vocabulary, however, is "hard to recognise" (Williamson & Blench, 2000:36).
It is not related to the similar-sounding Mbre.
[edit] Bibliography
- Cardinall, A.W. 1931. "A survival". Gold Coast Review, V,1:193-197.
- Painter, Colin. 1967. "The Distribution of Guang in Ghana, and a Statistical Pre-Testing on Twenty-Five Idiolects," The Journal of West African Languages, Vol. 4, No. 1, Cambridge University Press, Ibadan, pp. 25-78.
[edit] External links
- Blench, Roger (1999) Recent Field Work in Ghana: Report on Dompo and a note on Mpre.
