Gokana language

Gokana
Native to	Nigeria
Region	Rivers State
Native speakers	(100,000 cited 1989)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Cross River Ogoni East Ogoni Gokana
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gkn
Glottolog	goka1239

Gokana (Gòkánà) is an Ogoni language spoken by some 130,000 people in Rivers State, Nigeria.

Writing system

Gokana alphabet

Uppercase letters	A	B	D	E	Ẹ	F	G	Gb	Gy	I	K	Kp	Ky	L	M	N	Ng	Nv	Ny	O	Ọ	P	S	T	V	Z
Lowercase letters	a	b	d	e	ẹ	f	g	gb	gy	i	k	kp	ky	l	m	n	ng	nv	ny	o	ọ	p	s	t	v	z

Nasal vowels are indicated by a tilde and tones are indicated by an acute or grave accent:

• The high tone is indicated by an acute accent : á, ã́, é, ẹ́, ẽ́, í, ĩ́, ó, ọ́, ṍ, ú, ṹ, ḿ ;
• The low tone is indicated by a grave accent : à, ã̀, è, ẹ̀, ẽ̀, ì, ĩ̀, ò, ọ̀, õ̀, ù, ũ̀, m̀ ;
• The middle tone is indicated with no diacritic.

References

• "A global linguistic database:Gokana" Tower of Babel Project
• Brosnahan, L. F. (1964) "Outlines of the Phonology of the Gokana Dialect of Ogoni" Journal of West African Languages 1(1): pp. 43–48
• Brosnahan, L. F. (1967) "A Word List of the Gokana Dialect of Ogoni" Journal of West African Languages 4(2): pp. 43–52
• Hyman, Larry M. and Comrie, B. (1981) "Logophoric Reference in Gokana" Journal of African Languages and Linguistics (Leiden) 3(1): pp. 19–37
• Hyman, Larry M. (1982) "The representation of nasality in Gokana" In Hulst, Harry, van der and Smith, Norval (eds.) (1982) The Structure of Phonological Representations part, 1 Foris Publishing, Dordrecht, Holland, ISBN 90-70176-53-X
• Yan Huang (2003) "Switch-reference in Amele and logophoric verbal suffix in Gokana: a generalized neo-Gricean pragmatic analysis" In Georgiafentis, M.; Haeberli, E, and Varlokosta, S. (eds.) (2003) Reading Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 7, pp. 53–76, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, University of Reading, Reading, UK
• Bond, Oliver and Anderson, Gregory D. S. (2005) "Divergent Structure in Ogonoid Languages" In (2005) Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society Volume 31, Berkeley Linguistic Society, Berkeley, California