Gbe languages

Gbe
Geographic distribution:	southeastern Ghana, southern Togo & Benin, and southwestern Nigeria
Linguistic classification:	Niger–Congo Volta–Congo Volta–Niger Gbe
Subdivisions:	Ewe Gen Fon Aja Phla–Pherá
Glottolog:	gbee1241
Map showing the distribution of the major Gbe dialect areas (after Capo 1988, 1991).

The Gbe languages (pronounced [ɡbè]) form a cluster of about twenty related languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe language is Ewe (3 million speakers in Ghana and Togo), followed by Fon (1.7 million, mainly in Benin). The Gbe languages were traditionally placed in the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo languages, but more recently have been classified as Volta–Niger. They include five major dialect clusters: Ewe, Fon, Aja, Gen (Mina), and Phla–Pherá.

Most of the Gbe peoples have come from the east to their present dwelling-places in several migrations between the tenth and the fifteenth century. Some of the Phla–Pherá peoples however are thought to be the original inhabitants of the area who have intermingled with the Gbe immigrants, and the Gen people probably are immigrants from the Ga-Adangbe Tribal People in Ghana. In the late eighteenth century, many speakers of Gbe were enslaved and transported to the New World: it is believed that Gbe languages played some role in the genesis of several Caribbean creole languages, especially Haitian Creole.

Around 1840, German missionaries started linguistic research into the Gbe languages. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Africanist Diedrich Hermann Westermann was one of the most prolific contributors to the study of Gbe. The first internal classification of the Gbe languages was published in 1988 by H.B. Capo, followed by a comparative phonology in 1991. The Gbe languages are tonal, isolating languages and the basic word order is subject–verb–object.