 nafaanra (sometimes written nafaara, pronounced ) is a senufo language spoken in northwest ghana, along the border with ivory coast, east of bondoukou. it is spoken by approximately 61,000 people.ghana institute for linguistics, literacy, and bible translation (gillbt) 2003, as cited in gordon, raymond g., jr. (ed.), 2005. nafaanra: a language of ghana. ethnologue: languages of the world, fifteenth edition. dallas, tex.: sil international. retrieved on 2007-04-10 its speakers call themselves nafana; others call them banda or mfantera. like other senufo languages, nafaanra is a tonal language. it is somewhat of an outlier in the senufo language group, with the geographically closest relatives, the southern senufo tagwanaâdjimini languages, approximately  to the west, on the other side of comoÃ© national park. the basic word order is subjectâobjectâverb, similar to latin and japanese. like other nigerâcongo 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). there are also three distinct tones, a feature shared with the other senufo languages. nafaanra grammar features both tense and aspect which are marked with particles. numbers are mainly formed by adding cardinal numbers to the number 5 and by multiplying the numbers 10, 20 and 100. ==geography and demography== nafaanra is bordered by kulango languages to the west, while deg (a gur language) and gonja (kwa) are found to the north and east. the closest eastern neighbour is the mande language ligbi, whose speakers are also called banda) which, like nafaanra, is an outlier to its own family. southeast and south of nafaanra and ligbi, the akan language
Languages_of_Ghana Senufo_languages