In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are, and, in words such as nose, bring and mouth. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages.
Igbo is the principal native language cluster of the Igbo people, an ethnicity in the Southeastern part of Nigeria.
Ewe is a language spoken by approximately 5 million people in West Africa, mainly in Ghana and Togo. Ewe is part of a group of related languages commonly called the Gbe languages. The other major Gbe language is Fon, which is mainly spoken in Benin. Like many African languages, Ewe is tonal as well as a possible member of the Niger-Congo family.
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced without nasalization.
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is.
Fon also known as Dahomean is the language of the Fon people. It belongs to the Gbe group within the larger Atlantic–Congo family. It is primarily spoken in Benin, as well as in Nigeria and Togo by approximately 2.28 million speakers. Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an isolating language with a SVO basic word order.
The Gbe languages 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, followed by Fon. The Gbe languages were traditionally placed in the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo languages, but more recently have been classified as Volta–Niger languages. They include five major dialect clusters: Ewe, Fon, Aja, Gen (Mina), and Phla–Pherá.
The Phla–Pherá (Xwla–Xwela) languages form a possible group of Gbe languages spoken mainly in southeastern and southwestern Benin; some communities are found in southeastern Togo and southwestern Nigeria. The group, comprising about ten varieties, was introduced by H.B. Capo in his 1988 classification of Gbe languages as one of the five main branches of Gbe. Additional research carried out by SIL International in the nineties corroborated many of Capo's findings and led to adjustment of some of his more tentative groupings; in particular, Phla–Pherá was divided in an eastern and a western cluster. Phla–Pherá is one of the smaller Gbe branches in terms of number of speakers. It is also the most linguistically diverse branch of Gbe, due partly to the existence of several geographically separated communities, but mainly because of considerable influence by several non-Gbe languages in the past. Some of the Phla–Pherá peoples are thought to be the original inhabitants of the region having intermingled with Gbe immigrants.
Maninka, or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande language family. It is the mother tongue of the Malinké people in Guinea, where it is spoken by 3.1 million people and is the main language in the Upper Guinea region, and in Mali, where the closely related Bambara is a national language, as well as in Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, where it has no official status. It was the language of court and government during the Mali Empire.
The phonology of Sesotho and those of the other Sotho–Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular has very mixed origins inheriting many words and idioms from non-Sotho–Tswana languages.
Urhobo is a South-Western Edoid language spoken by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria. It is from the Delta and Bayelsa States.
The Aja language is a Gbe language spoken by the Aja people of Benin, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria and Gabon. In Gabon, they are mostly migrants.
The Santa Cruz language, locally known as Natqgu or Natügu, is the main language spoken on the island of Nendö or 'Santa Cruz', in the Solomon Islands.
Benin is a diverse country linguistically. Of those, French is the official language, and most of the indigenous languages are considered national languages.
Jibu is a Jukunoid language spoken in the Taraba State of Nigeria by 30,000 people.
Kenyang is the most spoken language of the Mamfe language group. It is spoken in the Manyu and Meme departments of the Southwest Region of Cameroon. Kenyang speakers in Cameroon are known as Bayangi (Bayangui) people and are called Bayangi (Bayangui).
Waci is a Gbe language of Togo and Benin. It is part of a dialect continuum which also includes Ewe and Mina also known as Gɛn. It is scattered in an area Capo designates as Ewe speaking.
Orokaiva is a Papuan language spoken in the "tail" of Papua New Guinea.
The Gun people, also rendered Ogũ, Ogun and Egun, is an ethnic group principally found in Lagos and Ogun State regions of southwestern Nigeria, and Ouémé Department in the southeast of the Republic of Benin, who speak the Gun language. The Ogu account for about 15% of the indigenous population of Lagos State and 6% of the total population of the Republic of Benin, although their parental ethnic group Fon is the majority in Benin Republic.
Hounkpati B Christophe Capo is a Beninese linguist, and professor of linguistics at the University of Abomey-Calavi in the Republic of Benin.
Benin 
