| Ega | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Ivory Coast |
| Region | near Gly or Gli,Sud-Bandama region |
Native speakers | 2,500 (2001)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ega |
| Glottolog | egaa1242 |
| ELP | Ega |
Ega, also known asEgwa andDiès, is a West African language spoken in south-centralIvory Coast. It appears to be aKwa language of uncertain affiliation.
Ega is spoken in 21 villages near Gly in Diès Canton,Gôh-Djiboua District,Ivory Coast (Bole-Richard 1983: 359).[2] Some villages are Broudougou, Gly, Dairo, Didizo, and Douzaroko.[3]The Ega people are increasing in number, though some are shifting toDida through intermarriage.
A language documentation fieldwork project on Ega was conducted by a team from Universität Bielefeld, Germany (Dafydd Gibbon) and Université Houphouet Boigny, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire (Firmin Ahoua) from 2000 to 2003 in cooperation with York University, Canada (Bruce Connell).[4]
Ega appears to be a divergentWestern Kwa language within theNiger–Congo language family spoken inIvory Coast. It does not appear to belong to any of the traditional branches of Niger–Congo. Blench (2017) classifies Ega as a Western Kwa language that has borrowed fromKru,Gur, andMande.[3]
Like other Western Kwa languages, traditional story-telling among the Ega people has a fairly strict schedule: after an introduction by the narrator, a well-defined role in the village, the narration proceeds, punctuated by responder's interjection [sɛsɛ], and interspersed with song interludes with the call and response structure of work songs.
The economy of the Ega community is partly horticultural, partly dependent on plantation work. Hunting is practised with nets which are used to enclose an area of several hundred square meters, within which small game such as agouti (Thryonomys swinderianus) are cornered by a group of beaters. The nets resemble the local canoe trawling nets used on the southern Côte d'Ivoire coast about 100km further south, and possibly indicate a history of coastal migration.
Ega has twenty-seven consonants. Its stops have a three-way contrast between voiceless, voiced, and implosive.
| Labial | Alveolar | Dorsal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| front | plain | labial | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Plosive | implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | ɠ | ɠɓ |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ɡb | |
| voiceless | p | t | c | k | kp | |
| Fricative | voiced | v | z | |||
| voiceless | f | s | x | |||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
There are nine vowels, withATR contrast: /i̙/, /i̘/, /u̙/, /u̘/, /e̙/, /e̘/, /o̙/, /o̘/, and /a/.
There are three tones: high, mid, and low.