Fante, also known as Fanti, Fantse, or Mfantse, is one of the three principal members of the Akandialect continuum, along with Asante and Akuapem, the latter two collectively known as Twi, with which it is mutually intelligible. It is spoken in the central and southern regions of Ghana, as well as in settlements in other regions in western Ghana. Fante is the common dialect of the Fante people, whose communities each have their own subdialects, such as Agona, Anomabo, Abura, and Gomoa, all of which are mutually intelligible. Schacter and Fromkin describe two main Fante dialect groups: Fante 1, which uses a syllable-final /w/ and thus distinguishes kaw and ka ; and Fante 2, where these words are homophonous. A standardized form of Fante is taught in primary and secondary schools. Many Fantes are bilingual or bidialectal and most can speak Twi. Notable speakers include Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, former United Nations Secretary GeneralKofi Annan, and former Ghanaian presidents Kwame Nkrumah and John Atta Mills.. Maya Angelou learned Fante as an adult during her stay in Ghana. One striking characteristic of Fante is the level of English influence, including English loanwords and anglicized forms of native names, due both to British colonial influence and "to fill lexical and semantic gaps, for reasons of simplicity and also for prestige". Examples of such borrowings include rɛkɔso, rɔba "rubber", nɔma, kolapuse "collapse", and dɛkuleti "decorate". Native names are occasionally anglicized, such as "Mεnsa" becoming "Mensah" or "Atta" becoming "Arthur". Many people consider European Christian missionaries and schools the cause of this anglicization.
Etymology
The name "Fante" has two possible etymologies, both in reference to the neighbouring Asante people. The first states that the Fante were named for their custom of eating spinach, or efan, while the Asante ate another herb called san; the second, that the Fante split from the Asante, receiving the name ofa-tew, "the half that separated". However, as well as being phonetically inconsistent, any connection these etymologies propose with the Asante is anachronistic: the Asante rose to power in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and the Fante-Asante dichotomy only developed in the latter part of the 18th century, while the name "Fante" is much older. The true etymology is unknown.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Of these vowels, five may be nasalized: /ĩ/, /ɪ̃/, /ã/, /ũ/, and /ʊ̃/. Fante exhibits vowel harmony, where all vowels in a word belong to one of the two sets /i e o u a/ or /ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ a/.
Tones
Fante, like all other varieties of Akan, has two contrastive tones, high tone and low tone.
Orthography
Fante has a relatively phonemic orthography. It uses the following letters to indicate the following phonemes:
Uppercase
A
B
D
E
Ɛ
F
G
H
I
K
M
N
O
Ɔ
P
R
S
T
U
W
Y
Z
Lowercase
a
b
d
e
ɛ
f
g
h
i
k
m
n
o
ɔ
p
r
s
t
u
w
y
z
Phoneme
/a/
/b/
/d/
/e/, /ɪ/
/ɛ/
/f/
/g/
/h/
/i/
/k/
/m/
/n/
/o/, /ʊ/
/ɔ/
/p/
/r/
/s/
/t/
/u/
/w/
/j/
/z/
Consonants
Fante makes heavy use of digraphs, including ky, gy, hy, tw, dw, hw, and kw. However, labialization is symbolized in other labialized consonants either with ⟨u⟩, e.g. pue, bue, tue, hue, huan, guan, nua, and sua ; or with ⟨o⟩, e.g. soer, soe, and noa. Furthermore, the digraphs ny and nw may represent /ɲ/ and /ɲʷ/, respectively, as in nya , and nwin , parallelling the use of other digraphs in Fante; or they may represent two individual phonemes, /nj/ and /nw/ respectively, as in nwaba "snail". Fante also uses the digraphs ts and dz, which represent /ts/ and /dz/ in Fante subdialects that distinguish the plosives /t/ and /d/ and the affricates /ts/ and /dz/, but are allophonic with t and d in those subdialects which do not distinguish them. Fante is the only dialect of Akan to distinguish /ts/ and /dz/ from /t/ and /d/, and is therefore the only dialect whose alphabet contains the letter ⟨z⟩.
Vowels
Although ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ can represent multiple phonemes each, Fante orthography uses two strategies to distinguish them. First, Fante vowel harmony means /e/ and /ɪ/ are not likely to appear together in a word, nor are /o/ and /ʊ/. Second, if disambiguation is necessary, vowel digraphs may be used: ⟨ie⟩ to mean /e/ and ⟨uo⟩ to mean /o/. Thus /moko/ "pepper" is spelled muoko, while /mʊkʊ/ "I sit" is spelled muko. Nasalization is marked with the diacritic ⟨ ̃⟩, but is only used when distinguishing "one of two or more words of the same spelling but different meanings which contain a nasal vowel", and is omitted when there is no danger of ambiguity. The diacritic may also be included on the wrong vowel, as in the wordkẽka, where it is the second syllable that actually receives the nasalization.
