Moba language

Quality 0.50 · 1 view · Updated 2 months ago

Gur language spoken in West Africa

title: "Moba language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["languages-of-togo", "gurma-languages", "languages-of-ghana"] description: "Gur language spoken in West Africa" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moba_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Gur language spoken in West Africa ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Moba
altname	Moba–Bimoba
states	Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso
ethnicity	Moba/Bimoba
speakers	440,000
date	2004–2012
ref	e18
familycolor	Niger-Congo
fam2	Atlantic–Congo
fam3	Gur
fam4	Northern
fam5	Oti–Volta
fam6	Gurma
dia1	Moba
dia2	Bimoba
lc1	mfq
lc2	bim
glotto	moba1243
glottorefname	Moba–Bimoba
script	Latin (Moba alphabet)
Moba Braille
::

Moba or Bimoba is a Niger-Congo language spoken by the Moba people of Togo and Ghana. There are also some Moba speakers in Burkina Faso. It has two dialects (Moba in Togo and Burkina Faso and Bimoba in Ghana). The language cluster is also known as Moba–Bimoba.

Classification

Moba-Bimoba is a Gur language, a subset of the proposed Niger-Congo language family. It, along with Bassari and Konkomba/Likpakpaln, is part of the Gurma (or Mabia) subgroup of Gur languages.

Moba is spoken by the Moba people. It is spoken by the Moba people in northern Ghana and Togo. There are also some Moba speakers in the central plateau of Burkina Faso.

Moba is a relatively important and vigorous language in Togo. It was one of the first four languages used for literacy training by Togo's government, and , remains one of ten languages used for this purpose. Ethnologue lists Moba as stable, but the Bimoba dialect as endangered.

Phonology

Bimoba has twenty-two consonants and six vowels.

Consonants

The singly-articulated consonants of Bimoba are listed below.

::data[format=table title="'''Consonant phonemes'''"] | | | Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar (Palato- alveolar) | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | | Plosive | | Affricate | | Fricative | | Nasal | | Trill | | Approximant | | Lateral approximant | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ::

The Bimoba dialect also has four doubly-articulated consonants, all of which involve labial and velar occlusions. One is the labiovelar approximant , and the other three are the voiced and voiceless stops (, ) and voiced nasal .

Vowels

Chanard lists six vowels in Bimoba. ::data[format=table title="'''[[Monophthong]] phonemes'''"]

	Front	Back	unrounded	rounded	Close	Close-mid	Open-mid	Open



a
::

Tones

Moba is a tonal language, with four tones. It exhibits downstep, meaning that the second of two consecutive identical tones is slightly lowered compared to the first. Tone patterns also form the core of a whistled language based on Moba.

Moba is a register tone language, like other Gur languages, but it incorporates a fourth, extrahigh tone in addition to the three-level high, middle, low tone system of most other Gur languages. (Bariba is another Gur four-tone language.) The fourth tone appears to have been a result of segmental attrition in Moba compared to its sister languages. Specifically, Moba lost final vowels that other languages retained:

::data[format=table title="Cognates between [[Gulmancema language|Gulmancema]] and Moba"]

Gulmancema tone	Gulmancema word	Moba word	Moba tone
high-low			extrahigh
high-high			high
::

In three-tone Gur languages, the underlying high tone is pronounced higher before a low tone than before a high tone, though this difference is not contrastive. Moba lost the second syllable (and thus the second tone) but retained the phonetic distinction between extrahigh and high tones, and has grammaticalized that difference as a fourth tone.

Grammar

Moba is an SVO language, like English. It has both a noun class system and a verb class system. Most Moba morphemes are monosyllabic. Negation generally occurs before the verb, but is placed clause-finally in some constructions.

Writing system

::data[format=table title="Bimoba alphabet (SIL)
All letters correspond to IPA unless noted"]

a	b	ch	d	e	f	g	gb	h	i	j	k	kp	l	m	n	ny	ŋ	ŋm	o	ɔ	p	r	s	t	u	w	y
::

::data[format=table title="Moba alphabet (Peace Corps Togo)"]

a	ã	b	c	d	e	ẽ	ɛ	ɛ̃	f	g	h	i	ĩ	ɩ	ɩ̃	j	k	l	m	n	ŋ	o	õ	ɔ	ɔ̃	p	s	t	r	u	v	w	y
::

References

"Moba-Bimoba".
(3 July 2025). "Online linguistic landscaping and indigenous languages in multilingual Ghana". International Journal of Multilingualism.
(August 1998). "Phonetic realisation of downstep in Bimoba". Phonology.
(2009). "Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond". John Benjamins Publishing.
(2024). "The Palgrave Handbook of Language Policies in Africa". Springer International Publishing.
(2024). "The Palgrave Handbook of Language Policies in Africa". Springer International Publishing.
"Moba Language (MFQ)".
"Bimoba Language (BIM)".
(2006). "Langue : bimoba".
"Moba OPL Workbook (Oral Proficiency Learning)". [[Peace Corps]] Togo.
(2005). "Phonological and phonetic aspects of whistled languages". Phonology.
(2007). "A Linguistic Geography of Africa".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::