Native to Ivory Coast ISO 639-3 wob | Native speakers 160,000 (1993) Glottolog weno1238 | |
Language family Niger–Congo
Atlantic–Congo
Kru
Western Kru
Wee
Wobé | ||
Wobé (Ouobe) is a Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum called Wèè (Wɛɛ).
Tone
Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of tones (fourteen) of any language in the world (Bearth & Link). However, this has not been confirmed by other researchers, many of whom believe that some of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects (Singler 1984, Newman 1986), though the Wèè languages in general do have extraordinarily large tone systems.
The 14 tones posited by Bearth & Link (1980) are:
References
Wobé language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA