It is the major language of the easternmost parts of Burkina Faso, around the traditional Gurma capital Fada N'gourma; it is also spoken in neighbouring parts of northern Togo, Benin, Niger, Ghana and Nigeria.
In the standard orthography the symbols c j represent palatal stops; they sound somewhat similar to English "ch" and "j" respectively.
[citation needed] Gourmanché preserves most of the noun-class based grammatical gender system characteristic of the Niger-Congo family, with eight classes and regular agreement of pronouns, adjectives and numerals.
They are written as separate words in the standard orthography: bu tibu "a/the tree", i tiidi "(the) trees", mi ñima "(the) water", and they are omitted, for example, when the noun is preceded by a possessor or followed by kuli "each"; thus u nuu, "hand", ki biga "child", o joa "man" but e.g o joa muubi o biga nuu "the man holds his child's hand"; o nilo "a person" but nilo kuli "each person.
"[citation needed] There is a fairly full Gourmanché-French dictionary[4] but no readily accessible complete grammar.