Nafaanra (sometimes written Nafaara, pronounced [nafãːra]), also known as Nafanan or Nafana, is a Senufo language spoken in northwest Ghana, along the border with Ivory Coast, east of Bondoukou.

[3][2] The Nafana people live in the north-west corner of the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana, concentrated mainly in Sampa (capital of the Jaman North district) and Banda.

[4] Bendor-Samuel gives a 79% cognate relationship on the Swadesh list between the two dialects, meaning that they have many basic words in common.

[12] Westermann in his classification of West-African languages, also grouped Nafaanra with Senufo, apparently based on the word list found in Rapp.

Likewise, Mensah and Tchagbale establish an intercomprehensibility factor of 38% with "Tyebaara" (Senari), concluding that Nafaanra is only distantly related to this dialect.

[15] Nafaanra has been tentatively linked to Palaka (Kpalaga) by Manessy, whereas Mills suggests a relation with the southern Tagwana–Djimini branch.

[citation needed] The consonant system of Nafaanra is fairly similar to that of other Senufo languages.

Nafaanra has only one attested palatal fricative, /ç/, occupying an intermediate position between the Northern Senufo languages (Mamara, Supyire) that have both /ç/ and its voiced counterpart /ʝ/, and the Central and Southern Senufo languages (e.g. Karaboro, Senari, Djimini) that have no palatal fricatives at all.

[citation needed] Like the other Senufo languages, Nafaanra has three contrastive tones: High, Mid and Low.

[19] The High tone downstep (signified by a raised exclamation mark) occurs in the following context:[22] wehe!FUTsɛgowe !

sɛhe FUT go"he will go".It is likely that the tonal lowering seen in this particular example is related to the low tone nasal prefix found in future tense constructions in some other Senufo languages.

[25] In general however, downstep is more widespread than in Supyire; a similar phenomenon is found in Palaka, Tagwana, and Djimini.

"[30] Tense and aspect in Nafaanra are generally encoded in two places: in preverbal particles and on the verb form.

In a simple sentence, the order of the various constituents can be rendered as follows: SUBJECT • (NEGATION) • (TENSE) • (ASPECT) • VERB .

Continuative aspect is usually marked both by a preverbal particle nà (low tone) and by a change of the verb form.

In sentences in the recent past tense, this gives rise to ambiguity since the preverbal continuative particle is omitted there.

Thus, the sentence kòfí blú can be interpreted in the following two ways:[citation needed] kòfíKofiblúswim-CONT ⓘ kòfí blúKofi swim-CONT"Kofi is swimming"—CONT + RECENT PASTkòfíKofiblúswim-COMPLkòfí blúKofi swim-COMPL"Kofi just swam"—RECENT PAST (no marking)Considerable fusion takes place between pronominal subjects and the preverbal particles.

"—constituent questionThe cardinal numbers without tonal marking are presented below;[35] where possible, the tone pattern is added based on the list in Rapp.

[citation needed] The numbers 11–19 are formed by adding 1–9 to 10 by means of the conjunction mbɔ, e.g. kɛmbɔnunu, "eleven", kɛmbɔkunɔ, "fifteen".

Morphophonological alternations occur here and there, most notably the reduction of kúnɔ, "five" to kɔ́ɔ̀ (preserving the tone pattern) and the change from lafaa to lafɛɛ in the hundreds.

[39] The three basic colour words of Nafaanra are: wɔɔ, "black", finge, "white", and ɲiɛ, "red".

The first linguistic publication to mention Nafaanra is Delafosse (1904), containing some notes on the Nafana people and a fairly extensive comparative Senufo word list, though it lacked any proper tonal marking.

Rapp (1933) is an appendix to an article on the Kulango language containing a German-Nafaanra (Nafana-Sprache) word list of around 100 items, gathered during a stay of four hours at Sampa.

[42] After a period of silence on Nafaanra, Painter (1966) appeared, consisting of basic word lists of the Pantera and Fantera dialects.

[citation needed] Mensah and Tchagbale in their 1983 linguistic atlas of Ivory Coast include a comparative Senufo word list of about 120 items; Nafaanra is present under the name "Nafara of Bondoukou".