Dan language

Dan is a Southern Mande language spoken primarily in Ivory Coast (~800,000 speakers) and Liberia (150,000–200,000 speakers). There is also a population of about 800 speakers in Guinea. Dan is a tonal language, with 9 to 11 contour and register tones, depending on the dialect.

Alternative names for the language include Yacouba or Yakubasa, Gio, Gyo, Gio-Dan, and Da. Dialects are Gio (Liberian Dan), Gweetaawu (Eastern Dan), Blowo (Western Dan), and Kla. Kla is evidently a distinct language.

Vowels
¹Only in Liberian Dan.

²Only in Eastern Dan when in the position of extra-high tone.

Consonants
¹Only in Liberian Dan.

²Not in Liberian Dan.

³Not in western Dan.


 * is heard as when preceded by alveolar or palatal consonants.
 * Consonant combinations are heard as lateral fricative sounds.

Writing system
The orthography of Liberia includes this alphabet:

The capital ɤ will be encoded in a future version of The Unicode Standard.

Tones are marked as follows: extra high tone: a̋; high tone: á; medium tone: ā; low tone: à; extra low tone: ȁ; high drop tone: â; extra low hanging tone: aʼ.

The digraphs keep the same values as in the spelling of 1982, and the nasal vowels are also indicated by appending the letter n after the letter of the vowel.