Talk:Ewe language

Untitled
In linguistic literature, Ewe is designated Ewe, not Éwé. Native speakers of Ewe would also write just 'Ewe', following the common orthography which excludes most tones from appearing in writing. I think this article should adopt this way of writing. (Since I'm a newbie, I haven't figured out how to change the name of an article and I'm not aware of possible domino effects that might occur when I would do it. I'll confine myself for now to changing Éwé to Ewe inside the article)

strangeloop 10:46, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh well, I moved it anyhow, since I read that moving would not cause a domino effect. I've also changed the links from the pages that link to here.

strangeloop 10:49, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Writing system, status & official usage
On the writing system, I'm not sure it is accurate to say that any language "uses the African Reerence Alphabet" as the latter was just a guideline based on usage. In the case of Ewe, its use of various extended Latin characters was established well before 1979 when I first encountered the language in Togo; the ARA was adopted in 1978.

On Status, I thought it would be helpful to have a heading under which to mention legal status of the language as well as use in education, press, etc. Consider it a stub section - modification of the heading category to something better is invited. --A12n 17:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Ewe language template
If you are a native speaker of Ewe then you can help translate this template into your own language:

To the template

--Amazonien (talk) 21:37, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Native name
The native name seems to be “Eʋegbe” rather than “Ɛ̀ʋɛ̀gbè”, see Ewe Wikipedia, French Wikipedia and Basic Ewe for foreign students (Institut für Afrikanistik der Universität zu Köln, p. 206).--Nil Blau (talk) 23:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Number of speakers
The Ethnologue entry for Ewe claims that it has 3,112,000 speakers. Does anyone have a citation for the numbers currently listed in the article (approximately 6 million, with 2,000,000 second language speakers)? If not, we should change it to reflect the Ethnologue entry. --N-k (talk) 14:51, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * UCLA list "3-5 million". There may be a confusion between Ewe proper and the former, now deprecated use of Ewe for what is now called Gbe. Jalwikip (talk) 12:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Changed it to three million, as the ref was actually to the 3 mil of Ethnologue. Jalwikip (talk) 13:09, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Help with identifying Ewe song?
I've asked a question at the Language reference desk asking to identify the words of a song which I believe may be in Ewe. Can anyone watching this page stop by to try and confirm whether this could be the case? --dragfyre_ ʞןɐʇ c 15:50, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Extended
This article should be greatly extended. E.g. Felix Ameka's theses is a very comprehensive grammar, including a few pages on phonology, but is used only to support the SVO-ness of Ewe?? Unfortunately, I do not have the time currently. Jalwikip (talk) 13:25, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Ewe language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111118234109/http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/afrikanistik/sprachen/ewe/ to http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/afrikanistik/sprachen/ewe/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060318005230/http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Language/EWE/EWE.html to http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Language/EWE/EWE.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070321212319/http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Gbe to http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Gbe
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071223022701/http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/nl-ipa/eweipa.html to http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/nl-ipa/eweipa.html

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External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Ewe language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130115224245/http://www.journalofwestafricanlanguages.org/Volume10.aspx to http://www.journalofwestafricanlanguages.org/Volume10.aspx
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130114202237/http://www.journalofwestafricanlanguages.org/Ewe.aspx to http://www.journalofwestafricanlanguages.org/Ewe.aspx

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"Pragmatics" section.
"Ewe has phrases of overt politeness, such as meɖekuku (meaning "please") and akpe (meaning "thank you")."

What is remarkable enough about this to warrant its inclusion?? Almost all languages have words (or phrases) that mean "please" and "thank you"! More importantly, why on earth would pragmatics be included in the section on phonology? I considered just removing it, but I figured someone else may be able to integrate this better into the article as I'm reluctant to simply delete true information in a small article, regardless of how trivial it may seem. Janadume (talk) 18:29, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Number of Native Speakers
The current number of native speakers listed on the page, 20 million, seems much higher than most estimates. The site was recently paywalled, but at of 2019 Ethnologue lists there to be roughly 3.9 million native speakers and I would be surprised if that number was much different than in 2022. I understand that the source used seems legitimate, but it goes against most other sources used, such as our Gbe languages page.  Sam Walczak  Talk / Edits 22:45, 18 April 2022 (UTC)


 * IPs seem intent on edit warring to change this to 20 million, so I've requested semi-protection. Jfire (talk) 17:37, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The combined population of Ewe speakers in Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria alone surpassed 10 million in 2023. It's puzzling that ethnologue reports only 5 million native speakers. It would be helpful if they provided their sources for verification. Thank you. Enalasie (talk) 09:10, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It may all be exactly as you say. Provide a reliable source (which needs to be more credible than a blog post), and you can change the number to whatever that reliable source says. Until then, Ethnologue is our most reliable source. Examples of a reliable source would be a recent census, or other official government statistics, or a recent published grammar of Ewe. It is not enough to make reference to "what everyone knows." How, for example, do you know about the 2023 Ewe population in Togo, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria? If this comes from a credible source, you are most welcome to present this here. LandLing 10:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * BTW, for the Ewe-speaking population of Ghana Ethnologue quotes UNSD (2013) as their source, which states 3.3 million L1 speakers. The rest of the Ewe population therefore resides in Togo, and very few in Benin. Based on what do you assume an Ewe population in Nigeria? I hope you're not counting the Fon language as part of Ewe. LandLing 10:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Ewe Grammar
Taking about tenses, aspects, and moods in Ewe, these guys have an idea that there are tenses in Ewe: https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/ewe/ This PDF here might be more useful: https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_855570/component/file_855731/content https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED028444.pdf https://www.mun.ca/linguistics/media/production/memorial/academic/faculty-of-humanities-and-social-sciences/linguistics/media-library/more/e-books/Ch10.pdf https://www.persee.fr/doc/aflin_2033-8732_2012_num_18_1_1008 There are search results I found saying that Ewe has moods, but no tenses at all, and one saying that Ewe is "aspect prominent". Kaden Bayne Vanciel (talk) 17:00, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Consonantal Blends
dz, gb, kp, ny, ts Elizanthia (talk) 18:50, 31 March 2024 (UTC)