Mpre language

Not to be confused with Mbre language.

Mpre
Pronunciation	ḿpŕ̩ɛ̀
Spoken in	Ghana
Extinct	mid 20th century
Language family	Niger–Congo Kwa? Mpre
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None
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Mpre aka Mpra is a language once spoken in the village of Butie (8°52′N 1°15′W / 8.867°N 1.25°W / 8.867; -1.25) in Ghana, near the confluence of the Black and White Voltas, that has been difficult to classify. It is known only from a 70-word list given in a 1931 article.

Painter (1967) briefly states that "ḿpŕ̩ɛ̀ has died" and that the ethnic group ("the Nnyamase-mprɛ") have "become Nnyamase-Gonja"; he appears to regard it as having been a dialect of Gonja. This is based only on the numerals, which are clearly related to Gonja. The rest of the vocabulary, however, is "hard to recognise" (Williamson & Blench, 2000:36). Blench (2010), however, presents it as a Kwa language.

Bibliography

• Blench, Roger. 2010. "Why is Africa so Linguistically Undiverse?".[1] Language Isolates in Africa workshop, Lyon, December 3–4
• Cardinall, A.W. 1931. "A survival". Gold Coast Review, V,1:193-197.
• Painter, Colin. 1967. "The Distribution of Guang in Ghana, and a Statistical Pre-Testing on Twenty-Five Idiolects," The Journal of West African Languages, Vol. 4, No. 1, Cambridge University Press, Ibadan, pp. 25–78.

External links

• Blench, Roger (1999) Recent Field Work in Ghana: Report on Dompo and a note on Mpre.