Anyi/Baule language page

Classification and where spoken

Anyi and Baule are closely related dialects in the Akan branch of Kwa. They are spoken in southeastern Cote d'Ivoire and southwestern Ghana.

Number of speakers

Grimes (1996), cites figures of 810,000 speakers of Anyi and 2,130,000 speakers of Baule. Burmeister (personal communication, 1983) estimates about 500,000 speakers of Anyi; Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) cite 450,000; Derive (1978) notes 1.01 million speakers of Baule and 264,000 speakers of Anyi in Cote d'Ivoire.

Usage

Dialect survey work for Baule is going on at the University of Cote d'Ivoire; Anyi dialect work is being carried out by the Societe Internationale de Linguistique.

Orthographic status

Anyi and Baule in Cote d'Ivoire use the official orthography developed for all languages in that country; Ghanaian orthography varies.

Sets of learning materials

For various linguistic and sociolinguistic reasons, it is suggested that two sets of learning materials be developed.