Mpre Mpra is a language once spoken in the village of Butie (8°52′N 1°15′W) in Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

, near the confluence of the Black

Black Volta

Black Volta or Mouhoun is a river of western Africa rising in western Burkina Faso and flowing about 1,352 km to the White Volta in Ghana. The Black Volta forms a small part of the boundary between Ghana and Ivory Coast, and also a section of border between Ghana and Burkina Faso.-See also:*Deux...

 and White Volta

White Volta

The White Volta, also known as the Nakambe River, is the headstream of the Volta River in West Africa. It originates in Burkina Faso and it flows into Lake Volta in Ghana. Its main tributaries are the Black Volta and the Red Volta....

s, 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

Gonja language

The Gonja language is a Kwa language spoken by an estimated 230,000 people, almost all of whom are of the Gonja ethnic group of northern Ghana. Related to Guang languages in the south of Ghana, it is spoken by about a third of the population in the northern region...

. 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.

External links

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