Fon (, ) is spoken in Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana and Gabon by approximately 1.7 million speakers, and is the language of the Fon people. Like the other Gbe languages, Fon is an isolating language with an SVO basic word order. Cultural and legal status In Benin, French is the official language, while Fon and other indigenous languages, including the Yom and Yoruba languages, are classified as national languages. Grammar Dialects The standardized Fon language is part of the Fon cluster of languages inside the Eastern Gbe languages. Hounkpati B Christophe Capo groups Agbome, Kpase, Gun, Maxi and Weme (Ouémé) in the Fon dialect cluster, although other clusterings are suggested. Standard Fon is the primary target of language planning efforts in Benin, although separate efforts exists for Gun, Gen, and other languages of the country. To date, there are about 53 different dialects of the Fon language spoken throughout Benin. Phonology Vowels Fon has seven oral vowel phonemes and five nasal vowel phonemes. Consonants only occurs in linguistic mimesis and loanwords, though often it is replaced by in the latter, as in cɔ́fù 'shop'. Several of the voiced occlusives only occur before oral vowels, while the homorganic nasal stops only occur before nasal vowels, indicating that and are allophones. is in free variation with ; Fongbe therefore can be argued to have no phonemic nasal consonants, a pattern rather common in West Africa. and are also nasalized before nasal vowels; may be assimilated to before . The only consonant clusters in Fon have or as the second consonant; after (post)alveolars, is optionally realized as : 'to wash', 'to catch', 'to want'. Tone Fon has two phonemic tones, and . is realized as rising (low–high) after a voiced consonant. Basic disyllabic words have all four possibilities: –, –, –, and –. In longer phonological words, such as verb and noun phrases, a high tone tends to persist until the final syllable; if that syllable has a phonemic low tone, it becomes falling (high–low). Low tones disappear between high tones, but their effect remains as a downstep. Rising tones (low–high) simplify to after (without triggering downstep) and to before . {|class="wikitable IPA" |- | / xʷèví-sà-tɔ́||é ||kò ||xɔ̀ ||àsɔ̃́ || wè / |- |[ xʷèvísáꜜtɔ́ ‖ ||é ||kó ||ꜜxɔ̂ | || àsɔ̃́ ||wê ‖ ] |- | fish-sell-aɡent||s/he |||| buy ||crab ||two |} "The fishmonger, she bought two crabs" In Ouidah, a