è ɛ̀ ì ò ɔ̀ ù; the other mid (high-low) is indicated by a circumflex : â ê ɛ̂ î ô ɔ̂ û. Most vowels in the Supyire language contain a single tone although vowels may have two, or in extremely rare cases three, tones. Further, nasals that come before stops can only have one tone. Basic noun gender suffixes, imperfective verb suffixes, the causative verb suffix –g followed by a vowel, and the intransitive verb prefix N- are considered toneless. It was noted that boys who spent their days herding cows communicated with each other strictly through whistled language, which only elaborated vowel length and pitch. These small pieces of information were enough to have conversations of considerable detail. Morphology Class system The noun class system of Supyire is similar to that of other languages in the Niger–Congo family. This system includes eight noun classes that are grouped into five noun genders. While there is noun class agreement between pronouns and their head nouns, there is no verb agreement. However, there is agreement between quantifiers (such as determiners and independent adjectives) and the head noun. The gender system of Supyire does differ slightly from the gender systems of other similar languages. Bantu, also a subgroup of Niger–Congo languages, places different forms of the same word into varying gender classes. For example, the Swahili word for friend is and it is a class 9 noun. However, the plural form belongs to noun class 6. This confusion over noun class distinction does not occur in any Senufo language, Supyire included. In Supyire, gender 1 is categorized as the “human” gender. Instead of classifying loan words by their definition, those who speak Supyire tend to classify loan words by their suffixes and thus most loan words, regardless of meaning, are placed into gender 1. More than half of the dictionary of gender one nouns is loan words. Nouns found in this category range from general human terms such as (“woman”) and (“child”) to terms that describe relationships such as (“wife’s father”). Also found in this category are terms that describe people such as (“twin”) or (“friend”). Gender 1 also contains class terms and occupational terms such as (“leather-worker”), (“blacksmith”) and (“soldier”). Supernatural entities are also categorized into the human gender. The word for god, , is categorized as a gender 1 noun. This gender also contains some “higher” animals and mass nouns