Dagbani (or Dagbane), also known as Dagbanli and Dagbanle, is a Gur language spoken in Ghana and Northern Togo. Its native speakers are estimated around 3,160,000. This number increases to more than 6,000,000 if mutually intelligible languages such as mamprusi are added. It is a compulsory subject in primary and junior high school in the Dagbon Kingdom, which covers the north eastern part of Ghana. Dagbani is the most widely spoken language in northern Ghana, especially among tribes overseen by the King of Dagbon, the Yaa-Naa. It is closely related to and mutually intelligible with the Mampelle language, also spoken in Northern Region, Ghana. Dagbani is also similar to the other languages of the same subgroup spoken in this region, the Dagaare and Wali languages, spoken in Upper West Region of Ghana, and the Frafra language, spoken in Upper East Region of Ghana. In Togo In Togo, Dagbani is spoken in the Savanes Region at the border with Ghana. Dialects Dagbani has a major dialect split between Eastern Dagbani, centred on the traditional capital town of Yendi, and Western Dagbani, centred on the administrative capital of the Northern Region, Tamale. The dialects are, however, mutually intelligible, and mainly consist of different root vowels in some lexemes, and different forms or pronunciations of some nouns, particularly those referring to local flora. The words Dagbani and Dagbanli given above for the name of the language are respectively the Eastern and Western dialect forms of the name, but the Dagbani Orthography Committee resolved that “It was decided that in the spelling system <Dagbani> is used to refer to the ... Language, and <Dagbanli> ... to the life and culture”; in the spoken language, each dialect uses its form of the name for both functions. Orthography Dagbani is written in a Latin alphabet with the addition of the apostrophe, the letters ɛ, ɣ, ŋ, ɔ, and ʒ, and the digraphs ch, gb, kp, ŋm, sh and ny. The literacy rate used to be only 2–3%. This percentage is expected to rise as Dagbani is now a compulsory subject in primary and junior secondary school all over Dagbon. The orthography currently used (Orthography Committee /d(1998)) represents a number of allophonic distinctions. Tone is not marked. Phonology Vowels Dagbani has eleven phonemic vowels – six short vowels and five long vowels: Olawsky (1999) puts the schwa (ə) in place of , unlike other researchers on the