Documentation of Animere in Kecheibi and Kunda

Language	Animere
Depositor	James Essegbey, Bryan Gelles, Felix K. Amika, Prosper Teye Akortia, Freda Asante Kumi
Affiliation	University of Florida, Accra College of Education
Location	Ghana
Collection ID	0331
Grant ID	SG0199, MDP1031
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/fbd23548-859b-426d-9e96-72173f0804a6

 

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Summary of the collection

This collection is a result of documentation projects of the linguistic and cultural practices of the Benimbere who use Animere (anf) funded by ELDP as a Pilot Project and as a Major Documentation project from 2025 t0 2028. It is a collaboration among members of the Benimbere in Kecheibi and Kunda and Ghanaian researchers in the design and collection, transcription, glossing and translation of Animere materials. The content of the collection includes a wide variety of genres, topics and types recorded in multimedia formats (audiovisual and written).  Animere (ISO 639-3: anf) is a critically endangered Ghana-Togo Mountain language (Kwa, Niger-Congo) spoken north of the Volta Region, Ghana. The materials from the initial project by James Essegbey provide a sample documentation and establish the feasibility of engaging in a full-scale language documentation of Animere. The second project by Felix Ameka aims to comprehensively document Animere as used in two villages in Oti, Ghana: Kecheibi (Nkwanta South) and Kunda (Krachi East). Animere is not being learnt by children. Speaker numbers have decreased to only 17 (12 Kecheibi; 5 Kunda), all above 50 years. In each site there are mainly five named languages in daily use: Animere, Adele Twi, Ewe, English. Animere is documented in the two multilingual ecologies, recording, representing, and analysing lexicon, grammar and speech patterns based on the performance of cultural activities: oral genres, conversations, and narratives.

 

Group represented

Sometime in 2005, while a team from the Volta Region Multi-language Project (VRMP) were conducting a survey collecting wordlists from speakers of various Ghana Togo Mountain languages (GTM), they met some elders of Animere who expressed their dismay about their disappearing language. According to Andy Ring, the elders lamented that “We do not have anyone to sing our songs.” Animere (ISO 639-3: anf) is one of 15 languages located in the hills of Ghana-Togo border, from which they got the name Ghana Togo Mountain languages. It is estimated to have less than 17 speakers all of whom are over 50 years old. Animere people are known in the language as Benimbere. Animere is no longer being transmitted to children, a robust indicator of acute endangerment. All Benimbere people speak Adele, another GTM language, and Akan, the regional dominant language. The Animere situation is particularly interesting in that rather than shift to the dominant regional language, as happens in most language endangerment situations in Africa, they are shifting to Adele.

The groups represented in the collection are the users of Animere who live in two major locations in the Middlebelt of Ghana: Kecheibi and Kunda. These two communities are 60 km or so apart and they are not in contact. The participants use multiple languages. The language users have different degrees of knowledge about language. In both sites there are in total about 20 fluent users as well as some semi-speakers. The two communities are multingual hotbeds with 4 or 5 languages in the communities. However the pattern of language shift differs. In Kecheibi, the Benimbere are shifting to Adele another Ghana-Togo Mountain language which is the language of Kecheibi. In Kunda however, the Benimbere are shifting to Twi, the regional language of wider communication.

 

Language information

Animere is used in two communities in Kecheibi and Kunda in the Oti region of Ghana. It is not being acquired by children and the adults who identify as users are all above 50. The number of users continue to dwindle.

 

Special characteristics

Sound System:

[ŋ] – ŋ
[ɛ] – ɛ
[ɔ] – ɔ
[ɪ] – ɩ
[ʊ] – ʋ
[n¬w] – nw
[j] – y
[bw] – bw
[ãĩ] – aɩn
[ɾ] – r
[ɲ] – ny
[kw] – kw
[gw] – gw
[ʨ] – ky
[ʨw] – tw
[ʥ] – gy
[ʥw] – dw

 

Collection contents

The collection is comprised of 29 bundles that reflect the way of life in Animere. Each bundle contains either a video of the stories being told or an elicitation video. The original storytelling includes mixed generations of Animere speakers that sit together and tell different folk stories and fables relating to their cultural identity. The stories include cultural explanations, personal accounts of life as an Benimbere, historical interactions, ‘legends’ told at tribal gatherings, as well as songs and dance. The elicitation videos take place in Nkwanta, where the researchers are asking the consultant to slowly repeat the Animere phrases in order to verify that the correct sound and tone is being noted. Some bundles also contain one or more audio recordings and an ELAN file that contains a transcription of a specific story.

All the materials are openly accessible, without any kind of restrictions, in the online catalogue of the Endangered Languages Archive, ELAR.

Materials resulting from the second project are being added to the collection as the project evolves.

 

Collection history

With a small grant from the ELDP Bryan Gelles, graduate students at the University of Florida to collect preliminary documentation materials on the language. These include 3 conversations and 5 stories. Bryan’s preliminary investigation of the language shows that a lot of the vocabulary is from Akan. Over the summer of 2017, Dr. James Essegbey also traveled to Nkwanta with four students from the University of Florida, with funding from the Center of African Studies, to transcribe some of Bryan’s videos and record the elders singing and dancing to their songs.

In 2025 Felix Ameka received a Major Documentation Project grant to document the varieties of Animere spoken in Kecheibi and Kunda, together with Freda Asante Kumi and Prosper Teye Akortia.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

Users of any part of the collection should acknowledge James Essegbey, Bryan Gelles, Felix K. Amika, Prosper Teye Akortia and Freda Asante Kumi as the principal investigators, the data collectors and the researchers. Individual speakers whose words and/or images are used should be acknowledged by respective name(s). Any other contributor who has collected, transcribed or translated the data or was involved in any other way should be acknowledged by name. All information regarding consultants or contributors is available in the metadata.

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Essegbey, James, Bryan Gelles, Felix K. Amika, Prosper Teye Akortia & Freda Asante Kumi. Documentation of Animere in Kecheibi and Kunda. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-000F-B670-E. Accessed on [insert date here].