Fang language should not be confused with Fang language (Cameroon).
| Fang | |
| Also Known As: | Pangwe |
| Nativename: | Faŋ, Paŋwe |
| States: | Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, and São Tomé and Príncipe |
| Ethnicity: | Fang |
| Speakers: | million |
| Date: | 2006–2013 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Niger-Congo |
| Fam2: | Atlantic–Congo |
| Fam3: | Volta-Congo |
| Fam4: | Benue–Congo |
| Fam5: | Bantoid |
| Fam6: | Southern Bantoid |
| Fam7: | Bantu (Zone A) |
| Fam8: | Beti |
| Dia1: | Southwest Fang |
| Dia2: | Ntoumou-Fang |
| Dia3: | Okak-Fang |
| Dia4: | Mekê-Fang |
| Dia5: | Mvaïe-Fang |
| Dia6: | Atsi-Fang |
| Dia7: | Nzaman-Fang |
| Dia8: | Mveni-Fang |
| Minority: |  Equatorial Guinea Gabon |
| Iso2: | fan |
| Iso3: | fan |
| Glotto: | fang1246 |
| Glottorefname: | Fang (Equatorial Guinea) |
| Guthrie: | A.75,751 |
| Map: | Idioma_fang.png |
| Mapcaption: | Idioma fang (Fang language) spread |
Fang is a Central African language spoken by around 1 million people, most of them in Equatorial Guinea, and northern Gabon, where it is the dominant Bantu language; Fang is also spoken in southern Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, and small fractions of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. It is related to the Bulu and Ewondo languages of southern Cameroon.
Under President Macías Nguema, Fang was the official language of Equatorial Guinea, although in 1982, the Third Constitution once again replaced it with Spanish. Since then, each version of the Constitution has recognized Fang and other languages indigenous to the country as integral to the national culture, despite these languages not having official status.
There are many different variants of Fang in northern Gabon and southern Cameroon. Maho (2009) lists Southwest Fang as a distinct language. The other dialects are Ntoumou, Okak, Mekê, Atsi (Batsi), Nzaman (Zaman), Mveni, and Mvaïe.
According to ALCAM (2012), Fang is mainly spoken in northern Gabon and also in Equatorial Guinea. Dialects include Ntumu, Mvayn, and Okak. In Cameroon, Fang is spoken in the southern half of Dja-et-Lobo department (Southern Region) south of Djoum. It is also spoken in the southeast of Mvila department: south of Mvangan, plus small isolated parts of Océan department between Lolodorf and Kribi where the Okak dialect is spoken. The other dialects, Mvayn and Ntumu, are spoken in Vallée-du-Ntem department.[1]
Despite Fang's lack of any well-defined literary corpus, it is of note that linguists have, in the past, made attempts to compile dictionaries and lexicons for the Fang language. The two most notable ones to be proposed or fully compiled were made by Maillard (2007) and Bibang (2014). Neither created a direct Fang-English dictionary, but opted instead to separate the two languages via third European languages (French and Spanish, respectively) as a bridge for various loanwords.
The translation efforts to English have been done through Romance languages: specifically, Spanish and French. The latter of the two languages would likely have had the most impact on the language, given the occupation of Gabon by the French during the existence of French Equatorial Africa (itself part of French West Africa), which lasted 75 years from 1885 to 1960. To a lesser extent, in São Tomé and Príncipe, Portuguese also likely has influenced the dialects of Fang present there, due to the country being occupied by Portugal for most of the islands' history of habitation.
The phonology of Fang is listed below.
Fang has 7 vowels, each of which can have short or long realizations.
| Front (short/long) | Back (short/long) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) | |
| Open-mid | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) | |
| Open | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) | ||
Nasal vowels are allophones of the respective oral vowels, when followed by a nasal consonant pronounced as /[ŋ]/ or pronounced as /[ɲ]/. Words cannot start with pronounced as /[ɛ]/, pronounced as /[i]/, pronounced as /[ɔ]/ or pronounced as /[u]/.
Diphthongs can be a combination of any vowel with pronounced as /[j]/ or pronounced as /[w]/, as well as pronounced as /[ea]/, pronounced as /[oe]/, pronounced as /[oa]/, pronounced as /[ua]/.
Fang distinguishes between at least 5 lexical tones, conventionally called: high, mid, low, rising and falling. One vowel in a sequences of vowels can be elided in casual speech, though its tone remains and attaches to the remaining vowel.
In Fang, there are 24 plain consonants. The majority of them can become prenasalized:
| Labial | Alveolar | Alveopalatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Plosive | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Affricate | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| Tap | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
pronounced as //h// is only used in interjections and loanwords.Words can not start with pronounced as //ŋ//, except when followed by a velar consonant. pronounced as //ɾ// and pronounced as //z// also are restricted from word-initial position. pronounced as //g// and pronounced as //p// can only come in word-initial position in words of foreign origin, although in many of these cases, pronounced as //g// becomes realized as pronounced as /[ŋg]/.
The morpheme "gh" is pronounced as pronounced as /ɾ/ in the case of the word "Beyoghe" (the Fang term for Libreville); one of several changes to pronunciation by morphology.
It is also important to note that in Fang, at every "hiatus" (shock of two vowels), such as in "Ma adzi", it is required for one to make the second word an aphetism, dropping the pronunciation of the pronounced as /aː/ sound at the start of the second word (e.g. "Ma dzi").