West African Narratives of Slavery: Texts from Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Ghana

A Note on Ewe Orthography

A NoTE oN EWE orTHogrAPHy The Ewe language has a number of letters that do not exist in the English language . These include the following: ô = the open sound found in the English word taught¤ = voiced bilabial fricative ⁄ = voiceless bilabial fricative æ = a voiced retroflex stop × = a voiceless dorsal-velar fricative, like the “ch” ê = pronounced like the English long “a” When Ewe words are written in English-language texts, however, practices vary in terms of which orthography is used. Ewe proper names are often written using the English orthography while Ewe-language phrases are written using the Ewe orthography. I follow this particular practice here. Only specific words and phrases in Ewe are rendered using the Ewe orthography. These are also italicized. With regard to proper names, I have attempted to use the most common English-language spelling. West African Narratives of Slavery ...