Fang is a Central African language spoken by around 1 million people in Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Congo Republic. It is the dominant Bantu language of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. It is related to the Bulu and Ewondo languages of southern Cameroon. Fang is spoken in northern Gabon, southern Cameroon, throughout Equatorial Guinea, in the Republic of the Congo, and small fractions of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. Under President Macías Nguema, Fang was the official language of Equatorial Guinea. There are many different variants of Fang in Gabon and Cameroon. Maho lists Southwest Fang as a distinct language. The other dialects are Ntoumou, Okak, Mekê, Atsi, Nzaman, Mveni, and Mvaïe.
Corpus and lexicology
Despite lacking any truly certain corpus of Fang's literary body, 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 and Bibang. Neither created a direct Fang-English dictionary, but opted instead to separate the two languages via a third European language 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, 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.
Phonology
Vowels
Fang has 7 vowels, each of which can have short or long realizations. Nasal vowels are allophones of the respective oral vowels, when followed by a nasal consonant or. Words can not start with,, nor.
Diphthongs
Diphthongs can be a combination of any vowel with or, as well as,,,.
Tone
Fang distinguishes between 4 different tones, conventionally called: high, low, rising and falling. The former two are simple tones, while the latter are compound tones. One vowel in a sequences of vowels can be elided in casual speech, though its tone remains and attaches to the remaining vowel.
Consonants
In Fang, there are 24 plain consonants. The majority of them can become prenasalized:
is only used in interjections and loanwords. Words can not start with, except when followed by a velar consonant. and also are restricted from word-initial position. and can only come in word-initial position in words of foreign origin, although in many of these cases, becomes realized as. The morpheme "gh" is pronounced as in the case of the word "Beyoghe" ; one of several changes to pronunciation by morphology. It is also important to note that in Fang, at every "hiatus", such as in "Ma adzi", it is required for one to make the second word an aphetism, dropping the pronunciation of the sound at the start of the second word in order to make grammatically correct sentences.
