French Upper Volta and two years later on 5 August 1960, it attained full independence. On 4 August 1984, the name was changed to Burkina Faso. The name Upper Volta indicates that the country contains the upper part of the Volta River. The river is divided into three parts, called the Black Volta, White Volta and Red Volta. Until the end of the 19th century, the history of Upper Volta was dominated by the empire-building Mossi/Mossi Kingdoms, who are believed to have come up to their present location from present-day Northern Ghana. For centuries, the Mossi peasant was both farmer and soldier, and
Volta–Congo languages system employing vowel harmony and that this set has been reduced to a seven vowel-system in many Volta–Congo languages. The Ghana–Togo Mountain languages are examples of languages where nine- or ten-vowel systems are still found. Volta–Congo languages Volta–Congo is a hypothetical major branch of languages of the Niger–Congo family. It includes all the Niger-Congo languages and subfamilies except the families of the erstwhile Atlantic and Kordofanian branches, Mande, Dogon, Ijo and Balanta. It thus only differs from Atlantic–Congo in that it excludes the Atlantic languages and, in some conceptions, Kru and Senufo. In the infobox at the right, the languages