Oti–Volta languages Oti–Volta languages The Oti–Volta languages form a subgroup of the Gur languages, comprising about 30 languages of northern Ghana, Benin, and Burkina Faso spoken by twelve million people. The most populous language is Mõõré, the national language of Burkina, spoken by five million people. The family is named for the Oti and Volta rivers. The internal classification of Oti–Volta, as worked out by Manessy 1975–79 and Naden 1989 (Williamson & Blench 2000) is as follows: Native Dagbani speakers assert that Dagbani is mutually intelligible with Dagaare, Frafra, Mamprusi, and Wali, but in the case of Dagaare, Frara and Wali it
Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender generically, notably in high registers. For example, French "Musée de l'homme" for an anthropology museum exhibiting human culture, not specifically "male culture". This semantic shift was parallel to the evolution of the word "man" in English. These languages therefore largely lack a third, neutral option aside from the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman". In Spanish and in Portuguese "ser humano" is used to say "human being". In Romanian, however, the cognate "om" retains its original meaning of "any human person", as opposed to the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman" ("bărbat" and "femeie", respectively). In Romansh the word "um"