The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur, belong to the Niger–Congo languages

Niger–Congo languages

The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...

. There are about 70 languages belonging to this group. They are spoken in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso – also known by its short-form name Burkina – is a landlocked country in west Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the southwest.Its size is with an estimated...

, southern Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

, northeastern Côte d'Ivoire

Côte d'Ivoire

The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...

, northern Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

, northern Togo

Togo

Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...

, northwestern Benin

Benin

Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...

, and southwestern Niger

Niger

Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...

.

Like most Niger–Congo languages, the ancestor of Gur languages probably had a noun class

Noun class

In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...

 system; many of today's languages have reduced this to a system of nominal gender

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

s or declensions or no longer have a class system. A common property of Gur languages is the verbal aspect

Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...

 marking. Gur languages are tonal. The tonal systems of Gur languages are rather divergent. Most Gur languages have a two tone downstep system.

Koelle first mentions twelve Gur languages in his 1854 Polyglotta Africana

Polyglotta Africana

Polyglotta Africana is a study written by the German missionary Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle in 1854 in which he compared 156 African languages...

, which represent ten languages in modern classification. Notably, he correctly identified these languages as being related to one another; his 'North-Eastern High Sudan' corresponds to Gur in modern classification.

The Gur family was previously called Voltaic following the French name (langues) Voltaïques (named after the Volta

Volta River

The Volta is a river in western Africa that drains into the Gulf of Guinea. It has three main tributaries—the Black Volta, White Volta and Red Volta...

 river). It was once considered to be more extensive than it is often regarded today, including the Senufo languages

Senufo languages

The Senufo or Senufic languages comprise ca. 15 languages spoken by the Senufo in the north of Côte d'Ivoire, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra, is also spoken in the west of Ghana. The Senufo languages are generally considered a branch of the Gur...

 and a number of small language isolates. The membership of Senufo was rejected for example by Tony Naden. Williamson and Blench place Senufo as a separate branch of Atlantic–Congo and other non-Central Gur languages somewhat closer as separate branches of the Savanna languages

Savanna languages

-External links:* – Blench* by Michael & Charlene Ayotte, 2002. SIL Electronic Survey Reports SILESR 2002-048.* , Tourneaux...

.

Classification

The position of Dogoso–Khe in Southern Gur is not clear; they are not closely related to other members of the branch.