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**List: Akan Ministry
the Bible ( the Bible )
Akan...
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FANTEE.
"THE Fantees are the most powerful people on the Gold
Coast, a section of which they occupy. They
reside chiefly in the immediate vicinity of Cape Coast, including Dixcove and
Anamaboe. In number
they amount to between 800,000 and 1,000,000: but they have never been united
into one compact
political body, their government being in the hands of inferior chiefs, who
possess an almost indepen-
dent and despotic jurisdiction over limited districts. The Fantees
were originally one people with the
Ashantees, but many centuries have elapsed since their separation.
They are pagans, and very super-
stitious, and are still in a state of semi-civilisation. Fantee is a
soft and harmonious language, and is
closely connected in structure and idiom with all the other languages of
Ashantee, except the Accra.
It has no article, and no terminational variations to express the distinctions
of case. The possessive
case is marked either by the mere collocation of words, or else by affixing an
abbreviation of the relative
pronoun. The plural is formed by prefixing the syllable im or
in to the singular noun. Conjugation
is carried on, as in Mandingo, by
means of the pronouns, which undergo certain changes to denote the
variations of tense, while the verb itself remains unaltered.
An introductory work to the Accra and Fantee
languages, containing among other things a
translation of the Ten Commandments, was
published at Copenhagen in 1764, by order of the King of
Denmark. Five or six chapters of the
Gospel of St.
John have been translated into
Fantee by the
Rev. Mr. Hanson, but they have not yet been committed to the press,
and the Fantees are still destitute
of printed copies of the Scriptures in their own language." --The Bible
of Every Land. (1860, Second Edition) Samuel Bagster [Info
only]
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