Phla-Pherá languages

The Phla-Pherá languages form a subgroup of Gbe languages spoken mainly in south-eastern and south-western Benin; some communities are found in south-eastern Togo and south-western Nigeria. The group, comprised of about ten lects, was introduced by H.B. Capo in his 1988 classification of Gbe languages as one of the five main branches of Gbe. Additional research carried out by SIL International in the nineties corroborated many of Capo's findings and led to adjustment of some of his more tentative groupings; in particular, Phla-Pherá was divided in an eastern and a western cluster. Phla-Pherá is one the smaller Gbe branches in terms of number of speakers. It is also the most linguistically diverse branch of Gbe, due partly to the existence of several geographically separated communities, but mainly because of considerable influence by several non-Gbe languages in the past. Some of the Phla-Pherá peoples are thought to be the original inhabitants of the region having intermingled with Gbe immigrants.

The term Phla-Pherá is a conjunction of the names of two major dialects of this grouping. There exist many spelling variants of both names. Phla, pronounced , has been previously spelt Pla, Kpla, Xwla, Hwla, and Fla . Pherá, pronounced or , has been previously spelt Peda, Fida, Péda, and Houéda. For simplicity's sake, this article will use the unified standard orthography of Gbe set forth by Capo.