Ghanaian English

So, they speak English in Ghana.  That’s what the guidebooks say.  Well, the reality on the ground is a bit different – at least, here in the far north.

English might be the official language of Ghana, but it is not the day-to-day language of most Ghanaians.  There are probably well over a hundred local languages and dialects here.  Apparently there are about five major “language groups” (I think a language group in Europe might be French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Rumanian etc – ie the “romance languages”, which are all closely descended from Latin).  Some of the languages in the same group are mutually comprehensible up to a point. 

The number and distribution of these languages undoubtedly says something about the ethnic origin and subsequent dispersal of the different peoples who live in the land now called Ghana – for example, there are pockets of people who speak a language which is totally different from everyone around them, who presumably must have settled there after migrating from somewhere else.  I suspect it is a pretty complex story and I haven’t seen an account of it in any detail. 

Life is conducted in these local languages.  When you live here in Zebilla, you have a clear sense of not knowing the language that ordinary local people speak, and being able to communicate with them only in the tiny smattering of their language that you know, and the slightly (but not much) larger smattering of English that they know; plus lots of gestures and smiles.  It’s sufficient to survive but it doesn’t allow for much conversation or cultural and intellectual exchange.

Here in Bawku West District the local language is Kusaal – which means “the language of the Kusasi people”.  The Kusasi live in Zebilla, Bawku and the surrounding villages, extending over the borders into Burkina Faso in the north and Togo in the east.  Travelling west from Zebilla, by the time you reach Bolgatanga you’re into Frafra territory, and Frafra is a significantly different language, with few words in common with Kusaal.   Of course there are Kusasi in Bolga, who presumably speak Kusaal among themselves. 

I estimate that Kusaal is spoken as a first language in, roughly, a circular area with a radius of 20 – 30 miles centred somewhere between Zebilla and Bawku.  It can’t be spoken by more than a few of hundred thousand people.  Zebilla isn’t a major centre for immigration from other parts of Ghana but there are people from other regions here and some of these (and particularly their children who are growing up here) speak Kusaal as an additional language.  Kusaal isn’t yet a written language, though people are working on a standardised orthography and eventually teachers will be trained to teach it; and there is already a bible in Kusaal.  Personally I think it’s a huge pity that the children can’t learn to write it at school (or indeed the adults).

There will be other small local languages like Kusaal all over Ghana, alongside some much bigger ones.  The “biggest” language is Twi (the main Akan language of the Asante and related people).  I think the experience of living as a European foreigner anywhere in Ghana, possibly with the exception of Accra, will be as Jane and I have enjoyed it in Zebilla. 

Despite the undoubted importance of the local languages, English is the main, and in many places the only written language. It is the language in which education is delivered and received (during the first five years of school, teaching is supposed to take place in the local language with English being progressively introduced for full-time use from Primary 4 onwards); it is the official language for all formal things (for example the health service functions in English, your electricity and water bills come in English, and I think legal documents, contracts etc are all in English); it seems to be the dominant language for business (though business between speakers of the same local language is presumably more likely to be in the local language than English); it is one of the main broadcasting languages (alongside Twi); it is one of the linguae francae that enable people who speak different local languages to communicate; and there seems to be a general assumption that white people speak English, and as such English has status.  As far as I can tell, even Ghanaians who can’t speak or understand English still realise that English is an important part of Ghanaian life.  Interestingly, despite the fact that Christianity was presumably introduced by white English-speaking missionaries, English is not the language of Christian worship, including funerals.

Ghanaian English is certainly a form of English and I wouldn’t characterise it as a different tongue.  But it is at least as different from UK English as American or Australian, and probably moreso.  If you turn up in Ghana and speak your usual English at your usual speed and with your usual smattering of slang etc, there’s every chance that you won’t be understood at all.  Maybe you shouldn’t be surprised when a sentence like “and I’m like, whoa!” meets with completely blank looks!

Unless you’re listening carefully and sensitively, there’s also a good chance you initially won’t understand much of what most Ghanaians say to you.  Those last few sentences probably aren’t applicable to the small percentage of very well educated and well-travelled Ghanaians who might speak and understand English as well as you do; or to the staff of expensive hotels, who have a good command of the English that they need to do their work (though not necessarily extending far beyond that).  If you’re travelling on business and sticking to the big cities, you might be mingling with such people for most of your time and miss the fact that they are a small linguistic minority.  But you’ll discover it if you take a taxi or look for somewhere to eat out local-style.

Perhaps the first thing to say about Ghanaian English is that it sounds “African” – by which I mean that if you have ever heard native African people speaking English, you will hear clear similarities.  However, it doesn’t sound at all like the English spoken by white people from, for example, South Africa or Zimbabwe – whose language bears a strong influence from the original white settlers’ native tongues.  It also doesn’t sound Caribbean.

In the main, the vowel sounds in Ghanaian English are broadly the same as in UK English.  This is in marked contrast to USA English, Australian English, New Zealand English and South African English – when you try to imitate speakers from these places, the main change you make from your UK English is to use different vowels.  The qualification “broadly” is important though – the vowels are not exactly the same, Ghanaians approximate some of the UK English vowels so that when you hear words in isolation they can be confusing.  Short “o” and short “u” are examples – as in “hot” and “hut”.  The same happens with some short and long vowels – for example “hit” and “heat”.  I think that in general Ghanaians pronounce the long vowels a bit shorter than in UK English.  Ghanaians tend not to use the "neutral" - the "uh" sound which, for example, is often the last syllable of "brother".  They often use an "a" vowel instead. 

Regarding the consonants, as a general rule Ghanaians pronounce these rather softly (ie rather indistinctly).  For example, “b”, “p”, “t” and “d” are a lot less “plosive” than in UK English and thus less distinct to our ears.  Ghanaians also tend not to pronounce the consonants near the ends of words at all, or so softly that you don’t hear them.  "R" isn't pronounced at the end of words - for example "brother" sounds more like "brada".

For example, consider the two sentences “I can come” and “I can’t come”.  In UK English, there will generally be two differences.  The first is that the vowel in can’t isn’t the same as the vowel in can – it might be a different vowel (eg if you’re speaking “cut glass” English where the a in can is almost an e); or it might just be longer (compare “cat” and “cart”).  The second is that you can (usually) hear the t (even if, for example, in Estuary English it has turned into a glottal stop).  In Ghanaian English, you can’t hear the t at all – the only difference between the sentences is the length of the vowel.  (The short a vowel isn’t cut-glass – a cat is a “cat” not a “ket”.)

In like fashion, “don’t” comes out as “doan” (or “doa/doh”), “went” is “wen”, “walked” is “walk” (or “waw”), “because” is “beco” etc. “I will walk” actually sounds pretty close to “I wi waw”.  This tendency is so strong in Ghanaian English that when they are writing they often leave off the “t” or “ed” at the end of verbs in the past tense.  Only yesterday I saw “march pass” instead of “march past” in a document.  The tendency to omit final consonants seems to be a bit less strong in some longer words – for example, “impregnated” comes out intact as “impregnated”.

Ghanaians also simplify some consonant combinations.  The classic is the “sk” in “ask” – which comes out as "ax" (or "aks").  (Given that this is a feature of most black American and Caribbean English too, one suspects that there might be a something generic about African languages which makes this combination difficult – there’s probably a PhD or two on this somewhere, though I haven’t hunted for it/them.)  This feature appears in words like “desk” (“dex”) and “text” (“tex”).  Interestingly there is a word “text” – it’s the past tense of the verb “to tex” (as in “I text (teksed) you yesterday”).

Other consonants that Ghanaians mangle are “th” (both unvoiced and voice - as in “thing” and “the”, which come out respectively as ting and de).  The word “three” is pronounced “treh” with a trilled “r”. “Tree” is “tree” (with trilled “r”).

Combinations like “xth” (in “sixth”) and “rch” (in “March”) also suffer.  The anniversary of Ghana’s independence, which is celebrated annually on the sixth of March, is talked about as the “seef mahsh” or “seef mahs”.  (I’ve spelt March that way to represent a long vowel with no hint of an r).

Another example which floored Jane and me for a while and then had us in stitches was “johnson” – which is what our interlocutor said when he meant “junction” (see above re confusion between short “o” and short “u”).

Ghanaian English sometimes pronounces “g”, differently from UK English.  For example your motorbike has “jears” not “gears”; but if you are waving your arms you will be making a “guesture” (hard “g”) not a “jesture”.  If there is a logic to this, I haven’t worked it out yet.

Next, Ghanaians pronounce some words with unexpectedly precise respect for their spelling.  The most common are “listen” (where the "t" is pronounced) and “plumber” (where the "b" is pronounced).  Another example is “circuit” – which is pronounced “sir-kute”.

Jane and I can’t understand why this should happen, because we have found absolutely no evidence of English being taught in school via phonics (and plenty of evidence of ridiculous things such as a class of KG2 children being drilled in 2-letter words, chanting “ess – oh – so”).  We haven’t heard “see-ay-tea-cat” or “dee-oh-gee-dog”, but we have no doubt they are being chanted by small children, up and down the land.

An interesting extension of this “rule” is that “lettuce” here is known as “lectus”. 

Another example is that the words “flower” and “flour”, which in my version of UK English sound exactly the same, have quite different pronunciation in Ghanaian English.  “Flower” is more or less the same as UK English, but “flour” is “flaah”.  I can only explain this as an attempt to reflect the spelling in the pronunciation – even though UK English is quite happy to have these two words as exact homophones.

Leaving pronunciation and moving onto vocabulary, I suppose you would expect there to be local words that you have not heard before – and there are!  Examples are “spot” (or “drinking spot” for a small street-side bar (often serving the local tipple, pito, in rural areas), and sometimes “eating spot” (also “chop-bar”) if it serves food); “tro-tro” (or “tro”) for the cramped and dilapidated minibuses which are the bus network in Accra and other big cities (this is alongside “lorry” and “car”, which often mean “bus”, with “lorry fare” meaning what you pay for the journey (even if nobody refers to the vehicle as a lorry); a tyre is a “cover”; the handlebars on your bike or motorbike is the “steer”; your motorbike is a “motor” (pronounced “motoh”).

Another thing that you notice early on is that Ghanaians often use words which feel surprisingly formal, technical or precise to a UK English speaker, who would use something more casual.  Ghanaians are generally unaware of the alternative casual options, and they have no sense that they have (for us) dipped into a different register when they use these words.

An example you will discover early is that Ghanaians urinate.  They don’t wee or pee, or pinkle or tinkle or piddle or widdle, or have a pit-stop or a slash, or take a leak, or powder their nose or freshen up.  They don’t know these euphamisms - if you use them you won’t be understood.  On a long-distance bus recently the driver made some general practical announcements to the passengers, one of which was that if you wanted to urinate please ask him to stop the bus.  Ghanaians also defecate, and they know that both people and animals produce faeces.  Defecate isn’t an especially common word and doesn’t seem to be talked about all that much, but the others are, and aren’t accompanied by any sniggering or tittering.  They are simply the words for these things; and I don’t think we have heard any other words for them, despite the long list of available options in UK English.  I’m not sure whether this lack of euphamisms is a linguistic feature or simply reflects the fact that Ghanaians get on with natural processes with the minimum of embarrassment.

Other examples, among surprisingly many, include:

·        A bicycle pump is a “tyre inflator”;

·        A man who gets a girl pregnant “impregnates” her;

·        When you want to get out of a shared taxi, you “alight”;

·        A hole punch is a “perforator”;

·        A staple remover is an “extractor” (and staples are “pins”, for some reason);

·        “Reduce” means both to make something smaller (eg to tighten the waist of your trousers); and also to lose weight (and “increase” means to put on weight);

·        When Adam took his trousers to have them reduced, and returned without them, he explained that he had “remained” them at the tailor’s;

·        The person who repairs a puncture in your tyre is a “vulcaniser”;

·        Anything which is broken (bust, knackered, worn out etc) is “spoilt”; you get it “repaired”;

·        When the baker has sold all his bread, the bread is “finished”;

·        If someone tells you something, they “inform” you.

These kinds of words don’t create a problem when you hear them, they just take you rather by surprise, and remind you that in our everyday UK English we use an awful lot of little, casual words in place of bigger, grander ones.  It’s more difficult when you want to use them because, unless you have heard them before and remembered them, you simply use the usual UK English word and then feel foolish when your interlocutor doesn’t understand.  (Of course, you get used to this experience and you learn to say it again, slower and more clearly, to point and to gestures.)  It doesn’t help that many of the UK English equivalents of this sort of vocabulary use those useful little idiomatic words like “get” and “put”, which are words I have seldom heard Ghanaians use in this type of combination.

Ghanaian English uses some words in specific, different ways from UK English.  One that you encounter early on is “pick”, which is often used where we would expect “take”, “collect”.  Hence, recently the Director announced that we had had a delivery of chalk for schools, but it was too heavy to expect the office car to take it round to all the schools, so the head teachers should come to the office and "pick" it.  Pick also has other specific meanings – for example “I called you and you didn’t pick” means that you didn’t answer your phone (a serious faux pas here).

“Take” is a less common word in Ghanaian English and often has a specific meaning.  For example, “the plumber will take 30 cedis” means that’s how much he will “charge” you.

The wonderfully economical verbs “to on” and “to off” mean, perhaps obviously, “to switch/turn on/off” – as in “I have forgotten to off the fan”.  I think these words might also be used for taking clothes on and off.

“Lights” here means “electricity” (for which you are charged via a “lights bill”); and a “lights out” is a power cut.

“Fast” means clever and dishonest - perhaps similar to the idea of “making a fast buck”, but with a stronger sense that it isn’t legal.  We’ve been told that the people in Nigeria are “fast” (that was after a conversation involving a man who makes his living installing a bit of Nigerian software into people’s satellite TV, which means they can watch unlimited TV without paying).

You might have guessed from “chop-bar” that “to chop” means “to eat”, though “eat” also exists here.  On Zebilla market they sell a vegetable which looks a bit like a green tomato and is known as a “garden” egg.  We didn’t know how to cook these, so I asked the seller – she looked a bit confused initially and then said “you only chop it” (see later on for “only”).  I think that meant that you can simply eat it as it is (something I would contest, incidentally, having tried it – they are barely palatable even if you cook them for so long that they turn into mush, and raw they are horrid in both taste and texture – bitter and tough!)   I’ve wondered if it is a coincidence that the sticks people eat with in China and Japan are called chop-sticks in English.  Was there a time when there was an English word “chop” which meant “to eat”?  I haven’t yet found it in a dictionary, and I’m separated by a few thousand miles from my trusty OED.

There is a set of oddities in Ghanaian vocabulary is words which seem to be direct translations of the local language.  Here are just two examples from Kusaal.  A person once told us that he had taken what he thought was enough to pay his sister’s school fees, but the head teacher said that “the money was not up”.  After a bit more questioning we understood that this meant that there was not sufficient.  When we were working with some pupils at school on a description of the head teacher, one pupil said that his complexion was red.  The head teacher has quite pale skin, and it seems that the word for this in Kusaal is the same as the word for the colour red.  I imagine that there are different examples for other local languages, but I don’t have any examples to offer.

A related example, which could perhaps equally fit in the section about grammar and syntax, is that at least in Kusaal, the local language doesn’t appear to distinguish between he and she, him and her – so it’s very common to hear men referred to as she and women as he.

The common expression “I will go and come” probably arises in the same way.  It means “I am leaving now and I will come back when I have run my errand”.  Last weekend Adam said “I will go and buy the local porridge and come”.  There is also a phrase “I’m coming”, which a person says when he/she is being interrupted and means “I want to keep talking and I’ll get onto that point soon” – this might also be a literal translation of a Kusaal expression.  The phrase “I’m coming” meaning “I know you’re waiting for me and I’ll be there sometime in the next ten hours or so, give or take, unless something more interesting comes up or I get a better offer” probably doesn’t reflect the Kusaal language, just Ghanaian culture.  It has amused me that the Ghanaians in our office say “come again” when they want you to repeat something.  I don’t know whether that’s because in the past they’ve had a VSO volunteer from Yorkshire!  Another way of asking you to repeat something is “you say?” (with rising intonation).

My last, and actually all-time favourite under the vocabulary section is the Ghanaian word for “thingumy-jig”, “whatnot”, “doofer” etc.  It is “this-thing”, pronounced “disting”.  You regularly hear people say something along the lines of “where is de disting?” (where’s the wotsit?) – it never fails to make me smile.

Ghanaian English is subtly different from UK English in its grammar and syntax, though this is not easy to illustrate.  If you have read Alexander McCall-Smith’s wonderful books about the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which is set in Botswana, you’ll perhaps have a sense of what I mean.  The dialogue in those books is absolutely recognisably English but it is somehow different, in a way that isn’t easy to put your finger on.  I sometimes think of it as being more careful.  When they did a short TV series of the first book, that aspect came across wonderfully for me.  Ghanaian English has a similar quality.

Some examples of the grammar/syntax of Ghanaian English are:

·        The verb “to be” can be omitted.  A Ghanaian will introduce someone to you saying “this my junior brother”.  (A “junior brother” is any male relative, no matter how distant, who is younger than the speaker; actually there might be no blood relationship at all.  A “senior brother” is the equivalent person who is older than the speaker.  It has tickled me that one of the BECE exam questions that I have seen more than once asks candidates to pick the correct adjective qualifying “brother” from “senior”, “junior” “older” and “elder” – and they are ever so proud of knowing that the correct answer is “elder”.  I’ve not heard anyone actually use the word “elder” when referring to brothers though!)

·        Ghanaian English uses the present continuous much more than UK English and doesn’t seem to recognise the subtle differences between it and the simple present (“I am eating fish” as opposed to “I eat fish”).  So, you might hear someone way “my uncle is owning fifteen cows”; and someone might easily say “ah yes, Mr Abugri, he is wearing a smock” – meaning that Mr Abugri is never ever seen in anything except that traditional north-Ghanaian male garment.

·        In complex questions, the word order is different.  In UK English you might ask “Is that fat friend of yours who lives down the Brompton Road near the chip-shop with the pink vinegar coming to your anniversary party next week?”  In Ghana that might come out as “that fat friend of yours, he lives down the Brompton Road…, next week he is coming to your party?”  The intonation in this sentence is also different – Ghanaian English doesn’t generally go up at the end of a question and sometimes goes down.

·        Ghanaians are much more likely to say “this person”, “that place” than “him”, “there”.  They also use this construction to buy them thinking time in a sentence – for example “you will go to that place, Bolgatanga, with that man, the Education Director?”.

·        Ghanaians mainly form their negative sentences as “I have no dog” rather than “I do not have a dog”.  Also, if you ask a non dog-owning Ghanaian if he has a dog, you might easily get the answer “I don’t have” (not “I don’t have one” or “I don’t have a dog”, and neither will be preceded by “no”).

·        Where UK English would say “there are many boys and few girls in this class”, Ghanaian English would have “in this class the boys are many and the girls are few”.

·        The words “only”, “rather” and “even” are used quite a lot in Ghanaian English, and in a slightly different way from UK English.  They tend to appear at a different place in the sentence, usually just before the verb.  “Actually he is even coming” would carry the implication that this might be slightly against your expectations or someone else’s.  “Mr Abugri will rather take banku” or, quite possibly, “Mr Abugri will take rather banku”)  (banku is one of the many porridge/dumpling-like carbohydrate foods in Ghana) carries a slight implication of “in contrast to other people”, though often that contrast might only exist in the speaker’s mind and hasn’t been mentioned before.

·        The word “too” doesn’t occur in Ghanaian English.  “Also” is used instead, and is placed before the verb.  So, “I will also come” means “I’ll come too”.  “I should also come?”, or “that I should also come?” (both without the rising intonation they would have in UK English) are questions meaning “Do you want me to come too?” – the version with “that” would imply that your interlocutor might have said something like that and you are seeking confirmation (see next bullet but one).

·        “Also” also appears in sentences like “I have not also seen him”, which means “I have not seen him either”.  I don’t think I have heard Ghanaians use “either” or “neither”.

·        It is very common to hear sentences that begin with “that” – “that you should come now”; “that the printer is spoilt”.  It’s as if a preceding clause has been omitted – “the Director says…” or “I want to mention to you…”

None of these grammatical/syntactic differences is a big issue in its own right, but the cumulative effect is actually surprisingly powerful, I think.

Moving briefly now onto paralinguistic items… if you have done any homework at all before you arrive in Ghana, you will know that people here greet, and that you will give great offence if you don’t greet too.  “Greeting” means saying good morning etc to everyone when you arrive in the office, or when you enter a shop, or before you attempt to buy something from a market trader, and random people in the street if they catch your eye (though the adults, as a rule, don’t catch your eye and wait for you to make the first move).  There is quite a bit of ritual to greeting, with set phrases which are batted back and forth.  It’s quite common for the person you have greeted to respond (for example to "good morning" with “you are welcome”), and among themselves Ghanaians may then ask about each other’s family.  You score huge brownie points if you can do some of this in the local language, and if you can, you quickly realise that your Ghanaian friends are using the English equivalents of their standard local language phrases when they greet you.  People will phone you up just to greet you, and they will make a trip (or at least a short detour) to you house to greet too. 

For us, as we cycle to work in the morning, we might typically have a conversation (multiple times) along the lines of:

·        Toma toma toma

·        Yaou, toma. Doh awela?

·        Lafubay.  La-awela?

·        Lafubay.

In Kusaal this is a bare minimum - we tend to preempt it by wishing people “good morning”, to which the response is often “fine morning”.  In the office, if we start with “good morning”, people are likely to say “how was the night” (a rough of equivalent of doh awela, which seems literally to mean something like “how was your waking up?”).  On Mondays you tend to get “how was the weekend?”.  It seems to amuse people slightly, but in a “this boy is a fool” kind of way, if I respond “it was rather too short” or (referring to the night) “I don’t know, I was asleep”.

Another thing which hits you when you first arrive in Ghana is that people are very direct.  It’s not exactly impolite, but those smoothing, lubricating phrases like “if you wouldn’t mind”, “could you” etc generally aren’t used.  Even “please” is quite a rarity.  When a Ghanaian means “please, would you mind coming with me”, he/she will say “you come”, or “you should come” (possibly “that you should come”).  The tone of voice is also very direct.  Jane and I cringe a bit sometimes when someone is being told off – but at least here there is no risk of a person being reprimanded in such a round-about way that they don’t even realise they’re having a telling off!  

All Ghanaians are capable of producing a strong, loud, carrying voice; and they are quite happy to conduct a conversation over a distance of up to 30 metres, even at 5.30 in the morning, right next to your house. 

When Ghanaians take their leave of you, they tell you where they are going and then go.  They don’t say goodbye.  On the phone they just hang up when they have decided that the conversation is finished.

There is a range of gestures here, some of them accompanied by specific words.  As this is an aspect of UK English that we are perhaps not terribly conscious of, I’m not sure if it is really the case that there is more of this here than at home – but that is certainly how it feels. 

An example is a gesture where you put your right hand in front of your body, palm towards your chest, then flick you wrist over so that your palm is further away from you, facing upwards.  It means something like “I told you so”, and is accompanied by a distinctive “ah-ha!” (emphasis on the “ha”). Another involves clapping the back of your right hand against the palm of your left, then bringing both hands in quite a wide circle down to your sides, with the palms facing forward and fingers down.  The accompanying words are “a-ba”, and it means something like “oh, for goodness sake”.  Putting your hand out in front of you, palm down, then flicking the hand over so the palm faces up, is a silent way of asking a question - which question will be obvious (to a Ghanaian) from the context. 

I should now add that there are Ghanaians who have spent a lot of time in the UK or USA and who speak with the pronunciation, vocabulary and syntax of those places.  But most Ghanaians haven’t, and although there is a very wide range of competence in English (from those who can barely say more than “good morning”, to those who are fluent and have a wide and sophisticated vocabulary), the things I’ve described come over as general trends.

At the beginning of this post I said that most daily life is conducted in the local language.  I think that is generally true, but maybe a few more comments are called for. 

Big cities are worth a mention.  Tamale, the biggest city in the Northern Region, is mainly populated by Dagbani speakers and as far as I can tell, Dagbani is spoken there except by sub-communities from other regions, who speak their own local language among themselves.  Tamale has a population of between half a million and one million, so it’s big rather than huge.  Dagbani seems to be a second language for many of the people in Tamale who don’t have it as their first language, so, oddly, even for such a big place, it has perhaps unexpected linguistic homogeneity.

Kumasi is the capital of the Ashanti Kingdom.  There are a lot of other people in Kumasi, including a lot from the north, but even so it is mainly populated by Akan speakers, the main dialect of which is Twi.  According to one guidebook, Twi is spoken by 50% of the population of Ghana, though it that is true, I think a lot of these people don’t speak it as their first language.  I think in Kumasi what’s normally spoken is each group’s local Akan language, or Twi, with English only after that.  Kumasi sprawls into some of the neighbouring towns – taken together it is well over a million people.

Accra is in Ga territory but the proportion of people from other places is bigger than Kumasi, so Ga doesn’t seem to be the main local language except among Ga speakers.  There is a lot of Twi.  And other groups will speak their local language when they are in their own company.  English also serves as a lingua franca, particularly at work.  There is also a “pidgin English” which seems to exist in Accra and all along the coast – it isn’t used to attempt to communicate with foreigners, it’s another lingua franca which Ghanaians talk among themselves, and I get a slight sense that they do it just for fun – particularly those who also speak English well.  Accra’s population is 3 million or more, and growing.  There is an amusing and slightly enlightening story about a large sign at Accra airport, which apparently was put up when President Obama visited.  The sign says “Akwaaba” – which means “welcome”.  It caused a row because “akwaaba” is a Twi word – and Twi isn’t the language of Accra.  I don’t think any blows were struck about this but it got quite heated, apparently.  The sign was there when we came through the airport; it will be interesting to see if it is still there when we leave (but if it is, that might simply mean that they have agreed to remove it but haven’t got round to doing so yet).

There is a language called Hausa, which is spoken as a native tongue by a large portion of Nigerians, and also serves as a lingua franca particularly among Muslims (who are much more numerous in the north of Ghana than further south).  It seems to be a Muslin/North & West African equivalent of Swahili.  I’ve not encountered many people who have even heard of Swahili.

The countries bordering Ghana – Togo, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso – are all French-speaking (probably to the same extent as Ghana is English-speaking).  I do occasionally hear French spoken, but exclusively by people from Burkina or Togo when addressing me.  I’ve never heard a Ghanaian speak French.  Just four of the 45 Junior High Schools in Bawku West District offer French to BECE (ie a 3-year course leading to a standard which is a bit below GCSE).  Almost nobody takes it seriously; only about 5% of pupils even pass, and those who do get the lowest possible pass grades.  My advice is, if you only speak French, pick somewhere else to visit!

I’ve wondered how Ghana got into this position from a historical perspective.  I’ve wondered less about how it will evolve, because I think it’s fairly clear that the number of people in Ghana who speak English confidently and well will increase as time passes – though I think it will be a long time before a baby born in one of the villages around Zebilla hears English as his first language.  That might happen sooner in Accra.

English was the colonial language – though that is a statement which requires clarification.  The first European people to come to Ghana were the Portuguese, who landed on the coast in 1471.  Over the next 300 – 400 years the Dutch, the Swedish and the English were all here in addition, though not in large numbers, not necessarily continuously and not all at the same time.  Most of the Europeans stayed at the coast – they set up trading posts with the agreement of the tribes who lived on the coast (principally the Asante and the Ga) and traded with those people, who in turn managed the trading of goods – both import and export – with other tribes who lived further inland.  Possibly some of the more adventurous Europeans might have made small expeditions into the interior during this period so might have come into brief contact with local people who didn’t live directly on the coast – but my guess (I haven’t researched this point) is that such contact will have been brief and will not have resulted in any significant numbers of local people acquiring any significant knowledge of or fluency in any European language. 

Eventually, in the later part of the 19^th century, England became the “colonial power” and from this point onwards one assumes that they did begin to make inroads further into the country and this presumably resulted in more local people acquiring some English language competence.  The British weren’t necessarily loved universally during this period – there was some significant armed conflict between the British and the Ashanti kingdom (in the middle of the southern half of modern Ghana), and I have seen references to fighting between detachments of British troops and the people who lived in the Tongo hills (just outside Bolgatanga – so over five hundred miles north of the coast) – and I imagine that there were other instances of localized unhappiness which will have resulted in a brush between the local people and the military wing of the colonial administration.  But, as far as I know, these were isolated problems.  The British didn’t emigrate to Ghana in huge numbers; those who were here were either functionaries of the colonial administration (plus presumably the associated households and support infrastructure) or traders; and they lived mainly on or close to the coast – the capital of the British Gold Coast colony was Cape Coast initially, then Accra from 1877. 

As mentioned in previous blogs, the colony was subjected to “indirect rule”, meaning that the country was actually ruled/run/administered by the local people under the control (I’m not clear how real or notional this control was) of the colonial authorities.  It strikes me as possible in these circumstances that many of the local people never even saw a European, let alone interacted with them sufficiently frequently to acquire competence in their language.

Another group of who came to Ghana, possibly quite early on, were missionaries.  These came with the direct intention of interacting with the local people and “bringing them to God”, and in the process educating them.  I haven’t researched the activities of the missionaries but it seems likely to me that because of them there will have been some places where English was present continuously over periods of years and that local people will have learnt to understand and speak it.  But having travelled the length of Ghana (though not its breadth yet), I can’t help feeling that in linguistic terms the missionaries’ influence must have been small and isolated.

Ghana’s independence came in 1957.  The borders of Ghana were drawn up at a relatively late stage and it’s worth noting that some parts of the north and east had previously been part of French or German-speaking colonies.  I have seen absolutely no evidence of a legacy of linguistic competence in either French or German in those communities.  I think it’s fair to conclude that if Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, had chosen a language other than English as the national language, the legacy of English might have disappeared equally completely Ghana from by now.

But Nkrumah chose English – and with hindsight I think it was a good choice.  Entirely by chance, Ghana is already using what seems to be the emerging global language.

By 1957 there was a backbone of road and railway infrastructure in Ghana; at least some Ghanaians (Kwame Nkrumah for one) had obtained access to education and travelled widely outside Ghana; cities were growing inside Ghana; radio was well established in the developed world and the wealthy had televisions, and mass communication was beginning to be possible even where the majority of the population lived in small rural communities.  The British had made a decent fist of making education available to the colonial subjects, though it was by no means universal, and the new Government of Ghana would expand the education more than five-fold in its first few years.  And, since education was carried out in English, by this means more than any other, a substantial number of Ghanaians will have acquired some knowledge of English.  But it was far from the case that most Ghanaians spoke or understood English well – the majority didn’t at all, and most of those who did speak or understand English had only a rudimentary grasp.  

That starting point for the country of Ghana was 57 years ago.  It’s a short time and I think a lot has happened with regard to Ghanaian English – not least, it has developed an identity of its own.  There is no doubt in my mind that the expansion of education in Ghana is the force which has led to the position where guide books can write that Ghanaians speak English – even if it perhaps isn’t quite true yet.  In wishing Ghanaians every success with the ongoing process of developing their country (which I think is still a rocky road ahead), I have every confidence that English will flourish here – and if I get the chance to come back in twenty years I’ll be fascinated to see how it has changed.