Ga is a

Kwa language The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of Ivory Coast, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo. The Kwa family belongs to the Niger-Congo ...

spoken in

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

, in and around the capital

Accra Accra (; or ''Gaga''; ; Ewe: Gɛ; ) is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , had a population of ...

, by the

Ga people The Ga-Dangbe, Ga-Dangme, Ga-Adangme or Ga-Adangbe are an ethnic group in Ghana, Togo and Benin. The Ga or Gan and Dangbe or Dangme people are grouped as part of the Ga–Dangme ethnolinguistic group. The Ga-Dangmes are one ethnic group that li ...

. There are also some speakers in

Togo Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to Ghana–Togo border, the west, Benin to Benin–Togo border, the east and Burkina Faso to Burkina Faso–Togo border, the north. It is one of the le ...

Benin Benin, officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It was formerly known as Dahomey. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its po ...

and western

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

. It has a phonemic distinction between three vowel lengths.

Classification

Ga is a Kwa language, part of the Niger–Congo family. It is very closely related to

Adangme The Dangme language, also ''Adangme'', ''Dangbe'' or ''Adaŋgbi'', is a Kwa language spoken in south-eastern Ghana by the Dangme people ''(Dangmeli)''. They are part of the larger Ga-Dangme ethnic group. Klogbi is a variant, spoken by the Kl ...

, and together they form the Ga–Dangme branch within Kwa. Ga is the predominant language of the

, an ethnic group of Ghana. Ethnic Ga family names (surnames) include

Owoo Owoo is a surname. Notable people with the name include: * Nii Kwate Owoo, Ghanaian academic and filmmaker * James Owoo, Ghanaian athlete * The Owoo family, claimed original owners of the land of the Achimota Forest {{surname ...

, Lartey, Nortey, Aryee, Lamptey, Tetteh, Ankrah, Tetteyfio, Laryea, Ayitey, Okine, Bortey, Quarshie, Quaye, Quaynor, Ashong, Kotei, Clottey, Nai, Sowah, Odoi, Maale, Ako, Adjetey, Annang, Yemoh,and Abbey.

Geographic distribution

Ga is spoken in south-eastern

, in and around the capital

. It has relatively little dialectal variation. Although English is the official language of Ghana, Ga is one of 16 languages in which the ''Bureau of Ghana Languages'' publishes material.

Phonology

Consonants

Ga has 31 consonant phonemes. * is an allophone of which occurs before nasals and is represented with its own digraph in writing. * may be realised as when between a consonant and vowel * has an allophone before nasal vowels

Vowels

Ga has seven oral vowels and five nasal vowels. All of the vowels have three different

vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many ...

s: short, long or extra long (the latter appears only in the simple future and the simple past negative forms).

Tones

Ga has two tones, high and low. Like many West African languages, it has

tone terracing Tone terracing is a type of phonetic downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone, shift downward in pitch ( downstep) after certain other tones. The result is that a tone may be realized at a certain pitch over a short stretch of ...

Phonotactics

The syllable structure of Ga is , where the second phoneme of an initial consonant cluster can only be and a final consonant may only be a (short or long) nasal consonant, e.g. ''ekome'', "one", V-CV-CV; ''kakadaŋŋ'', "long", CV-CV-CVC; ''mli'', "inside", CCV. Ga syllables may also consist solely of a syllabic nasal, for example in the first syllable of ''ŋshɔ'', "sea".

Writing system

Ga was first written in about 1764, by Christian Jacob Protten (1715–1769), who was the son of a Danish soldier and a Ga woman. Protten was a Gold Coast Euro-African Moravian missionary and educator in the eighteenth century. In the mid-1800s, the Germany missionary Johannes Zimmermann (1825–1876), assisted by the Gold Coast historian Carl Christian Reindorf (1834–1917) and others, worked extensively on the grammar of the language, published a dictionary and translated the entire Bible into the Ga language. The orthography has been revised a number of times since 1968, with the most recent review in 1990. The writing system is a

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

-based

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

and has 26 letters. It has three additional letter symbols which correspond to the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation ** International Phonetic Association, the organization behind the alphabet * India pale ale, a style of beer * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA ...

symbols. There are also eleven digraphs and two trigraphs. Vowel length is represented by doubling or tripling the vowel symbol, e.g. 'a', 'aa' and 'aaa'. Tones are not represented. Nasalisation is represented after

oral consonant An oral consonant is a consonant sound in speech that is made by allowing air to escape from the mouth, as opposed to the nose, as in a nasal consonant. To create an intended oral consonant sound, the entire mouth plays a role in modifying the ai ...

s where it distinguishes between

minimal pairs In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate t ...

. The Ga alphabet is: Aa, Bb, Dd, Ee, Ɛɛ, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Ŋŋ, Oo, Ɔɔ, Pp, Rr, Ss, Tt, Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy, Zz The following letters represent sounds which do not correspond with the same letter as the

symbol (e.g. B represents ): *J j - *Y y - Digraphs and trigraphs: *Gb gb - *Gw gw - *Hw hw - *Jw jw - *Kp kp - *Kw kw - *Ny ny - *Ŋm ŋm - *Ŋw ŋw - (an allophone rather than a phoneme) *Sh sh - *Ts ts - *Shw shw - *Tsw tsw -

Oral literature

In his 1865 collection
''Wit and Wisdom from West Africa''

Richard Francis Burton Captain (British Army and Royal Marines), Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Order of St Michael and St George, KCMG, Royal Geographical Society#Fellowship, FRGS, (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, army officer, orien ...

published over 200 Ga proverbs and sayings with English translations,Burton, Richard (1865).
Wit and Wisdom from West Africa
'. pp. 133-175. taken from Johannes Zimmermann'
''Grammatical Sketch of the Akra Language''
Here are some of those sayings: *"''Tutsofa ke la yee.''" "Gunpowder and fire do not agree." (#7) *"''Ke dse na le, gbomei fe dio.''" "If it is dark, all men are black." (#11) *"''Nu ni ake-bagbe la le, ataoole kronkron.''" "Clear water is not wanted for quenching fire." (#13) *"''Ake hinmeii enyo kwee to mli.''" "Not with both eyes people look into a bottle." (#15)

Footnotes

References

* * * * * * *

External links

My First GaDangme Dictionary
kasahorow
Short tutorial on counting in the Ga languageYoung boy speaking about Ghanaian tribes in Ga language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ga Language Ga–Dangme languages Languages of Ghana