Ga language

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Kwa language spoken in Ghana

title: "Ga language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["ga–dangme-languages", "languages-of-ghana"] description: "Kwa language spoken in Ghana" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Kwa language spoken in Ghana ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Ga
nativename	Gã
pronunciation
states	Ghana
region	South-eastern Ghana, around Accra
ethnicity	Ga
speakers	745,000
date	2016
ref	e25
familycolor	Niger-Congo
fam2	Atlantic–Congo
fam3	Volta-Congo
fam4	Kwa
fam5	Ga–Dangme
nation	None. Government sponsored language.
script	Latin (Ga alphabet)
Ghanaian braille
iso2	gaa
iso3	gaa
glotto	gaaa1244
glottorefname	Ga
notice	IPA
::

Ga is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, in and around the capital Accra, by the Ga people. There are also some speakers in Togo, Benin and western 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, and together they form the Ga–Dangme branch within Kwa.

Ga is the predominant language of the Ga people, an ethnic group of Ghana. Ethnic Ga family names (surnames) include Owoo, Lartey, Lomo, 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 Ghana, in and around the capital Accra. 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. ::data[format=table title="'''Consonant phonemes'''"] | | Labial | Dental | Postalveolar and palatal | Velar | Labial- velar | Glottal | Plain | Labialized | Plain | Lab.v | Plain | Lab. | Nasal | Stop | Fricative | Approximant | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ::

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

::data[format=table title="[[Monophthong]]s"]

Front	Central	Back	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	Close	Close-mid	Open-mid	Open




::

Tones

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

Phonotactics

The syllable structure of Ga is gaa, 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

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Alphabet_in_Rasmus_Rask,_Vejledning_til_Akra-Sproget,_1828.png" caption="Ga alphabet of 1828"] ::

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-based alphabet and has 26 letters. It has three additional letter symbols which correspond to the 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 consonants where it distinguishes between minimal pairs.

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 IPA 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 published over 200 Ga proverbs and sayings with English translations, taken from Johannes Zimmermann's Grammatical Sketch of the Akra Language. Here are some of those sayings as recorded with its historical orthography:{{efn|In the modern orthography, these would be written as:

Tutsɔfa kɛ la yeee.
Kɛji na lɛ, gbɔmɛi fɛɛ diɔ.
Nu ni akɛbaagbe la lɛ, ataooo lɛ krɔŋkrɔŋ.
Akɛ hiŋmɛii enyɔ kwɛɛɛ tɔ mli.}}
"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

Smith, Noel. "Christian Jacob Protten".
Dreydoppel, Otto. "Christian Jacob Protten".
Sebald, Peter. (1994). "Christian Jacob Protten Africanus (1715-1769) - erster Missionar einer deutschen Missionsgesellschaft in Schwarzafrika". Kolonien und Missionen..
(June 2012). "This Month in Moravian History: Christian Protten - Missionary to the Gold Coast of Africa". Moravian Archives.
"Johannes Zimmerman".
"Zimmermann, Johannes – Life and work – Johannes-Rebmann-Stiftung".
Reindorf, Carl Christian. (1895). "History of the Gold Coast and Asante, Based on Traditions and Historical Facts: Comprising a Period of More Than Three Centuries from about 1500 to 1860". The author.
Reindorf, Carl Christian. (2018-04-21). "History of the Gold Coast and Asante (Classic Reprint)". LULU Press.
Burton, Richard (1865). ''[https://archive.org/details/witandwisdomfro01burtgoog/page/n168/mode/2up?view=theater Wit and Wisdom from West Africa]''. pp. 133-175.
[Johannes Zimmermann (1858). https://archive.org/details/agrammaticalske01zimmgoog Grammatical Sketch of the Akra Language] pp. 158-9

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