Ga language
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (September 2015) |
Ga | |
---|---|
Gã | |
Pronunciation | [ɡã] |
Native to | Ghana |
Region | South-eastern Ghana, around Accra |
Ethnicity | Ga |
Native speakers | 745,000 (2016)[1] |
Latin (Ga alphabet) Ghanaian braille | |
Official status | |
Official language in | None. Government sponsored language. |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | gaa |
ISO 639-3 | gaa |
Glottolog | gaaa1244 |
Ga is a
. It has a phonemic distinction between three vowel lengths.Classification
Ga is a
Ga is the predominant language of the
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.
Labial | Dental | Postalveolar and palatal |
Velar | Labial-
velar |
Glottal | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plain | Labialized | Plain | Lab.v | Plain | Lab. | |||||||||||
Nasal
|
m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ŋ͡m | |||||||||||
Stop
|
p | b | t | d | tʃ | dʒ | tʃʷ | dʒʷ | k | ɡ | kʷ | ɡʷ | k͡p | ɡ͡b | ||
Fricative
|
f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʃʷ | h | hʷ | ||||||||
Approximant
|
l | j | ɥ | w |
- [ŋʷ] is an allophone of /w/ which occurs before nasals and is represented with its own digraph in writing.
- /l/ may be realised as [ɹ] when between a consonant and vowel
- /j/ has an allophone [ɲ] 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).
Front | Central | Back | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |
Close | i | ĩ | u | ũ | ||
Close-mid | e | o | ||||
Open-mid | ɛ | ɛ̃ | ɔ | ɔ̃ | ||
Open | a | ã |
Tones
Ga has two tones, high and low. Like many West African languages, it has tone terracing.
Phonotactics
The syllable structure of Ga is (C)(C)V(C), where the second phoneme of an initial consonant cluster can only be /l/ 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.[2][3][4][5] 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.[6][7][8][9] The orthography has been revised a number of times since 1968, with the most recent review in 1990.
The writing system is a
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 /b/):
- J j - /d͡ʒ/
- Y y - /j/
Digraphs and trigraphs:
- Gb gb - /ɡ͡b/
- Gw gw - /ɡʷ/
- Hw hw - /hʷ/
- Jw jw - /d͡ʒʷ/
- Kp kp - /k͡p/
- Kw kw - /kʷ/
- Ny ny - /ɲ/
- Ŋm ŋm - /ŋ͡m/
- Ŋw ŋw - [ŋʷ] (an allophone rather than a phoneme)
- Sh sh - /ʃ/
- Ts ts - /t͡ʃ/
- Shw shw - /ʃʷ/
- Tsw tsw - /t͡ʃʷ/
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Ga at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ Smith, Noel. "Christian Jacob Protten". dacb.org. Retrieved 2018-10-14.
- ^ Dreydoppel, Otto. "Christian Jacob Protten". dacb.org. Retrieved 2018-10-14.
- OCLC 610701345.
- ^ "This Month in Moravian History: Christian Protten - Missionary to the Gold Coast of Africa" (PDF). Moravian Archives (74). Bethlehem, PA. June 2012. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
- ^ "Johannes Zimmerman". dacb.org. Archived from the original on 2017-11-24. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
- ^ "Zimmermann, Johannes – Life and work – Johannes-Rebmann-Stiftung". www.johannes-rebmann-stiftung.de. Archived from the original on 2017-11-24. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
- ISBN 9780598937520.
- ISBN 9781330819852.
References
- M. E. Kropp Dakubu, ed. (1977). West African Language Data Sheets Vol 1. West African Linguistic Society.
- M. E. Kropp Dakubu, ed. (1988). The Languages of Ghana. London: Kegan Paul International for the International African Institute. ISBN 0-7103-0210-X.
- M. E. Kropp Dakubu (1999). Ga-English dictionary with English-Ga Index. Accra: Black Mask Ltd. ISBN 9964-960-50-6.
- M. E. Kropp Dakubu (2002). Ga Phonology. Legon: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
- Bureau of Ghana Languages (1995). Ga Wiemɔ Kɛ Ŋmaa. Accra:Bureau of Ghana Languages. ISBN 9964-2-0276-8.
- A. A. Amartey (1989). Beginners' Ga. Ga Society.
- Campbell, Akua Asantewaa (2017). A Grammar of Gã (Doctor of Philosophy thesis). Rice University. hdl:1911/102269.