Everything about The Ga Language totally explained
The
Ga language is a
Kwa language spoken in
Ghana, in and around the capital
Accra. It has a phonemic distinction between 3 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.
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 which the Bureau of Ghana Languages publishes material in.
Phonology
Consonants
Ga has 31 consonant phonemes.
- [ŋʷ] is an allophone of /w/ which occurs before nasals and is represented with its own digraph in writing.
- /l/ may be realised as [r] when between a consonant and vowel
- /j/ has an allophone [ɲ] before nasal vowels
Vowels
Ga has 7 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels. All of the vowels have 3 different
vowel lengths: short, long or extra long (the latter appears only in the simple future and the simple past negative forms).
Tones
Ga has 2 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, for example
ekome, "one", V-CV-CV;
kakadaŋŋ, "long", CV-CV-CVC;
mli, "body", 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 by Christian Jacobsen Protten, who was the son of a Danish soldier and an African woman, in about 1764. 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, eg '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 don't correspond with the same letter as the
IPA symbol (eg B represents /b/):
J j - /ʤ/
Y y - /j/
Digraphs and trigraphs:
Gb gb - /ɡb/
Gw gw - /ɡʷ/
Hw hw - /hʷ/
Jw jw - /ʤʷ/
Kp kp - /kp/
Kw kw - /kʷ/
Ny ny - /ɲ/
Ŋm ŋm - /ŋm/
Ŋw ŋw - [ŋʷ] (an allophone rather than a phoneme)
Sh sh - /ʃ/
Ts ts - /ʧ/
Shw shw - /ʃʷ/
Tsw tsw - /ʧʷ/Further Information
Get more info on 'Ga Language'.
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