Ga language

Encyclopedia : G : GA : GAL : Ga language

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.

Contents

1 Classification
2 Geographic distribution
3 Phonology

3.1 Consonants
3.2 Vowels
3.3 Tones
3.4 Phonotactics

4 Writing system
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

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

**Consonant phonemes**
	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental		Post- alveolar (Palato- alveolar)			Velar		Glottal	Labial-velar		Labia- lized palatal		Labia- lized velar
Plosive	p	b			t	d				k	ɡ		kp	ɡb			kʷ	ɡʷ
Nasal		m				n			ɲ		ŋ			ŋm
Fricative			f	v	s	z	ʃ					h			ʃʷ		hʷ
Affricate							tʃ	dʒ							tʃʷ	dʒʷ
Approximant									j							jʷ		w
Lateral approximant						l

Vowels

Ga has 7 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels. All of the vowels have 3 different vowel lengths: short, long or extra long (used in the simple future and the simple past negative forms).

Monophthongs Front Central Back
Close i u
Close-mid e o
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

Monophthongs Front Central Back
Close ĩ ũ
Close-mid
Open-mid ɛ̃ ɔ̃
Open ã

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back
Close	ĩ		ũ
Close-mid
Open-mid	ɛ̃		ɔ̃
Open		ã

Tones

Ga has 2 tones, high and low. Like many West African languages, it has tone terracing.

Phonotactics

The possible syllable structures are V, CV, CCV where the second consonant is /l/, or a syllabic nasal.

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 do not correspond with the same letter as the IPA symbol (eg B represents /b/):

J j - /dʒ/
Y y - /j/

Digraphs and trigraphs:

Gb gb - /gb/
Gw gw - /ɡʷ/
Hw hw - /hʷ/
Jw jw - /dʒʷ/
Kp kp - /kp/
Kw kw - /kʷ/
Ny ny - /ɲ/
Ŋm ŋm - /ŋm/
Ŋw ŋw - [ŋʷ]
Sh sh - /ʃ/
Ts ts - /tʃ/
Shw shw - /ʃʷ/
Tsw tsw - /tʃʷ/

References

External links

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