Twi: The Everyday Voice of Ghana

Step off a plane at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, and one of the first words you will see is Akwaaba: "welcome". Take a taxi into the city, and the driver may greet you with "Ɛte sɛn?" (How are you?). In the markets of Kumasi, on Ghanaian radio, in highlife songs and church sermons, and in Ghanaian communities from London to New York, the language you will hear most often is Twi. It is the everyday voice of Ghana.

Twi and Akan

Twi is part of the Akan language cluster, the most widely spoken group of languages in Ghana. The Akan peoples, who include the Asante, Akuapem, Akyem, Bono, Fante and others, make up the country's largest ethnic grouping, and their languages are mutually intelligible to a large degree.

The main forms of Akan are:

• Asante Twi, spoken in the Ashanti Region around Kumasi, and the most widely used variety.
• Akuapem Twi, spoken in the hills north of Accra; it was the first variety to be standardised in writing.
• Fante (Mfantse), spoken along the central coast, around Cape Coast.
• Bono, spoken in the Bono regions.

Linguists often use "Akan" for the whole language and "Twi" for the Asante and Akuapem varieties, but in everyday speech, many Ghanaians simply call it Twi. Akan is also spoken in parts of eastern Côte d'Ivoire.

Millions of Ghanaians speak Akan as their first language, and many more speak it as a second language, making it the most important lingua franca in southern and central Ghana.

Sounds and tones

Twi is a tonal language: the pitch of a syllable can change a word's meaning. It also uses two special vowel letters, ɛ (an open "e", as in "bed") and ɔ (an open "o", as in "law"), which appear in the Ghanaian alphabet. Another feature is vowel harmony: vowels in a word tend to belong to the same set, which affects how prefixes are pronounced.

Missionaries, dictionaries and the Bible

In the 19th century, missionaries of the Basel Mission, a Swiss-German Protestant society, settled in Akropong, in the Akuapem hills. Working closely with Ghanaian scholars and teachers, such as David Asante, one of the first Ghanaians ordained by the mission, they studied the language and developed a written form.

The German missionary Johann Gottlieb Christaller published a grammar and, in 1871, a translation of the Bible into Akuapem Twi. He also compiled a large collection of more than 3,000 Twi proverbs, and in 1881 he published a great dictionary of the language. These works shaped written Twi for generations, and the Bible translation made Akuapem Twi a prestigious written standard.

The language of the linguist

In Akan tradition, a chief does not usually speak directly in public. Instead, he speaks through his okyeame, often translated as "linguist" or "spokesperson". The okyeame is a master of eloquent speech, proverbs and diplomacy, who relays and polishes the chief's words. The linguist's staff, topped with a carved symbol, often illustrates a proverb. The Ghanaian scholar Kwesi Yankah has written a celebrated study of this art.

Proverbs and wisdom

Twi is rich in proverbs (ɛbɛ), and speaking well means knowing when to use them. A few examples:

• Obi nkyerɛ abɔfra Nyame — "No one shows a child the Supreme Being": some truths are obvious to everyone.
• Tikoro nkɔ agyina — "One head does not go into council": decisions need consultation.
• Sɛ wo werɛ fi na wosan kɔfa a, yenkyi — "It is not wrong to go back for what you forgot", the proverb behind the famous Sankofa symbol.

Many adinkra symbols, printed on cloth and carved into objects, are linked to Twi proverbs and sayings.

Names and days

Akan culture gives each child a day name according to the day of the week on which they were born, such as Kofi (Friday) for a boy or Ama (Saturday) for a girl. We explored this tradition in our story on Akan day names.

Twi in the world

With Ghanaian migration, Twi is now heard in London, Toronto, New York and beyond. It is the language of much Ghanaian music, from highlife to hiplife and azonto, and of Ghanaian films and comedy. Some researchers have also suggested that a few words in Caribbean creole languages, particularly in Jamaica, may come from Akan, since many enslaved people taken from the Gold Coast were Akan speakers. Such word histories are often debated, but the Akan influence on the Caribbean, seen in Anansi stories and in Maroon communities, is well documented.

A few words of Twi

• Akwaaba — welcome
• Maakye / Maaha / Maadwo — good morning / good afternoon / good evening
• Ɛte sɛn? — how are you?
• Me ho yɛ — I'm fine
• Medaase — thank you
• Aane / Daabi — yes / no
• Nante yie — goodbye (literally "walk well")

Why it matters

Twi is more than a means of communication. It carries the wisdom of Akan proverbs, the art of the okyeame, the names given to children, and the songs of highlife and church choirs. It shows how an African language can grow, through trade, migration, missions and media, into the shared voice of a modern nation. And it begins every encounter with a single generous word: akwaaba.

Further reading

• J.G. Christaller, A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language Called Tshi (Twi) (Basel Evangelical Missionary Society, 1881; 2nd ed. 1933)
• Florence Abena Dolphyne, The Akan (Twi-Fante) Language: Its Sound Systems and Tonal Structure (Ghana Universities Press, 1988)
• Kwesi Yankah, Speaking for the Chief: Okyeame and the Politics of Akan Royal Oratory (Indiana University Press, 1995)