Accra is the capital city of the Greater Accra region, as well as the capital of Ghana. This is to clarify that Accra also identifies as a city name in the Greater Accra region of Ghana. However, people also refer to the region as Accra, in this sense, not meaning Accra as a city name in the Greater Accra region, but Accra as a region. Thus when a person in a different region says I am going to Accra,it does not strictly mean he is coming to the Accra city but to any city in the Greater Accra region. For this, Accra used in this writeup refers to as a region rather than a city in the region.
The indigenes of Accra are known as Ga- Adangme (Ga-Adangme people). Just as the name for the indigenes, so are the spoken languages. Ga Adangme people speak Ga Adangme, and is actually a combination of two tribes that make up the people of the greater Accra region, but the focus of this write up is on the Ga people and their language;Ga. The Ga language is closely related to Adangme and that is why they form Ga-Adangme collectively.
Predominantly, Ga is the language of the Ga people, and ideally, the supposed language to be spoken in cities and towns that make up the whole Greater Accra region is the Ga language. However, migration has affected reality, and unfortunately, the largest spoken language currently in Accra is not Ga. This is due to the fact that the largest population of Accra is the Akan ethnicity which occupies 38.9% of the total population of Accra, with Ga population amounting to 30.7%. There are also other ethnicities sharing in the entire population percentage of Accra. The major language spoken in Accra now is Twi, a language of the Akan ethnicity. Native Ga speakers abandon their language to speak the Twi language because either the person involved isn’t a Ga or will speak Twi to facilitate easy effective communication.
Gone were the days where typical Ga communities like Teshie, La, Osu, Nungua, Ga Mashie, Jamestown, Tema New Town speak only Ga. Presently, there are more Twi speakers found in these communities too. In some of the basic schools found in Accra , there are a number of them that do not teach the Ga language at all but rather teach Twi. There are also some that teach both for the student to decide between the two, which he/she wants to learn.
The media can be said to have promoted this menace more. Out of the numerous local radio stations in Accra, only six broadcast in the Ga language, representing 10%. Meanwhile, it is due to how widely Twi is spoken in Accra thus much blame cannot be apportioned to them, especially when the Ga traditional leaders are not fighting and pushing much for their language dominance. However, Akan is the largest ethnicity in Ghana, and as long as Acrra remains the capital that headquarters numerous companies, institutions, and running of state’s affairs, so will migration to Accra remain incessant. Majority of Akan states officials are immigrants in Accra, who build permanent families, properties and do all their lives here in Accra.
Generally, one is likely to start conversing with you in the Twi language, and gradually Twi is becoming the pass language to validate one’s Ghanaian citizenship in Accra, to the point that your inability to express yourself well in the Twi language gets followed up with “are you not a Ghanaian?”. This is narrowing down the area specific that speaks Ga in Accra.
