Words that came into Ga

Ga has been spoken on the Accra plains for centuries. Over that time it took in words from the traders and missionaries who came to the coast, and made them its own. Follow those words home to Accra.

Ga and its people

Ga belongs to the Kwa languages, part of the large Niger-Congo family of Africa. Its closest relative is Dangme, the language of the Adangbe peoples to the north and east of Accra, including the Krobo and Ada. Linguists treat the two as one branch, Ga-Dangme, and they share much of their basic vocabulary. Dangme is thought to keep more of the older language from which both descend.

Ga families keep their own traditions about where their ancestors came from, and historians have not settled the question. Accra grew from a series of settlements founded at different times by different peoples, who came to share one Ga identity. Those settlements were flourishing by the 1400s.

The Ga capital then was Ayawaso, inland near present-day Pokuase. Tradition credits its founding to Ayi Kushi. Between about 1677 and 1680, Akwamu forces destroyed it, and the Ga moved to the coast. There they built Ga Mashie, the old heart of Accra.

Missionaries of the Basel Mission wrote Ga down in detail in the 1800s. Johannes Zimmermann's vocabulary of 1858, on which this dictionary is built, shows how Ga was spelled then. He wrote akutšo for the word now spelled akutso, a clan or quarter of a town.

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