Deep History. The Languages of Northern Ghana

The Languages of Northern Ghana

MANY TRIBES IN NORTH

One way of identifying the peoples of Northern Ghana is through the languages that they speak.   Language can be viewed as a rough guide to ethnic differentiation.   A people may speak the same or similar dialects of the same language yet not see themselves as one ethnic unit.   Social and cultural differences as well as traditional enmities might divide such people despite shared language.   In pre-colonial times it was possible for communities to speak similar dialects and yet not have a sense of common ethnic identity.

The peoples of the Northern Regions of Ghana speak a variety of related languages. However, in spite of the closeness of their languages they did not have the opportunity to develop a pan-Northern Ghanaian linguistic medium of communication among themselves.   Therefore, even today these people use several languages including English (if they are educated literates), Hausa, (for those who have lived in the bigger Northern towns where Hausa trading communities had come into existence) and sometimes Twi, (for those who have lived in Southern Ghana) as media of wider communication.   Within the Districts some local languages may serve as media of communication between people who do not share the same first language or mother tongue.

Most of the languages spoken indigenously in Northern Ghana have been classified as members of the "Gur" sub-family of languages.   These languages are not however unrelated to other West African languages, since Gur itself is a branch of the North-Volta-Congo group of languages which together with the Kwa group (Southern Ghanaian languages belong to this family) and several others make up the Volta-Congo sub-branch of languages found mainly in West Africa.   The Gur languages are not however exclusive to Northern Ghana; many of the languages spoken in the northern parts of Cote D'Ivoire, Togo and Benin are members of the Gur branch of languages. The linguistic relationship between some of the Northern Ghanaian languages and some languages spoken in Burkina Faso, such as Moore, is so close that we can talk of the existence of mutual intelligibility.   However, not all Northern Ghanaian languages belong to Gur.   A number of languages such as those spoken by the Gonja people (Ngbanyito), the Nchumuru, and the Nawuri people are Guang languages and as such fall within the Volta-Comoe sub-branch of the Kwa group of languages.   Although the history of the Gonja people indicates a colonization of the vast area once occupied by the Gonja kingdom by a warrior group of Mende or Wangara origin, there are very few traces of the original language spoken by the invaders of the area who came from further north under the leadership of Jakpa.   Anufo (Chokosi) spoken in the northern-east corner of the Northern Region around Chereponi in the Chere-Saboba District in fact a Bia language akin to Nzema and the like.  These are thus closer to the Akan languages of southern Ghana than they are to any Northern Ghana languages.