Ghana: Indigenous Languages, English, and an Emerging National Identity

Abstract

Abstract Like most sub-Saharan countries, Ghana is highly multilingual and linguistically complex. But at the same time, the Akan language with its close relatives squarely occupies two-thirds of the country, and has had and continues to have a strong influence on the rest of it. Although it may well be true that the national geo-political borders were a colonial creation based more on the relations between the European colonizing powers than on the local situation, it is also a fact that today’s Ghana almost exactly coincides with the territory and sphere of influence of the Akan-speaking Asante (Ashanti) empire in the nineteenth century (Wilks 1993: 203). However this does not necessarily simplify the problem of the relationships between language, ethnic identity, nationalism, and the existence and nature of Ghanaian national identity, and might even be said to complicate it.