Have you realised that English speakers in Ghana tend to sometimes interchange the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’? Well, I have! Have you ever wondered why?
I once was narrating a movie I watched to someone and somewhere during the narration she got confused. She got confused because at a point she didn’t know whom I was referring to.
The variety of English spoken by Ghanaians is ‘Ghanaian’ English. There are several varieties of English often referred to as the ‘New Englishes’ by researchers. These include Singaporean English, Nigerian English and Chinese English. I have been doing a lot of reading on Ghanaian English lately and I have realised how different English spoken in Ghana is from English spoken in England, Australia or even America.
Most varieties of English are somewhat different in both spoken and written forms. This is often typical in a home where other languages are spoken.
In societies like Ghana where there are other indigenous languages (such us Ga, Twi, Ewe), the use of English is often influenced by these home languages as well as the culture behind the language. Language and culture are linked. People learn about their culture, thus, the culture plays a key role in their use of language. In Ghana, this means coining English words in the indigenous languages that do not seem to have original English words or importing the local name into English, such as ‘waakye’ and ‘Kwashiorkor’.
Some Ghanaian English speakers often interchange the pronouns ‘he’ or ‘she’ because nearly all indigenous Ghanaian languages do not have its equivalent and rather use a gender neutral pronoun. In Twi the sentence ‘He is going home’ or ‘She is going home’ will be ‘ɔɔkɔ fie’. In Ga, ‘eeya shia’ means both ‘He is going home’ or ‘She is going home’. When we speak English, we sometimes transfer this rule in Twi or Ga to English. We often need to think more carefully when we are speaking English to use the appropriate third person pronoun. Honestly, this can sometimes be a bit daunting if you become conscious of it and want to use the right pronoun.
Related to the variety of English spoken in Ghana is the use of some words that are used differently in other contexts or considered ‘old’. A word like ‘vacation’ in Ghana refers to school holidays. Elsewhere, ‘vacation’ means going on holiday and ‘school holidays’ means children are on break from school. In Ghana, ‘tea’ refers to beverages such as milo, tea, chocomilo, Ovaltine etc whereas ‘tea’ in England means ‘a drink made from pouring boiling water on (tea) leaves’.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were talking to someone who is not a Ghanaian, and they do not understand something you have said? Could it have been about something you said that was more ‘Ghanaian English’ than the variety of English the person is used to? Sometimes it might be helpful to rephrase it or describe it to help them understand. The vice versa does happen too.
Feel free to let them know you didn’t understand what they said. It’s not a crime! Sometimes your facial expression can give you away anyway. It’s great when we learn the background behind that particular expression in that variety of English!
The author is a Speech and Language Therapist/Clinical Tutor at the University of Ghana.
