AKAN (FANTSE) - ENGLISH DICTIONARY PROJECT
This project
aims to develop a comprehensive dictionary of Akan (Fantse) with
English translation and an up-to-date bibliographic information on the
language. Since J. G. Christaller published A Grammar of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Twi) based on the Akuapem Dialect with Reference to Other Dialects in 1875 and A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Twi)
in 1881, and the Committee developed a unified orthography for Akan in
1975, there has not been any undertaking to provide a comprehensive and
up-to-date dictionary of any of the dialects of the Akan (Fantse and
Twi) language. Publications (both print and electronic) resulting from
this project will be an important boost to Akan linguistic studies, and
will aid scholars and teachers in the study and teaching of the Akan
language and the history and culture of the Akan people. Scholars
engaged in
Akan is an
official literary language used for education through the university.
It is used as the medium of instruction for the first three grade
levels of the primary school in areas where it is the mother tongue.
Standardized orthographies exist for Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi and
Fantse. Roman alphabet writing system for Akan has existed since the
middle of the nineteenth century through the pioneering work of the
Basel Mission and the Methodist Mission.
The Akan constitute about 44 percent of
There is a
number of historical, socio-economic, educational, and cultural factors
which favor the launching of this new Akan dictionary project at the
present time:
In spite of adverse economic conditions, the production of Akan literature has never ceased. The government-sponsored Bureau of Ghana Languages (established in 1951) and some private publishing agencies have continued to maintain a steady if modest output mostly of elementary schoolbooks, traditional stories as well as plays and novels. Even if the market is visibly dominated by English literature, literary creativity in Akan—some of it by well known writers—is alive (see Arkaifi, 1976 and Warren, 1976; and for an incomplete sample of current work in Akan, one may consult the back cover of booklets recently published by the Bureau of Ghana Languages).
Akan—alongside
with many other Ghanaian languages—is also being used as a means of
spreading adult literacy and for certain aspects of mass education.
Besides daily broadcasts and regular weekly features on radio and
television in the Akan language, popular music (e.g. in the Highlife tradition) plays an important role in spreading the use of Akan beyond its traditional linguistic borders and even beyond
Akan
as a literary language has passed through a period of relative
stagnation—in marked contrast to e.g. Swahili or Hausa. There is
currently no newspaper or periodical appearing in Akan as there had
been in earlier periods—a main reason for this is the precarious
economic and educational situation. The documents resulting from this
project will give tremendous boost to joint efforts by two Ghana-based
non-profit organizations—Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) and
the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems (CEFIKS)—to publish a
monthly magazine in Akan and other organizations engaged in adult
literacy aimed at promoting participatory democracy.
In this
project, we will bring together not only an extensive compilation of
words in Akan with definitions in Akan, and sample Akan sentences and
their English translations. Also, we will bring together figurative
uses of some of these words and the etymological sources of some these
words. Also, we will provide an Akan grammar section and explanatory
notes for the entries and the pronunciations of the words. There will
be bibliographic entries of works in the Akan language or in other
languages about the Akan. The bibliographic entries will improve and
update the excellent works compiled by Arkaifie (1976),
Akan is one of the major languages of
The primary
lexicographic source on Akan is still J.G. Christaller’s dictionary,
first published in 1881 (revised ed. 1933). This monumental work
remains an invaluable source for the scholar familiar with the
subtleties of Akan philology, but the obsolescence of part of the older
vocabulary and the under-representation of current vocabulary and
idioms as well as its user-unfriendly layout make it unsuitable for all
practical purposes in the contemporary setting. The remarkable rise of
Akan to a full-fledged literary language during the latter 19th and
early 20th century, while enjoying the support of the Basel mission and
in the 1920's of the colonial government, has its roots in
Christaller’s and colleagues’ seminal work.
The use of the Roman alphabet in
The
development of the Roman alphabet for the Akan language dates to the
seventeenth century according to European travelers’ accounts. For
example, between 1600 and 1602, J. P. de Marees, a Dutch traveler on
the Gold Coast, was able to compile a list of vocabulary of the Fantse
and Ga-Adangme languages. The Danish chaplain in one of the first
Danish settlements near
The Basel
Mission from about 1840 modified the existing Roman alphabet to write
the Akwapim Twi. This was used to translate the Bible. Rev. H. N. Riis
published two books on Twi grammar. One of the two books was entitled Elemente des Akwapim-Dialekts der Odschi-Sprache (Elements of the Akwapim Dialect of the Twi language). In 1854, Karl Richard Lepsius, a professor in
Despite the
improvements, the Roman alphabet system still lacked sufficient letters
to transcribe many languages. One solution has been to add new letters
to existing ones. Another solution has been to create a new alphabet
system, for example, the Cyrillic alphabet used in writing some of the
Eastern European languages. In 1888, the International Phonetic
Association (IPA) created in effect a new Roman alphabet, with lower
case (small) letters only through the addition of a series of new
letters (Dalby, 1986).
In 1930, the
Government of Ghana (then called Gold Coast) adopted an offcial
national alphabet for writing the languages in the country. This
alphabet system has thirty-four (34) letters. Beginning from the end of
the 19th century, the works of Rev. R. G. Acquaah (1884–1954), J. A.
Annobil, C. A. Akrofi, J. J. Addaye, F. Safori, E. J. Osew, K. E.
Owusu, S. K. Otoo, A. Crakye Denteh, A. A. Opoku, E. Effa, R. A. Tabi,
Efua T. Sutherland, and J. H. Kwabena Nketia have contributed immensely
in developing a corpus of literary classics in Akan (Asante Twi,
Akuapem Twi and Fantse). The establishment of the Ghana Broadcasting
Service in 1935 created a popular platform for young Ghanaian poets and
writers. The establishment of the Bureau of Ghana Languages in 1951
served as an important center for the development of Akan literature
using the alphabetic writing system. In the 1950’s and the 1960’s there
were several newspapers and magazines that were published in Fantse and
Twi. Popular among these were Amansuon, Nkwantabisa, and Dawuru. Since then, the erstwhile
According to a
recent survey carried out by ODA (Overseas Development Agency), only
20% of the pupils handle English well enough after 6 years of primary
school to be able to read a book or a newspaper. According to the same
source, only 3% pass the English proficiency exams at grade 6. As far
as Akan is concerned, inadequate teacher training (in spite of some
efforts in the 1980's to incorporate the teaching of Ghanaian languages
into the curriculum of teacher training colleges), lack of teaching
materials, and above all, the scarcity of incentives in the form of
suitable reading material capable of bridging the gap between classroom
teaching and preoccupations of daily life and personal advancement mean
that most students soon lapse back into functional illiteracy. The net
result is that a majority of those having attended school must be
counted as “nominal literates” or “functional illiterates” in both
English and Akan.
This is all
the more a matter of concern as enrolment in primary and secondary
schools in Ghana is estimated at only 57 % of the population of
school-going age, while adult literacy is estimated at 53 % (Ghana News
and Views, Government Information Services, autumn 1995).
At the heart
of the planned new Akan dictionary lies the conviction of the project
partners that it will constitute the centerpiece of a strategy aiming
at strengthening the Akan language in its respective roles (a) as one
of the two pillars of Ghana’s educational system and as the privileged
means for conveying basic education in harmony with the natural and
social milieu of the pupils, and (b) as a bridge—particularly in the
rural areas—between traditional concepts of life and challenges and
opportunities of modern life, (c) as an instrument of human and
socio-economic advancement in both rural and urban settings; providing
a new impetus not only to language professionals and students but to
writers, journalists and above all to the vast potential readership of
Akan for using Akan as an instrument of written communication in
literature, newspapers, information outlets, etc, and (d) as a
bridge—through the fast developing networks of information and
communication technology—in enhancing US position in the global market
competition. The decision to launch the Akan dictionary project at this
time is motivated by a convergence of a number of factors favoring a
revitalization of the written use of major African languages in
general, and of Akan in particular.
There is
simply no alternative to the mobilization of the neglected potential of
African languages for purposes of education and publication, unless one
is prepared to perpetuate the exclusion of the vast majority of
citizens from active participation in the development
discourse and in the process of democratization. This view, which has
been pervasive among leading sociolinguists inside and outside of
Africa for some time (see, among others, Bamgbose 1991, Boadi 1976,
Fardon & Furniss 1994, Herbert 1992, Laitin 1992, Mansour 1993),—a
view also consistently held by UNESCO (1953)—is now being vigorously
endorsed not only by many Ghanaians, particularly of the younger
generation, but also and above all by what may be called
“trendsetters,” in particular leading development agencies such as the
USAID, German Foundation for International Development, the Working
Group on Higher Education of Donors to African Education (DEA) and
others (Prah 1995).
The creation of a
work comparable in scope to Christaller's original work, but reflecting
current usage and responding to the various needs and expectations of a
vast, educationally and socially fragmented contemporary audience, is
key to the revitalization of Akan as a literary language and to its
full efficacy as an instrument of mediation between traditional and
modern values for a very large segment of the Ghanaian population, in
accordance with its double role as a majority language of national
importance and as a lingua franca.
It is hoped
that this work will be found useful in the home, schools and colleges,
and in the office—in short, wherever information about Akan language is
likely to be sought. The front matter—those pages preceding the A–Z
vocabulary—will contain two important sections. The first section will
be the Explanatory Notes. The second section will be a short lucid essay on the Akan language.
The back
matter—those pages following the A–Z vocabulary—will contain several
sections that dictionary users have long found helpful. These will
include more than figurative uses of some words and several Foreign
Words and Phrases that occur in Fantse texts but that have not become
part of the Akan vocabulary and Geographical Names of Akan states and
towns. There will be a bibliographic entry of works that have been published in the Akan or about the Akan.
The database will be compiled from:
1. Existing printed sources
a) Christaller’s dictionary (1881, 1933).
b) Fantse Bible and other religious printed material, e.g. Som Yebia and Kristian Asor Ndwom (of the
c) vocabulary list compiled by Rev. J. Yedu Bannerman and the Ghana Bureau of Languages (with their permission).
d) modern literary texts to be found in novels, newspapers (e.g., Amansuon and Nkwantabisa), plays, poetry, etc.
These sources will give rise to Database 1 (DB1).
The
compilation from these printed sources will be done through scanning
using Adobe Acrobat to create portal document files (PDF). The Adobe
Acrobat files can easily be imported into word processing programs such
as Corel WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. This will be done on the PC
computer using the Twi-Ewe Times Roman font as well as Gentium font.
The Twi-Ewe Times Roman and Gentium fonts are serif fonts, and they
enable one to write Akan and other Ghanaian languages with a consistent
font size.
2.
Field recordings (by audio-tape and video-tape) and transcription of
oral discourse focusing on topics insufficiently covered by existing
printed material. Such recordings will take place in settings such as
the
a) royal courts of traditional chiefs (various settings such as court hearing).
b) funerals.
c) storytelling, proverbs, riddles and discussions.
d) work-site and recreational site conversations (various settings such as artisan workshops, nsadwase, gyeduase and at the well or stream).
Languages
are not fixed and isolated entities but rather are collections of
repertoires that have appropriate occasions for use depending on
setting, topic, and social status of the respective speakers and
listeners. In most cultures, not all dialects are considered
appropriate for all occasions. By going to these various settings, this
project will be able to capture the various uses of certain words and
the nuances of the Akan language.
The data from these sources will be transcribed to generate Database 2 (DB2) which will be compiled into a word list.
3. Transcription of radio broadcasts. The community radio station, Peace FM, at
The transcripts will be compiled into a word list to generate Database 3 (DB3).
4.
Compilation of a comprehensive word list to be derived from Databases
1-3. This will be Database 4 (DB4). This word list will be arranged in
alphabetical order a-z as well as subject groups.
5. Compilation of bibliographic citations of Akan works (works in Akan language and in other languages about the Akan).
As of August 1, 2005, we have a list of about 3,120 words that start with the letter a
alone. Because we have not finished typing all the words, we do not
have an accurate count of our current collection of words. We have
compiled words from a-z. Here is a sample entry of the d word list collected so far. The final format may appear as indicated here with sample from the a word list.
We
will appreciate help from anyone in the form of financial support
to publish this dictionary. Please contact us: e- mail:
cefiks@cfiks.org
Postal mail: Dictionary Project, P. O. Box CO 435, Tema, Ghana.