English in West Africa - Ghana
A Research Project at the Department of Linguistics
Institute of English and American Studies
Humboldt University, Berlin
Ghana: Brief Introduction
Extract from: Wolf, Hans-Georg (2001). English in Cameroon. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 85. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[see this volume for the references given]
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Ghana, a country with about 18,490,000 inhabitants (July 1998 est., see US.G.CIA 1999c, online), had been a trading ground for several European powers since 1470, when the Portuguese reached the coast of this area. At first, gold was the desired commodity, as is reflected in the “original” name for that part of West Africa, Gold Coast. Later, the Gold Coast became one of the centers of the slave trade, until the British prohibited slave trade in 1807 and subsequently campaigned against the Atlantic slave trade on an international basis (which stopped in 1850; Der Grosse Brockhaus vol. 10 1980: 485). According to Fage (1991: 822), “the first serious advance of British power in western Africa occurred on the Gold Coast.” Having seized power from the Danish and Dutch and the local Ashantis, the British established the colony of Gold Coast in 1874 (Fage 1991: 882; for details, see Boahen 1974). In 1895 the British government incorporated the northern territories, in 1902 the land of the Ashanti (also Asanti, Asante), and in 1922 West Togo into the colony. T. Jones (n.d. [1921?]) claimed that “it is generally agreed that European colonization has had a more beneficent influence and a greater degree of success in the Gold Coast than in any other African colony.” In 1957 the colony became the independent state of Ghana (Der Grosse Brockhaus vol. 4 1978: 521). |
Speech sample Ghanaian English