This is a real question. Not a troll. Not a rhetorical trick. A sincere, unsettling question that makes people bristle because it dares to touch the nerve they have spent decades pretending does not exist. Why don’t Ghanaians speak Ghanaian? They are Ghanaian, are they not?
I can already hear the protests warming up their throats. There is no such thing as a Ghanaian language. There are Ghanaian languages. We are diverse. Multiethnic. Complex. Don’t you know? Were you born under a rock? On the wrong side of the ocean? Who asks such a foolish question?
This response, predictable as the dusty roads in Accra, is always the same: combative, insulting, condescending—and yes, childish. As if the proper reaction to a question is not to pause, to ponder—hmm… why don’t Ghanaians speak Ghanaian?—but to immediately assume that the questioner has misplaced their intelligence.
So, as is customary in this region of the world, let me do the thinking for you.
The people of Japan speak Japanese.
The people of Russia speak Russian.
German is spoken in Germany.
Italian in Italy.
Spanish in Spain.
In Norway, Norwegian.
In Finland, Finnish.
In Portugal, Portuguese.
The people of China speak Chinese.
Need I go on?
This way of organizing the world makes an almost offensive amount of sense, which is precisely why it has become normative. Yes, there are exceptions—but look closely at those exceptions and a pattern emerges. They tend to belong to countries that were colonized, or are still colonized but too anesthetized to notice, or too lackadaisical to care. These are the places where the language of the colonizer still sits smugly on the tongue, long after the flag has been lowered.
So under which frame does Ghana fall? Still a colony of Britain and America, with the linguistic yoke firmly in place? If not, then why all the English?
Ghanaians suffer profoundly for not having a Ghanaian language to call their own.
The children suffer most. Narmer Amenuti writes of the National Science and Maths Quiz, quoting a lament that rural students must translate scientific concepts from Ewe, Twi, or Dagbani into English, “losing precious seconds and confidence.” Narmer rightly punctures this excuse: Into what language, then, do Ewe or Twi students at Mfantsipim translate—Latin? If language is the problem, it is a universal one. All our children struggle with English. And why shouldn’t they? It is, after all, a British-American language. Have you ever heard a British or American child effortlessly debating thermodynamics in Dagbani? Then why do we subject our children to this daily humiliation—the discouragement, the psychic violence, the impossible demand that they think, dream, and create in a language that is not spoken in their homes and not mastered by most Ghanaians anywhere in the world?
The culture suffers too. Where are the contemporary writers read by all Ghanaians in moments of leisure? Where is the national conversation, the shared laughter, the unified outrage, the chorus of critique and reply? Where is the cultural commons when there is no common language? How do we build together when the most basic instrument of human cooperation—language—keeps us divided? Why have we not swallowed our ethnic fragmentations and forged a single, common, West African, Bantu-rooted Ghanaian language capable of carrying us forward?
Without such a language, Ghana resembles a modern Tower of Babel—technologically dressed, administratively busy, yet fundamentally stalled. Instructions toward civilization dissolve in translation. Competing languages crowd the air like unresolved arguments. This is not diversity flourishing; it is tribal warfare relocated into the mind.
Worse still, our sense of kinship is broken. We fail to recognize our own. We treat fellow Ghanaians as strangers because they do not speak our ethnic tongue, while smiling warmly at English-speaking invaders who nod politely as they extract our cocoa, our gold, our bauxite. Our guard is down. Our dignity exposed. Our men relieving themselves in the grass while the land is quietly signed away.
To lack a national language—a unifying West African tongue reflecting our shared ancestry and collective future—is not merely unfortunate. It is irresponsible. It underdevelops our children’s minds, corrodes their self-esteem, and strangles their creativity. It is naïve—bordering on primitive—to believe that a nation can function coherently under these conditions.
To those who insist there is no such thing as “Ghanaian,” I ask: why not? Why can there not be? Why can Ghanaians not speak a common language—one that unifies rather than fractures?
Let us hope that civilization eventually triumphs over this inherited problem. Let us hope our leaders awaken from their centuries-long slumber and at least pretend they are no longer crushed beneath the iron boot of British-American rule. Let us hope that after purchasing their latest Land Cruisers, shipping their children off to European and American private schools on Ghanaian cedis, and stuffing their bellies with fried goat, they recognize the urgency of linguistic liberation.
Let them commission our finest minds—now, not tomorrow—to ensure that Ghanaian children think and dream in a tongue they understand, a tongue they can love. A language with the warmth and authority of motherhood, not the salty tongues of other men.
If we were a little honest as a people, we’d realized we can do it and there’s one common “Ghanaian” Language which offers us a good start, it’s the language of the Market,in Music,Arts,etc. without mentioning the name every Ghanaian knows the one I speak of, but like Lord Voldemort, I dare not mention it cos it arises the very primitive Tribalistic beast in most Ghanaians,
You see it’s not as if we cannot have more than one Ghanaian language,or create a Creole of some sort, but the reality here is no one is suggesting any other only the excuse that you should not mention ‘you know what ‘.
Allow us to speak our English, 😂
Kwadwo Owusu Gyasi You can mention it. Even I am scratching my head why you won’t. My point is that it is not that you can’t mention it. No. It is that you can’t bear the push back. Usually when you suggest something and people don’t want it, you meet and you suggest something else until everyone becomes satisfied. But in this Korntri, if your suggestion is challenged then we are “primitive Tribalistic beasts” as you say. If we suggest something, you don’t want it either. Yet that doesn’t make you a “primitive Tribalistic beast”! Nefetiti just suggested a language, a new or a pre-modern West African tongue as a possibility, yet you would rather rant about how and why we refuse your suggestion – whatever it may be? Still, that doesn’t make you a “primitive Tribalistic beast”? Or does it? And it is the kind of gross miscarriage of misunderstanding that makes our cooperation impossible to achieve.
Dade Afre Akufu You see assume you know the language I’m talking about even without me mentioning the name, you see where the problem is? We are such a dishonest people even Dr Ephraim Amu will cringe in his grave.
Like you want us to carve a new express highway from Accra to Kumasi when there’s a shorter route under construction for God knows how long….
😂
Kwadwo Owusu Gyasi So you won’t brave the wind blowing your way. You think we don’t know? You brought it up but you are running away. Ok, suit yourself.
We are witnessing an erosion of our basic social identity across generations.
Our self-identity and worldview is submerged by foreign culture and we still appear helpless.
The very soul of every people is their language, and if we don”t have one then cognitively, we will continue to lag behind in the world scheme of things
I’d want to have a conversation on this topic. It’s way deep than we can imagine
Nana Akwesi Ntiamoah-Agyeman IV Its a conversation that must be had. It tickled something in me too.