Examining Ghanaian English as a Regional Dialect

Abstract or Introduction

This paper aims to answer the following questions: What is the nature of Ghanaian English as a regional dialect? And how is Ghanaian English different from British English?

"The Dynamic Model of the evolution of New Englishes" by Schnelder categorises Ghanaian English within the Outer Circle variety spoken in Britain’s former Gold Coast colony in West Africa. It concludes the debate of whether there is what is called Ghanaian English at all, citing other varieties in different part of the world as a backing. This work examines the extent to which Ghanaian English is truly Ghanaian, its uniqueness that characterizes it as a variety of English in terms of pronunciation, register and syntax.
Statement of the Problem. Scholars and educated elites who have passed through the English medium education sometimes argue over the type of English spoken in Ghana as ungrammatical. Because of that it is not easy to condemn or criticize Ghanaian English as bad or wrong since it has moved far away from the colonial English that gave birth to it. Others even think it should not be considered English.

The main aim of this study is to examine the extend of growth and deviation of GhE away from its origin in terms of register, semantics, phonetics among others. It also aims at finding out if in the midst of this variation, it could be considered English at all. In other words, it identifies the concept and characteristic of language variety, in this case, variety of English.