Affricates

Of the major Ghanaian Kwa languages Akan, Ga-Dangme, and Ewe (all located in the southern half of Ghana) only Dangme (spoken by ca. 4.5% of Ghana’s population) has the affricates /ʧ , ʤ​/. These sounds have greater currency in the Gur and Mande languages of Ghana's north, but population density is much lower there. Thus, at least half of Ghana's population is not familiar with /ʧ , ʤ​/ from their mother tongues, but since English is much more widespread in the urbanized south, the proportion of GhE speakers whose L1 lacks these phonemes is probably in the region of three quarters.

Before high front vowels, Akan /k/ and /g/ are realized by the allophones  and  (orthographically ky and gy), as in kyi ‘dislike’, kye ‘catch’, kyε 'share out'. These are sufficiently similar to RP's more fronted /ʧ , ʤ​/ to be employed by GhE speakers as substitutes for these phonemes. Examples are church  or larger . The plosives in these affricates are often reduced, so that forms like major  are widely used. Similarly to what has been said with regard to the fricatives /ʧ , ʤ​/ above, Akan  and  have been adopted by other Ghanaians, so that they are used widely among speakers with a Kwa language background, but also by others. Again, there is  variability.