Uneducated Pidgin

The traditional indigenous language in the capital Accra area is Ga, but there is a high number of immigrants from both inside and outside Ghana. In 1970, over 50% of the population in the Greater Accra Region were immigrants, and the percentage in immigrant quarters (called zongos, from Hausa zango ‘camp, caravanserai’) of Accra, like Nima, Kanda, or Mamobi, was and is much higher. These quarters are characterized by linguistic heterogeneity, overpopulation, slum conditions, and a high level of unemployment. Personal observation suggests that the rate of illiteracy is far higher than the Ghanaian average. There are no reliable data on the ethnic composition of the zongos but one inhabitant enumerated no less than 15 tribes that form distinct communities in Nima, many of them immigrants from northern Ghana, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, besides speakers of Akan, Ewe, and Ga-Dangme. While Hausa, spoken in various forms from pidginized to Standard Nigerian Hausa, is the dominant lingua franca in Accra’s multilingual immigrant quarters, Pidgin English also fulfils this function. Hausa seems to derive its ethnic neutrality from the fact that many do not consider it a genuinely Ghanaian language. It also carries some prestige through its association with Islam, the dominant religion in the zongos. Pidgin English draws its neutrality from the fact that it has no native speakers.

The label ‘uneducated Pidgin’ does not imply that its speakers necessarily had no or little formal education, but rather that this variety is transmitted and used in non-educational contexts. This is why Ghanaians most readily associate it with unskilled labourers, lorry and taxi drivers, watchmen, household servants, and the like. This type of Pidgin is typically used in multilingual settings characterized by low educational attainment of the speakers – in other words, settings which diminish (but do not necessarily exclude) the usefulness of an areal Ghanaian lingua franca such as Twi (or Hausa) and at the same time preclude StGhE as a language of interethnic communication. Places where this uneducated Pidgin can be heard are lorry stations (taxi or bus ranks), places of trans-shipment where the so-called truck boys load or unload lorries, or workers’ bars.