Modem Multilingual Accra II

Abstract Accra, north of the Ring Road and between the Nsawam Road and the Kanda Estate, looks different from Ga Mashi: it sprawls over a wide area and, except on its fringes (where one sees private bungalows, often of two stories or more), consists of numerous large compounds of long, rectangular, single-storied blocks of rows of rooms, of the kind typical of zongo sections of towns anywhere in Ghana. It is almost as crowded as the old Ga core and much more cosmopolitan. Although many Ga and other southern Ghanaians live in outer areas like Nima and Accra New Town, they seem to be in a minority. The population mainly consists of people from northern Ghana and neighboring West African countries, especially from northern parts of Togo, Republic of Benin, and Nigeria and from Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali. Many southern Ghanaians assume that all these people are both Hausa and Muslim, and the Hausa language and Islam go together in the minds of most. It is believed that “all northerners” speak Hausa and, consequently, that Hausa is the main language of northern Ghana. An early motive for collecting the data dis cussed in this chapter was finally to refute these assumptions.