To the Sea: The Formation of the Ga Language Community

Abstract In this chapter we unravel the origins of the association between Accra and the Ga language. More generally, we trace the spread of Ga and its close relative Dangme on the Accra plain. But Ga-Dangme has never had the territory to itself, and so the account of how and in what sense Ga acquired and maintained linguistic hegemony in its present territory leads to investigation of a series of relationships with other language communities. The external history of the emergence of the Ga language also requires attention to the history of contacts with speakers of other languages before arrival on the plain. There is no doubt that such contacts occurred, but they are difficult to place in a chronological sequence, let alone date. The available migration traditions do not seem to reflect events before the fourteenth century. Painter’s (1966) lexicostatistical figures for the onset of the Ga-Dangme split point to an earlier date, about the ninth century. However, if the theory to be proposed is correct—that Ga originated as Dangme in the mouths of a grouping of mostly Guang-speaking populations—ease of intelligibility between Ga and Dangme probably declined rather abruptly, and the glottochronological figure, based as it is on the hypothesis of a constant rate of re placement of culturally non-specific vocabulary, is thus misleading. The Ga-Dangme migration traditions have been published and discussed by numerous authors, includ ing me, but for our present purposes they must be examined once again.