Ghanaian Pidgin English: phonology

Ghanaian Pidgin English (henceforth GhP) is part of a wider West African Pidgin English (WAP), and accordingly needs to be studied in close comparison with similar varieties in Nigeria and Cameroon. As shown in the article on Ghanaian English, Afro-European contacts on the Gold Coast evolved in three stages: early trading contacts (1471–1844), colonization (1844–1957), and independence and after (1957–).

During the phase of early trading contacts, several Pidgins lexified by the languages of the European merchants developed. Pidginized Portuguese was the earliest, falling out of use only in the second half of the 18th century, some 150 years after the Portuguese lost their supremacy on the Gold Coast. A Pidgin English came into being with the establishment of English traders on the coast from the middle of the 17^th century onwards. Structurally, this was considerably simpler and more variable than today’s GhP.

The origin of GhP as current today took place in the colonization period. From the 1840s onwards, Africans liberated from slave ships and freed on the Sierra Leone peninsula went back to their respective places of origin, thus spreading an early form of Krio along the West African coast, Nigeria in particular. Historical and linguistic evidence indicates that in the 1920s the Nigerian variety of Krio was introduced to Ghana by migrant workers. This decade can therefore be seen as the birthdate of GhP.