Twi-Fante language
| Twi-Fante | |
|---|---|
| Akan | |
| Native to | Ghana |
| Ethnicity | Akan |
| Speakers | L1: 8.9 million (2013) L2: 1 million (no date) |
| Dialects | |
| Latin | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | None; Government-sponsored language of  Ghana |
| Regulated by | Akan Orthography Committee |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ak |
| ISO 639-2 | aka |
| ISO 639-3 | aka – inclusive codeIndividual codes: twi – Twifat – Fantiabr – Abronwss – Wasa |
| Glottolog | akan1251 Akanic |
Twi-Fante, commonly referred to by its speakers as either Twi (pronounced /ˈtʃwiː/) or Fante (/ˈfænti, ˈfɑːnti/) and academically and institutionally known by the broader term Akan (pronounced /əˈkæn/), is a widely spoken language of Ghana and the main native language of the Akan people. Spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana, about 44% of Ghanaians are native speakers, and about 80% of Ghana's population speak Akan as a first or second language. The Bono dialect is also widely spoken in Ghana and across the border in Ivory Coast.
Three dialects of Twi-Fante were developed as literary standards with distinct orthographies: Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi, and Fante. Despite being mutually intelligible, they were inaccessible in written form to speakers of the other standards until the Akan Orthography Committee (AOC)'s development of a common Twi-Fante orthography in 1978, based mainly on Akuapem dialect. As the first Akan variety to be used for Bible translation, Akuapem Twi had become the prestige dialect.
With the Atlantic slave trade, Akan languages, principally Twi/Fante, were introduced to the Caribbean and South America, notably in Suriname and Jamaica, where they heavily influenced the language of the Ndyuka and the Jamaican Maroons, also known as the Coromantee. The cultures of the descendants of escaped slaves in the interior of Suriname and the Maroons in Jamaica still retain Akan influences, including the Akan naming practice of naming children after the day of the week on which they are born, e.g. Akwasi/Kwasi for a boy or Akosua for a girl born on a Sunday, etc. In Jamaica and Suriname, the Ananse spider stories are still well-known.