Twi Alphabet (Akan)

Akan is one language with several written varieties: Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi, Fante and Bono. In 1978 the Akan Orthography Committee agreed one spelling for all of them, and it uses 22 letters in this order: A B D E Ɛ F G H I K L M N O Ɔ P R S T U W Y, each with a capital and a small form. That is the whole Twi alphabet a to z, with its own open vowels Ɛ and Ɔ: in the alphabet and in dictionaries ɛ comes straight after e and ɔ straight after o.

Sounds that English spells with ch or j are written with digraphs, pairs of letters that count as one sound: ky and gy (as in kyɛ, to share, and gyae, to stop), tw (the tw of Twi itself), dw (Dwoada, Monday), hw (hwɛ, look), kw (kwan, road), nw and ny (Nyame, God). They are written with ordinary letters and need no special characters, but learners meet them early because Twi words are full of them.

What Ɛ ɛ and Ɔ ɔ do

Akan has more vowel sounds than the Latin alphabet has vowel letters. The open e, Ɛ ɛ, is close to the vowel of English bed; plain e is higher, nearer the vowel of French é. The open o, Ɔ ɔ, is close to the vowel of British law; plain o is higher, as in go. The difference changes meaning, so the letters are not decoration: kɔ means to go, ɔdɔ is love, and Ɛte sɛn? is "How are you?".

The two letters come from the phonetic alphabet, where ɛ and ɔ stand for exactly these sounds, and the same letters are written in Ewe, Ga and many other languages of West Africa. Akan is also a tonal language, where the pitch of a syllable can tell words apart, but the standard spelling does not mark tone, so there are no accented letters to learn.

Ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε, and Ɔ is not the reversed c ↄ, even though they look alike. In texting, ɛ is often typed as the digit 3 (3te s3n?), which is fine in a chat, but in a document, a name or anything that has to be found by search, use the real letters from this page.

How to type Twi letters: Ɛ ɛ, Ɔ ɔ and the cedi sign ₵

On a phone, the easiest way is to add a keyboard app that supports Twi or Akan; free ones exist for Android and iPhone, with ɛ and ɔ on their own keys or under e and o. Otherwise copy them from the grid above.

On a Windows PC in Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X: 025B gives ɛ, 0190 Ɛ, 0254 ɔ, 0186 Ɔ and 20B5 the cedi sign ₵. For everyday typing in every program, install a free Twi or Akan keyboard layout, for example one of those available through Keyman. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the same four-digit codes.

In HTML, write ɛ for ɛ, Ɛ for Ɛ, ɔ for ɔ, Ɔ for Ɔ and ₵ for ₵. Check that your font has the letters: most modern system fonts do, but many decorative fonts do not, and the browser then borrows ɛ and ɔ from a different typeface.

Where Akan is spoken

Akan is the most widely spoken language of Ghana. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 13.5 million speakers, and millions of other Ghanaians use Twi as a second language in markets, offices, churches, on the radio and in music. Asante Twi is centred on Kumasi, Akuapem Twi on the Akuapem hills north of Accra, and Fante along the central coast around Cape Coast; Bono, also called Abron, is spoken in Ghana's Bono region and across the border in eastern Côte d'Ivoire.

Akan belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo family; its close relatives include Nzema and the Baoulé and Anyi languages of Côte d'Ivoire. For the other languages of Ghana, see the Ewe, Ga, Abron and Nzima collections; for the flag, the cedi and the country's emoji, see Ghana.