Overview of the Twi Basic Course

The Twi Basic Course is divided into 20 units, many of which are composed of dialogues, notes, and supplemental vocabulary. The course assumes the student has no prior knowledge of Twi and is fully self-instructional. This means that while an instructor/native speaker would be helpful, it is not imperative to learn Twi with this course. There are 7 CDs and a 244 page textbook or 1 DVD with all lessons on MP3 with the textbook in a PDF file format.

Unit 1: Use of drills; sound drills

Unit 2: Greetings

Unit 3: 'Do you speak Twi?'

Unit 4: 'How do yo say...?'

Unit 5: 'At the office.'

Unit 6: 'Fufu'

Unit 7: 'Buying fish'

Unit 8: 'At the doctor's'

Unit 9: 'Have you gone to eat yet?'

Unit 10: 'I went to Accra yesterday.'

Unit 11: 'An interview

Unit 12: 'What time is it?'

Unit 13: 'How much is this?'

Unit 14: 'The telephone.'

Unit 15: 'The bus'

Unit 16: 'The filling station'

Unit 17: 'Directions to the market'

Unit 18: 'The cocoa farm'

Unit 19: 'What will you do if it rains?'

Unit 20: 'An introduction'

The Twi Basic Course indicates tone by using diacritical marks. Unit one of this course consists of 48 drills of pairs of words that are distinguished by tone or consonant and vowel differences that often cause difficulty for speakers of English. Other units include basic dialogues, notes, and drills such as lexical, substitution, question and answer drills, and pattern.

Twi is spoken in the southern two-thirds of Ghana, mainly between the Volta and Tano rivers, but in the last few centuries it has spread over a larger area, especially to the west, so that there are now a large number of speakers in contiguous areas. There are about 15 million native speakers of Twi, plus millions more who regularly use the language. All dialects of Twi are mutually intelligible; but at conversational speed and on some subjects, speakers from distant areas may have difficulty understanding one another.

The first grammar of Twi was published in Copenhagen in 1764. Missionaries began to publish in Twi in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Akuapim Twi, spoken in the south-east was the first dialect used for Bible translation and other literature. Because of this, Akuapim Twi became the prestige dialect and is still regarded by many people as the 'real' or 'pure' Twi. Fanti Twi, spoken in the south-central area, is rather different from the other dialects and also has a fairly extensive literature. This manual uses Ashanti Twi, spoken in the central area and by far the largest dialect. The speaker on whose speech the materials are based is from the eastern part of the AShanti area, and some differences will be noted between the speech of Kumasi, regarded as the standard, and the form used herein. An effort has been made in the footnotes to indicate such differences.