Ghana's indigenous languages are disappearing faster than many realise, and the warning signs are growing harder to ignore.

The Executive Director of the Ghana Library Authority,  Alhassan Betintiche Ziblim,  has raised the alarm, noting that while only a handful of Ghanaian languages have died out completely, as many as 40 are now teetering on the edge of extinction.

Without deliberate effort to preserve them, he says, the list of lost languages will only grow longer.

Among those already gone is Boro, once spoken around Worawora and Tapa in the central-eastern part of the country. By the end of the 1800s, the language had been reduced to a single elderly speaker, and today all that remains of it are about a dozen words captured in old linguistic records. Mprɛ, also called Mpra, met a similar fate.

It was once spoken in Butei, a village between Techiman and Tamale, and though the language itself died out sometime in the twentieth century, a few elderly residents were still able to recall bits and pieces of it as recently as the early 2000s.

Then there is Dompo, once the language of a hunter-gatherer community in what is now the Bono East Region. Its speakers have since shifted almost entirely to Akan, and the language is now considered extinct.

But the bigger worry, according to the Ghana Library Authority, is what comes next. Languages such as Nawuri, Tuwuli (also known as Bowiri), Chala, and certain dialects of Anufo (Chakosi) are all endangered, and could vanish within a generation if young people stop learning and speaking them.

It is not just a Ghanaian problem, either; dozens of indigenous languages across the African continent have already been lost, a sobering reminder that this is not some distant, hypothetical threat but something happening in real time.

Interestingly, not everyone agrees on exactly how many languages have been lost. Ethnologue, one of the most widely used language databases in the world, tends to be far more conservative in its classifications and lists fewer extinct Ghanaian languages than local researchers do.

The disagreement often comes down to how strictly "extinct" is defined, particularly in cases where a language survives only in the memory of a few elderly semi-speakers.

The conversation around Ghana's local languages inevitably turns to Hausa as well. Hausa's historical roots lie in what is now northern Nigeria and southern Niger, and it is generally regarded as a major West African language rather than a Ghanaian one.

 Yet legendary media personalities such as Alhaji A. R. Gomda and Alhaji Baba Sheriff have long argued that centuries of settlement and continuous use have earned Hausa a rightful place among Ghana's own languages.

It is, after all, spoken widely in Zongo communities across the country and remains one of the most common languages of inter-ethnic communication here.

Hausa's spread through Ghana has deep historical roots, such as trade routes, migration, and the colonial-era recruitment of soldiers from northern Nigeria into what would become the Ghana Armed Forces all played a part.

Its fingerprints are visible in everyday Ghanaian speech, too. The word "donkomi," for instance, is thought to derive from the Hausa "rangwame," meaning a reduction or concession, while "kafra" traces back to the Hausa "gaafara," itself borrowed from the Arabic word for forgiveness.

Even some place names carry this legacy. Kasoa, Adabraka, and Nima are all believed to reflect Hausa and Arabic linguistic influence, a quiet testament to the many cultural currents that have shaped Ghana's language landscape over the generations.

None of this has to be Ghana's story, though. Boro, Mprɛ, and Dompo did not disappear overnight, they faded gradually, one skipped conversation at a time, one generation that chose not to pass the language on to the next.

That is exactly what stands between us and the same fate for Nawuri, Tuwuli, Chala, and the many other languages still hanging on today.

The good news is that every Ghanaian has a part to play in changing that story. Speak your language at home. Teach it to your children. Use it proudly in the market, on the street, in the church or mosque, wherever you find yourself not just as a duty, but as an act of preservation.

This is the whole idea behind SPEAK LOCAL GH, a campaign reminding Ghanaians that our languages are ours to lose or ours to keep.

We believe that when development becomes a practical guide that speaks in the people’s language, through their leaders and arts, it designs programmes that honour communities as authors of their own development, not merely its recipients.

Sankofa wo h)yi, yen kyi.

Speak indigenous. Preserve heritage, Protect the future.

Yen Kasa, Yen Ahohoahoa

Yen Kasa, Yen Aho)den

Our tagline says it simply: Speak it, Preserve it and Pass it on. Follow SPEAK LOCAL GH on all social media platforms, engage with our posts, and join the conversation because a language spoken today is a language saved for tomorrow.

This is a Communication for Social Change social media campaign by Group 2, M.A Development Communication students, University of Media, Arts and Communication – Institute of Journalism (UniMAC-IJ)

Group Members: Josephine Gyebuaah Ntiamoah, Maryam Gomda Ibrahim, Lawrencia Baah, Richard Mctetteh, Joseph Mawuena Kodzo Zanu, Ramla Seidu, Ishmael Oduro-Acheampong, and Gertrude Owireduwaah Otchere.