Consonants[]
Ga has 31 consonant phonemes.
| Labial | Dental | Postalveolar and palatal |
Velar | Labial- velar |
Glottal | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Labialized | Plain | Lab.v | Plain | Lab. | |||||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ɲʷ | ŋ | ŋʷ | ŋ͡m | |||||||||
| Stop | p | b | t | d | tʃ | dʒ | tʃʷ | dʒʷ | k | ɡ | kʷ | ɡʷ | k͡p | ɡ͡b | ʔ | ʔʷ |
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | ʃʷ | ʒʷ | x | ɣ | xʷ | ɣʷ | h | hʷ | ||
| Approximant | ʋ | l | j | ɥ | ʟ | ʟʷ | w | |||||||||
- [ŋʷ] is an allophone of /w/ which occurs before nasals and is represented with its own digraph in writing.
- /l/ may be realised as [r] when between a consonant and vowel
- /j/ has an allophone [ɲ] before nasal vowels
Vowels[]
Ga has 7 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels. All of the vowels have 3 different vowel lengths: short, long or extra long (the latter appears only in the simple future and the simple past negative forms).
| Front | Central | Back | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unr. | rnd. | unr. | rnd. | ||||||
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | ||
| Close | i | ĩ | y | ʉ | ʉ̃ | u | ũ | ||
| Close-mid | e | ẽ | ø | ɵ | ɤ | o | õ | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɛ̃ | œ | ɜ | ʌ | ɔ | ɔ̃ | ||
| Open | æ | æ̃ | a | ã | ɑ | ɑ̃ | ɒ | ||
Tones[]
Ga has 2 tones, high and low. Like many West African languages, it has tone terracing.
Phonotactics[]
The syllable structure of Ga is (C)(C)V(C), where the second phoneme of an initial consonant cluster can only be /l/ and a final consonant may only be a (short or long) nasal consonant, e.g. ekome, "one", V-CV-CV; kakadaŋŋ, "long", CV-CV-CVC; mli, "inside", CCV. Ga syllables may also consist solely of a syllabic nasal, for example in the first syllable of ŋshɔ, "sea".