GhaPE is a regional variety of West African Pidgin English[3] spoken in Ghana, predominantly in the southern capital, Accra, and surrounding towns.
[2] It is confined to a smaller section of society than other West African creoles, and is more stigmatized,[2] perhaps due to the importance of Twi, an Akan dialect,[4] often spoken as lingua franca.
The former terms are associated with uneducated or illiterate people and the latter are acquired and used in institutions such as universities[2][9] and are influenced by Standard Ghanaian English.
[4][10] GhaPE, like other varieties of West African Pidgin English, is also influenced locally by the vocabulary of the indigenous languages spoken around where it developed.
[13] Although other languages of Ghana are available to them, students, particularly males, use GhaPE as a means of expressing solidarity, camaraderie and youthful rebellion.
[2] Specifically, GhaPE still carries stigma in academia which may explain why "few structural or sociolinguistic descriptions of the variety have been published".
[4] GhPE, like other varieties of West African Pidgin English is influenced locally by the vocabulary of the indigenous languages spoken around where it developed, in this case, as around the Greater Accra Region, largely Ga.
[citation needed] Also, young educated men who were raised outside Accra and Tema very often do not know it until they come into contact with others who do at boarding-school in secondary school or at university.
[citation needed] Over the years, some young Ghanaian writers have taken to writing literary pieces such as short stories in GhPE as an act of protest.
[19] This pidgin first developed when native speakers of West African languages were taken to Portugal in order to learn Portuguese for translating purposes during voyages.
GhaPE developed as masters required communication with their workers and was initially spoken by police corporals, watchmen, labourers, and domestic staff who were trying to keep pace with fast-paced English speakers.
[17] "Migration of West Africans to and through Ghana in search of work"[21] have impacted GhaPE development greatly in the last century.