Older Spellings

1. Three traditions, one system
Missionaries first wrote Twi in the 1800s. Akuapem came first, because the Bible was translated into it, and J. G. Christaller settled its spelling in 1869, before the full Bible was printed. His English book titles even spell the language Tshi and Chwee. Fante writers made their own English-based spelling, as in the Mfantsi Grammar of 1868, and Asante had its own written standard too. In 1978 the Akan Orthography Committee gave all three one shared system, based mainly on Akuapem, and the Bureau of Ghana Languages later revised the spelling rules. See Asante, Akuapem and Fante.

2. Marks you may meet
Older books did not all use ɛ and ɔ. Instead they may:

• put a dot or a line under a vowel to show which kind of e, o, i or u it is;
• put a tilde (~) over a nasal vowel, a sound that modern spelling does not mark;
• mark tone with accents over vowels;
• write w̌ for the rounded sound in tw, as in Christaller's spelling Tw̌i.

Each book used its own marks, and older books usually explain them at the start. The words underneath are the same Twi. See The Twi Alphabet and vowels and nasal vowels.

3. English spellings of places
Colonial maps and English books spelled Akan names the English way, and many of these are still the usual spellings in English:

• Ashanti = Asante
• Kumasi = Kumase
• Akim = Akyem, Kibi = Kyebi
• Akwapim = Akuapem
• Fanti = Fante

Both are right in their own language: write Kumasi in English and Kumase in a Twi sentence.

4. Family names
Many family names keep an older spelling with a final h, such as Mensah and Asamoah, where modern Twi spelling would write Mensa and Asamoa. A name is spelled the way its owner spells it, so never change someone's name to modern spelling.

5. Word breaks
Older and casual writing sometimes splits or joins words differently from today's rules, for example writing a subject prefix apart from its verb. If a word looks strange, try reading it together with the word beside it. Modern spelling joins the prefix to the verb: Mekɔ, not Me kɔ. See subject prefixes.

6. Reading old texts
Match each old form to a word you know, and keep using modern spelling in your own writing. See informal spelling and Akuapem forms in print.