Do you know how to properly pronounce all the Twi words you come across? If you don’t, don’t worry at all. There are a lot of extremely fluent Twi speakers who can’t read or write any Twi. This is because Twi is more of a spoken language than a written one. Twi is written with a script developed by the Bureau of Ghana Languages.
In order to be able to read in any language, you much know its alphabet and digraphs before you even start learning the basic grammatical rules. In this article, we shall learn the Twi alphabet and digraphs with emphasis on pronunciation.
TWI ALPHABET
The Twi language uses the same Roman alphabet that is used by most languages, with the omission of c, j, q, v, x and z and the addition of ε and ɔ. There are 22 letters in the Twi alphabet, made up of 7 vowels and 15 consonants. The vowels are a, e, ε, i, o, ɔ and u and the consonants are b, d, f, g, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w and y. Listen and learn how to say each letter by watching the video below.
TWI DIGRAPHS
Twi also uses a few digraphs in forming some words. A digraph is a combination of two letters that represent one sound as in ph and ey in English. In Twi, there are dw, gy, hw, hy, kw, ky, nw, ny and tw. Listen and learn how to say each digraph by watching the video below.
I hope you found this article and videos very educative and informative. If you want to learn how to speak Twi download a trial version of Nkyea Twi Primer and you will be on your way. To learn Twi words and phrases that you can use in your day to day conversation, get the Nkyea Twi Phrasebook iPhone app for only $2.99 on the Apple Store. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the Nkyea Forum.
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