Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

Native Speaker Will Bring Life to Ghanaian Language in Linguistics Class

Wednesday, December 6, 2017, By Kathleen Haley
Share
academicsCollege of Arts and SciencesfacultyStudents
Photo of pinned Accra on a map of Africa.

Assistant Professor Christopher Green is providing a unique spring semester course to students interested in exploring the linguistic makeup of a major language of Ghana, with the help of a native speaker.

The best way to learn the intricacies of a foreign language is through the words of a native speaker. Assistant Professor Christopher Green is making that happen for students who want to explore a particular African language in his spring semester course, “Field Methods in Linguistics.”

Green will be assisted by Maxwell School alumnus Andy Semabia G’10, a native speaker of Ewe, a major language of Ghana, who will be a language consultant and participate in each class—a unique opportunity for students.

“The main idea is to give students some exposure to something outside of their comfort zone. This will open students’ eyes to a completely different language family, and the culture that goes along with it,” Green says. “We learn a lot about culture through language and how people express different topics. It’s not often you get to sit with a native speaker to ask questions about a language you’ve never heard of before.”

Understanding the grammatical makeup

Students will ask questions of Semabia about certain vocabulary—such as words for food, family members, things in nature—and gain an understanding of the grammatical makeup of the language. Semabia will also record the work so that students can refer back to his voice and check the transcription.

“As we build out, we’ll start to use responses to discern the other grammatical components of language—what is the language sound system, tonal system, what prefixes and suffixes does it use, how do you build phrases, how do you build larger sentences,” Green says. “It’s basically building from the ground up.”

head shot

Christopher Green

Green, who is based in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences, studies the Wanga language of the Luyia set of languages, based in Kenya. “I’ve never worked on a language from Ghana but it’s a tonal language and that’s my specialization, so I get an opportunity be exposed to a new language,” Green says.

Looking for native speakers

Green had been starting to form the course and was looking for native speakers of African languages when he met Semabia at the Westcott Street Cultural Fair in September, where Semabia was selling food and craft items from West Africa.

“We started chatting and I told him I was looking for potential consultants for the spring,” Green says. As secretary of the Ghana Society of Central New York and acquainted with members of the nonprofit Pan African Community Center of Central New York, Semabia told Green he could spread the world about Green looking for a language consultant and that he would also be interested in assisting.

Semabia came to the U.S. in 2006 from Ghana to pursue a degree; he completed an M.A. in anthropology from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He met and married his wife, and they opened a local business, Better Brittle. Semabia was an archeologist for a civil and environmental engineering firm but is currently on hiatus, working with his wife full time selling fair-trade local baskets from Ghana and Senegal at the CNY Regional Market and making and selling a variety of West African-style brittle.

Fluent in five Ghanian languages—Ewe, Twi, Ga, Ada and Krobo, Semabia was interested by Green’s invitation to participate in the class.

head shot of man

Andy Semabia

“I will like to help expose the Ghanaian languages to a larger audience,” Semabia says. “It is my desire to use the class to help students learn new sounds and expressions and basic mannerisms of the Ewe language while at the same time introduce them to a different culture.”

Information in real time

The benefit of having a native speaker is getting information in real time, instead of working from written narratives. “Maybe you want to know about an interesting suffix or a certain verb for when a person walks down the street versus when an animal walks down the street,” Green says. “There’s all these interesting things that emerge out of these discussions—you can trail off on a tangent.”

The Ewe language is a regional language used in the eastern portion of Ghana and into the neighboring countries of Togo and Benin, with about 20 million speakers.

The class will develop a grammatical sketch of the language with each student assigned a particular grammatical topic to explore, such as how questions are formed, what type of prefixes it has and how the number system works.

Students in linguistics, anthropology, communications sciences and disorders and communications—or any student interested in languages—would be ideal for the class, Green says.

The course will be offered every spring with consultants from other African countries. Semabia’s experience will help inform others what the course will entail. “It could build community for other offerings of the course,” Green says.

Semabia is looking forward to an enthusiastic class with a lot of interaction that will go beyond basic grammar and vocabulary. “I want students to understand the beauty of an African language as we explore the dichotomy between ‘Ewe’ and ‘English,’” Semabia says.

  • Author

Kathleen Haley

  • Recent
  • Former Orange Point Guard and Maxwell Alumna ‘Roxi’ Nurse McNabb Still Driving for an Assist
    Tuesday, July 8, 2025, By Jessica Smith
  • Empowering Learners With Personalized Microcredentials, Stackable Badges
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Hope Alvarez
  • WISE Women’s Business Center Awarded Grant From Empire State Development, Celebrates Entrepreneur of the Year Award
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Dawn McWilliams
  • Rose Tardiff ’15: Sparking Innovation With Data, Mapping and More
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By News Staff
  • Law Professor Receives 2025 Onondaga County NAACP Freedom Fund Award
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Robert Conrad

More In Arts & Culture

Vintage Over Digital: Alumnus Dan Cohen’s Voyager CD Bag Merges Music and Fashion

Bucking the trend of streaming music platforms and contrary to what one might expect of a member of his generation, musician Dan Cohen ’25 prefers listening to his favorite artists on compact disc (CD) and record players. His research and…

VPA Announces New Drama Department Chair

The College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) has appointed Eleanor Holdridge as the new chair of the Department of Drama effective July 1. Holdridge comes to Syracuse University from the Catholic University of America, where she served as professor…

Swinging Into Summer: Syracuse International Jazz Fest Returns With Star Power, Student Talent and a Soulful Campus Finale

Get ready for the sweet summer sounds of jazz in the city and on campus. The University is again a sponsor of the Syracuse International Jazz Fest, a five-day celebration of world-class jazz music and community spirit, taking place June…

Tiffany Xu Named Harry der Boghosian Fellow for 2025-26

The School of Architecture has announced that architect Tiffany Xu is the Harry der Boghosian Fellow for 2025–26. Xu will succeed current fellow, Erin Cuevas, and become the tenth fellow at the school. The Boghosian Fellowship at the School of…

Syracuse Stage Concludes 2024-25 Season With ‘The National Pastime’

Syracuse Stage concludes its 2024-25 season with the world premiere production of “The National Pastime,” a provocative psychological thriller about state secrets, sonic weaponry, stolen baseball signs and the father and son relationship in the middle of it all. Written…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.