The word of the year for 2016, according to Oxford Dictionaries, was post-truth. In 2013 is was selfie. Whether we agree with these choices or not, one thing is very clear – English is adding new words and some of the new words are very widely used. In Ghana, an English word invented by Ghanaians is getting lots of exposure. That word is galamsey. But you won’t find galamsey in any of the major on-line dictionaries of English. It is absent from Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionary on-line, even though the latter lists other Ghana-isms such as outdooring.

Galamsey refers to illegal or informal mining, usually for gold. Ghana is known for its gold as its former name, The Gold Coast, implies. There are gold mining companies, but there are also other kinds of mining. One is informal mining carried out with hand tools by Ghanaian individuals, not companies. These mines are not regulated. They are both unsafe and they pose some environmental risks. The conditions are sometimes deplorable as you can see by doing a Google Image search for galamsey.

But galamsey is not just informal mining by hand. Some unregistered mining operations use large machinery. These can degrade the local environment to the point where local people start complaining. There has been a recent push in society and by the government to put a stop to galamsey. Even though the word has been around for years, I heard it for the first time in the last few months and now I hear it all the time.

The human mind and human societies are language factories constantly churning out new words and phrases and taking a plow to the settled ground of old words and phrases, turning them over and over. Did you know that “nice” meant “precise” in the 18th century and until fairly recently some English teachers taught that was the correct meaning? Or that in the 14th century it meant “foolish”, then “wanton” or “lascivious” in the 15th century?

So even though a translation stays exactly the same, it’s meaning is changing. To keep the meaning the same, sometimes the words need to change. That is why modern translations such as English Standard Version are updated regularly. By updating the translations where words have changed meaning, the translators are working hard to keep the meaning the same. For the same reason, translations in Africa will need to be revised when the languages change.

Here are some other words Ghanaians use in English to talk about things in their context for which English does not have good word or phrase: