Akan (/əˈkæn/), or Twi-Fante, is the most populous language of Ghana, and the principal native language of the Akan people, spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana. About 80% of Ghana's population speak Akan as a first or second language, and about 44% of Ghanaians are native speakers. The Bono dialect is also spoken across the border in Ivory Coast.

Three dialects were developed as literary standards with distinct orthographies: Asante and Akuapem, collectively known as Twi, and Fante. Despite being mutually intelligible, they were inaccessible in written form to speakers of the other standards until the Akan Orthography Committee (AOC)'s development of a common Akan orthography in 1978, based mainly on Akuapem dialect. As the first Akan variety to be used for Bible translation, Akuapem had become the prestige dialect.

With the Atlantic slave trade, Akan languages were introduced to the Caribbean and South America, notably in Suriname and Jamaica, where it heavily influenced the languages spoken by the Ndyuka and the Jamaican Maroons, also known as the Coromantee. The cultures of the descendants of escaped slaves in the interior of Suriname and the Maroons in Jamaica still retain Akan influences, including the Akan naming practice of naming children after the day of the week on which they are born, e.g. Akwasi/Kwasi for a boy or Akosua for a girl born on a Sunday. In Jamaica and Suriname, the Anansi spider stories are still well-known.

The language was originally referred to by local designations such as 'Twi' (/tʃwiː, twiː, tʃiː/; Akan: [tɕᶣi]), 'Fante. After independence, the national language commission adopted 'Akan', a name that had been used for all the languages spoken by the Akan people, which included Twi-Fante and the Bia languages, as the name for Twi-Fante specifically. The broader scope was renamed the Central Tano languages to disambiguate. However, many sources still refer to the Central Tano languages as 'Akan'.

The largest Akan migration was to Ghana in successive waves between the 11th and 18th centuries. Smaller numbers migrated to the eastern part of Côte d'Ivoire and parts of Togo. Within Ghana, they expanded from the north to occupy the southern forest and coastal areas during the 13th century. The Akans have a strong oral history tradition of their past and are also known in for symbolic artifacts of wood, metal and terracotta. Their cultural ideas are expressed in stories and proverbs as well as in designs such as symbols used in carvings and on clothes. The rich Akan culture and history in Ghana are areas of research for many disciplines, such as folklore, literary studies, linguistics, anthropology, and history.

Akan is a dialect continuum that is closely related to the Bia languages, the other Central Tano languages spoken by the Akan people. The relationships of the major Akan dialects are as follows:

Brong and Wasa have limited mutual intelligibility with each other, and so are separate languages by that standard. Neighboring Brong and Asante are mutually intelligible, though geographically more distant Brong and Fante are less so. Indeed, 'a Fante-speaker will be right in looking on Bron [Bono] as a different language.'

The Akan dialects contain extensive palatalization, vowel harmony, and tone terracing.