A Handbook of Varieties of English Volume 1 Phonology Compress

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Titelei: A Handbook of Varieties of English ⫺ vol. 1
A Handbook of Varieties of English

1: Phonology
≥
A Handbook
of Varieties of English
A Multimedia Reference Tool
Two volumes plus CD-ROM
Edited by
Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider
together with
Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie,
and Clive Upton
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
A Handbook
of Varieties of English
Volume 1: Phonology
Edited by
Edgar W. Schneider
Kate Burridge
Bernd Kortmann
Rajend Mesthrie
Clive Upton
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
앪
앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A handbook of varieties of English : a multimedia reference tool.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 3-11-017532-0 (set of two hardcovers plus CD-ROM : alk.
paper)
1. English language ⫺ Variation ⫺ Handbooks, manuals, etc.
2. English language ⫺ Dialects ⫺ Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Kort-
mann, Bernd, 1960⫺ II. Schneider, Edgar W. (Edgar Werner),
1954⫺
PE1711.H36 2004
427⫺dc22
2004025131
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at ⬍http://dnb.ddb.de⬎.
ISBN 3-11-017532-0
” Copyright 2004 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin
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including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without per-
mission in writing from the publisher.
Cover design: raumfisch.de/sign, Berlin.
Typesetting: medionet AG, Berlin.
Printing and binding: Kösel GmbH & Co. KG, Altusried.
Printed in Germany.
Contents of volume 1
Contents of volume 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
General introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
General references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The British Isles

Bernd Kortmann and Clive Upton (eds.)
Introduction: varieties of English in the British Isles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Bernd Kortmann and Clive Upton
English spoken in Orkney and Shetland: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Gunnel Melchers
Scottish English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Jane Stuart-Smith
Irish English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Raymond Hickey
Welsh English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Robert Penhallurick
English dialects in the North of England: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Joan Beal
The English West Midlands: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Urszula Clark
The dialect of East Anglia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Peter Trudgill
The dialects in the South of England: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Ulrike Altendorf and Dominic Watt
Channel Island English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Heinrich Ramisch
Received Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Clive Upton
British Creole: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Peter L. Patrick
vi Contents of volume 1
The Americas and the Caribbean

Edgar W. Schneider (ed.)
Introduction: varieties of English in the Americas and the Caribbean . . . . . 247

Edgar W. Schneider
Standard American English pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.
New England: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Naomi Nagy and Julie Roberts
New York, Philadelphia, and other northern cities: phonology . . . . . . . . . . 282
Matthew J. Gordon
Rural Southern white accents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Erik R. Thomas
The urban South: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Jan Tillery and Guy Bailey
The West and Midwest: phonology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Matthew J. Gordon
English in Canada: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Charles Boberg
Newfoundland English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
Sandra Clarke
African American Vernacular English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Walter F. Edwards
Gullah: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Tracey L. Weldon
Cajun Vernacular English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Sylvie Dubois and Barbara M. Horvath
Chicano English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
Otto Santa Ana and Robert Bayley
Bahamian English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Becky Childs and Walt Wolfram
Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Hubert Devonish and Otelemate G. Harry
Eastern Caribbean English-derived language varieties: phonology . . . . . . 481
Michael Aceto
Contents of volume 1 vii
Bajan: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501

Renée Blake
The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
Valerie Youssef and Winford James
Suriname creoles: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
Norval Smith and Vinije Haabo
The Pacific and Australasia

Kate Burridge and Bernd Kortmann (eds.)
Introduction: varieties of English in the Pacific and Australasia . . . . . . . . . 567

Kate Burridge and Bernd Kortmann
New Zealand English: phonology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
Laurie Bauer and Paul Warren
Regional and social differences in New Zealand: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Elizabeth Gordon and Margaret Maclagan
Maori English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614
Paul Warren and Laurie Bauer
Australian English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
Barbara M. Horvath
Regional characteristics of Australian English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645
David Bradley
Australian creoles and Aboriginal English: phonetics and phonology . . . . . 656
Ian G. Malcolm
Bislama: phonetics and phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
Terry Crowley
Solomon Islands Pijin: phonetics and phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 690
Christine Jourdan and Rachel Selbach
Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 710
Geoff P. Smith
Hawai‘i Creole: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
Kent Sakoda and Jeff Siegel
Fiji English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 750
Jan Tent and France Mugler
Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English: phonetics and phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
John Ingram and Peter Mühlhäusler
viii Contents of volume 1
Africa, South and Southeast Asia

Rajend Mesthrie (ed.)
Introduction: varieties of English in Africa and South and Southeast Asia 805
Rajend Mesthrie
Nigerian English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813
Ulrike B. Gut
Nigerian Pidgin English: phonology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831
Ben Elugbe
Ghanaian English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 842
Magnus Huber
Ghanaian Pidgin English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
Magnus Huber
Liberian Settler English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 874
John Victor Singler
Cameroon English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 885
Augustin Simo Bobda
Cameroon Pidgin English (Kamtok): phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 902
Thaddeus Menang
East African English (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania): phonology . . . . . . . . . . . 918
Josef Schmied
White South African English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 931
Sean Bowerman
Black South African English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 943
Bertus van Rooy
Indian South African English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 953
Rajend Mesthrie
Cape Flats English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964
Peter Finn
St. Helena English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985
Sheila Wilson
Indian English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 992
Ravinder Gargesh
Pakistani English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003
Ahmar Mahboob and Nadra Huma Ahmar
Contents of volume 1 ix
Singapore English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1017

Lionel Wee
Malaysian English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1034
Loga Baskaran
Philippine English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1047
Ma. Lourdes G. Tayao
Synopses
The editors
Synopsis: phonological variation in the British Isles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1063

Clive Upton
Synopsis: phonological variation in the Americas and the Caribbean . . . . . 1075
Edgar W. Schneider
Synopsis: phonetics and phonology of English spoken in the Pacific
and Australasian region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1089
Kate Burridge
Synopsis: the phonology of English in Africa
and South and Southeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1099
Rajend Mesthrie
Global synopsis: phonetic and phonological variation
in English world-wide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1111
Edgar W. Schneider
Index of subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1139

Index of varieties and languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1161
Contents of volume 2
Contents of volume 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
General introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
General references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The British Isles

Introduction: varieties of English in the British Isles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

English spoken in Orkney and Shetland: morphology, syntax and lexicon . 34
Gunnel Melchers
Scottish English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Jim Miller
Irish English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Markku Filppula
Welsh English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Robert Penhallurick
English dialects in the North of England: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . 114
Joan Beal
The dialect of East Anglia: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Peter Trudgill
English dialects in the Southwest: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Susanne Wagner
The varieties of English spoken in the Southeast of England:
morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Lieselotte Anderwald
British Creole: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Mark Sebba
Contents of volume 2 xi

Introduction: varieties of English in the Americas and the Caribbean . . . . 211
Edgar W. Schneider
Colloquial American English: grammatical features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Thomas E. Murray and Beth Lee Simon
Appalachian English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Michael B. Montgomery
Rural and ethnic varieties in the Southeast: morphology and syntax . . . . . 281
Walt Wolfram
Newfoundland English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Sandra Clarke
Urban African American Vernacular English: morphology and syntax . . . . 319
Walt Wolfram
Earlier African American English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Alexander Kautzsch
Gullah: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Chicano English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Robert Bayley and Otto Santa Ana
Bahamian English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Jeffrey Reaser and Benjamin Torbert
Jamaican Creole: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Peter L. Patrick
Eastern Caribbean English-derived language varieties:
morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Michael Aceto
The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Winford James and Valerie Youssef
Surinamese creoles: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
Donald Winford and Bettina Migge
Belize and other central American varieties: morphology and syntax . . . . 517
Geneviève Escure
xii Contents of volume 2

Introduction: varieties of English in the Pacific and Australasia . . . . . . . . . 547

New Zealand English: morphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
Marianne Hundt, Jennifer Hay and Elizabeth Gordon
Australian English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
Peter Collins and Pam Peters
Australian Vernacular English: some grammatical characteristics . . . . . . . . 611
Andrew Pawley
Hypocoristics in Australian English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
Jane Simpson
Australian creoles and Aboriginal English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . 657
Ian G. Malcolm
Bislama: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
Terry Crowley
Solomon Islands English: morphology and syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702
Christine Jourdan
Tok Pisin: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720
Geoff Smith
Hawai’i Creole: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
Fiji English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
France Mugler and Jan Tent
Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English (Pitkern Norfolk): morphology and syntax 789
Peter Mühlhäusler

Rajend Mesthrie
Nigerian English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813
M.A. Alo and Rajend Mesthrie
Nigerian Pidgin English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 828
Nicholas Faraclas
Contents of volume 2 xiii
Ghanaian English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854

Magnus Huber and Kari Dako
Ghanaian Pidgin English: morphology and syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
Magnus Huber
Liberian Settler English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 879
John Victor Singler
Cameroon English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 898
Paul Mbangwana
Cameroon Pidgin English (Kamtok): morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . 909
Miriam Ayafor
East African English (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania):
morphology and syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 929
Josef Schmied
White South African English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 948
Sean Bowerman
Black South African English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962
Rajend Mesthrie
Indian South African English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974
Rajend Mesthrie
Cape Flats English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993
Kay McCormick
St. Helena English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1006
Sheila Wilson and Rajend Mesthrie
Indian English: syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1016
Rakesh M. Bhatt
Butler English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1031
Priya Hosali
Pakistani English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1045
Ahmar Mahboob
Singapore English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1058
Lionel Wee
Malaysian English: morphology and syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1073
Loga Baskaran
xiv Contents of volume 2
Synopses
The editors
Synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in the British Isles . . . . . . 1089
Bernd Kortmann
Synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in the Americas
and the Caribbean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1104
Edgar W. Schneider
Synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in the Pacific
and Australasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1116
Kate Burridge
Synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in Africa
and South and Southeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1132
Rajend Mesthrie
Global synopsis: morphological and syntactic variation in English . . . . . . 1142
Bernd Kortmann and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
Index of subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203

Index of varieties and languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1220
Abbreviations
AAVE African American Vernacular English

AbE/C/P (Australian) Aboriginal English / Creole / Pidgin
AfBahE Afro-Bahamian English
AfkE Afrikaans English
AmE American English
AnBahE Anglo-Bahamian English
AppE Appalachian English
AusE/VE/C Australian English/Vernacular English/Creoles
BahE Bahamian English
Baj Bajan (Barbadian Creole)
BelC Belizean Creole
BIE Bay Islands English (Honduras)
BrC British Creole
BrE British English (= EngE + ScE + WelE)
ButlE Butler English (India)
CajE Cajun English
CAmC Central American Creoles (Belize, Miskito, Limón, etc.)
CamP/E Cameroon Pidgin/English
CanE Canadian English
CarE Caribbean English
Car(E)C Carribean (English-lexicon) Creoles
CFE Cape Flats English
ChcE Chicano English
ChnP Chinese Pidgin English
CollAmE Colloquial American English
CollSgE Colloquial Singapore English
EAfE East African English
EMarC Eastern Maroon Creole
EngE English English
EModE Early Modern English
ME Middle English
OE Old English
ESM English in Singapore and Malaysia
FijE Fiji English
GhE/P Ghanaian English/Pidgin
GuyC Guyanese Creole
HawC Hawaii Creole
HKE Hong Kong English
IndE Indian English, Anglo-Indian
xvi Abbreviations
InlNE Inland Northern (American) English

IrE Irish English
JamC/E Jamaican Creole / English
KenE Kenyan English
KPE Kru Pidgin English
LibC/E Liberian Creole/English
LibSE Liberian Settler English
LibVE Liberian Vernacular English
LimC Limonese Creole (Costa Rica)
LonVE London Vernacular English
LnkE Lankan English
MalE Malaysian English
NEngE New England English
NfldE Newfoundland English
NigP/E Nigerian Pidgin / English
NZE New Zealand English
NYCE New York City English
OzE Ozarks English
PakE Pakistani English
PanC Panamanian Creole
PhilE Philadelphia English
PhlE Philippines English
RP Received Pronunciation
SAfE South African English
BlSAfE Black South African English
CoSAfE Coloured South African English
InSAfE Indian South African English
WhSAfE White South African English
SAmE Southern American English
SAsE South Asian English
SEAmE South Eastern American English enclave dialects
ScE Scottish English, Scots
ScStE Scottish Standard English
SgE Singapore English
SLVE St. Lucian Vernacular English
SolP Solomon Islands Pidgin
StAmE Standard American English
StAusCE Standard Australian Colloquial English
StAusFE Standard Australian Formal English
StBrE Standard British English
StE Standard English
StGhE Standard Ghanaian English
Abbreviations xvii
StHE St. Helena English

StIndE Standard Indian English
StJamE Standard Jamaican English
SurC Suriname Creoles
TanE Tanzanian English
TobC Tobagonian Creole
Trad-RP Traditional Received Pronunciation
TrnC Trinidadian Creole
T & TC Trinidadian & mesolectal Tobagonian Creoles
TP Tok Pisin, New Guinea Pidgin, Neomelanesian
WAfE/P West African English/Pidgin
WelE Welsh English
WMwE Western and Midwestern American English
ZamE Zambian English
More abbreviations
ESL English as Second Language

EFL English as Foreign Language
EIL English as International Language
ENL English as Native Language
L1 First Language
L2 Second Language
P/C Pidgins and Creoles
General introduction
The all-important design feature of this Handbook is its focus on structure and on
the solid description and documentation of data. The two volumes, accompanied
by the CD-ROM, provide comprehensive up-to-date accounts of the salient pho-
nological and grammatical properties of the varieties of English around the world.
Reliable structural information in a somewhat standardized format and presented
in an accessible way is a necessary prerequisite for any kind of study of language
varieties, independent of the theoretical framework used for analysis. It is espe-
cially important for comparative studies of the phonological and morphosyntactic
patterns across varieties of English, and the inclusion of this kind of data in typo-
logical studies (e.g. in the spirit of Kortmann 2004).
Of course, all of this structural information can be and has to be put in perspec-
tive by the conditions of uses of these varieties, i.e. their sociohistorical back-
grounds, their current sociolinguistic settings (not infrequently in multilingual so-
cieties), and their associated political dimensions (like issues of norm-setting, lan-
guage policies and pedagogical applications). Ultimately, all of the varieties under
discussion in these Handbooks, certainly so the ones spoken outside of England,
but in a sense, looking way back in time, even the English dialects themselves, are
products of colonization processes, predominantly the European colonial expan-
sion in the modern age. A number of highly interesting questions, linguistically
and culturally, might be asked in this context, including the central issue of why
all of this has happened and whether there is an underlying scheme that has con-
tinued to drive and motivate the evolution of new varieties of English (Schneider
2003). These linguistic and sociohistorical background issues will be briefly ad-
dressed in the introductions of the four regional parts and in some of the individual
chapters, but it should be made clear that it is the issue of structural description
and comparison which is at the heart of this project. Accordingly, in this General
Introduction we focus upon the organization of the Handbook and the information
to be culled from it.
This Handbook is geared towards documenting and mapping the structural vari-
ation among (spontaneously spoken) non-standard varieties of English. Standard
English is of course that variety, or set of closely related varieties, which enjoys
the highest social prestige. It serves as a reference system and target norm in for-
mal situations, in the language used by people taking on a public persona (includ-
ing, for example, anchorpersons in the news media), and as a model in the teaching
of English worldwide. Here, however, it is treated as is commonplace in modern
2 Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider
descriptive linguistics, i.e. as a variety on a par with all other (regional, social,
ethnic, or contact) varieties of English. Clearly, in terms of its structural proper-
ties it is not inherently superior to any of the non-standard varieties. Besides, the
very notion of “Standard English” itself obviously refers to an abstraction. On the
written level, it is under discussion to what extent a “common core” or a putatively
homogeneous variety called “International English” actually exists: there is some
degree of uniformity across the major national varieties, but once one looks into
details of expression and preferences, there are also considerable differences. On
the spoken level, there are reference accents like, for example, Received Pronun-
ciation for British English, but their definition also builds upon abstractions from
real individuals’ performance. Thus, in this Handbook especially the grammar of
(written) Standard English figures as no more than an implicit standard of com-
parison, in the sense that all chapters focus upon those phenomena in a given va-
riety which are (more or less strikingly) different from this standard (these being
perceived as not, note again, in any sense deficient or inferior to it). In light of the
wealth of publications and comprehensive grammars on Standard English, there
are no survey chapters on, for example, Standard British or American English in
this Handbook. For the reference accents of British and American English chap-
ters have been included.
1. Coverage
The Handbook covers some 60 (sets of) varieties, including main national standard
varieties, distinctive regional, ethnic, and social varieties, major contact varieties
(pidgins and creoles), as well as major English as a Second Language varieties in
the British Isles (edited by Bernd Kortmann and Clive Upton), the Americas and
the Caribbean (edited by Edgar W. Schneider), the Pacific and Australasia (edited
by Kate Burridge and Bernd Kortmann), and Africa, South and Southeast Asia
(edited by Raj Mesthrie).
The inclusion of second-language varieties (e.g. English in India, Singapore,
Ghana, Nigeria) and, especially, English-based pidgins and creoles, which add
up to more than half of all varieties covered in this Handbook, may come as
a surprise to some readers. Normally these varieties are addressed from differ-
ent perspectives (such as, for example, language policy, language pedagogy, lin-
guistic attitudes, language and identity (construction), substrate vs. superstrate
influence), each standing in its own research tradition. Here they are primarily
discussed from the point of view of their structural properties. This will make
possible comparisons with structural properties of, for example, other varieties
of English spoken in the same region, or second-language or contact varieties in
other parts of the English-speaking world. At the same time the availability of
solid structural descriptions may open new perspectives for a fruitful interaction
General introduction 3
between the different research traditions within which second-language and con-
tact varieties are studied.
The boundaries of what is considered and accepted as “varieties of English”
and thus included in the Handbooks has been drawn fairly widely, to include
English-based pidgins and creoles which at first sight look quite different from
what many English-speaking people may have been exposed to. Pidgins are make-
shift contact varieties used in communication between people who share no other
tongue. Creoles, according to the classic definition, emerge when pidgins become
a new generation’s native language. Pidgins are usually described as structurally
reduced, while creoles are structurally complex and fulfill all communicative re-
quirements by human speakers, but in practice the distinction between both lan-
guage types is anything but clearcut, as some of the contributions in the Handbook
illustrate. Traditionally, creoles have been regarded as distinct languages of their
own, but linguists agree that the line between what constitutes a separate language
as against a dialect of a language is usually drawn on political and social grounds
rather than because of structural properties. In accepting English-oriented pidgins
and creoles in the present context, we adopt a trend of recent research to consider
them as contact varieties closely related to, possibly to be categorized as variet-
ies of, their respective superstrate languages (e.g. Mufwene 2001). Creoles, and
also some pidgins, in many regions vary along a continuum from acrolectal forms,
relatively close to English and used by the higher sociolinguistic strata in formal
contexts, to basilects, “deep” varieties maximally different from English. Most
of our contributions focus upon the mesolects, the middle ranges which in most
creole-speaking societies are used most widely.
For other varieties, too, it may be asked why or why not they have been selected
for inclusion in this Handbook. Among the considerations that led to the present
selection, the following figured most prominently: amount and quality of existing
data and research documentation for the individual varieties, intensity of ongoing
research activities, availability of authors, and space constraints (leading, for ex-
ample, to the exclusion of strictly local accents and dialects). More information on
the selection of varieties will be given in the regional introductions by the editors.
2. Organization of the Handbook
The overall organization of the Handbook is very simple: one volume each for
phonology and grammar (i.e. morphology and syntax), with each of the volumes
falling into four parts according to region or rather continent(s). The major world
regions relevant for the discussion of varieties of English are the following: the
British Isles, the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, (South and Southeast) Asia,
Australasia and the Pacific (or Oceania). These world regions have been lumped
together into the four parts spelt out in section 1, according to criteria such as
number of relevant varieties, their (present and/or past) relatedness, availability

of documentation and of researchers into the specific issues under discussion, and
the expertise of the individual volume editors.
Following the general introduction, each volume opens with a list of general
reference works, all of them exclusively book publications, relevant across the
world regions covered in the Handbook and for individual world regions. Within
the two volumes, each of the four regional parts opens with an introduction by the
responsible editor(s) which puts in perspective the varieties spoken in the relevant
world region(s) and provides a brief guide to the chapters written on them. These
regional introductions include accounts of the histories, the cultural and sociolin-
guistic situations, and the most important data sources for the relevant locations,
ethnic groups and varieties. Further issues addressed may include a survey of cur-
rent research, but also the discussion of such notoriously problematic notions as
dialect boundaries, dialect areas, or traditional as opposed to modern dialects, and
the problem of treating pidgins and creoles as varieties of English.
Following the regional parts, each of the volumes concludes with a fifth part
in which the reader will find two types of synopses: four regional synopses and a
general synopsis. In the former, the editors will summarize the most striking prop-
erties of the sets of varieties of English spoken in the individual world regions and,
within them, of selected cross-sections of varieties (e.g. contact varieties). Each
volume will close with a general synopsis (authored by Edgar W. Schneider for the
phonology volume, and Bernd Kortmann and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi for the mor-
phology and syntax volume) on the most noteworthy findings and tendencies on
phonological and morphosyntactic variation in English from a global perspective.
What will emerge from the synopses is that many of the features described for
individual varieties or sets of varieties in this Handbook are not unique to these
(sets of) varieties. This is true both for morphology and syntax and for phonology.
As a matter of fact, quite a number of morphosyntactic features described as salient
properties of individual varieties may strike the reader as typical of other variet-
ies, too, possibly even of the grammar of spoken English in general. In a similar
vein, it turns out that certain phonological processes (like the monophthongiza-
tion of certain diphthongs, the fronting, backing or merging of some vowels, and
some consonantal substitutions or suprasegmental processes) can be documented
in quite a number of fairly disparate language varieties – not surprisingly, perhaps,
given shared underlying principles like constraints of articulatory space or tenden-
cies towards simplification and the reduction of contrasts.
It seems possible to distinguish three broad groups of non-standard features ac-
cording to their distribution across varieties of English:
Group I: by far widest distribution on a global scale
Group II: foundrelativelyfrequentlyinoneormorepartsoftheEnglish
speakingworld
Group III: restricted to relatively few non-standard varieties of English (possibly

only one variety)
As it turns out, only very few of the formal variants belong to Group III. The dis-
tributions of selected individual features, both morphosyntactic and phonological,
across varieties world-wide will be visualized by the interactive world maps on
the accompanying CD-ROM (see also section 4 below). On these maps, each of
the selected features, for almost all of the varieties under discussion, is categorized
as occurring regularly (marked as “A” and colour-coded in red), occasionally or
only in certain specified environments (marked as “B” and represented by a pink
circle) or practically not at all (“C”, grey). These innovative maps, which are ac-
companied by statistical distribution data on the spread of selected variants, will
provide the reader with an immediate visual representation of regional distribution
and diffusion patterns. It should be noted that, not surprisingly, it has turned out
to be impossible to obtain accurate documentation on the presence or absence of
each and every feature in each one of the varieties, so category “C” also includes
those cases, for example, where no positive evidence as to the presence of a given
feature has been provided, though the positive non-existence of anything seems
impossible to prove. Also, any such categorization by necessity enforces problem-
atic distinctions at times, so that finely-graded distinctions and conditions cannot
be represented appropriately. For a summary presentation and discussion of the
major results of these comparisons the reader is referred to the regional and the
global synopses.
3. Nature and structure of the contributions
The chapters are descriptive survey articles providing state-of-the-art reports on

major issues in current research, with a common core in order to make the Hand-
book an interesting and useful tool especially from a comparative, i.e. cross-dialec-
tal and cross-linguistic, point of view. All chapters aim primarily at a qualitative
rather than quantitative perspective, i.e. whether or not a given feature occurs is
more important than its frequency. Of course, for varieties where research has
focused upon documenting frequency relationships between variants of variables,
some information on relevant quantitative tendencies has been provided. Depend-
ing upon the research coverage in a given world region (which varies widely from
one continent to another), some contributions build upon existing sociolinguistic,
dialectological, or structural research, and a small number of other chapters makes
systematic use of available computerized corpora. In some cases and for some
regions the chapters in this Handbook provide the first-ever systematic qualitative
survey of the phonological and grammatical properties of English as spoken there.
For almost all varieties of English covered there are companion chapters in
the phonology and morphosyntax volumes. In these cases it is in the phonology
chapter that the reader will find a concise introductory section on the historical and
cultural background as well as the current sociolinguistic situation of the relevant
variety or set of varieties spoken at this location.
In order to ensure a certain degree of comparability, the authors were given a
set of core issues that they were asked to address (provided something interesting
can be said about them in the respective variety). For the phonology chapters, this
set included the following items:
– phonological systems
– phonetic realization(s) and (phonotactic) distributions of a selection of pho-
nemes (to be selected according to salience in the variety in question)
– specific phonological processes at work in the relevant variety
– lexical distribution
– prosodic features (stress, rhythm)
– intonation patterns
– observations/generalizations on the basis of lexical sets à la Wells (1982) and
Foulkes/Docherty (1999), a standard reading passage and/or samples of free
conversation (cf. also section 5 on the content of the CD-ROM below).
It is worth noting that for some of the contributions, notably the chapters on pidgins
and creoles, the lexical sets were not sufficient or suitable to describe the variabil-
ity found. In such cases authors were encouraged to expand the set of target words,
or replace one of the items. The reading passage was also adjusted or substituted
by some authors, for instance because it was felt to be culturally inappropriate.
This is the corresponding set for the morphology and syntax chapters:
– tense – aspect – modality systems
– auxiliaries
– negation
– relativization
– complementation
– other subordination phenomena (notably adverbial subordination)
– agreement
– noun phrase structure
– pronominal systems
– word order (and information structure: especially focus/topicalizing construc-
tions)
– selected salient features of the morphological paradigms of, for example, auxil-
iaries and pronouns.
Lexical variation was not our primary concern, given that it fails to lend itself to
the systematic generalization and comparability we are aiming for in this Hand-
book. However, authors were offered the opportunity to comment on highly sa-
lient features of the vocabulary of any given variety (briefly and within the overall
space constraints) if this was considered rewarding. The reader may find such
information on distinctive properties of the respective vocabularies in the mor-
phology and syntax chapters.
In the interest of combining guidance for readers, efficiency, space constraints,
but also the goal of comprehensiveness, bibliographic references are systemati-
cally divided between three different types of reference lists. As was stated above,
this introduction is accompanied by a list of “General References” which com-
piles a relatively large number of books which, taken together, are central to the
field of world-wide varieties of English – “classic” publications, collective vol-
umes, particularly important publications, and so on. It is understood that in the
individual contributions all authors may refer to titles from this list without these
being repeated in their respective source lists. Each of the individual chapters
ends with a list of “Selected References” comprising, on average, only 15–20
references – including the most pertinent ones on the respective variety (or closely
related varieties) beyond any others possibly included in the General References
list, and possibly others cited in the respective article. In other words, the Selected
References do not repeat any of the General References given at the very begin-
ning of both Handbook volumes. Thirdly, a “Comprehensive Bibliography”, with
further publications specifically on the phonology and morphosyntax of each of
the varieties covered in the Handbook, for which no space limitations were im-
posed, is available on the CD-ROM. The idea behind this limitation of the number
of references allowed to go with each article was to free the texts of too much
technical apparatus and thus to increase their reader-friendliness for a target audi-
ence of non-specialists while at the same time combining basic guidance to the
most important literature (in the General References list) with the possibility of
providing comprehensive coverage of the writings available on any given region
(in the Bibliographies on the CD-ROM). It must be noted, however, that at times
this rule imposed limitations upon possible source credits allowed in the discus-
sions, because to make the books self-contained authors were allowed to refer to
titles from the General and the Select References lists only. In other words, it is
possible that articles touch upon material drawn from publications listed in the
CD-ROM bibliographies without explicit credit, although every effort has been
made to avoid this.
4. The CD-ROM
The two volumes of the Handbook are accompanied by a CD-ROM providing il-
lustrative, additional and incidental material. Most importantly, given that in their
natural setting language varieties are spoken and heard rather than described in
writing but that such oral material is hardly ever available, the CD contains audio
samples, new sound material for each variety that, depending upon availability,
may comprise (partly) phonemically transcribed samples of free conversation, a
standard reading passage, and recordings of the spoken “lexical sets” which define
and illustrate vocalic variation (Wells 1982). Another highly innovative feature
of the CD is the vivid and in parts interactive graphic illustration of the variabil-
ity discussed in the books. The user is provided with representations of regional
vowel charts and with interactive maps showing the geographical distribution of
individual phonological and grammatical features and, on a global scale, their de-
gree of pervasiveness across the varieties of English. The CD-ROM also includes
the “Comprehensive Bibliographies” for the individual chapters mentioned above.
For individual varieties, users will find phonetic analyses of sounds and intonation
patterns as well as further incidental material considered relevant by the author.
5. Acknowledgements
A publication project as huge as this one would have been impossible, indeed im-
possible even to think of, without the support of a great number of people devoted
to their profession and to the subject of this Handbook. First among these, the edi-
tors would like thank the members of their editorial teams: in Freiburg, these are
Melitta Cocan, Cosima Diehl, Cara Heinzmann, Isabella Risorgi, Anna Rosen, Su-
sanne Wagner, Veronika Westhoff and, above all, Monika Schulz; in Regensburg,
Regina Trüb and Petra Orendi; in Cape Town, Sarah Johnson and Rowan Mentis.
The editors are also much indebted to Elizabeth Traugott, for all the thought she
gave to this project right from the very beginning of the planning stage and her ex-
tremely helpful feedback on draft versions of chapters, introductions and synopses.
Without Jürgen Handke, the rich audio-visual multimedia support of the chapters
in the Handbook would have been impossible to conceive of. Furthermore, we
have always benefitted from the support and interest invested into this project by
Anke Beck and the people at Mouton de Gruyter. Finally, and most importantly, of
course, the editors would like to thank the contributors and informants for having
conformed to the rigid guidelines, deadlines and time frames that we set them for
the various stages of (re)writing their chapters and providing the input material for
the CD-ROM and, in the final stages of the editing process, for not having tired of
answering last-minute questions.
This Handbook truly represents an impressive product of scholarly collabora-
tion of people from all around the globe. Right until the end it has been an exciting
and wonderful experience for the editors (as well as, we would like to think, for
the authors) to bring all these scholars and their work together, and we believe
that this shows in the quality of the chapters and the material presented on the
CD-ROM. May this Handbook be enjoyed, appreciated and esteemed by its read-
ers, and treasured as the reference work and research tool it was designed as for
anyone interested in and concerned with variation in English!
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The British Isles
Introduction: varieties of English in the British Isles
1. A note on geopolitical terminology
‘The British Isles’ is a geographical term which refers to the two large islands that
contain the mainlands of Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, Wales,
and England, together with a large number of other, smaller islands that are part
of the territories of these countries: one island (the Isle of Man) and one archi-
pelago (the Channel Islands) have a significant degree of autonomy within the
state which encompasses the bulk of the British Isles, the United Kingdom. ‘The
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ (the UK) is a state that
encompasses Scotland, Wales, England, Man, and the Channel Islands, together
with the northernmost part of the island of Ireland. If Northern Ireland is omitted
entirely from a description, the designation of the area described is properly ‘Great
Britain’. ‘Ireland’ properly designates the whole of the island of Ireland (though
popularly it is used to refer to the state of Ireland, that is the Republic of Ireland,
which occupies the central, southern, and north-western parts).
2. The coverage of British Isles accents and dialects
Major accent and dialect distinctions in the British Isles section of this Handbook
are represented in chapters covering Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern England,
and Southern England. Other chapters cover the distinctive accents and dialects
of somewhat less extensive areas: Orkney and Shetland, the Channel Islands, the
eastern England region of East Anglia, and the very major conurbation and admin-
istrative area of the English West Midlands. Variation within each of these areas
is, of course, discussed in the relevant chapters: in particular, Northern and South-
ern Irish are distinguished, as is the speech of southwest and southeast England,
where major differences apply. It is expected that the reader might concentrate on
particular chapters or smaller sections to gain in-depth knowledge of a particular
variety or group of closely-related varieties or, especially by referring to the sound
charts, to obtain an overview of wider overall variation or of variation relating to
specific linguistic variables.
Whilst Received Pronunciation (RP) is specifically presented as a supra-re-
gional accent model frequently used in the teaching of English worldwide and
for purposes of wide communication, its description plays only a very minor part
26 Bernd Kortmann and Clive Upton
in the analysis of the regional varieties, each of which is described in its own
terms rather than in any sense as divergent from an externally-imposed norm. For
reasons spelt out in the General Introduction to this Handbook, Standard English
grammar is not explicitly discussed as a separate entity.
3. The concept of the ‘dialect area’
The linguistic varieties of the UK and Ireland presented in this Handbook are
discussed along geographical lines. This arrangement by region is convenient in
terms of structure, and is helpful to the user who wishes to understand regional
differences, or who needs to concentrate on the variety or group of varieties found
in one particular region. But it is also potentially misleading, since the impres-
sion might be gained that UK and Irish varieties are tidily to be separated from
each other, with one being spoken by a fixed, geographically identifiable group
of people quite distinct from another group using another quite different set of
speech-forms.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Far from there being regional cut-
off points for ways of speaking, i.e. boundaries where, for example, one accent
ceases to be heard and another takes its place, accents and dialects blend subtly
and imperceptibly into one another. Rather than the hearer detecting the presence
or absence of features as they move about a country or region, particularly at a
local level it is a matter of ‘more or less’, of features being heard with greater or
lesser frequency as features most characteristic of one region are left behind, to
be replaced with greater intensity by others associated with a region being ap-
proached.
Nor should we think that all speakers in one place use the same set of features
with the same level of intensity, if they use them at all. It is to be expected that
some speakers, those who sound most local to a particular place, will fairly consis-
tently exhibit a set of features which most closely conform to a characteristic local
way of speaking, and it is these which form a central part of the local accent and
dialect descriptions given in the chapters that follow. However, very many speak-
ers will not be consistent in their use of these features, being variably more or less
regional in different situations or under different social promptings (e.g. the social
status of addresser and addressee, and the degree of familiarity between them),
even within the same discourse (e.g. depending on the topic). It is important to
note immediately that such variation is not random: speakers do not drift between,
towards, or away from markedly regional pronunciations on a whim. Rather, it
has been shown in numerous studies that such movement patterns correlate with
such social phenomena as age, gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity and local
affiliations of both speaker and hearer, and can result in short-term, but also long-
term, language change.
Introduction: varieties of English in the British Isles 27
The acceptance of the absence of tight boundaries for phonological and gram-
matical features, and the acknowledgement of speakers in any one place being
socially heterogeneous and, moreover, inconsistent in their speech lead to the in-
evitable conclusion that the concept of the ‘dialect area’ as a fixed, tidy entity is
ultimately a myth. In terms of pronunciation, what we are faced with, in place of a
certain number of accents, is in reality a continuum: accents shade one into anoth-
er as individual speakers espouse features drawn from a range of accents to which
they have access and that are indicative not just of their regional connections but
also of their social needs and aspirations. The same is true for grammatical usage,
and for lexical choice.
4. The distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ dialects
Another often-used notion in dialectology we would like to question is the sepa-

ration of dialects into two distinct categories, the ‘Traditional’ and the ‘Modern’.
This artificially tidy categorisation is not only questionable given the fact of con-
stant language change. It is even more debatable in the light of the fact that, as
will be explained below, much of our knowledge of recent distributions of dialect
features over wide sweeps of territory in the British Isles continues to be based
on surveys now considered to have focused on the ‘traditional’, in the sense that
their target was the essentially rural speech of comparatively static communities.
(No community is ever wholly static or isolated, of course: there will always be
incomers and external contacts, however few these might be in particular com-
munities at certain times.) Nevertheless, the bipartite distinction does have some
undoubted merit as an idealisation: it reminds us that urbanisation and geographi-
cal and social mobility have resulted in some accelerated and often quite dramatic
changes in speech in recent years, as is made clear in the following chapters. Per-
haps it reminds us, too, that language should be seen in its continuous historical
(diachronic) as well as its ‘snapshot-in-time’ (synchronic) dimension, that there
was a ‘then’ to contrast with the ‘now’. However, we would be wrong to suppose
that there is a straightforward, clear-cut distinction between the way English was
spoken in the rural communities of half a century ago and as it is in the towns and
cities of today, or that change is happening to language now as it has not happened
before. Across time there are periods of comparatively rapid and of slower altera-
tion in speech, but language is constantly changing. (And, indeed, the mechanisms
of language change occupy the research attention of very many dialectologists
today, just as ascertaining the facts of its progress absorbed the efforts of dialect
researchers of previous generations.) Furthermore, since human society is in es-
sence the same as it was in the past, a greater understanding of the facts of and
reasons for that change today informs our understanding of developments both in
the past and into the future.
5. Historical and cultural elements in the formation of British accents
Varieties of English around the world are all derived from one ancestral root-stock
(variously called Anglo-Saxon or Old English). In part at least, the distinctive
sounds and grammatical properties of each are tied to developments in the history
of the language, these sometimes dating back many centuries. It is in the UK and
Ireland, and in England in particular, however, that this matter of pedigree is most
significant. This fact is unsurprising. English is, after all, at bottom the product
of England and southern Scotland, born of a fusion of West Germanic dialects
brought from mainland Europe to the islands of Britain in the fifth and sixth cen-
turies AD, and perhaps even earlier. Fusing over the centuries with elements of
Celtic, Norse, and French, and subject to sundry other influences as a result of the
islands’ complex history of trade and conquest, the language in its homeland has
had time and motive both to preserve ancient forms and to fragment to a degree
unknown elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
Thus, constant echoes of earlier phonology and grammar are to be heard in the
British regional varieties discussed in this Handbook. They are very clearly evi-
dent where contrasts appear between regional accents and the convenient touch-
stone accent of RP, which is itself an evolving accent but one which, as a model for
pronunciation of British English, does not go back before the nineteenth century.
The STRUT/PUT merger of the English North and North Midlands, i.e. the vowel
in words like strut and hut being the same as in put, is Anglo-Saxon, for example.
So are long monophthongs where RP and some other accents have diphthongs.
So too, among many other features, are the ‘Velar Nasal Plus’ feature (as in the
pronunciation /sINg/ of sing or /sINg´/ of singer [Wells 1982: 365]) of the English
north-west Midlands, and the rhoticity (i.e. the pronunciation of /r/ following a
vowel, as in star or start) characteristic of Scotland, Ireland, south-west England,
parts of Lancashire and the Northeast, as too of North America of course. Cor-
responding grammatical features from earlier periods of English include multiple
negation (or negative concord), as in She couldn’t say nothing about them, and
personal pronoun forms like thou and thee.
The length of time over which English has been evolving in the small area that
is the British Isles accounts in large part for the complex variation in its present-
day dialects. To this must be added the region’s ethnic and political mix, both now
and in the past. There are, of course, two sovereign states represented, the United
Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The United Kingdom in turn comprises the
nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and matters of national
as well as of narrower regional identity come into play when espousal of features
of language are concerned. In the present, Wales especially, and Scotland and Ire-
land to lesser extents, see the interaction of English with Celtic languages. In the
past, this interaction with Celtic has been most influential in the north and west of
the region, as has that with Norse in Ireland, in northern Scotland and the Orkney
and Shetland Isles, and in northwest and eastern England. The economic and po-
litical dominance exerted on Britain by London and the southeast of England has
also inevitably shaped accents: not itself a regional accent, RP nevertheless has an
essentially southeastern phonemic structure and phonetic bias; such processes as
the Great Vowel Shift have acted to shape modern phonology more consistently
and more completely in the south of England than elsewhere. All of this cultural
and historical complexity, as it affects language, is rehearsed in the various chap-
ters that follow, and each in consequence has its own unique perspective.
6. Dialect surveys
Although they are neither very recent nor focused upon the accents of major cen-
tres of population, a small group of major regional dialect surveys are heavily
drawn upon in the writing of the following chapters, as they must inevitably be
by anyone commenting on variation in the speech of the British Isles. Foremost
among these, for England, is the Survey of English Dialects (SED). This essen-
tially rural survey from the mid-twentieth century continues to be drawn upon for
information because of its detailed coverage, its reliability (given the constraints
under which it operated) and the accessibility of its information: it is fair to say
that no reliable statements can be made about the widespread distribution of lin-
guistic features within England without reference to its findings, since there exists
no more recent country-wide comprehensive evidence. The SED is paralleled by
its contemporary in Scotland, the Linguistic Survey of Scotland, in Wales by the
Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects, and in Ireland by the Tape-recorded Survey of Hi-
berno-English Speech. The last two surveys were in some large measure directly
inspired by the SED, under whose founder, Harold Orton, some of their founder-
workers had trained.
Recently, however, whilst there have been some comparatively large-scale efforts
at data-gathering (see especially the Survey of British Dialect Grammar [Cheshire/
Edwards/Whittle 1993], the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus [Kortmann 2003,
Kortmann and Wagner 2005], and the Sound Atlas of Irish English [Hickey 2005
and this volume]), the reader will notice that, with the notable exception of the lat-
ter, even these have not been on the scale of earlier surveys. This has not, however,
been accidental or the result of academic indolence on the part of the linguistic
community. Rather, recent concentration on social variation in speech, in order to
better understand the mechanisms of language change, has resulted in focus being
on small(er) areas and fewer locations in which diverse populations can be studied
in close detail: the wide sweeps of variation that were the object of earlier research
do not speak to the considerations of motivation for language use, and for language
variation, which are a preoccupation of today’s dialectologists. (In this regard, there
have been a number of recent seminal works which have been drawn upon in the
present volume, such as Foulkes and Docherty’s Urban Voices [1999] and Milroy
and Milroy’s Real English [1993].) Beyond the larger survey materials, therefore,
the authors have drawn upon a wide range of materials which result from their own
and others’ intensive study of the localised speech of their respective areas.
7. The chapters on phonology
Melchers’ focus is on distinctions between the phonology of Orkney (“Orcadian”)

and Shetland, and also between their divergence from and correspondence to the ac-
cents of mainland Scotland. Amongst those accents, Stuart-Smith identifies a con-
tinuum corresponding to a phonological range available to very many in Scotland,
whose speech ranges seamlessly between Scottish Standard English and Scots: as
regards the latter, on grounds of population density and the existence of detailed
research data, she concentrates on the Urban Scots of the ‘Central Belt’ around Ed-
inburgh and (especially) Glasgow. In a chapter which, concerning its northern data,
relates very closely to that of Scotland, Hickey describes a complex of accents in
which a north-south split provides a basic structure. He identifies a supraregional
Southern accent and three regional southern varieties, distinguishing these from
Northern varieties. He includes discussion of the complex terminology associated
with northern variation, and three urban accents, those of Dublin, Belfast, and Der-
ry. As Hickey’s chapter treats the admixture of English, Irish and Scots influences
on the Irish English accents, so Penhallurick’s is concerned with the interface of
English and Welsh in the phonology of Wales. Welsh sounds in English, the effects
of long-established cultural links with the English Midlands and Southwest, and
the existence of English as a Foreign Language for Welsh speakers are shown to be
factors in the creation of the Principality’s distinctive English accents.
Directly across the border from Wales, Clark’s West Midlands is the second
largest conurbation of England and the UK, home to the two distinct if closely-re-
lated accents of Birmingham and the Black Country. Concentration in this chapter
is on the Black Country on the one hand and on the wider West Midland conur-
bation on the other, with the various accents discussed as both distinctive and as
collectively a Northern English variety. In a discussion of the Northern accents of
England proper, Beal identifies pan-northern accent features, whilst pointing also
to more locally distinctive characteristics, most especially though not exclusively
those of the Northeast (‘Geordie’) and Liverpool (‘Scouse’). Altendorf and Watt,
in their chapter on the phonology of southern England, divide their area firmly
into east and west (the non-rhotic and rhotic areas respectively), and describe the
distinctive characteristics of the accents of these areas quite separately. Whilst
they regard East Anglia as part of the South they do not venture specifically into
this region: features of the East Anglian accents, and their relation to those of sur-
rounding areas to the south, west, and north, are the subject of Trudgill’s chapter.
Concluding the chapters which deal with the accents associated with specific geo-
graphical regions, Ramisch concentrates on the Channel Islands, where interaction
with Channel Island (Norman) French and mainland immigrant English have both
had an impact on distinctively local English pronunciation.
Descriptions of two non-regional accents round off the discussion of accents
of the British Isles. The first is that of British Creole, an ethnic variety which, in
Patrick’s words, ‘is the product of dialect contact between West Indian migrants
… and vernacular varieties of urban English’. The second is Received Pronuncia-
tion (authored by Upton), an accent that is in essence unmarked for place and so
attracts none of the (sometimes adverse) social judgements which regional accents
attract, and that is, in consequence, frequently used in broadcasting and as a lan-
guage-teaching model.
8. The chapters on morphology and syntax
With the exception of the West Midlands and the Channel Islands, all regional
and ethnic (British Creole) varieties in the British Isles discussed in the phonol-
ogy volume of this Handbook have a companion chapter in the morphosyntax
volume. In all morphosyntax chapters the features described are distinctive of the
relevant varieties, but in the vast majority of cases not to be understood as unique
to these varieties (cf. also the General Introduction to this Handbook). Another
property the majority of these chapters share is that they provide qualitative, only
exceptionally quantitative, accounts based on large digitized and/or computerized
corpora of spontaneous non-standard present-day speech.
The first two chapters complement each other. The one by Melchers on Orkney
and Shetland is geared towards highlighting morphosyntactic features which are
distinctive of the Northern Isles especially due to their Scandinavian substratum.
The Scandinavian features are particularly pronounced at the Broad Scots end of
the dialect continuum. Especially for the Central Lowlands (Edinburgh and East
Lothian), this is also the focus of Miller’s chapter on Scottish English. Southern
Irish English, but also varieties of Ulster and Ulster Scots stand at the centre of
Filppula’s chapter on Irish English. Especially the morphosyntax of Irish English
varieties shows an interesting mix of features which, due to one or a combination
of the following four factors, have affected the development of Irish English: re-
tention of features from earlier periods of English, dialect contact with other va-
rieties spoken in the British Isles, substratal influence from the indigenous Celtic
language (Irish), and universal features we associate with varieties resulting from
rapid, large-scale second-language acquisition. The second and third of these fea-
tures also figure prominently in Penhallurick’s account of the morphosyntax of
Welsh English: the influences of Welsh, and of the regional dialects spoken in the
neighbouring counties of England.
Beal provides a survey of features found in the grammars of varieties spoken in

the North of England, the vast majority of which are restricted to particular regions
or cities. This variation in the morphology and syntax reflects the diverse histories
of the different parts and urban centres of the North: in the far north, the shared his-
tory with Scotland and the continuing migration from central Scotland to Tyneside;
the large-scale medieval Scandinavian settlements in an area stretching from the
Northwest (Cumbria) south-east down to East Anglia, the so-called “Scandinavian
belt” (including, for example, all of Yorkshire); in the large cities like Liverpool,
Newcastle, and Manchester, high Irish immigration since the 19th century.
Three chapters are concerned with the morphology and syntax of non-standard
varieties spoken in the southern parts of England. Trudgill deals with East Anglia,
Wagner with the Southwest (traditionally known as the West Country), and An-
derwald with the Southeast (London and the neighbouring counties, the so-called
Home Counties). East Anglia and the Southwest have been well-established dialect
areas since medieval times, especially the Southwest still boasting not only a unique
mix of morphosyntactic features but also individual morphosyntactic properties
which are truly unique to this area. The Southeast, by contrast, is a relatively young
and, at least with regard to grammar, surprisingly underresearched area in modern
dialect research. Here most morphosyntactic features seem to be representative
of non-standard speech in present-day England in general. Anderwald’s survey is
based, among other things, on quantitative analyses of the British National Corpus
(BNC), the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT) and the Freiburg
English Dialect Corpus (FRED), and provides a solid basis for studies wanting to
explore the extent to which the Southeast may be responsible for the (partly ongo-
ing) spread of the relevant morphosyntactic features in the British Isles.
The chapter on the Southeast is also useful background reading against which
to judge Sebba’s observations on British Creole, since the conversational data
Sebba has analyzed are all taken from British-born Caribbean adolescents living
in London. This contact variety displays a fascinating degree of syntactic variabil-
ity which cannot be explained by a continuum model, as known from pidgin and
creole studies, alone. What additionally needs to be factored in is, for example, the
existence of (especially Jamaican) creole- and standard-like variants for many lin-
guistic forms, and the fact that (for a variety of reasons) speakers often mix Creole
and English English forms.
References
Cheshire, Jenny, Viv Edwards and Pamela Whittle

1993 Non-standard English and dialect levelling. In: Milroy and Milroy (eds.),
53–96.
Foulkes, Paul and Gerard Docherty (eds.)
1999 Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold.
Hickey, Raymond
2005 A Sound Atlas of Irish English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kortmann, Bernd
2003 Comparative English dialect grammar: A typological approach. In: Ignacio
M. Palacios, María José López Couso, Patricia Fra and Elena Seoane (eds.),
Fifty Years of English Studies in Spain (1952:2002). A Commemorative
Volume, 65–83. Santiago de Compostela: University of Santiago.
Kortmann, Bernd and Susanne Wagner
2005 The Freiburg English Dialect Project and Corpus. In: Bernd Kortmann, Tanja
Herrmann, Lukas Pietsch and Susanne Wagner, A Comparative Grammar of
British English Dialects: Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses. Berlin/New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Milroy, John and Lesley Milroy (eds.)
1993 Real English. The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. London/
New York: Longman.
Orton, Harold (ed.)
1962–1971 Survey of English Dialects: The Basic Material. 4 vols. Leeds: E.J. Arnold.
English spoken in Orkney and Shetland:
phonology
Gunnel Melchers
1. General background
Orkney and Shetland, known as “the Northern Isles”, are indeed the most norther-
ly units of land in the British Isles. The lighthouse of Muckle Flugga, at a latitude
of 61º, is the northernmost point of Shetland as well as of the whole of Britain, and
Orkney is as far north as Bristol Bay in Alaska. Lerwick, the capital of Shetland,
is equidistant from Aberdeen in Scotland, Bergen in Norway, and Tórshavn in the
Faroe Islands.
The Shetland archipelago has a total area of 1,468 sq. km (to be compared with
Orkney’s 976 sq. km) and consists of well over 100 islands, 15 of which are inhab-
ited. In Shetland as well as Orkney the largest island is simply known as Mainland.
Otherwise the names of the islands in both archipelagos can all be traced back to
Norn, the Scandinavian variety once spoken in the area, e.g. Whalsay and Foula in
Shetland, Westray and Egilsay in Orkney.
There are many similarities between Orkney and Shetland with regard to to-
pography, history, population structure, culture and language but also some char-
acteristic differences. Arable land, for example, amounts to a mere 3% of the total
area in Shetland, whereas it is almost 40% in Orkney. It used to be said that the
typical Shetlander is a fisherman who occasionally does a bit of farming, while the
Orkneyman is a farmer who occasionally devotes himself to fishing. Other differ-
ences have to do with the fact that Orkney is much closer to the Scottish mainland
(the southernmost point of South Ronaldsay is only about a mile north of Caith-
ness). This is, among other things, reflected in language in that the Orkney dialect
is less distinct from mainland Scots/Scottish English.
In spite of their peripheral location, Orkney and Shetland should not be seen as
isolated communities, neither in the past nor today. The islands have always been
at the crossroads of shipping and trade, and have been subjected to different kinds
of immigration and impulses from various peoples: the Norse settlers first arriv-
ing in the 9th century, the Scots gradually taking over from the early Middle Ages
onwards, and the Dutch and German tradesmen in the Hansa period. The Northern
Isles today are modern British societies, with excellent educational establishments
and a highly developed infrastructure. While traditional local industries live on,
such as the production of cheese and whisky in Orkney, yarn and knitwear in
Shetland, the last few decades have seen major changes in population growth, oc-
36 Gunnel Melchers
cupation and life styles as a result of the activities related to North Sea oil. The real
boom took place in the 1970s in connection with the construction work, but the
population level is fairly stable and there is less unemployment than in Scotland
as a whole. Shetland now has a population of about 23,000 (to be compared with
17,000 in the mid-sixties) and Orkney about 20,000.
Considering social stratification, Shetland and Orkney make the impression
of being more egalitarian than most other regions in Britain. Erving Goffman,
the renowned American social anthropologist, who did fieldwork for his Ph.D.
thesis as a “participant observer” on Unst, Shetland’s northernmost island, was
impressed by the general classlessness of the society. More than half of the work-
ing population work in services; the second largest category is self-employed,
which could stand for running a spinning mill as well as home-based knitting. It
is not uncommon for an individual to be employed in widely different spheres,
as in the case of a Fair Islander who until recently (1) ran the local post office,
(2) was a member of the crew of “The Good Shepherd” connecting Fair Isle
with Shetland Mainland, (3) was the local butcher, (4) taught traditional fiddle
music at the school, and (5) looked after hundreds of sheep. With regard to gen-
der as a sociolinguistic factor, results from recent linguistic work suggest that
it is not significant either. Orten (1991: 65) reports similar observations from
Orkney.
In the 10th century Orkney and Shetland were invaded and settled by Vikings,
probably coming from South West Norway, as described in the Orkneyinga Saga,
Landnámabok and Historia Norvegiae. It is claimed that they defeated the Picts,
who are believed to have been the indigenous inhabitants of the area but have left
few traces. It is no coincidence that the name of the Icelandic saga documenting
the early history of the Northern Isles is derived from Orkney – that is where the
heart of the Viking earldom lay and other Scandinavian settlements such as Shet-
land and Caithness were seen from an Orkney perspective.
Orkney and Shetland remained all-Scandinavian, with a native language variety
known as Norn, the first Germanic language to be spoken on the islands, until
well into the 14th century, when the Scots began to come in, making the Scottish
element in the joint earldom the dominant cultural influence extending northwards
into the islands. In 1379 a Scotsman was appointed Earl of Orkney, which includ-
ed the sovereignty of Shetland, and about a century later the islands became part of
Scotland. A serious plea for reunion with Norway was put forward as late as 1905,
in connection with the Sweden-Norway separation, but the islands have remained
under Scottish and British rule. It should be pointed out, however, that the links
with Scandinavia, especially Norway, were never broken, as so remarkably dem-
onstrated through the support given to the Norwegian resistance movement during
World War II (“the Shetland Bus”). The Scandinavian heritage is an integral part
of Orkney and Shetland identity.
English spoken in Orkney and Shetland: phonology 37
2. The linguistic background
Norn was the dominant language in Orkney and Shetland for at least 500 years,
but a natural consequence of the political changes beginning in the late Middle
Ages was a gradual shift from Norn to Scots. Owing to the scarcity of written
sources we have neither a complete documentation of the structure of the Norn
language nor of the rate and character of the process of change. There is an ongo-
ing, heated debate considering the actual demise of Norn (Barnes vs. Rendboe),
where a group of “Nornomaniacs” (cf. Waugh 1996) argue that it lived on at least
until the end of the 19th century in Shetland. What real evidence there is, however,
suggests that in both Orkney and Shetland it died out no later than the second half
of the 18th century.
Today, the traditional dialects as spoken in the Northern Isles must be described
as varieties of Scots, yet with a substantial component of Scandinavian, mani-
fested above all in the lexicon but also in phonology and, to a lesser extent, in
grammar. These varieties are often referred to as “Insular Scots”, recognized as
one of the four main dialect divisions of Lowland Scots (cf. Grant and Murison
1931–1976; Johnston 1997).
Orkney and Shetland can be characterized as bidialectal speech communities
with access to a choice of two discrete, definable forms of speech: one a form of
standard, basically Standard Scottish English, and the other what Wells (1982)
calls traditional-dialect. Orcadians and Shetlanders are generally aware of com-
manding two distinct varieties and they have names for these, e.g. “English” vs.
“Shetland” or “Orcadian”. Admittedly, age-related differences have been observed:
on the one hand young people are losing some of the traditional-dialect indexicals,
on the other they often state explicitly that they do not wish to adapt to outsiders
and tend to be scathing about islanders who do. It would, however, be difficult to
find truly monolingual speakers of the traditional dialect today.
As some of the recordings will reveal, the “either-or” scenario is probably not
quite categorical, especially not with regard to phonology. In fact, there may
well be something of a continuum, where certain traditional-dialect features are
stable, such as the palatalization of dental plosives, whereas others vary with the
speaker, the situation, and the topic, such as th-stopping. The following account
of Orkney and Shetland phonology is not restricted to one end of the continuum
and includes some observations on the considerable regional variation found in
the Northern Isles. The presentation should be viewed as a complement to the
full-length description of Scots/Scottish English in this volume (cf. the contribu-
tions by Stuart-Smith, this volume, and Miller, other volume); in other words, it
focuses on features where Orkney and Shetland accents differ from other accents
in Scotland.
38 Gunnel Melchers
3. Research and data
There exists as yet no definitive description of the present-day phonology of the

Northern Isles. A number of young scholars, however, are currently researching top-
ics such as the Shetland vowel system, aspects of quantity in Orkney and Shetland
speech, and dialect levelling in young speakers. The final results from this research,
which tends to focus on realizations of Standard (Scottish) English rather than tradi-
tional dialect, are unfortunately not yet available at the time of writing this text.
The only existing full-length work on Orkney dialect as spoken in the 20th
century is Marwick’s The Orkney Norn (1929). Confusingly, Marwick uses the
term Norn both for the all-Scandinavian language once spoken on the islands
and for contemporary Orkney dialect. His work is mainly a dictionary of the dia-
lect but with a brief introduction to grammar and phonology and with phonetic
transcriptions of all headwords. As the title suggests, it has a marked Scandi-
navian and historical bias, particularly apparent in the phonology, which takes
the Old Norse sound system as its starting-point, simply listing its modern reflec-
tions in Orkney. Although contemporary evidence suggests that Marwick’s data
are characterized by a touch of “Nornomania” and that he had preconceived no-
tions of “correct” answers from his informants, his work is clearly of great impor-
tance for the present study. As a phonetician he seems very competent, and fairly
narrow distinctions, such as [o] vs. [ç] have been noted in individual entries.
Shetland dialect as spoken at the end of the 19th century was carefully docu-
mented in the Faroese scholar Jakob Jakobsen’s monumental An Etymological
Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland (1928–1932). As the title suggests,
it, too, has a clear Scandinavian bias but provides information about the language
variety as a whole, including phonology (pre-structural, naturally). Jakobsen, who
was a trained philologist in the German school, notes very fine distinctions in-
deed, to the degree that he has been accused of practising “phonetics run riot” (cf.
Waugh 1996: 6). Some of his headwords have up to twenty-five different realiza-
tions, but there is no indication of a systematic account of vowels and consonants.
This does not mean that he should be ignored in a study of Shetland phonology.
The phonological section of The Linguistic Survey of Scotland (LSS) (cf. Mather
and Speitel 1986), which above all was designed to elicit vowel systems, included
a number of localities in the Northern Isles (thirteen in Orkney, ten in Shetland).
John C. Catford, who was instrumental in setting up the survey, took the view that
Shetland phonology was unique among Scottish accents in its rich vowel system,
palatalization of final /d/, /n/, and /l/, certain consonant mergers and characteristic
syllable structure. Before the actual launching of the LSS, Catford found it nec-
essary to do some pilot fieldwork in Shetland, “a phonological reconnaissance”,
which resulted in a special Shetland section in the questionnaire, e.g. eliciting
Scandinavian-based words expected to be realized with [ø], such as brööl ‘moo’.
There was no similar highlighting of Orkney. Catford (1957: 75) assesses Shetland
dialect in general as having a “somewhat archaic character”, suggesting that its

vowel system may be similar to Scots as spoken in the metropolitan area of Scot-
land in the 16th–17th centuries. Interestingly, aspects of Shetland verbal usage can
also be characterized as archaic (cf. Melchers, other volume).
A recent excellent study of Insular Scots, i.e. Orcadian and ‘Shetlandic’, based
on data from LSS and considering Catford’s preliminary analyses of vowel sys-
tems, can be extracted from Paul Johnston’s chapter on regional variation for the
Edinburgh History of the Scots Language (Johnston 1997).
The only existing account of a particular Insular Scots accent is Elise Orten’s
The Kirkwall Accent (Orten 1991), an M.A. thesis submitted at the University of
Bergen, claiming to be “based on the London School of phonology”, but not mak-
ing use of the Wells lexical sets.
An interesting source of information is John Tait’s article on Shetland vowels
(Tait 2000). Tait, a native Shetlander, first began taking an interest in Shetland
phonology for the purpose of creating a workable writing system. He takes a criti-
cal view of the LSS material and introduces the concept of “soft mutation”, i.e. the
raising of certain vowels before certain consonants, which “provides, along with
vowel length, a framework for looking at Shetlandic vowel phonology as a whole”
(Tait 2000: 88; cf. section 4.1. below).
With the help of instrumental analysis, van Leyden (2002) has investigated
vowel and consonant duration in Orkney and Shetland dialects, taking Catford’s
impressionistic observations as her starting-point. Whereas her Shetland data sug-
gested a Scandinavian-like pattern, Orkney showed more affinity with Standard
Scottish English.
In addition to the research described above, this presentation draws on mate-
rial collected for a project entitled The Scandinavian Element in Shetland Dialect,
directed by the present writer. The material consists of tape-recordings eliciting
phonological as well as lexical and attitudinal aspects. In addition, a great deal of
material recorded for the purpose of oral history has been placed at my disposal by
the Orkney and Shetland Archives. This is particularly useful since the interview-
ers are mostly dialect speakers themselves, which means that the informants do
not tend to adapt their language.
For the purpose of this publication, recordings were made in Shetland and
Orkney during the summer of 2002. Regrettably, however, the presentation will
still have a marked “Shetland bias”, since considerably more data and information
is available on the most northerly part of the Insular Scots region.
4. Orkney and Shetland phonology
With the exception of the table showing the realizations of lexical sets, this pre-
sentation is not explicitly organized according to region; in other words, there are
40 Gunnel Melchers
no specific Orkney and Shetland sections but the two speech communities are
discussed jointly in connections with the various phonetic and phonological issues.
Any known differences are of course indicated.
Orkney and Shetland may be small speech communities, but they are both char-
acterized by considerable regional variation, not least evident from the LSS data.
In his introduction, Jakobsen (1928–1932) claims that there are nine main dialect
areas in Shetland, which, in turn, consist of several sub-areas; Fetlar, for example,
which has an area of 39 sq. kilometres, is said to have several dialects, without
further specification. In my opinion, such claims must be taken with a pinch of salt
and may simply reflect idiosyncrasies.
The local accents mostly singled out as “deviant” by Shetlanders today are spo-
ken in Whalsay and Out Skerries, two close-knit fishing communities east of Shet-
land Mainland. This view is corroborated by linguistic research, including my own
fieldwork. Surprisingly, these particular localities were not investigated by LSS
although they are mentioned in Catford’s pilot study (Catford 1957). In Orkney, the
northernmost islands (Westray and North Ronaldsay) are held to be different, show-
ing for example traces of palatalized consonants as regularly found in Shetland.
Some established regional variation is accounted for here, e.g. the front-back
variation of PALM and START and the realization of initial <wh> as [] or [kw],
but the bulk of the data refers to Orkney and Shetland accents in general, as com-
monly heard in the “capitals”, Kirkwall and Lerwick.
4.1. Phonological systems

A traditional phonological inventory of Shetland and Orkney vowels will, natural-
ly, categorize them as Scots/Scottish English (cf. Stuart-Smith, this volume). In his
pilot study for the LSS, Catford (1957) argues that most accents in Shetland (along
with Angus and parts of Perthshire and Kincardineshire, which is plausible from
a demographic point of view) display the maximal Scots vowel system of twelve
monophthongs and at least two diphthongs. The twelve-vowel system typically
makes a distinction between e.g. bread and bred, sale and sell, where the latter in
the pair is considerably more open.
Johnston, who is alone in having made a phonemic inventory of the LSS data,
does not dispute Catford’s claims, but draws attention to a series of changes in
Shetland and Orkney accents that he calls “the Insular Clockwise Vowel Shift,
from the direction in which the nuclei move from the point of view of a conven-
tional vowel chart” (Johnston 1997: 449).
This shift implies that Older Scots /a/ is reflected as [æ], // as [e] or [ei], // as
[a ~ æ], /ç/ and /ç˘/ to [] or []. Further information from Johnston’s detailed
inventory is included in the presentation of lexical sets below.
Tait (2000), also a discussion of LSS data and to some extent a critique of
Johnston’s analysis, emphasizes the importance of “soft mutation” (his own term),
by which he means qualitative changes in a number of Shetland vowels before

certain consonants, predictable according to phonetic environment. He refers to
allophones occurring typically before voiceless consonants as “hard” and those
which occur typically before voiced consonants as “soft”. The BATH vowel, for ex-
ample, is raised from /a/ to /æ/ before /d/. Tait views these systematic changes, in
part, as an alternative and an addition to the concept of a clockwise vowel shift. He
summarizes his analysis in a vowel table, which lists as many as fifteen contras-
tive vowel phonemes, six of which have length as “potentially contrastive”. Tait’s
interesting vowel analysis is further considered in the presentation of lexical sets.
In her traditional study of Orkney phonology, Orten (1991) identifies twelve
vowel phonemes in the accent of her main informant: nine monophthongs and
three diphthongs, viz. /i/, //, /e/, //, /a/, /ç/, /o/, /u/, /√/, /a/, /au/, /ç/. A general
finding by Orten is that the Kirkwall accent is heavily influenced by Standard
Scottish English (StScE).
No attempt is made here to identify the number of contrastive vowel phonemes
in Shetland or Orkney, however. As should be apparent from the above, such an
inventory is very problematic, among other things for the following reasons:
– the wide span of the available speech continuum, from StScE to broad, tradi-
tional dialect on a Norse substratum;
– the considerable regional variation within the island communities;
– the striking effect of the phonetic environment as demonstrated by Tait
In connection with the last-mentioned point, a further complication is of course the
effects of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR). This rule is described in the
main chapter on Scottish English (see Stuart-Smith, this volume). As shown by van
Leyden (2002), the SVLR is fairly strictly applied in Shetland dialect today, but less
so in Orkney, which she ascribes to the influence of “Standard English”. The main
research question for van Leyden, however, was to test the claim first made by Cat-
ford (cf. section 3) that Shetland dialect retains a Scandinavian-like syllable struc-
ture, in that stressed monosyllables, when closed by a consonant, contain either a
short vowel followed by a long consonant (VC:), as in back [bak], or a long vowel
followed by a short consonant (V:C), as in baulk [bak]. The results of the study,
relying on instrumental analysis, basically confirmed this claim, also showing that
it was particularly valid for traditional-dialect lexical items. The Orkney data, how-
ever, show that there “this particular relic of Norn has apparently been lost because
of the strong influence of mainland Scots dialects” (van Leyden 2002: 15).
Catford (1957: 73) points out that most of the Scandinavian-based features in
Shetland phonology have to do with consonants. He ascribes it to the fact that the
Norn speakers “had a smaller ‘repertoire’ of consonants than the incomers, and
failed to acquire some of the essential consonantal distinctions of Scots”. In addition
to the existence of long consonants (geminates), there are, indeed, other interesting
systematic characteristics. In Shetland as well as Orkney (though not mentioned in
42 Gunnel Melchers
Orten 1991), there is a categorical palato-alveolar affricate merger to the effect that
a word pair such as gin and chin is homophonous, realized as /tn/.
Another feature affecting the phonemic inventory is th-stopping, occasionally
found in Orkney dialect, but categorical in Shetland accents, unless adapted to out-
siders, i.e. towards the StScE end of the continuum. The familiar form of address,
for example, is represented as thu or thoo in Orkney dialect writing, but as du in
Shetland. Th-stopping has also taken place in mainland Scandinavia, but after the
end of Viking rule in the Northern Isles. Hence it might be due to an independent
innovation and/or to the never-ceasing close contact with Norway.
The realization of initial <wh> as in wheel and <kn> as in knee also deserves
mention in this context. In Shetland, initial <wh> is usually [], but in some re-
gions, notably the west side of Shetland mainland, the outlying islands of Foula and
Papa Stour and some pockets on the east side, it is realized as [kw], even in lexical
items such as whisky and whole. Hypercorrections are common in these accents, e.g.
[hwin] for queen. Similar realizations are believed to have existed in Orkney, but
there is no evidence in present-day speech (Marwick 1929). Initial /kn/ clusters are
recessive in Shetland, but can still be heard in the speech of some older speakers re-
alized as a voiceless velar nasal followed by [n]. A better-known variant, very lexi-
cally restricted, is characterized by enforced articulation of [k], sometimes followed
by an epenthetic vowel. In dialect writing, this variant is often represented as k-n
as in k-nee. This pronunciation is something of a stereotype and is particularly well
known from an old phrase, denoting the simple Shetland fare in the old days, kale
and knockit corn, where the force of alliteration obviously plays a part as well.
In Orkney, retroflex, “Scandinavian-like” realizations of /r/ + /s/ as [ ] in final
position are the rule rather than the exception, i.e. in words such as force, nurse,
incomers, tours.
4.2. Vowels
4.2.1. Lexical sets
Variation in quantity is not indicated in the following table.
Orkney Shetland
KIT ~ ï ~ ë ~
ï ~ ë ~
~
F
DRESS
TRAP a a
LOT ç ç~
STRUT ~
ç
ç ~
~
FOOT ~u u
BATH a a~
Orkney Shetland
CLOTH ç ç~
NURSE ç
ç ~ ç
FLEECE i i
FACE e e ~ e
PALM a ~
THOUGHT ç ~
ç
GOAT ç o
GOAL o~ç o
GOOSE u~u u~ø
PRICE a ~ a ~
CHOICE ç ç
MOUTH ~ u
~ u
NEAR i i
SQUARE e~ e~
START ~a a~
NORTH ~ç ~ç
FORCE ç ç~o
CURE u u
HAPPY i i
LETTER e
HORSES
COMMA ~a å
4.2.2. Further comments relating to the lexical sets

KIT
This vowel is always short, but displays considerable qualitative variation, most
of which is not exclusive to Insular Scots. The last allophone in the Shetland col-
umn is, however. It is found before labials and velars. A piece of evidence of its
use before the velar nasal is the following cross-dialectal miscomprehension as
experienced in a Shetland knitting course by the present writer: The local teacher
asked one of the participants, a lady from Lancashire working on a pair of gloves,
whether she had trouble with her fingers, which was perceived as fungus.
DRESS
is usually half-long and often fully-long. Before /d/ and /n/ which are dental in
Shetland, it is commonly realized as an upgliding vowel []. This is probably
44 Gunnel Melchers
what some lay observers have in mind when they talk about “palatalized” conso-
nants.
TRAP
There are raised variants in Fair Isle and some Orcadian accents. Before certain
consonants, on the other hand, notably the cluster /nd/, the realization is generally
[], so-called HAND darkening (Johnston 1997: 485).
STRUT
tends to be rounded, especially in Shetland.
NURSE
As in Scots generally, there is no NURSE merger.
PALM AND START

vary regionally. The use of a back vowel may signal locality as well as influence
from Standard varieties.
GOOSE
In traditional Shetland dialect, a great number of words in this set have an [ø]
vowel. It is popularly believed to be a preserved Norn feature, and is indeed
typically found in Scandinavian-based vocabulary, such as tröni ‘pig’s snout’,
and löf ‘palm of the hand’, but also in more modern words, such as curious, poor
(with a lowered variant [œ] before the /r/).
The use of these vowels is recessive.
PRICE
varies according to phonetic environment in quality (cf. the table) as well as quan-
tity.
MOUTH
varies along the dialect continuum, i.e. the monophthong is a regular feature of the
traditional dialects.
SQUARE
is very distinctive in Fair Isle and Whalsay, realized as [ç].
NORTH AND FORCE

are clearly distinctive in the speech of many Shetlanders and Orcadians.
4.3. Consonants – some additional remarks

Consonants that are alveolar in English English, e.g. /d/, /t/, /n/, are generally den-
tal in Shetland accents and //, too, is fronted. /l/ is clear. In fact, the articulatory
setting in Shetland speech is generally fronted, as shown by some palatograms
made for the project investigating the Scandinavian element in Shetland dialect
(cf. section 3 above).
In restricted areas (Whalsay and Out Skerries in Shetland, North Ronaldsay in
Orkney), /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are palatalized/affricated: cake [tek],
skerries [strs]. During my fieldwork in Whalsay in the early 1980s, a lady told
me that unless her grandchildren pronounced cake in the proper “Whalsa” way,
they would not get a piece! Some recent data collections suggest that this feature
is now recessive.
4.4. A note on prosody

Neither Shetland nor Orkney intonation has been researched. It is popularly be-
lieved that the accents have a Scandinavian ring about them. Yet, impressionisti-
cally, there seems to be nothing remarkable about the Shetland tone of voice.
A difference between Shetland and Orkney, however, is the unmistakable into-
nation of the latter. It is often held to be Scandinavian in character, but seems, in
fact, to be more similar to Welsh English. Orcadians themselves confirm that they
are often taken for Welshmen. Yet the romantic (“Nornomaniac”?) view lives on,
as the following quote by the Orcadian poet Edwin Muir nicely illustrates:
The men spoke for the most part in a slow deliberate voice, but some of the women
could rattle on at a great rate in the soft sing-song lilt of the islands, which has remained
unchanged for a thousand years.
Selected references
Please consult the General references for titles mentioned in the text but not in-
cluded in the references below. For a full bibliography see the accompanying CD-
ROM.
Catford, John C.
1957 Shetland Dialect. Shetland Folk Book 3: 71–76.
Grant, William and David Murison (eds.)
1931–1976
The Scottish National Dictionary, 10 Volumes. Edinburgh: Scottish National
Dictionary Association.
Jakobsen, Jakob
46 Gunnel Melchers
1928–32 An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland, 2 Volumes.

Copenhagen: Vilhelm Prior.
Johnston, Paul
1997 Regional Variation. In: Jones (ed.), 433–513.
Marwick, Hugh
1929 The Orkney Norn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mather, James Y. and Hans H. Speitel (eds.)
1986 The Linguistic Atlas of Scotland. Scots Section, Volume III: Phonology.
London: Croom Helm.
Orten, Elise
1991 The Kirkwall accent. M.A. thesis, Department of English, University of
Bergen.
Tait, John M.
2000 Some characteristics of the Shetlandic vowel system. Scottish Language 19:
83–99.
van Leyden, Klaske
2002 The relationship between vowel and consonant duration in Orkney and
Shetland dialects. Phonetica 59: 1–19.
Waugh, Doreen J. (ed.)
1996 Shetland’s Northern Links. Language and History. Edinburgh: Scottish
Society for Northern Studies.
Scottish English: phonology*
Jane Stuart-Smith
1. Introduction
Defining the term ‘Scottish English’ is difficult. There is considerable debate

about the position and appropriate terminology for the varieties which are spoken
in Scotland and which ultimately share a common historical derivation from Old
English. Here I follow Aitken (e.g. 1979, 1984) and describe Scottish English as
a bipolar linguistic continuum, with broad Scots at one end and Scottish Standard
English at the other. Scots is generally, but not always, spoken by the work-
ing classes, while Scottish Standard English is typical of educated middle class
speakers. Following Aitken’s model, speakers of Scottish English either switch
discretely between points on the continuum (style/dialect-switching), which is
more common in rural varieties, or drift up and down the continuum (style/dia-
lect-drifting), which is more characteristic of the urban dialects of cities such
as Edinburgh and Glasgow. Throughout Scotland, Scots is increasingly becom-
ing limited to certain domains, for example, amongst family and friends, while
more formal occasions tend to invoke Scottish Standard English. Of course the
boundaries between Scots and Scottish Standard English, and English English,
spoken by a small percentage of the population, are not discrete, but fuzzy and
overlapping.
Scottish Standard English, taken here as Standard English spoken with a Scot-
tish accent, is a possible variety for many speakers across Scotland, depending
on social context. There are only slight regional differences in Scottish Standard
English across the country. Scots is also widely available to speakers in the ap-
propriate context. The Scottish National Dictionary recognizes four main dialect
divisions of Scots whose names reflect their geographical distribution across Scot-
land: Mid or Central Scots, Southern or Border Scots, Northern Scots, and Insular
Scots. Alongside spoken Scots, there also exists a literary variety, Lallans (literally
‘Lowlands’), but this is rarely spoken and thus not discussed here. Northern Scots,
particularly the variety spoken in the North East, is often called the Doric. Urban
Scots spoken in the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and across the Central Belt,
is historically derived from forms of Central Scots.
The Scottish English continuum is the result of dialect contact and language
change over many centuries. A brief account follows (for more details, see for
example Jones 1997; Corbett, McClure, and Stuart-Smith 2003). Before the
Anglian invasions during the seventh century AD, Scotland was predominately
48 Jane Stuart-Smith
Celtic-speaking. The invaders introduced a northern variety of Anglo-Saxon

(‘Anglian’) into south-east Scotland. A century and a half later, the southern bor-
ders of Scotland were invaded again by the Vikings, who also separately reached
the far north of the country. At the time of the Norman Conquest, most people
in Scotland spoke a form of Celtic. Anglian was spoken in the south-east, and
Norse was used in the far north and possibly in the western borders. Political
developments in England and Scotland during the twelfth century led to an influx
of northern English speakers into Scotland. The twelfth to the fourteenth centu-
ries saw the gradual development of a particular variety of English in Lowland
Scotland which we recognize as Scots, but which was known as ‘Inglis’ (Gaelic
was called ‘Erse’ or ‘Irish’). By the fifteenth century Scots was noted as distinct
from contemporary forms of southern English English. Despite the early Anglian
settlement, the main historical basis of Scots was probably the language of north-
ern English settlers from 1100 onwards, which was considerably influenced by
Norse after the long period of Scandinavian occupation of the north of England.
Prolonged contact with Norman French also contributed to its distinct character.
Before the first large-scale literary work in Scots, Barbour’s Brus (1375), prelit-
erary Scots is only scantily attested, e.g. in place names and glosses. In 1398 the
Scottish Parliament moved from Latin to Scots as the language of record, and
until the Union of the Crowns (1603), Scots flourished as a literary and spoken
language. Thereafter, with increasing English influence, particularly after the Act
of Union of the English and Scottish parliaments in 1707, the use of literary Scots
declined beyond specific literary genres (e.g. comedy, satire) and gave way to
Standard Southern English, which is today the written standard. The eighteenth
century also saw the development of Scottish Standard English in the emergence
of a variety of Standard English spoken with a refined Scottish accent, typically
by the middle classes whose reference for prestige were Southern English accents
of England. While literary Scots declined, spoken Scots remained vigorous, at
least in rural areas and among the burgeoning working classes. Despite ongoing
dialect change and levelling of Scots towards Scottish Standard English, this lin-
guistic situation still persists, although with the additional qualification of Scots
as either ‘good’, i.e. traditional and rural, or ‘bad’, i.e. degenerate and urban (cf.
Aitken 1984: 529).
It is probably fair to say that a good proportion of the population of Scotland,
now estimated at 5,062,011 according to the 2001 census (GROS 2003), are po-
tential speakers of Scottish Standard English. There are no official estimates or
census statistics for the number of Scots speakers in Scotland, although Scots is
now counted as a ‘language’ by the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages.
Defining the number of speakers of Scots in Scotland is extremely difficult, and
cannot be easily resolved by asking speakers (Murdoch 1995; Maté 1996; for dis-
cussion, see Macafee 1997: 515–518). The problem is created and exacerbated by
a number of interrelated factors:
Scottish English: phonology 49
1. the difficulty of recognizing Scots as a variety which is linguistically distinct

from Scottish Standard English (for both linguists and native speakers);
2. the broad range of communicative competence in Scots found in speakers across
Scotland;
3. the unresolved difficulty of determining whether Scots is an autonomous lan-
guage;
4. the negative attitudes held towards Urban Scots, which is often regarded as a
degenerate form of speech synonymous with slang (e.g. Macafee 1994);
5. the ongoing process of dialect levelling towards English throughout Scotland
Two recent studies (Murdoch 1995; Maté 1996) have attempted to survey the
number of Scots speakers, and at the same time (Maté 1996) to evaluate the fea-
sibility of assessing Scots-speaking population through a survey tool such as a
Census question. The number of self-professed Scots speakers was relatively low
in both sample surveys (57% in Murdoch, 30% in Maté). In both cases, older
working-class speakers were more likely to classify themselves as speaking Scots.
The conclusions of Maté’s research, sponsored by the General Register Office For
Scotland, state that the “inclusion of such a Census question would undoubtedly
raise the profile of Scots” (1996: 2), but at the same time do not argue strongly for
the Census as the optimal tool for estimating Scots speakers:
Adequate estimates of the numbers of people who assess themselves as Scots speakers
can be obtained from sample surveys much more cheaply than from a Census [...] A
more precise assessment of genuine Scots language ability would require a more in-
depth interview survey and may involve asking various questions about the language
used in different situations. Such an approach would be inappropriate for a Census.
(Maté 1996: 2)
The 2001 Census did not include a Scots language question.

It is possible to provide a very gross estimate of Urban Scots speakers by us-
ing Census data which refer to the population of the Central Belt. Of the total
population of the Central Belt, 3,088,938, 66% are assigned to classes 3–8 of the
socio-economic classification index used to compile the Census. If we guess that
people assigned to these classes may in some domains and to differing degrees
be more likely to use Scots than those in classes 1–2, on the grounds that Scots is
likely to be continued in the lower middle and working classes (including those
who have never worked or who are long-term unemployed), we could suggest that
potentially this proportion has access to Urban Scots in some form. The popula-
tion of the Central Belt makes up approximately two-thirds of the population of
Scotland, and hence those classified as class 3–8 in that area make up 40% of the
total population. People assigned to classes 3–8 in Scotland as a whole gives 67%,
which might be very roughly indicative of a potential for Scots across the country,
though this is much less certain.
Beside the varieties of English origin which make up the Scottish English con-
tinuum, there are also other languages spoken in Scotland whose influence on
Scottish English is known to a greater or lesser extent. Scottish Gaelic was once
widespread across Scotland, particularly in the Western Isles and Highlands of
Scotland. The proportion of speakers bilingual in Gaelic and English living in
Scotland is now estimated at 58,652 (1.2% of the population; a slightly higher fig-
ure reported comprehension of Gaelic: 93,282, 1.84%). These figures are a slight
reduction from those registered in 1991 (65,978, 1.3%). The English spoken in
these areas, and also in small Gaelic/English bilingual enclaves in the cities, such
as in Partick in Glasgow, has particular phonetic and phonological characteristics,
for example the realization of /l/ as clear in all environments (e.g. Johnston 1997:
510), or the use of voiceless /s, S, tS/ where voiced /z, Z, dZ/ are expected, or the
retroflex fricative [ß] as the outcome of /rs/ in words like force, some of which are
due to Gaelic influence (see for example Wells 1982: 412–414).
Another small subset of the population of Scotland are recorded in the Census
as belonging to an ethnic minority. The number of people defined as ‘Pakistani/
Indian/Bangladeshi/Chinese/other Asian/Black-African/Black-Caribbean/Black-
Other/Mixed/Other’ make up 2% of the total population of the country, and 5.45%
of the population of Glasgow (GROS 2003). As Verma (1995: 120) has pointed out,
this substantial ethnic minority population also has linguistic implications, leading
to “the recent emergence of a bilingual, and culturally and linguistically diverse,
population in schools, where for historical reasons monolingualism was the norm”.
His analysis of data for ESL provision for the Lothian region reveal 54 languages
other than English in primary schools, and 37 in secondary schools, with overall
Punjabi and Chinese (Hakka/Cantonese and Mandarin) as most common. The ex-
tent of influence of South Asian languages such as Punjabi, on Scottish English and
particularly Urban Scots, has not yet been investigated, but my own informal ob-
servations suggest that younger members of these communities do show distinctive
features, particularly in the realization of FACE and GOAT as closer monophthongs
(even with expected breaking), some retraction in the articulation of /t, d/ which are
often fronter in Scottish English, and characteristic patterns of intonation (higher
nuclear tones) and voice quality (more nasalization and tenser phonation).
Reviews of Scottish English phonology, such as that of Wells (1982: 393), typi-
cally concentrate on Scottish Standard English (ScStE), and for good reasons. Af-
ter all, one could assume that Scots is a language distinct from English and hence
not within the scope of any discussion of ‘English’ in Scotland. Certainly, Scots
phonology is largely defined through a rather different lexical distribution result-
ing from differing historical developments in Scots (Wells 1982: 396). However,
at the same time, excluding Scots means effectively excluding description of the
possible phonological range of a very large number of speakers for whom Scots is
a seamless part of their linguistic repertoire (see, e.g. Wells 1982: 395). Certainly
any sociolinguistic analysis of urban Scottish English which includes phonetic or
phonological variables and which includes working-class or lower middle class

(or even middle-middle class) speakers is going to encounter Scots in some form.
This will be most overt in lexical alternations such as hame /e/ for home, usually
ScStE /o/. It will be less clear for those vowels whose lexical incidence is largely
the same, such as Glaswegian KIT/BIT, and where socially-stratified variation oc-
curs along a continuum correlating with social class (e.g. Macaulay 1977). How-
ever, close analysis of such data often reveals particular patterns of variants which
may occur in working-class speakers that make more sense if we can acknowledge
them as ongoing developments within and from Scots. Vowels and consonants
may appear to be ‘the same’ in Scottish Standard English and Scots, but the pat-
terns of variation may be rather different, and these differences may correlate with
linguistic heritage (Stuart-Smith 2003). Of course this explanation makes it sound
as if ScStE and Scots are distinct linguistic entities and the difficulty is that of
course they are not. Nevertheless the blurred observable socio-phonetic continua
do seem to show focussing about two poles, or at least about one which is ‘ScStE-
like’ and another which owes much, but certainly not everything, to what I call
Scots here (see Stuart-Smith 2003: 117). Another motivation for including some
discussion of Scots is provided by recent results of variation and change in Scot-
tish English. For it is the speech of working-class youngsters which is showing
the most vigorous innovation and change, and hence it seems that Urban Scots is
undergoing the most far-reaching changes.
Thus I take the view here that Scottish English must refer to the entire continuum,
not simply to Scottish Standard English, and Scots is therefore included in my dis-
cussion. However, I too must choose an uneasy compromise in what material may
or may not be included, since there is not space here to outline the phonology of
Scottish Standard English and Scots in their entirety. Given that around two-thirds of
Scottish English speakers inhabit the ‘Central Belt’, which loosely refers to the cities
of Glasgow and Edinburgh and the relatively small strip of land which lies between
and about them, and because much recent phonetic and phonological research has
been carried out on these accents, the material in this chapter is biased towards these
accents and especially Glaswegian. ‘Scots’ here generally refers to continuations
of Central Scots found in contemporary Urban Scots. For an outline of historical
developments in Scots see Macafee (2003), for the most comprehensive discussion
of regional differences in Scots phonology, see Johnston (1997). Macafee (1997)
provides a full review of sociolinguistic results, many of which are phonological.
2. Phonological system
I have already argued that Scottish English is a bipolar continuum, and thus to de-
scribe the phonology of this continuum we need, at least descriptively, to refer to
the phonologies of the two ends, Scottish Standard English and Scots. Both systems
share inventories of vowels and consonants, but differ in lexical incidence, that is in
the way that they are distributed across the lexicon. This results from the different
historical developments of the two varieties. In fact, for the majority of the lexicon,
lexical incidence largely overlaps, so we can recognise common or shared vowels,
e.g. KIT/BIT, or consonants, e.g. /l/, which differ only in having distinctive (and
sometimes overlapping) realizations in Scottish Standard English and Scots. Those
speakers who have access to the Scots end of the continuum may also use particular
Scots realizations for certain words, e.g. /u/ for /√u/ in house, and so have a distinct
system of Scots lexical incidence. Recent research based on recorded interviews
and conversations reveals that the actual number of words involved in Scots inci-
dence is small, and their overall frequency is low (Stuart-Smith 2003), though the
actual frequency may be higher in unobserved vernacular speech. Using the Scots
variant is strongly marked both for speaker and hearer in the Scottish context.
This division into Scottish Standard English and Scots systems inevitably pres-
ents an over-simplistic picture when we look at Scottish English speech. There are
certainly speakers who use Scottish Standard English more or less exclusively. But
there are far more who have access to Scottish Standard English, but who also have
access to Scots, and who drift between the two, and this is especially common
of those living in the Central Belt. What this means in practice is that there is a
large number of Scottish English speakers, of working-class background, either still
working class or recently moved into the middle classes, who may use distinctive
Scots variants for most words, but who may alternate to a Scots variant for a smaller
set of Scots words. Describing the phonological behaviour of these speakers, who
seem to use systematically an alternating system of vowels and some consonants,
presents quite a challenge to phoneticians, phonologists and sociolinguists (Stuart-
Smith 2003).
The phonetic and phonological description that follows owes much to previous
work which is difficult to supersede and where many more details and extensive
further bibliography may be found. Relevant works include Abercrombie (1979),
Aitken (1979, 1984), Johnston (1997) and Macafee (1997). Particularly useful stud-
ies for Edinburgh, and for Glasgow, which is the accent used as the example for the
tables and generally for comments unless noted, include Chirrey (1999), Johnston
(1985), Macafee (1983, 1994), Macaulay (1977), Johnston and Speitel (1983), Ro-
maine (1978) and Stuart-Smith (1999, 2003). The source of my comments on Glas-
wegian largely derive from analysis of a recent corpus of Glaswegian collected in
1997 by me with the help of Claire Timmins, a Scottish fieldworker and researcher.
3. Vowels
The vowels of Scottish English are: /i, I, e, E, a, o, ç, u, √, í, ae, oe, √u/. De-
scribing these vowels is complicated by the fact that they show two distinct but
intersecting systems of lexical incidence typical of Scottish Standard English and

Scots, which cannot be captured by using Wells’ (1982) lexical sets alone (e.g.
Macafee 2003: 139). The picture is further complicated by Scots showing some
regional differences for certain vowels. I therefore use three tables to illustrate the
vowels of Scottish English. Table 1 shows the phonetic realizations of the vowels
of Scottish Standard English together with variants typical of Urban Scots found
in Glasgow, which is similar in many, but not all respects, to that of Edinburgh
and across the Central Belt (e.g. Macafee 1994: 23–24). Table 2 gives the view
from Scots, by showing Scots lexical incidence (after Johnston 1997). The column
in the middle reflects the ‘system’ that is found in most Urban Scots speakers in
Glasgow, that is certain vowels whose categories, if not realizations, are largely
‘shared’ across Scots and Scottish Standard English, and others which may alternate.
Table 3 gives a very broad overview of regional variation in Scots across Central,
Southern and Northern dialects according to Scots lexical incidence, which may
be translated by detailed reference to Johnston (1997: 453–499); further details
cannot be given here. All the tables emphasize phonetic realization, although in-
evitably the symbols are also used to represent phonemic categories, as in Table 2.
After some deliberation I have chosen in general to use narrower transcriptions on
the grounds that broader (and more abstract) symbols provoke impressions which
may be potentially misleading phonetically and phonologically (see Foulkes and
Docherty 1999: 12–13). This leads to the less usual representation of Scots BIT
with /E_/ as opposed to /I/, and following from this BET with /E3/.
Table 1. The vowels of Scottish English (example from Glasgow) – the view from
Scottish Standard
English (ScStE); after Stuart-Smith (1999: 206).
ScStE Urban Scots ScStE Urban

Scots
KIT I ~ e_ E_ ~ e_ ~ √ ~ I CHOICE çe çe
DRESS E E3 MOUTH √u= u ~ √u
TRAP a a= NEAR i i
LOT ç4 o~ç SQUARE e e ~ E3
STRUT √ √_ START a E3 ~ a=
FOOT u= E_ ~ u ~ Y NORTH ç4 o~ç
BATH a a= FORCE o o
CLOTH ç4 o~ç CURE ju= ju
FLEECE i i HEAD E i ~ E3
Table 1. (continued) The vowels of Scottish English (example from Glasgow) – the view
from Scottish Standard
English (ScStE); after Stuart-Smith (1999: 206).
ScStE Urban Scots ScStE Urban

Scots
FACE e e AFTER a E3 ~ a=
PALM a a= NEVER E ~ E_ E_ ~ e_ ~ I
THOUGHT ç4 ç STAY e í ~ e
GOAT o o STONE o e~o
GOOSE u= u~Y STAND a ç4 ~ a=
BIRTH I E__ ~ √_ OFF ç44 a= ~ ç
BERTH E E3 ~ E_ DO u e~u
NURSE √ √_ ~ E_ happY e e ~ E_
PRICE √i í lettER I~√ √_
PRIZE ae ae commA √ √_
Table 2. The vowels of Scottish English (example from Glasgow) – the view from Scots;
after Stuart-Smith (2003: 116). ↔ indicates alternation.
Urban Scots Urban Scots ScStE

(in practice)
MEET i i i
BEAT i i i
(DEAD) i i ↔ E3 E
MATE e e e
(BOTH) e e↔o o
BAIT e e e
PAY í í ↔ e e
BOOT E__ E__ ↔ u u=
DO e e↔u u=
BIT E__ E__ I
BET E3 E3 E
OUT u u ↔ √u √u=
COAT o o o
COT o o↔ç ç4
Table 2. (continued) The vowels of Scottish English (example from Glasgow) – the view
from Scots; after Stuart-Smith (2003: 116). ↔ indicates alternation.
Urban Scots Urban Scots ScStE

(in practice)
OFF a= a= ↔ ç ç4
CAT a= a= a
(LONG) a= a= ↔ ç ç4
(WASH) a= a= ↔ ç ç4
HAND ç ç ↔ a= a
START E3 E3 ↔ a= a
CAUGHT ç ç ç4
(SNOW) ç ç↔o o
CUT √_ √_ √
(PULL) √_ √_ ↔ u u=
NEW/DEW ju ju ju=
BITE í í í
TRY ae ae ae
EYE i i ↔ ae ae
LOIN í í ↔ oe oe
VOICE oe oe oe
LOUP ‘jump’ u √u (√u)
Table 3. Outline of main regional variants for Scots vowels. For locations of variants,
see Johnston (1997), whose descriptions are the source of this table.
Central Southern Northern

Scots Scots Scots
MEET i i i, Ii
TREE i Ei i, Ii
BEAT i i e, Ei, i
MATE e e e, i
BAIT e e e
BOOT E_ E_ i, e
DO e e i:, Ii, e:
BIT E_ E_ E_, I, Œ
Table 3. (continued) Outline of main regional variants for Scots vowels. For locations of
variants, see Johnston (1997), whose descriptions are the source of
this table.
Central Southern Northern

Scots Scots Scots
BET E3 Q, a e~E
OUT u u u, u_, u
COW u, u u Uu, u
COAT o o o, ou
COT o o ç, Å
CAT a, A, Å Å, A, a A, Å, ç, a
CAUGHT ç A, Å, ç A, Å, ç, a
CUT , å, Œ, ç
NEW ju ju, iu, iu ju, ju
DEW ju ju ju
BITE í, E_i í, E_i i, Ei, í
TRY ae ae, åe Ae, ae ~ åe
LOIN í, E_i oe i, Ei, í
VOICE oe oe i, Ei, í, oe, Åi
LOUP ‘jump’ ú, u, u ú EY, ú, ú
Rhoticity
The retention of underlying post-vocalic /r/ means that in comparison to many
other English accents, Scottish English in general does not show phonemic
centring diphthongs in words such as near, hair. However, the selection and
realization of vowels before /r/ varies considerably. In Scottish Standard Eng-
lish, in words such as fir, fern and fur, some speakers will show one vowel /I/ or
/√/, others two /E, √/, and still others all three /I, E, √/. It is also possible to hear
the realization [´] in some types of ScStE (Johnston 1997: 470). There are also
differences in the back vowel used before /r/ in NORTH and FORCE (for more
discussion, see Wells 1982: 407–408; Macafee forthcoming). In Scots it is com-
mon to find vowel breaking in the form of epenthetic schwa emerging before /r/
(and /n, l/) after most high vowels (e.g. MEET, MATE, COAT); see Johnston (1997:
455).
Vowel length
An important aspect of Scottish vowels is vowel length. The Scottish Vowel Length
Rule (SVLR, also called ‘Aitken’s Law’) refers to the phenomenon whereby vow-
els are phonetically long in certain environments: before voiced fricatives, before
/r/, and before a boundary, including a morpheme boundary. Thus the vowels in
breathe, beer, bee, and agreed are longer than in brief, bead, and greed. In diph-
thongs, e.g. PRICE/PRIZE (BITE/TRY), the SVLR manifests itself in quantity and
quality differences which may be phonemic in Scots, e.g. aye [ae], ay [í]. In
the refined accents of ScStE, such as ‘Kelvinside’ (Glasgow) and ‘Morningside’
(Edinburgh), these diphthongs can be merged stereotypically as [ae] and show a
raised first vowel followed by a reduced second vowel (Johnston 1985: 39, 1997:
493). The SVLR still operates in most varieties of Scots and in Scottish English in
general, though it appears to be receding in some middle-class speakers in Edin-
burgh and in children of English-born parents (Jones 2002: 78). Recent accounts
of the SVLR based on durational data conclude that the monophthongs /i, u/ and
the diphthong /ai/ alone are subject to the SVLR.
KIT
The usual realization of this vowel in ScStE is [I], though it is often more open
[e_]. Corresponding to KIT is Scots BIT which is generally in the region of [E_] but
in certain contexts, e.g. after labials, as in milk, fill, may be substantially lowered
and retracted and even merged with CUT (Johnston 1997: 468). A socio-phonetic
continuum stretches between KIT/BIT, such that the realization shows clear differ-
ences according to class. This has been investigated in Edinburgh (Johnston and
Speitel 1983) and Glasgow in the 1970s (Macaulay 1977) and again in the 1990s
(Stuart-Smith 1999: 207). In all cases lower-class speakers used lower and more
retracted variants than those of higher-class speakers. In a recent study by Viktoria
Eremeeva and myself, acoustic data from male Glaswegian speakers show mid-
dle-class men using the highest vowels, but middle-class boys using the frontest
variants, but lower, at the same height as working-class speakers. Interestingly, in
spontaneous speech working-class boys are not as retracted as working-class men,
suggesting a move away from stereotypically retracted localized variants for this
vowel. Though not part of our analysis, we also noticed that [E_] was usual even in
contexts where CUT would be expected in these speakers.
DRESS
The ScStE vowel is closer than that of RP, and in Scots corresponding BET is
closer still, represented here as [E]; see Johnston (1997: 472).
NEVER
Abercrombie (1979: 74) discusses the possibility of a ‘third’ phoneme between
// and /E/ for Scottish Standard English, occurring in a few words such as never,
seven, heaven, devil, which he transcribes with /E_/, and which may be restricted
to certain regions such as the West of Scotland, the Borders, and Edinburgh. My
own experience from teaching Scottish students confirms /E_/ for some speakers
but with no obvious areal distribution and a good deal of individual variation (cf.
Wells 1982: 404). In Scots the equivalent vowel is BIT or BET (Johnston 1997:
471).
TRAP/PALM/BATH
Scottish Standard English usually shows a single vowel for TRAP and PALM, and
the same for BATH, represented here as /a/, though Abercrombie (1979: 75–76) ob-
serves that “quite a lot of people, particularly in Edinburgh” do have two vowels
but with slightly different lexical incidence, giving rise to /A/ in e.g. value, salmon.
The corresponding Scots vowel is CAT, whose realization tends to be more re-
tracted in Glasgow (Macaulay 1977; Stuart-Smith 1999: 208) and even more so
in Edinburgh (Johnston and Speitel 1983). Macaulay (1997) again found social
stratification in the realization of /a/, with fronter variants in higher class speakers
and backer ones in lower class speakers. Some of Macaulay’s Class I speakers
showed the very front [Q] which is stereotypical of the speech of the middle-class
‘Kelvinside’/‘Morningside’ areas (Wells 1982: 403), where it is said that “‘sex is
what the coal comes in’ and ‘rates are large rodents akin to mice’” (Johnston 1985:
37). As in Macaulay’s data, the working-class pronunciation in the 1997 Glasgow
data was more retracted than that of middle-class informants, though with some
unexpected alignment of allophonic variation with English English lexical inci-
dence such that fronter allophones were found in e.g. cap [kap] and backer ones
in e.g. car [ka=R8] (Stuart-Smith 1999: 209).
LOT/CLOTH/THOUGHT
Again, Scottish Standard English usually shows one vowel here, transcribed /ç4/,
but some speakers may have a distinction between LOT and THOUGHT, with again
a slightly different lexical incidence such that e.g. lorry would select /ç4/ rather
than expected English English /Å/ (Abercrombie 1979: 76). Abercrombie observes
that an /Å ~ ç/ contrast assumes an /a ~ A/ contrast. In Urban Scots COT and
CAUGHT are distinct but with different realizations, [o] and [ç] respectively (John-
ston 1997: 490).
GOOSE/FOOT
According to Wells (1982: 401), “from a diagnostic point of view, the most im-
portant characteristic of the Scottish vowel system is its lack [...] of a phoneme
/U/”. The vowels of these two sets are together realized as a high, usually rounded,
vowel which is central or even front, transcribed here as [u]. As for LOT/THOUGHT
and TRAP/PALM, ScStE speakers may show two vowels here, but this is less usual
and presumes the other contrasts (Abercrombie 1979: 76–77). The corresponding
Scots vowel is OUT, whose realization tends to be fronter (on Scots OUT-fronting,
see Johnston 1997: 475), and can even be unrounded to [I]. (GOOSE and FOOT
correspond to the Scots set BOOT and so select the vowel of BIT, though lexical
‘bleeding’ leading to replacement with ScStE /u/ is gradually progressing: Johnston

1997: 466). As with KIT/BIT and TRAP,BATH,PALM/CAT, there is sociolinguistic
variation in the realization of GOOSE,FOOT/OUT. Macaulay (1977) reported backer
variants in higher class speakers and fronter variants in lower class informants.
FACE/GOAT
The vowels of these sets tend to be monophthongs, though some Scottish Standard
English speakers, such as the rather unusual-sounding Scottish-English-speaking
BBC Scotland newscasters, will sometimes use diphthongs similar to Southern Eng-
lish English (Macafee 1983: 35). The Scots monophthongs in MATE/BAIT and COAT/
COT can be realized as closer vowels. Apart from phonetic breaking before /r/ (and
sometimes /n, l/) in working-class speakers in the 1997 Glasgow corpus, there was
very little evidence for a diphthongal realization of these vowels in any speakers.
SQUARE
In the Urban Scots of Glasgow, /er/ from all sources, including MORE/MATE and
POOR/BOOT, may be lowered to BET, perhaps as a result of Irish/Ulster influence.
Macafee’s (1994: 225) analysis of her Glaswegian sample showed weak support
for this as a particularly Catholic feature.
Scots OUT
The selection of the Scots vowel /u/ in a word like house (OUT) tends to correlate
with social stratification, such that middle-class speakers will avoid Scots variants
and working-class speakers will use them to differing degrees depending on the
alternating vowel and even the word involved. Though Macafee (1994) has ana-
lysed the results for 11 alternating vowels in her sample of Glaswegian, the Scots
alternation which has received the most attention is that of OUT (see e.g. Macaulay
1977; Johnston and Speitel 1983; Stuart-Smith 2003). The results of these studies
confirm that: (i) the Scots form is characteristic of working-class speech; (ii) few
lexical items occur in these data (only 12 in the 1997 Glasgow corpus); (iii) speakers
always show some alternation (sole use of Scots /u/ is not attested); and (iv) that the
alternation appears to be stable over the past 30 years (in Glaswegian at least). This
last finding is interesting as it demonstrates that some features of Scots phonology
are vigorous.
4. Consonants
The consonants of Scottish English are:

/p, b, t, d, k, g, f, T, v, D, s, z, S, Z, x, „, h, tS, dZ, r, l, m, n, N, w/. As for the
vowels, alternations arise from Scots lexical incidence, but fewer consonants are
involved: /v ~ ∅/, e.g. give/gie; /T ~ ∅/, e.g. with/wi’; /nd ~ n/, e.g. stand/staun;
/t ~ d/, e.g. bastard/bastart; /l ~ V/, e.g. football/fitbaw.
We now have a substantial body of information about the realisation of con-
sonants in Urban Scots, largely as a result of recent work on Glaswegian (e.g.
Stuart-Smith 2003), but also arising from other studies (see e.g. the summaries in
Johnston 1997 and Macafee 1997). To date 11 consonant variables have been con-
sidered in detail from the 1997 Glasgow corpus: t, th, dh, s, x, hw, l, r-realisation,
postvocalic r, k, w. In what follows, I restrict my discussion mainly to Scottish
English of the Central Belt; for details for regional variation, particularly in Scots,
see Johnston (1997).
Stops
Stops are generally reported to be less aspirated in Scottish Standard English (e.g.
Wells 1982: 409) and the same is said for Scots, though Johnston (1997: 505) notes
that aspiration is creeping into the dialects of the Central Belt. My auditory im-
pressions from the Glasgow data are also that all speakers are less aspirated than
typical Southern English English, but this has yet to be investigated acoustically
(a recent student project with two informants showed consistently shorter duration
of aspiration for a working-class speaker as opposed to a middle-class speaker
for /t, p, k/). The place of articulation for /t, d/ can be alveolar or dental, with
dental articulations reported for Scots (Wells 1982: 409; Johnston 1997: 505). In
Glasgow all speakers showed degrees of advanced tongue tip/blade, indicating a
fronted or dental articulation for /t, d/ (and /l, n/); see Stuart-Smith (1999: 216). I
deal with /t/-glottalling in the next section, but note here that glottalling of /p/ and
/k/ is also reported for Glaswegian, as are ejective realizations of emphatic utter-
ance final stops. See Johnston 1997: 501 for regional variation in glottalling and
preglottalization in Scots.
/t/
/t/-glottalling, the realisation of non-initial /t/ with a glottal stop in words such as
butter and bottle, is a stereotype of Glasgow speech and Urban Scots more generally
(cf. e.g. Johnston and Speitel 1983; Macafee 1994: 27, 1997; Johnston 1997: 500).
It is even spreading into Scots as a general Scottish feature (Johnston 1997: 501). In
Glasgow, /t/-glottalling is clearly evidenced in Macaulay’s data with the lower class-
es using glottals extensively (90% for Class III). An analysis of the 1997 Glasgow
data revealed similar patterns, and a cautious real-time comparison across the two
suggested some increase among working-class speakers, especially girls (though
with the already high numbers in 1973 there was little room for manoeuvre).
Perhaps more interesting were the qualitative patterns of /t/-glottalling which
were found from a close analysis of my 1997 corpus. In other accents of English /t/-
glottalling is a feature which seems to correlate with social class on a continuum,
with higher class speakers using few glottals and lower classes using more. On
the face of it a similar impression can be gained from looking at Scottish English,
and certainly this is how it looks for the 1973 and 1997 results. However, when
I analysed the patterning of glottals in working-class speakers and middle-class
speakers according to phonetic environment, comparing the usage in prepausal
position (e.g. but) compared with word-final prevocalic (e.g. a lot of) and intervo-
calic position (e.g. water), a striking difference in patterning emerged. When all
instances where [t] was used (exceptions to /t/-glottalling) were considered, it be-
came clear that /t/-glottalling is the norm for working-class speakers, and we could
even say obligatory for working-class adolescents. All exceptions are clearly moti-
vated. Middle-class speakers however show a different pattern. For them [t] is the
norm, and /t/-glottalling optional. That these distributions amounted to systematic
patterning was shown when speakers tried to shift socially through /t/-glottalling.
Movement sociolinguistically seems to require a systematic shift which neither
middle- nor working-class speakers achieved successfully. Middle-class children
moving ‘down’ approximated the working-class pattern but were not entirely suc-
cessful, retaining traces of typical middle-class patterning. Working-class adults
trying to move ‘up’ approximated their middle-class peers intervocalically, but
again retained working-class patterns in the categorical use of glottals before a
pause. Thus successful style-shifting along the Scottish English continuum re-
quires more than simply increasing or reducing the number of glottals used, and
demonstrates the continuation of different constraints inherited from Scots and
Scottish Standard English respectively. Variants other than released [t] or glottals
were less usual.
/x, „/
/x, „/ are not generally found in southern accents of English English and RP
(Wells 1982: 408). However, the extent to which these categories are intact for
some speakers of Urban Scots is doubtful. Macafee’s (1983: 32) observation
of [k] and [w] as possible realisations in localized Glasgow speech was con-
firmed for the speech of the working class speakers in 1997, especially the adoles-
cents, for whom [k] and [w] are the majority forms. Johnston (1997: 507) reports
[w] for [„] in Edinburgh, and a recent study of the speech of the new town
Livingston, which lies between Edinburgh and Glasgow, found [k] but not [w]
(Jones 2002: 57). [x] and [„], which we might expect to be characteristic of Ur-
ban Scots, are generally maintained in Scottish Standard English. (In Northern
Scots [„] has been replaced by [f], see Wells 1982: 397–398; Johnston 1997:
507).
/T, D/
In Scottish Standard English /T, D/ are realized as voiceless dental fricatives. In
Urban Scots /T/ has the traditional variant [h], in e.g. think, something, which
may also be completely deleted in e.g. think, both, and a possible retroflex or
alveolo-palatal fricative or [®8] in the initial cluster /Tr/, in e.g. three (Wells 1982:
410; Macafee 1983: 33). Macafee (1983: 34) noted sporadic instances of /f/ for
/T/ in Glasgow. By the time of the collection of the 1997 Glasgow corpus [f]
had emerged as a variable but frequent variant in the speech of working-class
adolescents (Stuart-Smith 1999: 209). Interestingly [f] is added to the existing
Scots variants to form a constellation of ‘non-standard’ variants for // such that
in spontaneous speech [] accounts for less than a third of the overall variation in
these speakers.
The traditional Urban Scots variant for //, particularly in intervocalic position,
is the tap [R], in e.g. brother, though complete elision is also common, in e.g. the
tag, an(d th)at (Wells 1982: 410; Johnston 1997: 508). Again the working-class
adolescents in the 1997 Glasgow sample showed [v] for /D/ in words such as
smooth; [v] joins the traditional Scots variants to extend the array of possible ‘non-
standard’ variation, though unlike // this makes up a much smaller proportion of
the variation (under 20%).
Stopping of /T, D/ occurs occasionally in Scots in Glasgow (Johnston 1997:
506) where it may be due to Irish/Ulster influence.
/s, z/
Urban Scots is commonly noted as having a distinctive articulation of /s, z/, which
has been described as apico-alveolar (e.g. Johnston 1997: 509). Auditory and
acoustic analyses of the 1997 Glasgow corpus suggest that the traditional Scots
articulation is also governed by gender.
/h/ and /j/

/h/-dropping is not generally reported for Scottish English (Wells 1982: 412). It
is only rarely apparent in e.g. enclitic him, her. Similarly, yod-dropping appears
to function much as Wells states, i.e. after [l] and commonly after [s], with only
sporadic instances elsewhere. Clusters with yod, such as [tj] in nature, which have
undergone coalescence to [tS] in Standard English are still retained by some speak-
ers (Wells 1982: 412; Macafee 1983: 32–33). In Urban Scots /hj/ in e.g. Hugh,
human can be realized as [C] or [S]; see Johnston (1997: 509).
/r/
Scottish Standard English is generally rhotic (Wells 1982: 10–11); in the 1997
Glasgow data articulated /r/ made up around 90% of all variants for postvocalic
/r/ in middle-class speakers (Stuart-Smith 2003: 128–129.). In Urban Scots /r/-
vocalization is becoming increasingly common (Johnston 1997: 511). Romaine
(1978) reported loss of postvocalic /r/ in the speech of working-class children
in Edinburgh, where she also noted gendered distribution of variants, with girls
showing more approximants and boys showing more r-lessness. The analysis of
postvocalic /r/ in the Glasgow data confirmed Macafee’s (1983: 32) comments in
the discovery of extensive /r/-vocalization in working-class adolescents (Stuart-
Smith 2003). Two ‘vowel’ variant categories were set up: vowels with audible
secondary velarization/pharyngealization (cf. Johnston 1997: 511), and ‘plain’
vowels with no audible secondary articulation. Interestingly, there appears to be
subtle conditioning according to gender in the use of these variants: girls overall
tended to vocalize more, and to favour plain vowels, especially in contexts such as
before a consonant, e.g. card or unstressed prepausal, e.g. better; boys used both
plain and velarized variants before a consonant, but preferred velarized vowels in
words like better (Stuart-Smith 2003: 126–135).
The phonetic realization of /r/ is variable. Wells states that trills are unusual, and
certainly I have rarely heard them amongst Scottish English students. More usual
are approximants, post-alveolar [®] and retroflex [”], and alveolar taps [R], which
vary according to position in the word, phonetic environment, and sociolinguistic
factors. Scots is usually said to favour taps, though Johnston (1997: 510) notes
that [®], more typical of Scottish Standard English, is encroaching. My analysis
of the realization of /r/ in the Glasgow data showed that all variants were present
in all speakers, with differences in distributional patterns and tendencies. Taps
emerged as more common in working-class speakers (especially men) but only in
read speech; retroflex approximants were more common in middle-class speakers.
There was a slight tendency for the working-class adolescents, who produced a
high proportion of vocalized variants, to use taps for articulated /r/.
/l/
Across the Scottish English continuum, the secondary articulation of /l/ tends to
be dark in all positions in the word (Wells 1982: 11; Johnston 1997: 510). Excep-
tional use of clear /l/ is sometimes found in Highland English and occasionally in
Scottish Standard English with a distribution similar to that of English English
(Macafee 1983: 33). In the 1997 Glasgow data velarized, and velarized and pha-
ryngealized secondary articulations were heard.
/l/-vocalization was a historical process in Scots, yielding common forms such
as a’ ‘all’ (Macafee 1983: 38). More recently, /l/-vocalization of the kind usually
found in southern English, to a high back vowel [F] or [o] (Wells 1982: 258) was
reported in Glaswegian (Macafee 1983: 34), and confirmed by subsequent analy-
sis, especially for working class adolescents.
5. Suprasegmentals
In describing vowels and consonants, the preceding description has emphasized

segments, perhaps at the expense of obscuring recurring traits which may occur in
groups of speakers and which may arise from shared features of the longer domain
phenomenon of voice quality. However, there are certainly links between a num-
ber of features noted above for Glaswegian and features of voice quality in the
same data. For example, /r/-vocalization to a vowel with secondary velarization
with some pharyngealization in working-class speakers fits well with my earlier
observation of raised and backed tongue body with possible retracted tongue root
for the same speakers (Stuart-Smith 1999: 215).
Apart from the work of Brown and colleagues on Edinburgh intonation (e.g.
Brown, Currie, and Kenworthy 1980), there has been surprisingly little research
on intonation in Scottish English. Cruttenden (1997: 136) notes that for accents of
Scotland other than those found in Glasgow, statements and questions will invari-
ably show “a sequence of falling tones”. The main difference between the speech
of Edinburgh and Glasgow is in terminating mid-to-low-falls in Edinburgh (e.g.
Brown, Currie, and Kenworthy 1980) but a tendency towards high rising patterns
in Glasgow (e.g. Macafee 1983: 36; Stuart-Smith 1999: 211). The extent to which
these continue patterns from earlier forms of Scots is not known, though Northern
Irish influence may be invoked to some extent to explain distinctive Glaswegian
patterns (Macafee 1983: 37; on Irish English influence more generally, see Crut-
tenden 1997: 133). It seems unlikely that Glasgow’s ‘high rise’ is linked to the
apparently rapid spread of high-rising terminal intonation patterns in southern ac-
cents of English English (see Cruttenden 1997: 129).
Even less has been said about rhythm in Scottish English, bar Abercrombie’s
(1979: 67) comments that disyllabic words such as table are often pronounced
with a short first syllable and long second syllable. This is also my impression
when teaching rhythm to Scottish English students. Abercrombie also makes the
observation that syllabification in Scottish Standard English tends to favour open
syllables, so that a phrase like St Andrews will be syllabified into [sn` tandruz].
6. Major issues in current research
Good summaries of previous phonetic, phonological and sociolinguistic research

on Scottish English may be found in Aitken (1984) and Macafee (1997). The
most recent fundamental research into the phonetics and phonology of Scottish
English has been carried out by James Scobbie (Queen Margaret University Col-
lege, Edinburgh), who is concentrating on empirical investigation of the Scottish
Vowel Length Rule using articulatory and acoustic phonetic analysis (e.g. Scobbie,
Hewlett and Turk 1999), but who is also working on other aspects of Scottish Eng-
lish, such as the voicing contrast as reflected in Voice Onset Time (VOT) systems
in Shetlandic. Closely related to Scobbie’s work is that of Ben Matthews who
looked at the acquisition of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Edinburgh children.
The reader is referred to the full bibliography on the CD-ROM for the relevant
studies mentioned in this section.
Much other current research on the phonology of Scottish English is concerned
with the interrelation of accent and user. Dominic Watt (Aberdeen) is developing
research on accent and identity, looking specifically at phonetic and phonologi-
cal features of Scottish English on the Scottish/English Border, as illustrated by
the inhabitants of Berwick upon Tweed. Attitudes and accent change have been
investigated recently by Karen Torrance (2002). She tracked the relationship be-
tween incoming diffusing features such as /th/-fronting in Glaswegian and attitudes
of speakers using such features towards different regional accents of English. Her
complex results show that attitudes seem to relate to language use for certain speak-
ers only, thus highlighting the role of the individual in this process. Call centres,
outlets of companies which conduct their business with customers using the tele-
phone, have flourished in the Central Belt of Scotland. Features of Scottish English
in call centre interaction is thus an obvious but neglected area of research which
formed the focus of Suzy Orr’s (2003) study. She found some evidence of accom-
modation in Glaswegian agents to their callers.
Phonological variation and change in the Scottish English of Glasgow is the
subject of my own research with colleagues Claire Timmins, Eleanor Lawson
and Viktoria Eremeeva (e.g. Stuart-Smith 2003), which tackles some of the is-
sues raised above and others including sound change in Glaswegian, real time
change in Glaswegian, social factors and sound change, mobility and dialect con-
tact in Glaswegian, and acoustic analysis in sociolinguistic investigation. Most of
my work has concentrated on consonant change, but Eremeeva (2002) started the
work of analysing vowels in the 1997 corpus. The first phase of the work, which
took 11 consonants and considered them both singly and together, has identified
innovation and change led by working-class adolescents, with few indications of
gendered distribution. What emerges from these results is the extent to which
Urban Scots is developing as a dynamic mixture of vigorous local and non-local
features. Exactly how and why the dialect is changing in these ways remains the
subject of further research.
* I am very grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for supporting the data analysis with
a research grant (F/179/AX) and the AHRB for supporting its writing up with a re-
search leave grant. Thanks are due to Claire Timmins who acted as researcher on the
Leverhulme project, and to Wolf-Gerrit Fruh who compiled the Census statistics. I am
grateful to Clive Upton for his editing, and to Caroline Macafee, Claire Timmins, Suzy
Orr, and Dom Watt who commented on an earlier draft. All errors and opinions remain
my own.
Selected references
ROM.
Abercrombie, David
1979 The accents of standard English in Scotland. In: Aitken and McArthur (eds.),
68–84.
Aitken, Jack
1979 Scottish speech: a historical view with special reference to the Standard
English of Scotland. In: Aitken and McArthur (eds.), 85–118.
Aitken, Jack
1984 Scots and English in Scotland. In: Trudgill (ed.), 517–532.
Brown, Gillian, Karen Currie and Joanne Kenworthy
1980 Questions of Intonation. London: Croom Helm.
Chirrey, Deborah
1999 Edinburgh: descriptive material. In: Foulkes and Docherty (eds.), 223–229.
Cruttenden, Alan
1997 Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
GROS
2003 Census 2001 Scotland. General Register Office for Scotland.
Johnston, Paul
1985 The rise and fall of the Morningside/Kelvinside accent. In: Görlach (ed.), 37–
56.
Johnston, Paul
1997 Regional variation. In: Jones (ed.), 433–513.
Johnston, Paul and Hans Speitel
1983 A sociolinguistic investigation of Edinburgh speech. Final Report to the
ESRC.
Jones, Charles
2002 The English Language in Scotland: An Introduction to Scots. East Linton:
Tuckwell.
Macafee, Caroline
1983 Glasgow. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
1994 Traditional Dialect in the Modern World: A Glasgow Case Study. Frankfurt
am Main: Lang.
1997 Ongoing change in modern Scots: the social dimension. In: Jones (ed.), 514–
548.
2003 The phonology of older Scots. In: Corbett, McClure and Stuart-Smith (eds.),
138–169.
forthcoming Scots and Scottish English. In: Hickey (ed.).
Macaulay, Ronald
1977 Language, Social Class and Education: A Glasgow Study. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Maté, Ian
1996 Scots Language: A Report on the Scots Language Research Carried out by the
General Register Office for Scotland in 1996. Edinburgh: General Register
Office.
Murdoch, Steve
1995 Language Politics in Scotland. Aberdeen: Aiberdeen Univairsitie Scots Leid
Quorum.
Irish English: phonology
Raymond Hickey
1. Introduction
The English language was introduced to Ireland with the coming of the Anglo-
Normans from West Wales in the late 12th century. Among the settlers were Eng-
lish speakers who coexisted with the Norman French in Ireland, settling down in
the towns of the east coast of Ireland and providing the cells out of which the Eng-
lish-speaking population of Ireland was later to emerge. Since the late 12th century,
the fate of English has been closely linked with that of the Irish language which
it came largely to replace in the late modern period. In addition, the interaction of
existing forms of English with the Scots imported in the early 17th century in the
north of the country led to the linguistic separation of Ulster, the most northerly
province, from the rest of the country. This state of affairs provides the rationale
for the division of English in Ireland into two broad groups as reflected by divi-
sions in the current chapter. For the many varieties of English on the island of
Ireland there are different designations.
Anglo-Irish is an established term in the literature to refer to works written in
English by authors born in Ireland and is also used in politics. The difficulty with
the term is its occurrence in these other spheres. Within the context of other va-
rieties, Canadian English, for instance, the term is still used to refer to English in
Ireland.
Hiberno-English is a learned term which is derived from the Latin term Hiber-
nia ‘Ireland’. The term enjoyed a certain currency in the 1970s and 1980s but in
the 1990s many authors ceased to employ it, as it often needs explanation to a
non-Irish audience or readership. However, not all authors share this opinion, see
for example Dolan (1998) who uses the term Hiberno-English.
Irish English is the simplest and most convenient term. It has the advantage
that it is parallel to the designations for other varieties, e.g. American, Australian,
Welsh English and can be further differentiated where necessary. Throughout the
present chapter this term will be used.
In the north of the country terms are used which reflect historical origins, e.g.
Ulster Scots for the English stemming from the initial Lowland Scots settlers, Mid-
Ulster English for geographically central varieties which are largely of northern
English provenance. There is much discussion of the status of Ulster Scots as a
possible separate language and similarly the status of Scots is debated. A discus-
sion of this issue is, however, well beyond the brief of the current chapter.
Irish English: phonology 69
Contact English is found occasionally to refer globally to varieties spoken in

areas where Irish is also spoken (in Donegal, Connemara and Kerry, see maps at
end of chapter).
1.1. Historical background

The most cursory glance at the history of Irish English reveals that it is divided
into two periods. The first period starts in the late 12th century with the arrival
of the first English-speaking settlers and finishes around 1600 when the second
period opens. The main event which justifies this periodisation is the renewed and
vigorous planting of English in Ireland at the beginning of the 17th century. One
must first understand that during the first period the Old English, as this group is
called in the Irish context, came increasingly under the influence of the Irish. The
Anglo-Normans who were the military leaders during the initial settlement had
been completely absorbed by the Irish by the end of the 15th century. The progres-
sive Gaelicisation led the English to attempt planting the Irish countryside in order
to reinforce the English presence there. This was by and large a failure and it was
only with James I that successful planting of (Lowland Scottish and English) set-
tlers in the north of the country tipped the linguistic balance in favour of English
in the north. During the seventeenth century (after the Cromwellian campaigns at
the middle of the century) new forms of English were brought to Ireland: Scots in
the north and West/North Midland varieties in the south (where there had been a
predominantly West Midland and south-west input in the first period). Although
there was renewed Anglicisation, on the east coast, in Dublin and other locations
down to Waterford in the south-east, there is a definite continuation of south-west
English features which stem from the imported varieties of the first period. This
fact underlies a distinctive east coast dialect area.
1.1.1. The medieval period

The documentary record of medieval Irish English is confined for all intents and
purposes to the collection of 16 poems of Irish provenance in BM Harley 913 which
are known collectively as the Kildare Poems (Heuser 1904; Lucas 1995) after one of
the poems in which the author identifies himself as from the county of Kildare to the
south-west of Dublin. The collection probably dates from the early 14th century. The
language of these poems is of a general west Midland to southern English character.
Many of the idiosyncratic features can be traced to Irish influence (see discussion in
Hickey 1993). It is a moot point whether the Kildare Poems were written by native
speakers of Irish using English as a H-language in a diglossic situation or whether
indeed the set was written by one or more individuals. Apart from the Kildare Poems,
medieval Irish English is attested in a number of verse fragments and in city records
from Dublin and Waterford, comments on which can be found in Henry (1958).
70 Raymond Hickey
1.1.2. The early and late modern period

At the end of the 16th century attestations of Irish English begin to appear which
are deliberate representations of the variety of the time. These are frequently in
the guise of literary parody of the Irish by English authors (Bliss 1979). The value
of these written representations of Irish English for reconstructing the language
of the time has been much questioned and it is true that little if any detail can be
extracted from these sources. In addition most of the satirical pieces were written
by Englishmen so that one is dealing with an external perception of Irish English
at the time. Satirical writings are not the only source of Irish English, however.
There are some writers, especially in the 19th century, who seriously attempt to
indicate vernacular speech of their time, such as Maria Edgeworth in her novel
Castle Rackrent (1801).
1.2. Language shift in early modern Ireland

Literary parodies do not reveal anything about the then relationship of Irish to
English, the spread of English and the regional input from England. There were
no censuses before 1851 which gave data on speakers of Irish and English. Ad-
ams (1965) is a useful attempt to nonetheless produce a linguistic cartography of
Ireland at the beginning of the early modern period. The upshot of this situation
is that there is no reliable data on the language shift which began in earnest in the
early 17th century and which had been all but completed by the late 19th century.
It is clear that the Irish learned English from other Irish who already knew some,
perhaps through contact with those urban Irish who were English speakers, espe-
cially on the east coast and through contact with the English planters and their em-
ployees. This fact had consequences for the nature of Irish English. Bliss (1977)
pointed out that this fact is responsible for both the common malapropisms and the
unconventional word stress found in Irish English. However, the stress pattern in
verbs with final long vowels, e.g. distribute [dIstrI»bju˘t], educate [edju»ke˘t], can
also be due to English input, particularly as late stress is a feature of southern Irish,
not of the west and north, and so influence due to contact with Irish could only be
posited for the south of Ireland.
Another point concerning the language shift in Ireland is that it was relatively
long, spanning at least three centuries from 1600 to 1900 for most of the country.
The scenario for language shift is one where lexical transfer into English is un-
likely, or at least unlikely to become established in any nascent supraregional va-
riety of English in Ireland. Such dictionaries as Ó Muirithe (1996) and to a lesser
extent Dolan (1998) seem to reveal a large number of Irish loans in present-day
Irish English. But the question of currency is the key issue here: there is a great
difference between the vocabulary of an older agricultural generation (which is
frequently reflected in the entries in these dictionaries) and a younger urban one.
In phonology and syntax the matter is quite different. Speakers who learn a
language as adults retain the pronunciation of their native language and have dif-
ficulty with segments which are unknown to them. A simple case of this would
be the substitution of English dental fricatives by stops (dental or sometimes
alveolar, depending on region) in Irish English. A more subtle case would be
the lenition of stops in Irish English, e.g. cat [kæt], which, while systemically
completely different from lenition in Irish, could be the result of a phonological
directive applied by the Irish learning English to lenite elements in positions of
maximal sonority.
1.2.1. Contact Irish English

In present-day Ireland there are only a few small remaining enclaves scattered
along the western seaboard where Irish is still spoken as a native language in a
situation of unbroken historical continuity. Apart from this there is an increasing
number of language enthusiasts who speak Irish as a second language and attempt
to keep the language alive by using it as much as they can, frequently in an urban
environment which is completely English-speaking. In principle, the rural setting
just mentioned should be the one in which the language shift scenario of previous
centuries (Hickey 1995) is replicated, thus enabling linguists to view the process
of language contact and transfer in vivo. Despite this fact there are few studies of
contact Irish English today although the Irish language in contact areas has repeat-
edly been the subject of investigation, e.g. Stenson (1991). This study was carried
out on seven informants from the north west of Ireland (Co. Donegal) to see what
kinds of /l/ sounds they showed in English. To this end their Irish was investigated.
This variety of Irish shows three types of /l/-sounds: a velarised [l], a palatalised
[¥] and a (lenited) neutral [l]. It turned out that the speakers used the last sound as
the realisation of English /l/ in all positions (bar before /j/ as in million /mIljń/ =
[mI¥ń]) which tallies with the realisation of /l/ in the rest of the country where
this was decided a century or two ago.
1.3. Supraregionalisation
It is obvious from English loanwords in Irish that early Irish English had not pro-
gressed through the major long vowel shift in England, e.g. Irish bacús ‘bakehouse’
shows unshifted /a˘/ and /u˘/. The play Captain Thomas Stukeley (1596/1605), the
first widespread representation of Irish English in literary parody, consistently uses
<oo> for words with /au/ from Middle English /u˘/, e.g. toon for town. Further-
more, comments from Thomas Sheridan in the late 18th century (Sheridan 1781)
show that Middle English /a˘/, as in patron, still had not shifted, nor had Middle
English /E˘/ as in meat. But present-day Irish English shows little or no trace of
these unshifted vowels. The reason is not that the shift took place in Irish English
72 Raymond Hickey
some time in the 19th century but that the unshifted forms were replaced by main-
stream English pronunciations due to a process which I have labelled suprare-
gionalisation. The essence of this process is the replacement of salient features of
a variety by more standard ones, frequently from an extranational norm, as with
southern British English vis à vis Irish English. The motivation for this move is to
render a variety less locally bound, more acceptable to a wider community, hence
the term supraregionalisation.
1.4. Vernacularisation
The story of supraregionalisation does not end with the disappearance of strongly
local features. There is another pathway which such features can take. This is
the relegation to vernacular varieties. Take the instance of Middle English /E˘/
as in beat /bE˘t/. This pronunciation is now confined to strongly local varieties
where supraregionalisation has not taken place. Furthermore, non-local speakers
can style-shift downwards to achieve a vernacular effect. Another example of this
would be the use of youse or yez for the second person plural (also found in other
Anglophone areas such as Tyneside). This is shunned by non-local speakers but
can be employed when deliberately switching to a vernacular mode.
The process of vernacularisation has in some instances led to a lexical split.
Consider the reflex of velarised [l] before [d] in Irish English: this led to the
diphthong [au] as in the words old [aul] and bold [baul] with the common post-
sonorant stop deletion. These forms are available alongside /o˘ld/ and /bo˘ld/ to
non-local speakers but the meanings are somewhat different as the original forms
with [au] have gained additional meaning components: [aul] ‘old + affectionate
attachment’, e.g. His [aul] car has finally given up the ghost, [baul] ‘daring +
sneaking admiration’, e.g. The [baul] Charlie is back on top again.
2. Varieties of Southern Irish English
It is obvious that linguistically, as well as politically, Ireland is divided into two

broad sections, the north and the south. The former consists of the six counties
presently within the state of Northern Ireland and of the large county of Done-
gal which is part of the Republic of Ireland. The north has a complex linguistic
landscape of its own with at least two major historical varieties: Ulster Scots, the
speech of those directly derived from the original Lowland Scots settlers, and
Mid-Ulster English, the speech of those descendants of English settlers to central
parts of Ulster. In addition there is the sociolinguistically complex capital, Belfast.
Co. Donegal by and large goes with the rest of Ulster in sharing key features of
English in the province and also of the varieties of Irish used there.
The north of the country is quite distinct from the south, accents of northern-
ers being immediately recognisable to southerners. A dividing line can be drawn
roughly between Sligo, just south of Co. Donegal, and Dundalk on the east coast
immediately below the border with Northern Ireland (Ó Baoill 1991). North of
this line the accents are distinctly Ulster-like. South of this line the northern fea-
tures rapidly give way to southern values. The term line here might imply a clearly
delimited boundary, perhaps zone might be more accurate, as border counties such
as Monaghan, Cavan or Louth show mixed accents which have adopted features
from both northern and southern types.
The transition can be clearly seen moving down the east coast: Dundalk has a
northern flavour to its speech but this is more or less lost by the time one reaches
Drogheda travelling southwards. However, the recordings of A Sound Atlas of
Irish English show that key features of northern Irish English, such as mid front
vowel breaking, as in save [se˘´v], and /u/-fronting, as in boot [but], extend quite
far down the east coast, indeed in the case of the latter almost to the border of Co.
Dublin.
Table 1. Northern features which occur in the transition zone from south to north
Use of interdental fricatives for dental stops in the south

Use of a fronted allophone of /u˘/ and /u/, i.e. [u(˘)]
A reduction in the vowel length distinctions
Use of a retroflex [”] in syllable-final position
Greater pitch range between stressed and unstressed syllables
Greater allophony of /Q/, e.g. raised variants in a velar environment bag [bEg] and a
retracted realisation in a nasal environment family [»fAmli]
Recessive occurrence of glides after velars and before front vowels as in Cavan [»kjQvń]
(a border county)
2.1. The East Coast

The east of the country stretches from the town of Drogheda somewhat north of
Dublin down to Waterford in the south-east and includes such towns as Carlow,
Kilkenny, New Ross, Wexford. This is the area which was first settled by the
English from the late 12th century onwards and it is roughly coterminous with
that which was encompassed by the Pale, the region of English influence in the
late medieval ages, at its greatest extension. The original input from south-west
England did in fact survive in altered form until the beginning of the 19th century
in the archaic dialect of Forth and Bargy which was recorded by a few glossary
compilers before it finally ceased to exist.
74 Raymond Hickey
Table 2. East band features from Dundalk down to Waterford (including Dublin)
Fortition of dental fricatives to alveolar stops (also south), e.g. think [tINk]
Lack of low vowel lengthening before voiceless fricatives (not Dublin), e.g. path [pat]
Front onset of /au/, e.g. town [tæUn], [tEUn]
Centralised onset of /ai/ (also south), e.g. quite [kwÍt]
Breaking of long high vowels (especially Dublin), e.g. clean [klijń]
Fortition of alveolar sibilants in pre-nasal position, e.g. isnt [Idn`t]
No lowering of early modern /u/ (only Dublin), e.g. done [dUn]
Glottalisation of lenited /t/, e.g. foot [fUt] → [fUt ] → [fU/] → [fUh]
ˆ
2.2. The South and West

This is a large region, from Co. Cork up to Co. Mayo, and was that in which Irish
survived longest. As rule of thumb one can say that Irish receded from east to west.
Furthermore, in this western and southern half of the country there is no survival of
English from the first period with the possible exception of very small pockets in
the major cities Cork, Limerick and Galway. Hence the English which developed
here was that of the early modern period which arose through uncontrolled adult
second language acquisition on the part of the rural inhabitants who represented
the vast majority of speakers. Furthermore, the regional English input of the early
modern period was of a largely West Midlands character.
The south and the west can also be distinguished from each other, at least on
phonological grounds. The major segmental feature is the raising of // to // be-
fore nasals in the south and southwest. This phenomenon is not spectacular in
itself and is found in many varieties of English, most notably in the Lower South
of the United States. But a consideration of the history of Irish English shows that
this raising was of a more general type previously. If one looks at the many liter-
ary satires which contain Irish English, for instance in the collection by Alan Bliss
(1979) or in A Corpus of Irish English (Hickey 2003), then one sees that formerly
the raising occurred in non-nasal environments as well, e.g. divil, togithir, (from
Dion Boucicault’s play Arragh na Pogue, 1864). What would appear to have hap-
pened in late 19th-century and/or early 20th-century Irish English is that the raising
came to be restricted to environments in which it was phonetically natural, i.e.
before nasals as these often trigger vowel raising due to their formant structure.
This would mean that the situation in the south and south-west of Ireland (roughly
the counties of Cork and Kerry) is a remnant of a much wider occurrence of // to
// raising.
A suprasegmental feature of the south, especially of the city of Cork, is the large
intonational range characterised by a noticeable drop in pitch on stressed syllables.
This intonational pattern is shared by Cork Irish, in the remnants which are still
extant, so that this prosodic feature can be viewed as an areal feature of the south/
south-west. The city of Cork also has a very open realisation of the vowels in the
LOT and THOUGHT lexical sets which is seen in (often stereotypical) pronuncia-
tions of the city’s name, [ka®k].
A distinctive feature of the west is the use of dental stops in the THINK-THIS
lexical sets. In vernacular varieties in the east and south, alveolar stops are em-
ployed here. In the history of Irish English one can assume that Irish speakers
switching to English would have used the nearest equivalent to English /T, D/,
i.e. the coronal stops of Irish. These stops were alveolar in the east and south,
but dental in the west so that speakers used /t5, d5/ as equivalents to the English
dental fricatives in their second language English. This dental pronunciation
of the west has become that of the supraregional variety of Irish English, it-
self deriving from usage in Dublin and spreading then throughout the country.
But in vernacular Dublin English the realisation of dental fricatives has been
as alveolar stops so it is not clear how vernacular speakers in Dublin came
to use dental stops. One view is that they picked this articulation up from the
many immigrants into Dublin in the latter half of the 19th century, because it (i)
allowed them to dissociate themselves phonetically from vernacular speakers
in the city and (ii) permitted a reversal of homophony in the words thinker and
tinker.
2.3. The Midlands

The centre of Ireland is a flat expanse bordered by the hills and mountains which
occupy the coastal regions of the country. In general the term Midlands is used
in Ireland to describe an area west of Co. Dublin as far as the Shannon and in-
cluding its western shore linking up with east Clare, Galway and Mayo and on a
north-south axis delimited by the border with Northern Ireland in the north and to
the south by a line running roughly from Limerick across to Dublin. In this sense,
Midlands actually refers to the north-central part of Ireland. Its extension to the
south is limited and does not stretch far down into Co. Tipperary. The counties
which are regarded as typically part of the Midlands are Westmeath, Longford,
Offaly, Laois along with west Kildare and Meath, south Roscommon and north
Tipperary. The main town in the Midlands is Athlone, situated on the Shannon
about half way on its north-south course.
To the north, the Midlands show the transitional features of the north-south
divide (Ó Baoill 1991) such as /u/-fronting, the use of dental fricatives for stops in
the THINK-THIS lexical set or a retroflex [”] for the more general, traditional velar-
ised [®] of the south. The single most obvious feature of the Midlands is the shift
of /tj/ to /k/ in intervocalic position as in fortune ['fçrku˘n], already mentioned in
the 19th century. Other features are shared by adjoining varieties.
76 Raymond Hickey
Table 3. Phonological features of the South, West and Midlands of Ireland
South and west from Cork through Limerick up to Galway and Sligo
/E/ to /I/ before nasals
Tense, raised articulation of /æ/ (also east)
Considerable intonational range (only south, south-west)
West
Dental stop realisation in THINK-THIS lexical sets
Low central onset for /ai/ and /au/, e.g. quite [kwaIt], town [taUn]
Midlands
Shift of /tj/ to /k/ in word-internal position, e.g. fortune ['fçrku˘n]
3. Varieties of Northern Irish English
Any treatment of English in Ireland must take special account of the situation in
Ulster. The reason for this lies in the settlement history of this province which led
to the introduction of Scots and forms of northern English which were, and still
definitely are, distinctive from all varieties of English in the south of the country.
There has also been, as in the south, interaction between forms of English and Irish
which has added a further dimension to the linguistic complexity in the north. A
common means of alluding to the northern part of the island of Ireland is by the
historical name Ulster which covers the entire north of Ireland.
3.1. Terminology
Similarly to the south, any discussion of English in the north must begin with a
consideration of terminology as there are many and frequently contradictory us-
ages found in treatments of language in Ulster.
Ulster English: 1) A cover term for various forms of English used in Northern
Ireland. 2) A specific reference to English brought to Ulster from the north-west
Midlands of England (Adams 1958: 61) and separate from the Scots element in the
province. Because Ulster Scots (see section 3.2) is found in the peripheral coun-
ties of Ulster (Donegal, Derry, Antrim and Down), the label Mid-Ulster English
(Harris 1984) is sometimes used to refer to general forms of English in Northern
Ireland which are not derived from Scots.
Ulster Scots: This refers to a continuation of the Scots language brought to Ireland
chiefly in the 17th century onwards. Some tens of thousands of Scots arrived in
the first half of this century and were mainly from the West-Mid and South-West
Lowlands. Ulster Scots today still shows many features typical of the most char-
acteristic form of English in Scotland, Scots.
Northern Irish English: This subsumes all kinds of English in the north of the
country, i.e. in all the nine countries of the province of Ulster, and is used in the
present chapter.
3.2. Ulster Scots

Of all the varieties of English taken to Ireland since the 17th century, Ulster Scots
is the only one which has retained a distinct profile and which can be unambigu-
ously linked to the present-day varieties to which it is immediately related: Scots in
western Scotland. Undoubtedly, Ulster Scots, especially in its rural forms, is quite
separate from other varieties of English in the north of Ireland, let alone the south.
Its highly divergent nature has meant that much debate has taken place concerning
its status as a language or a dialect.
The regions where Ulster Scots is spoken are nowadays no longer contiguous.
This would seem to imply a reduction of the previous geographical distribution.
The areas where it is still found do, however, represent historical regions of settle-
ment. There are three of these located on the northern periphery from north-west
to north-east, hence the term Coastal Crescent or Northern Crescent (see maps at
end of article).
3.2.1. Delimiting Ulster Scots

A treatment of Ulster Scots must start with differentiating between conservative
Ulster Scots (braid, i.e. broad, Ulster Scots, which has its base in rural areas of
Ulster) and more standard forms which are spoken chiefly in urban centres, paral-
lel to the established distinction in Scotland between Lowland Scots and Scottish
Standard English (Harris 1984: 119). An essential feature of standard Ulster Scots
is that most words with non-standard Scots vowel values have re-allocated values
which are nearer to those in general Ulster English. The following list illustrates
vowel values and some consonantal features which are indicative of conservative
Ulster Scots; the yardstick of reference is Older Scots (Older Scots), up to 1700,
i.e. before the emigration to Ulster began.
Table 4. Features of conservative Ulster Scots
Retention of Older Scots u# (not shifted to /au/) cow /ku˘/, hoos /hus/
A low, unrounded back vowel for Older Scots o, soft /sa˘ft/, top /tA˘p/
Older Scots ei merges with /i/ and not /ai/ [Í, Ae], die /di˘/
Older Scots o# has a fronted, unrounded reflex, blood /blId/
78 Raymond Hickey
Table 4. (continued) Features of conservative Ulster Scots
Fronting and raising of Old English a#, home /he˘m/

Little raising of above vowel after labio-velars, two /twç˘/
Lowering of /I/ to /E/, thick /TEk/
No raising of Middle English /E˘/ to /i˘/, beat /bet/, meat /met/
Raising of Older Scots /a/ especially before /r/, farm /fE˘rm/
Distinct open and close mid back vowels, horse /hç˘rs/, hoarse /ho˘rs/
Distinction between short vowels before /r/, term /tErm/, burn /b√rn/
No rounding of /a/ after /w/, swan /swan/
Retention of distinction between /w/ and /„/, whale /„e˘l/, wale /we˘l/
Retention of syllable-final /x/, bought /bç˘xt/
Vocalisation of word-final /l/ [¬], full /fu˘/, wall /wç˘/
The shifts of vowel values in Ulster Scots when compared to southern British Eng-
lish have led to a re-alignment of vowel space. This can best be indicated diagram-
matically as follows. The first shift one should note is that of Middle English /o˘/
to a front vowel, with or without rounding, i.e. Older Scots /I, O/. In Ulster Scots
this vowel appears as /I/.
Table 5. Ulster Scots vowel shifts
/I/ ← /o˘/ loom /lIm/

/æ/ ← /I/ limb /læm/
/A˘/ ← /æ/ lamb /lA˘m/
3.3. Contrasting northern and southern Irish English

In the following sections those features in which varieties in Ulster (both Ulster
Scots and general Ulster English) differ from those south of the province will be
discussed. In a number of instances it is necessary to distinguish the two main
groups within Ulster. The yardstick for the south is the supraregional standard
which ultimately is derived from middle-class Dublin English of the early and
mid 20th century.
Equivalents of dental fricatives

In the entire area of Ulster the THIN and THIS lexical sets show fricatives. The
only exception to this are areas of contact with Irish (in County Donegal) where
one finds [t5] and [d5] because of the transfer from Irish of the realisations of /t/ and
/d/ in the latter language.
Table 6. The THIN and THIS lexical sets
Ulster Supraregional Southern

thick [TEk] [t5Ik]
that [Dat] [d5æt]

lather [lA˘(D)´®] [la˘d5´®]
brother [br√´r] [br√d5´®]
Dentalisation of alveolar stops before /r/

This is a phonetic process whereby an alveolar stop, typically /t/, is shifted forward
to a dental point of articulation when it is followed by an unstressed rhotic schwa.
The /r/ is realised as a tap or slight trill due to the position of the tongue parallel to
the escaping airstream (Bernoulli effect) and is frequently voiceless.
Table 7. Dentalisation of alveolar stops before /r/
Ulster and Conservative Vernacular Southern

water [wA˘t5´r]
better [bEt5´r]
Allophones of alveolar plosives

The fricativisation of /t/ and often /d/ intervocalically and word-finally before a
pause is not generally to be found in the north – nor in other varieties of English,
bar the Irish section of Newfoundland – and thus gains the status of a defining
feature of southern Irish English.
Table 8. Allophones of alveolar plosives
bat [bat] [bæt]

bead [bid] [bid]

The palatalisation of velar plosives

A conspicuous feature of generalised Ulster English is the palatalisation of /g/ and
/k/ to /kj/ and /gj/ respectively. This palatalisation is only to be found before low
80 Raymond Hickey
vowels. It would appear to be an English and not a Scots feature and is attested in
18th-century mainland English although it was later lost.
Table 9. The palatalisation of velar plosives
cat [kjat] [kæt]

gap [gjap]
[gæp]
Off-glides
When mid front vowels occur in stressed position, they tend to develop off-glides.
This is particularly clear before a following consonant.
Table 10. Off-glides
save [se˘´v] [se˘v]

bait [be˘´t] [be˘t]

Unstressed vowels
In unstressed positions southern Irish English frequently has the high vowel [i], i.e.
without any centralisation to [I], so-called happY-tensing. Ulster English tends to
lower an unstressed /i/ to a value approaching /e/.
Table 11. Unstressed vowels
tricky [trëke] [trIki]

happy [hApe] [hæpi]
Vowel quantity
In Ulster, in strong contradistinction to the South, vowel quantity is often non-dis-
tinctive. High and mid vowels, which are elsewhere either long or short, appear
phonetically half-long.
Table 12. Vowel quantity
full [f¨l] [fUl]

fool [f¨l] [fu˘l]
4. Interpreting features of Irish English
In the history of Irish English studies, the pendulum of opinion concerning the
role of contact in the genesis of these forms of English has swung back and forth.
Initially writers like Joyce, P. L. Henry and, to a lesser extent, Hogan assumed that
every feature which had a parallel in Irish was of Irish origin. This stance has been
labelled the substratist position and came under heavy fire in the mid 1980’s most
noticeably in John Harris’ (1984) influential article. The retentionist standpoint,
which saw the input varieties of English in early modern Ireland as the source of
features hitherto accounted for by contact, came into vogue and was represented
by various scholars. But in the 1990’s the pendulum moved more to the centre
with the gradual acceptance of contact as a source of specific features in Irish
English (Hickey 1995), not for ideological reasons, as often previously, but due to
a better understanding of the mechanisms of language transfer and language shift,
not least due to authors on Irish English, such as Markku Filppula, taking on board
the ideas of other linguists examining contact in general, expressed most clearly
in the seminal monograph, Thomason and Kaufman (1988). Convergence became
the new standard wisdom with contact and retention occupying places of equal
standing in the history of Irish English. The following table offers suggestions for
sources of key phonological features of Irish English.
Table 13. Phonological features and their possible sources
Phonological feature Possible source
Dental/alveolar stops for fricatives Transfer of nearest Irish equivalent, coronal

stops
Intervocalic and pre-pausal lenition of /t/ Lenition as a phonological directive from
Irish
Alveolar /l/ in all positions Use of non-velar, non-palatal [l] from Irish
Retention of [„] for <wh> Convergence of input with Irish /f/ [∏]
Retention of syllable-final /r/ Convergence of English input and Irish
Distinction of short vowels before /r/, e.g. Convergence of English input and Irish
term [tE®m] and turn [t√®n]
Epenthesis in heavy clusters in syllable Areal feature of both Irish and English in
codas, film [fIl´m] Ireland
/u/-fronting in the north, e.g. boot [b¨t] Areal feature of both Irish and English in
Ulster
Lowering of short front vowels, e.g. bit [bet] Input to Ulster from Scotland
Use of retroflex /r/ in Ulster Input to Ulster from Scotland
82 Raymond Hickey
4.1. Ireland as a linguistic area

Table 13 contains features which are traits of vernacular varieties throughout the
entire island. When treating features of Irish English, a holistic view can be use-
ful, that is, rather than stress differences, one could examine the features common
to most or all varieties and indeed go a step further and compare these to parallel
structures in Irish. This approach is largely typological and sees Ireland (north and
south) as a linguistic area. Not all of these are strongly diagnostic of Ireland as
a linguistic area; they are also found in forms of English in England, quite apart
from Anglophone varieties overseas. One should also mention that the non-exis-
tence of features across the entire country has led to negative definers for Irish
English arising. For instance /r/-lessness and/or /h/-dropping are definite signs that
a speaker is not Irish.
5. Urban English in Ireland
5.1. English in Dublin

The English language has been spoken in Dublin since the late 12th century. Eng-
lish never died out in the capital and there are some features of vernacular Dublin
English which can be traced to the first period. The records of Dublin English are
slight and consist before 1600 mainly of municipal records which here and there
betray the kind of English which must have been spoken in the city (Henry 1958).
For a historical background to present-day speech one must look to the elocu-
tionist Thomas Sheridan (the father of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan)
who in 1781 published A Rhetorical Grammar of the English Language with an
appendix in which he commented on the English used by middle class Dubliners,
the “gentlemen of Ireland” in his words, which he regarded as worthy of censure
on his part. When discussing consonants, Sheridan remarks on “the thickening (of)
the sounds of d and t in certain situations”. Here he is probably referring to the
realisation of dental fricatives as alveolar plosives as found in vernacular forms of
Dublin English today. There is no hint in Sheridan of anything like a distinction
between dental and alveolar plosive realisations, which is an essential marker of
local versus non-local speech today.
Table 14. Dental versus alveolar stops in Dublin English
Local Dublin Non-local Dublin

thank, tank [tæNk] thank [t5æNk], tank [tæNk]
5.1.2. Varieties of Dublin English

Any discussion of English in Dublin necessitates a few basic divisions into types. For
the present contribution a twofold division, with a further subdivision, is employed.
The first group of speakers consists of those who use the inherited popular form of
English in the capital. The term local is intended to capture this and to emphasise
that these speakers are those who show strongest identification with traditional con-
servative Dublin life of which the popular accent is very much a part. The reverse of
this is non-local which refers to sections of the metropolitan population who do not
wish a narrow, restrictive identification with popular Dublin culture. This group then
subdivides into a larger, more general section, mainstream, and a currently smaller
group which vigorously rejects a confining association with low-prestige Dublin.
For want of a better term, this group is labelled fashionable.
Table 15. Varieties of Dublin English
Forms of English in present-day Dublin
1) local Dublin English

2) non-local Dublin English a) mainstream Dublin English
b) fashionable Dublin English
A central issue in contemporary Dublin English is the set of vowel shifts which
represent the most recent phonological innovation in Irish English (see section 5.1.4
for details). This is not surprising as Dublin is a typical location for language change
given the following features: Firstly, the city has expanded greatly in population
in the last three or four decades. The increase in population has been due both to
internal growth and migration into the city from the rest of the country. Secondly, it
has undergone an economic boom in the last 15 years or so, reflected in its position
as an important financial centre and a location for many computer firms which run
their European operations from Dublin. The increase in wealth and international
position has meant that many young people aspire to an urban sophistication which
is divorced from strongly local Dublin life. For this reason the developments in fash-
ionable Dublin English diverge from those in local Dublin English, indeed can be
interpreted as a reaction to it. This type of linguistic behaviour can be termed local
dissociation as it is motivated by the desire of speakers to hive themselves off from
vernacular forms of a variety spoken in their immediate surroundings.
5.1.3. Features of local Dublin English

Vowel breaking
Long high vowels are realised as two syllables with a hiatus between the two
when they occur in closed syllables. The hiatus element is [j] with front vowels
84 Raymond Hickey
and [w] with back vowels, clean [klijń], fool [fuw´l]. The disyllabification of
long high vowels extends to diphthongs which have a high ending point as can
be seen in the following realisations: time [t´j´m], pound [pEwń]. Among the
further prominent vocalic characteristics of Dublin English are the following: (a)
Fronting of /au/, e.g. down [dEUn] - [deUn], (b) Lengthening of historically short
vowels before /r/, e.g. circle [sE˘kl`], first [fU˘s(t)], (c) Retention of early modern
English short /U/, e.g. Dublin [dUblń].
Cluster simplification
Stops after fricatives or sonorants are liable to deletion. Intermediate registers
may have a glottal stop as a trace of the stop in question: pound [peUn(/)], last
[lQ˘s(/)].
Fortition of dental fricatives:

It is safe to assume that the realisation of the first sound in the THOUGHT lexical
set in popular Dublin English as an alveolar plosive [t] is not a recent phenom-
enon. Hogan (1927: 71–72) notes that it is found in the seventeenth century plays
(assuming that t, d represent [t, d]) and furthermore in the Dublin City Records
(from the first period, i.e. before the 17th century, see above) where the third person
singular ending -th appears as -t.
T-lenition
The clearest phonetic feature of southern Irish English is the realisation of /t/ as a
fricative with identical characteristics of the stop, i.e. an apico-alveolar fricative
in weak positions. Extensions include the lenition of /t/ in a weak position beyond
the initial stage of apico-alveolar fricative to /r/ then to /h/ with final deletion as
in the following instance.
Table 16. T-lenition
Cline of t-lenition in Dublin English
/t/ [t] → [®] → [h] → ø

water [wA˘t‘] [wA˘®‘] [wA˘h‘] [wA˘‘]

As mentioned above, the THIN and THIS lexical sets show alveolar stops rather
than the dental stops of supraregional Irish English.
5.1.4. Recent developments

As mentioned in section 5.1.2., the major instance of language change in present-
day Ireland is undoubtedly the shift in pronunciation of Dublin English. To un-
derstand the workings of this shift one must realise that in the course of the 1980s
and 1990s the city of Dublin, as the capital of the Republic of Ireland, underwent
an unprecedented expansion in population size and in relative prosperity with a
great increase in international connections to and from the metropolis. The immi-
grants to the city, who arrived there chiefly to avail of the job opportunities resulting
from the economic boom, formed a group of socially mobile, weak-tie speakers and
their section of the city’s population has been a key locus for language change. The
change which arose in the last two decades of the 20th century was reactive in nature:
fashionable speakers began to move away in their speech from their perception of
popular Dublin English, a classic case of dissociation in an urban setting.
The variable /ai/ in Irish English

A conservative pronunciation of /ai/ in Dublin is maintained in lower-class speech
as [Í] whereas the supraregional variety of the south has for /ai/ a diphthong
which has a low mid or low front starting point, i.e., either [aI] or [æi]. For fash-
ionable Dubliners the [aI, æI] pronunciations sufficiently delimit them from local
Dublin English. But increasingly a back starting point came to be used with this
diphthong. This retracted starting point is particularly noticeable before /r/ so that
the name of the country is realised as [AI®lńd] rather than [aI®lńd].
General shift of low vowels

The vowel shift in Dublin English is not just confined to the realisation of /ai/.
Other vowels in the area of this diphthong are affected, particularly the diphthong
in the CHOICE lexical set and the low and mid vowels in the LOT and THOUGHT
sets which usually have a lower realisation than in Britain (or unrounded in the
case of the LOT vowel): boy /çI/ → [bÅI], pot /Å/ → [pÅt] - [pAt], law /ç˘/ → [lÅ˘].

These realisations show that the change has the characteristics of a chain shift, that
is, it affects several segments by a process of retraction and raising in phonologi-
cal vowel space. This can be seen from the following tables which summarise the
various vowel developments.
Table 17. Summary of the present-day Dublin Vowel Shift
Retraction of diphthongs with a low or back starting point

time [taIm] → [tAIm]
toy [tÅI] → [tçI], [toI]
Raising of low back vowels

cot [kÅt ] → [kçt]

caught [kÅ˘t ] → [kç˘t ], [ko˘t ]

86 Raymond Hickey
Table 17. (continued) Summary of the present-day Dublin Vowel Shift
Raising oI o˘
↑ ↑
çI ç ç˘
↑ ↑ ↑
ÅI Å Å˘
Retraction aI → AI
5.1.5. The spread of fashionable Dublin speech

Because of the status of Dublin, non-vernacular speech of the capital acts as a de
facto standard for the rest of the south when speakers, outside of Dublin, are seek-
ing a non-local, generally acceptable form of Irish English. This has also meant,
for instance, that the retroflex [”] used by fashionable speakers in Dublin is spread-
ing out of the capital, especially with younger urbanites from different parts of the
country. Various features of fashionable Dublin English, both vocalic and conso-
nantal, are spreading rapidly, especially among the younger female population.
For the following discussion, this speech is labelled the New Pronunciation, the
capital letters deliberately suggesting a bundle of features which are adopted as a
group by innovative speakers.
Apart from vowels, the New Pronunciation of southern Irish English involves
above all the realisation of liquids /l/ and /r/. Other segments do not seem to be
affected by the shift in pronunciation. Specifically, the complex area of coronal
segments has not been altered to any significant extent. In addition to /ai/-re-
traction and back vowel raising, discussed above, one can note the following
features:
/au/-fronting
In Dublin English, and indeed in traditional east-coast varieties of Irish English
in general, the vowel in the MOUTH lexical set has a front starting point, either [æ]
or [E]. A realisation as [au] is more conservative in Dublin, and in rural areas it is
traditionally typical of the south-west and west of Ireland, but is being replaced by
the fronted realisation in the speech of the younger generation.
SOFT-lengthening
Here one is again dealing with a traditional feature of Dublin English. The vowel
of the LOT lexical set, when it occurs before a voiceless fricative, is lengthened.
This in its turn is in keeping with the general Early Modern English lengthening
of /a˘/ before such fricatives and is seen in words like staff, pass, path in southern
British English (Wells 1982: 203–206). In conservative mainstream Irish English
SOFT-lengthening (to use a cover term with a typical word involving this length-
ening) is not found, but again because it is present in fashionable Dublin English,
it is spreading to the rest of the country.
/r/-retroflexion
Traditionally, the realisation of /r/ in southern Irish English is as a velarised al-
veolar continuant, a pronunciation found in western and south-western varieties
of Irish to this day. Thus, it can be assumed that this type of /r/ resulted in Irish
English from transfer of the Irish realisation of the same phoneme. In Northern
Ireland, a retroflex /r/ is to be found, a parallel with Scotland, which may well
have been the source for this realisation. In current fashionable Dublin English
a retroflex /r/ is also to be found, though definitely independently of the occur-
rence in Northern Ireland, as varieties of English there have played no role in the
shaping of the speech of fashionable urbanites in Dublin. Dissociation from the
traditional velarised realisation is most likely the reason for the retroflex [”] which
has become so widespread throughout Ireland among younger female speakers. A
slightly raised /a˘/ ([Q˘], [E˘] co-occurs with the retroflexion of the /r/ so that one
has pronunciations like [kæ˘”d] for card.
/l/-velarisation
Traditionally, Irish English has an alveolar [l] in all syllable positions. However,
the recordings for young female speakers in A Sound Atlas of Irish English (see
below) overwhelmingly show a definite velarisation of /l/ in this position, e.g.
field [fi˘´lÚd]. The development of [lÚ], or its adoption from other accents of Eng-
lish, could be seen as a reaction to the traditional alveolar [l] so long a prominent
feature of Irish accents.
Apart from the features described above there are others which play a minor role
in the sound profile of the New Pronunciation. One obvious feature of local Dub-
lin English which has avoided stigma and hence is found in fashionable speech in
the city is the loss of /hw/ [„] in words like whale and while and which leads to
mergers of pairs like which and witch. Traditionally, the occurrence of [„] in all
words beginning with wh is a prominent feature of Irish English, but if the New
Pronunciation establishes itself as the new supraregional form of English in the
next generation then this will no longer be the case.
5.2. English in Belfast

The area of contemporary Belfast is characterised by a conurbation which stretch-
es along the north shore of Belfast Lough at least to Newtownabbey in County
Antrim and on the south shore at least to Holywood in County Down. Along the
Lagan Valley the city stretches to the south-west at least to Lisburn with a motor-
way to the triad of towns Lurgan, Craigavon, Portadown to the south of Lough
Neagh. The Lagan Valley is the hinterland of Belfast and there is a similarity be-
88 Raymond Hickey
tween accents in the city and those in its hinterland to the south-west. In general,
one can say that Lagan Valley speech is similar to the accents in West Belfast. The
east of the city shows greater similarity with accents from rural North Down, an
originally Scots area of settlement, as opposed to Lagan Valley which was settled
largely by people from England.
5.2.1. Sources of Belfast English

The English spoken in Belfast is an amalgam of features which come from the
two main English communities in Ulster with independent traits only found in the
capital city. The following is a list of features which can be clearly attributed to
one of the two main English-language sources in Ulster (Milroy 1981: 25–26).
Table 18. Ulster Anglo-Irish features in Belfast English (after Milroy 1981)
Palatalisation of /k, g/ before /a/, /kjat/ for cat

Dentalisation of /t, d/ before /r/, /bEt5´ / for better
Lowering and unrounding of /Å/, /pAt/ for pot
ME /E˘/ realised as a mid-vowel, /bE˘t/ for beat
/U/ for /√/ in but, luck, etc.
Lowering of /E/ to /æ/, set /sæt/
The use of /au/ before /l/ in monosyllables, /aul/ for old, also a feature of Lowland Scots.
Raising of /æ/ to /E/ before velars, /bEk, bEg/ for back, bag
Raising of /æ/ to /E/ after /k/ and (residually) /g/ /kEp, kEsl `/ for cap, castle
Short realisations of high vowels, /bit, b¨t/ for beet, boot
Lowering and sometimes centralisation of /I/, /bEt, sEns/ or /b√t, s√ns/ for bit, sense
The sociolinguistic developments in Belfast English, which were described in

ground-breaking studies by James and Lesley Milroy in terms of social networks
in the 1970s and early 1980s, are outside the scope of the present study, for ap-
propriate references, consult the relevant section of Hickey (2002).
Mention should also be made of the distinct intonational patterns in northern
Irish English. In her study, Rahilly (1997) notes a general predominance of rises
in intonation in Belfast which contrast explicitly with falls in the south of Britain.
Indeed the high numbers of rising nuclei and level tails in tone sequences are
regarded as typical of the Anglo-Irish group of dialects rather than the British
group. Rahilly concludes that the primary cue to prominence in Belfast is a high
pitch, but with much less movement than with nuclei in Received Pronuncia-
tion.
5.3. English in Derry

The city of Derry has a population of over 95,000 (1991 census) and is ethnically
over 70% Catholic as opposed to Belfast which has a majority Protestant population.
The designation Londonderry is a variant preferred by both Ulster Protestants and
British commentators and goes back to a renaming of the city when London com-
panies were commissioned with the task of transporting English settlers there at the
beginning of the 17th century. The city’s name is an Anglicisation of Irish doire ‘oak-
grove’, a common name, or element of name, in the north and south of the country.
There is a large degree of segregation in terms of residence for the two com-
munities: east of the River Foyle, which divides the city, are found Protestants and
west of the river is almost exclusively Catholic. The segregation increased greatly
in the last 30 years because of the sectarian violence.
The only research on the English of Derry city is that of McCafferty (see Mc-
Cafferty 2001 as a representative example of his work), apart from one study of
intonation in Derry. The city has a special status within Northern Ireland as it is on
the one hand the second largest and on the other the only major city with a Catho-
lic majority. It is understandable that it would receive innovations which arise in
Belfast but also that the Catholic majority in the city might well show an inherent
resistance to these. A number of changes are recorded for Derry which are listed
in the following.
Table 19. Four major linguistic changes in Derry English
(1) A gradual replacement of [√] with [¨] (standard Northern Irish English [NIE]) which
has been on-going in Ulster and Scotland for some time.
(2) A widespread vernacular innovation originating in the east of Northern Ireland which
sees older [I] replaced by [i´] in the FACE class and both of these alternating with
standard [e].
(3) A vernacular innovation that appears to have originated in the east in the last hundred
years by which intervocalic [D] is dropped giving a null variant.
(4) A localised Derry English vernacular innovation which realises the same intervocalic
[D] as a lateral [l].
Variable Standard Older Recent Lexical set

NIE General DE Local DE
(√) [¨] [√] [¨] PULL
(e) [e] [I] [i´] FACE
(D) [D] 0 [l] MOTHER
McCafferty (2001) maintains that there is a tendency for the SQUARE and NURSE
lexical sets to merge, a feature spreading from the east of Northern Ireland and
90 Raymond Hickey
typical of the Protestant middle class. For this group a lack of quantity distinction
with the NORTH and FORCE lexical set is also found. The shift of older [I] to [I´]
in the FACE class is taken to be characteristic of younger Protestants. Protestant
changes are in general incoming innovations which are spreading from eastern
Northern Ireland, i.e. from the Belfast conurbation. In this case the changes for
the Protestants in Derry have arisen through a process of supraregionalisation of
Belfast innovations. The only leading change among the Catholics in Derry is the
shift of intervocalic [D] to a lateral [l]. The Protestants in Derry have no vernacular
innovations of their own.
Table 20. Changes in Derry English according to ethnicity
Ethnic group Source
Protestants [o˘r] → [ç˘r] Eastern Northern Ireland

[Er] → [´˘r] ---
[e, I] → [i´] ---
Catholics [- D -] → [- l -] Local to Derry city
6. Lexical sets for the phonological description of Irish English
Tables 21 and 22 use the lexical sets as originally introduced by John Wells in the
early 1980s. Certain adaptions and extensions of Wells’ original set are necessary for
the correct description of Irish English, for instance the PRICE vowel can have a dif-
ferent realisation before voiceless and voiced consonants. In addition the NORTH and
FORCE sets must be kept separate, though increasingly with supraregional speakers
in the south, a distinction is not made between the vowels in each of these words.
The five columns in each table correspond to the five sound samples which ac-
company this chapter.
6.1. Vocalic sets
Table 21. Lexical sets and representative values in Irish English (vowels)
Rural Popular Fashionable Rural South- Supraregional

Lexical set Northern Dublin Dublin West/West Southern
KIT e I I I I

DRESS E E E E E
TRAP a Q Q Q Q
Table 21. (continued) Lexical sets and representative values in Irish English (vowels)
Rural Popular Fashionable Rural South- Supraregional

Lexical set Northern Dublin Dublin West/West Southern
LOT Å a ç a A
STRUT √ U √ √_ √_
FOOT ¨ U U U U
FLEECE i˘ ij´ i˘ i˘ i˘
FACE e˘´ e˘ e˘ e˘ e˘
BATH A(˘) Q˘ a˘ a˘ a˘
THOUGHT ç(˘) a˘ ç˘, o˘ A˘ Å˘
SOFT ç(˘) a˘ ç˘ A Å
GOOSE ¨(˘) uj´ u˘ u˘ u˘
PRICE EI Í AI QI aI
PRIDE EI, aI Í AI QI AI
MOUTH E¨ EU EU aU aU
CHOICE çI aI çI, oI AI ÅI
GOAT çU, o˘ √ç Ú o˘ Ú, oU
NEAR i(˘)” i˘() i˘” i˘® i˘®
SQUARE ´(˘)” E˘() e˘”, O˘” e˘ e˘
START A(˘)” Q˘() A˘” a˘ A˘
NORTH ç(˘)” a˘() Å˘”, ç˘” A˘ Å˘
FORCE o(˘)” Å˘() ç˘”, o˘” ç˘ o˘
CURE u(˘)” uj´() u˘”, u˘ u˘
NURSE ´(˘)” U˘() ‘˘”, O˘” ‘˘ ‘˘
COMMA ´ ´, å ´ ´ ´
LETTER ´” ´() ´” ´ ´
HAPPY I, e i i i i
DANCE Q, A Q˘ a˘, (A˘) Q˘, a˘ a˘
PATH A Q˘ a˘, (A˘) Q˘, a˘ a˘
Remarks
1) The vowel values which are associated with the now unfashionable Dublin 4
accent are not shared entirely by younger fashionable Dublin English speakers.
92 Raymond Hickey
In particular the retraction of /a˘/, and raising of the rhotacised version /Å˘”/, is
avoided so that the earlier pronunciation of Dart as [dç˘”t / do˘”t] is regarded as
“uncool”.
2) The vowel transcribed as [√_] is a variant which is somewhat more centralised
than the corresponding [√] vowel found in supraregional varieties.
3) The realisation [O˘”] in the SQUARE lexical set can be interpreted as a deliberate
reaction to the very open, unrounded realisation of population Dublin English,
[e:()].
4) Popular Dublin English is weakly rhotic and early conservative forms of this
variety are often entirely non-rhotic.
5) There is a complex distribution of low vowels in northern Irish English. Basi-
cally one can say that a front and raised vowel is found before velars and a

retracted variant before labials and nasals, giving pronunciations like bag [b g]
and family [fAmlI].
6.2. Consonantal sets

Wells’ lexical sets were designed to deal with the vowel distinctions found in Received
Pronunciation. They do not handle consonants. For that reason new sets are necessary
for the current discussion. A number of key words have been chosen and the conso-
nant which is at issue in each case is underlined as can be seen from Table 22.
Table 22. Lexical sets and representative values in Irish English (consonants)
Lexical set Rural Popular Fashionable Rural South- Supraregional

Northern Dublin Dublin West/West Southern
THIN T t t5 t t5
BREATHE D d d6 d d5
TWO t t t, ts t t
WATER R, /, Ø /h Rt t R, t

GET t|, / h, Ø t t t

FEEL Ø l, lÚ lÚ l l, lÚ
SORE ” ®, Ø ” ® ®, ”
WET w w w w w
WHICH w „ w „ „, w
Remarks
1) The distinction between dental and alveolar stops is sociolinguistically signifi-
cant in Ireland. All speakers can hear this difference clearly and the use of al-
veolar for dental stops in the THIN and THIS lexical sets is highly stigmatised.
2) Fashionable Dublin English speakers may have a slight afflication of syllable-

initial /t-/, as in two [tsu˘].
3) The allophony of syllable-coda and intersyllabic /t/ is quite complicated. With
conservative supraregional speakers the apico-alveolar fricative [t] is found.
With younger supraregional speakers a flap occurs. In popular Dublin English
the lenition of /t/ continues through a glottal stop to /h/ and frequently to zero,
especially in word-final position. In many forms of northern Irish English, final
alveolar stops may be unreleased.
4) The merger of [w] and [„] is increasingly frequent with supraregional speakers
so that word pairs like which and witch now consist of homophones.
5) It is merely a coincidence that fashionable Dublin English shares a flap and a
retroflex /r/ with northern Irish English.
7. Data sources for Irish English phonology
In the recent history of Irish English studies there have been two incomplete sur-
veys of English in Ireland. The first was initiated by P. L. Henry and preliminary
findings were published in 1958 (see Henry 1958). Nothing more was heard of the
project, but the material presented is of value for the study of Irish English up to
that date.
The second survey is called The Tape-Recorded Survey of Hiberno-English
Speech and was supervised by Michael Barry, then of the English Department at
Queen’s University, Belfast. A large amount of material was collected, particularly
for the north and approximately 50% of this material, which by a fortunate circum-
stance was given to the present author in the mid 1980s, has been digitised and is
available as two CDs from the present author. The material comes with a software
interface to examine the data of the survey which in this form consists of some 80
files (approximately 22 hours of recording). The survey includes both wordlists
and free speech.
The Irish English Resource Centre is a website dedicated to all matters pertaining
to academic research into Irish English. It is maintained by the present author at
the following address: http://www.uni-essen.de/IERC. The resource centre as it
stands contains much information on past and current research on Irish English,
an online history and overview of Irish English, summaries of issues in the field,
biosketches of scholars, details of various corpora and data collections, links to
related sites, etc. Importantly, it contains much bibliographical information of use
to interested scholars and students. The website is updated regularly with new
information as this becomes available. It is intended as a primary source for up-
to-date data on topical research into Irish English which can be used liberally by
scholars and students alike.
94 Raymond Hickey
A Sound Atlas of Irish English (Hickey 2005) is a set of over 1,500 recordings of
Irish English from the entire country covering urban and rural informants with
an age spread from under 10 to over 80 (both genders). A supplied software in-
terface allows end-users to view the recordings in a tree divided by province and
county and then listen to individual recordings. The recordings can also be sorted
by county, age, gender and rural versus urban speakers. Five of these recordings
are available on the accompanying CD-ROM.
Selected references
ROM.
Adams, George Brendan

1958 The emergence of Ulster as a distinct dialect area. Ulster Folklife 4: 61–73.
1965 Materials for a language map of 17th century Ireland. Ulster Dialect Archive
Bulletin 4: 15–30.
Bliss, Alan J.
1976 The English language in early modern Ireland. In: Terry W. Moody, Francis
X. Martin and Francis J. Byrne (eds.), Early Modern Ireland, 1534-1691, 546–
560. Oxford: Clarendon.
1977 The emergence of modern English dialects in Ireland. In: Diarmaid Ó Muirithe
(ed.), The English Language in Ireland, 7–19. Dublin/Cork: Mercier Press.
Dolan, Terence P.
1998 A Dictionary of Hiberno-English. The Irish Use of English. Dublin: Gill and
Macmillan.
Harris, John
1984 Syntactic variation and dialect divergence. Journal of Linguistics 20: 303–
327.
Henry, Patrick Leo
1958 A linguistic survey of Ireland. Preliminary report. Norsk Tidsskrift for
Sprogvidenskap [Lochlann, A Review of Celtic Studies] Supplement 5: 49–
208.
Heuser, Wilhelm
1904 Die Kildare-Gedichte. Die ältesten mittelenglischen Denkmäler in anglo-
irischer Überlieferung. Bonn: Hanstein.
Hickey, Raymond
1993 The beginnings of Irish English. Folia Linguistica Historica 14: 213–238.
1995 An assessment of language contact in the development of Irish English. In:
Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Linguistic Change under Contact Conditions, 109–130.
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
1999 Dublin English: Current changes and their motivation. In: Foulkes and
Docherty (eds.), 265–281.
2002 A Source Book for Irish English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

2003 Corpus Presenter. Processing Software for Language Analysis. Including A
Corpus of Irish English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Hogan, James Jeremiah
1927 The English Language in Ireland. Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland.
Lucas, Angela (ed.)
1995 Anglo-Irish Poems of the Middle Ages. Dublin: Columba Press.
McCafferty, Kevin
2001 Ethnicity and Language Change. English in (London)Derry, Northern Ireland.
Moody, Theodore W., Francis X. Martin and Francis J. Byrne (eds)
1976 A New History of Ireland, Volume III: Early Modern Ireland (1534–1691).
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ní Chasaide, Ailbhe
1979 Laterals in Gaoth-Dobhair Irish and Hiberno-English. In: Donall Ó Baoill
(ed.), Papers in Celtic Phonology, 54–78. Coleraine: New University of
Ulster.
Ó Baoill, Dónall
1991 Contact phenomena in the phonology of Irish and English in Ireland. In: P.
Sture Ureland and George Broderick (eds.), Language Contact in the British
Isles. Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Language
Contact in Europe, 581–595. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Ó Muirithe, Diarmuid
1996 Dictionary of Anglo-Irish. Words and Phrases from Irish. Dublin: Four Courts
Press.
Rahilly, Joan
1997 Aspects of prosody in Hiberno-English: the case of Belfast. In: Jeffrey L. Kallen
(ed.), Focus on Ireland, 109–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Sheridan, Thomas
1781 A Rhetorical Grammar of the English Language Calculated Solely for the
Purpose of Teaching Propriety of Pronunciation and Justness of Delivery, in
that Tongue. Dublin: Price.
Stenson, Nancy
1991 Code-switching vs. borrowing in modern Irish. In: P. Sture Ureland and
George Broderick (eds.), Language Contact in the British Isles. Proceedings
of the Eighth International Symposium on Language Contact in Europe, 559–
579. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
96 Raymond Hickey
Map of chief dialectal divisions in Ireland
Comments The south of Ireland can be divided into two broad dialect regions. The
first and oldest is the east coast dialect area which stretches from Waterford up to
beyond Dublin, probably as far as Dundalk in its original extension before 1600.
The second area is that of the south-west and west and is the part of the country
which was latest to engage in the language shift from Irish to English. Indeed for
a few small pockets on the western seaboard, in Kerry, Connemara and Donegal,
the Irish language has not died out yet.
In the centre and north-central part of the country there is a diffuse and dia-
lectally indeterminate Midlands region which extends from southern Offaly and
Laois up to Cavan and south Leitrim.
Between Sligo in the west and Dundalk in the east there is a broad transitional
band which shows a mixture of southern and northern features (see discussions
above).
The north of Ireland consists of the counties of Ulster and can be divided into
a large central region, that of Mid-Ulster English, and a ‘Coastal Crescent’ run-
ning from Co. Down, south-east of Belfast, up to Antrim in the extreme north-east,
through Co. Derry and across to the north-east of Donegal (but excluding the city
of Derry). This area is that of strongest Scottish settlement and hence it represents
Ulster Scots in its most original form (there are also some other smaller areas, such
as north Co. Armagh). In the west of Donegal, contact forms of Ulster English are
spoken.
Map of provinces and counties in Ireland
There are thirty two counties in present-day Ireland distributed in somewhat un-
even fashion across four provinces. The counties vary in size, Cork and Galway
being the largest, Louth and Carlow the smallest. The population of counties de-
pends on whether they contain large towns or cities. Some counties, like Leitrim
and Clare do not, while other have an associated town or city, e.g. Limerick, Cork,
Wexford, etc.
The province of Ulster contains nine counties, six of which are within the bor-
ders of Northern Ireland, formed on the partition of Ireland in 1921. There is a
limited presence of Ulster Scots speech outside of Northern Ireland, in the Lagan
district of north-west Donegal. Features of northern speech spread much further
southwards than previously thought as attested by A Sound Atlas of Irish English
(see remarks above).
Welsh English: phonology
Robert Penhallurick
1. Cultural and socio-historical background
The longer-standing language of Wales is Welsh, belonging to the Celtic branch

of the Indo-European family. In pre-Roman times, Celtic speakers were dispersed
over most of western Europe, but during the age of the Roman Empire Celtic
appears to have been pushed to the peripheries, with two branches developing:
Goidelic or Q Celtic, and Brittonic or P Celtic, to which Welsh belongs. The ar-
rival of Angles, Saxons and other Germanic-speaking tribes in Britain from the
fifth century onwards exerted a pressure on Welsh which continues to the present
day. Celtic speakers were driven into the area now known as Wales, thereafter to
be subject to a long process of anglicization. At the end of the eighth century AD,
a physical boundary was constructed to mark the political separation of the na-
scent England and Wales, in the shape of Offa’s Dyke, a linear earthwork running
north/south for some 130 kilometres from the River Dee to the Severn Estuary. It
was constructed by Offa, king of Mercia, to indicate the western boundary of his
territory. Aitchison and Carter (2000: 24) point out that whilst the construction of
Offa’s Dyke should not be understood as marking a firm divide between Welsh
and English speakers, it does serve “as a base line from which to chart the slow
and complex westward retreat of the Welsh language”, or to put it another way, the
inexorable advance of English to all parts of Wales.
The first major incursions of English came in the wake of the Norman invasion
of Wales, which began towards the end of the eleventh century AD. The Normans
established strongholds through the north and south, and English speakers arrived
in numbers. The areas most affected were the lower-lying borders with England,
and substantial parts of south Wales, with perhaps the most interesting develop-
ments occurring in the Gower Peninsula and south Pembrokeshire. Here, dialects
of Welsh English influenced by the south-west of England existed from the twelfth
century onwards, brought about it seems by population movement across the Bris-
tol Channel from Somerset and Devon.
Anglicization down the centuries was aided by events which boosted the status
of English and lowered that of Welsh. Under the Acts of Union of 1536–1543,
English was made the sole language of government and law in Wales. Aitchison
and Carter (2000: 27) state that although this “formally abstracted a domain of use
from Welsh which had effectively been lost long before”, it also meant that “[i]f
Welsh English: phonology 99
Welsh were not to be used in a significant formal context then it meant, too, that
its use in informal contexts would diminish”. They add:
Inevitably, if the Welsh gentry wished to participate in public life then that participation
would be in English and the language of polite society, if such it can be called, would also
be English. There followed the conviction that Welsh was the language of the barbarous
past, English the language of the civilized future. (Aitchison and Carter 2000: 27)
Aitchison and Carter here probably borrow from the (at least in Wales) well-known
editorial of The Times of 8 September 1866 which argued that the “antiquated and
semi-barbarous” Welsh language, together with ignorance of the English language,
was responsible for the exclusion of the Welsh people “from the civilization, the
improvement and the material prosperity of their English neighbours”. Certainly,
higher prestige (further enhanced by the education system during the second half
of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth especially) and increas-
ing incoming speaker numbers (from the Industrial Revolution onwards) helped
establish English as a language of the whole of Wales by the second half of the
twentieth century. Census statistics show large increases in the numbers of mono-
lingual and bilingual English speakers in Wales during the twentieth century, and
the extinction of monolingual Welsh speakers.
However, none of this has led to the demise of the Welsh language. Even in the
areas subject to the earliest anglicization, Welsh-speaking persisted for centuries,
and although its traditional geographical heartlands continue to shrink, up until the
end of the twentieth century Welsh remained the first language in much of rural
Wales (in the north-west, west midlands and south-west). The concerted attempt
in recent decades to promote the use of Welsh, in particular through expanding the
availability of Welsh-medium education, has apparently led to positive news for
the language’s supporters in the most recent statistics, but arguably what lies ahead
for Welsh is a process of ‘Latinization’, in which its use becomes restricted to a
decreasing number of social domains as its traditional regional dialects decline.
These regional dialects in particular have had the greatest influence overall on
the special character of English in Wales. As noted in Penhallurick (1993: 33),
there are notable differences between the traditional Welsh dialects of north and
south Wales, in phonology, lexis and grammar. These differences are mirrored to
a degree, more so in pronunciation, in spoken English. Thus it is possible to talk
of two main types of Welsh English, one centred in the north-west, the other in
the mid-south. In these main northern and southern sub-varieties, non-standard
features tend to be derived from Welsh-language influence. But there are other de-
termining factors, such as influence from the neighbouring non-standard dialects
(rural and urban) of England, particularly but not exclusively in the border areas,
south Pembrokeshire and Gower.
As for the term Welsh English, it has not been the universal label of choice. At
the outset of the only national survey of spoken English in Wales, David Parry
100 Robert Penhallurick
chose the term Anglo-Welsh for the varieties used by elderly English-speaking
Welsh people. In addition, Welsh English has the potential to arouse nationalist
sensibilities. As Coupland and Thomas (1989: 2) noted:
the language question in Wales is sufficiently highly charged that some might infer that
even to pay analytic attention to English in Wales, or ‘Welsh English’ [...] represents an
ideological position, perhaps even a form of capitulation, or collusion with the forces
threatening the Welsh language.
My view, briefly, is that English is a thoroughly established language of Wales,

a language used by and belonging to the Welsh people – not that they have sole
ownership of it, of course. My only anxiety over using the umbrella Welsh Eng-
lish could apply equally to other similar labels: that it masks diversity (that is, of
English in Wales) and connections (between English inside and English outside
Wales).
2. The phonological system
The most comprehensive collection of Welsh English data is in the archives of

the Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects (henceforth SAWD) at the Department of
English, University of Wales Swansea. Under the directorship of David Parry,
material was collected in rural areas of Wales between 1968 and 1982 (cf. Parry
1977–1979, 1999), and in urban areas between 1985 and 1987. SAWD is the
chief source of the present chapter, which aims to provide an overview of Welsh
English phonology, focussing on traditional, rural Welsh English. Use will be
made, in particular, of the analysis and description attempted in David Parry’s A
Grammar and Glossary of the Conservative Anglo-Welsh Dialects of Rural Wales
(1999). Parry (1999) attempts a general phonemicization for Welsh English based
on the rural data, drawn from the 60-plus age-group, which can be presented as
follows:
Short vowels: /I E a √ ç U/
Long vowels: /i: e: E: œ: a: ç: o: u:/
Diphthongs: /Iu ai au çi o´ i´/
Unstressed vowels: /i ´ I/
Consonants: /p b t d k g f v T D ¬ s z S Z x h tS dZ m n N l w j r/
Table 1 maps this broad phonemicization against the lexical set. STAY and SNOW
are included for comparison with FACE and GOAT respectively, and highlight a
tricky area in the phonemicization. In Table 1, the vowels for STAY and SNOW are
not given phonemic status, in order to remain consistent with the system above.
However, discussion of alternative analyses and the status of the vowels in FACE/
STAY and GOAT/SNOW can be found in section 2.1. below.
The remainder of the chapter discusses the phonological system in detail, in-
cluding realizations of the vowel phonemes and significant regional variations
(under headings from the lexical set), followed by a description of noteworthy
consonantal and prosodic features.
Table 1. Traditional rural Welsh English vowels
KIT I
DRESS E
TRAP a
LOT ç
STRUT √
ONE √~ç
FOOT U
BATH a ~ a˘
CLOTH ç
NURSE œ˘
FLEECE i˘
FACE e˘
STAY [ei]
GOAT o:
SNOW [ou]
PALM a˘
THOUGHT ç˘
GOOSE u˘
PRICE ai
CHOICE ç
MOUTH au
SQUARE E˘
START a˘
NORTH ç˘
FORCE ç˘
BOAR o´
CURE (I)uw´
POWER auw´
Table 1. (continued) Traditional rural Welsh

English vowels
FIRE aij´
NEAR i´
EARS œ˘ ~ i´
TUESDAY Iu
happY i˘
lettER ´~√
horsES I
commA ´~√
2.1. Stressed vowels

KIT
The realization of KIT words throughout Wales is [I].
DRESS
Similarly, the realization of DRESS is [E].
TRAP
Through most of Wales the realization of TRAP is [a], but in mid Wales, where the
county of Powys borders with the English counties of Shropshire and Hereford, a
raised [Q] or even [E] is recorded. A long [a˘] is also recorded very sporadically.
LOT
The chief realization in LOT words is [ç], though [Å] is also recorded frequently,
more so in the north than in the south. Some words which have the LOT vowel in
RP but an <a> in their spelling, such as quarry, wash, and wasps, may have [a ~
Q] in Welsh English. Such forms are recorded in all regions. In Welsh-speaking ar-
eas they might be spelling pronunciations influenced by Welsh-language conven-
tions (orthographic <wa> is pronounced [wa] in Welsh), but such [a ~ Q] vowels
were also recorded widely by the Survey of English Dialects.
STRUT
In STRUT there is a marked tendency to a vowel raised and centralized compared
with RP /√/, even to the extent that [´] is a common variant. There is also variation
in unstressed syllables between [√] and [´]. Wells (1982: 380) speaks of the “STRUT-
Schwa Merger” in Welsh English, that is to say, the lack of phonemic distinction
between /√/ and /´/. Parry (1999: 15) opts for /√/ as the phonemic designation for
STRUT vowels (rather than /´/), which can be justified on grounds of frequency of
occurrence, but he adds the rider that [√] in his STRUT group is “most commonly
a raised and centralized Cardinal Vowel 14”. The Welsh language has no /√/ pho-
neme, but it does have /´/, and this may be behind both the centralizing tendency
in STRUT and the blurring or even erasing of distinction between /√/ and /´/ (cf. also
section 2.2. below on unstressed vowels). In addition, it should be noted that oc-
casionally the realization of the STRUT vowel strays into [a] territory, as recorded
in Parry (1999: 15) in butter, furrow, uncle. These instances are few and are mainly
restricted to the north and mid Wales border with England.
Also, [U] can occur in STRUT words, and is recorded, interestingly, in the north-
east corner and the south-west corner. The north-east occurrences can be read-
ily explained by the presence of the well-known northern English [U] in STRUT
in neighbouring Cheshire. The south-west occurrences, mainly in south Pem-
brokeshire, an area subject to anglicizing influences since the twelfth century, are
more mysterious. One could presume that they result from historical connections
with south-west England, but as Parry (1999: 18) points out, there is only a small
amount of evidence of [U] in STRUT words in the traditional accents of Cornwall,
Devon and Somerset.
ONE
Wells (1982: 362) notes that one and other words (for example, none, nothing),
which have /√/ in RP and an <o> in their spelling, have /Å/ as their stressed vowel
across a wide band of the mid-north of England. Similarly, in Wales ONE words
sometimes fall in with the LOT group, though more frequently they belong with
STRUT. ONE with [ç ~ Å] is associated with the traditional Welsh-speaking areas of
north and west Wales, where it may result from Welsh-influenced spelling pronun-
ciation, and also with the north and mid border with England and the long-angli-
cized areas of south Pembrokeshire and the Gower Peninsula, to where it may have
travelled from the accents of the north-west, west and south-west of England.
As with STRUT, [U] can occur in ONE words. The details in Parry (1999: 18) indi-
cate that [U] occurs less frequently in ONE than in STRUT, but as with STRUT there is
an association with the north-east and south-west corners of Wales.
FOOT
By far the most widespread realization of FOOT words is [U]. Very rarely, in the
north, unrounded [F] is recorded. There are also instances of ‘hypercorrect’ [√]
in FOOT words, recorded in Parry (1999: 16) in the north-west, eastern mid Wales,
and the south-west. The instances that occur in Welsh-speaking areas, in the north-
west and south-west, are all of FOOT words with orthographic <u> (bull, butcher,
put), and these might conceivably be spelling pronunciations. The instances else-
where (eastern mid Wales, the south-west corner) might in most cases be linked
with traditional [√]-forms in west and south-west of England accents.
BATH
In BATH words there is competition between the short forms [a ~ Q] and long forms
[a˘ ~ Q˘ ~ A˘], with [a] the most common realization, occurring in all regions. Of the
long realizations, [a˘] is also fairly common, whilst [A˘] is less so, though it too is
not regionally restricted. Wells states that “[t]he situation in the BATH words is not
altogether clear” (1982: 387), and the same could be said now that SAWD material
for the whole of rural Wales has been made available. Nevertheless, Parry’s (1999:
214) phonemic map for chaff shows /a/ dominating, with a few instances of /a˘/ in
the mid- and south-eastern border areas. His phonetic map for draught (Parry 1999:
217) shows a similar distribution of [a] and [a˘], with one significant difference:
an area dominated by [a˘] in the north-west corner of Wales. The general picture
(as Wells concluded) seems to be of confrontation between a non-standard short /a/
and a standard-influenced long /a˘/, with the short vowel more than holding its own.
However, whilst it is clearly sensible to differentiate between two phonemes here
(a short and a long), this is one of those areas in Welsh English phonology where
there is fluidity, as indicated also by the sporadic occurrence of the long vowel in
TRAP words. On the other hand, it is likely that variation between the short and long
forms can be correlated to some extent with register and social class.
CLOTH
Parry (1999: 24–25) shows a scattering of long [ç˘] realizations in CLOTH words,
the majority in mid-Wales, but overall the pattern is similar to LOT, with [ç] the
main realization, and [Å] common also.
NURSE
A realization of NURSE identified with the southern region of Welsh English is the
long, rounded, centralized-front, half-open [ø˘]. There is no ready explanation for
this realization, although it may mark an intermediate stage between Welsh English
stressed /´/ + /r/ and RP (the NURSE group is one of several subject to rhoticity in
Welsh English – see /r/ in section 3 below). Parry (1999: 21) shows that this realiza-
tion is not exclusive to the south, but occurs throughout Wales. However, its main
competitor, /´˘/, which is also widespread, is notably absent from the mid-south-east
(that is, the Rhondda Valleys), the area associated in the public mind with [ø˘].
FLEECE
The dominant realization is [i˘], though [i´], that is, realizations with a glide to
the centre, are recorded (Parry 1999: 32), mainly in more strongly Welsh-speaking
regions in mid-Wales.
FACE/STAY and GOAT/SNOW

The regional patterning of two characteristic sounds of Welsh English, the long
monophthongs [e˘] and [o˘], is complex. They occur in both the main northern
and southern areas in words such as bacon, break, great, make (FACE) and coal,
road, spoke, toe (GOAT) respectively. In these cases, the monophthongs can be
regarded as phonemic, but overall their distribution is complicated by their occur-
rence also in words such as clay, drain, weigh, whey (STAY) and cold, shoulder,
snow (SNOW). In STAY and SNOW, it is difficult to argue that the monophthongs are
phonemic, for in these groups diphthongs, [ei] and [ou], are more likely. In addi-
tion, diphthongal forms can occur in FACE and GOAT. Table 2 summarizes the situ-
ation for the whole of Wales, outlining the competition between monophthongs
and diphthongs in FACE, STAY, GOAT, and SNOW.
[e˘] occurs most commonly in FACE, being dominant (in these words) in the
north and south, and in the northern peripheries. [ei] in FACE is dominant only in
the southern peripheries. In STAY, however, the diphthong is prevalent throughout
the south, whilst the monophthong is dominant in the north. The sequence is the
same for the [o˘] – [ou] pair: the monophthong is dominant in GOAT everywhere
but the southern peripheries, and in SNOW the diphthong dominates in the south,
the monophthong in the north.
Table 2. Regional distribution of FACE/STAY and GOAT/SNOW vowels (table lists only
regions where one variant dominates)
[e˘] [ei] [o˘] [ou]
FACE north, southern ---- ----

south, peripheries
northern peripheries
STAY north south, ---- ----
southern
peripheries
GOAT ---- ---- north, southern
south, peripheries
northern
peripheries
SNOW ---- ---- north south,
southern
peripheries
A number of processes have produced this pattern. Firstly, the Welsh language has
no diphthongs of the /ei/ and /ou/ types, and the Welsh monophthongs /e˘/ and /o˘/
have exerted an influence in Welsh English over words which have /eI/ and /oU/ in
RP. Running counter to this are spelling pronunciations affecting STAY and SNOW,
leading to the diphthongal forms, the general rules being: spellings with <ai>, <ay>,
<ei>, <ey> encourage [ei], and spellings with <ou>, <ow> encourage [ou], with
<ol> spellings falling in with SNOW rather than GOAT. Furthermore, there has been
influence from neighbouring accents of English English: [e˘] and [o˘] have been
reinforced in the north of Wales by the influence of monophthongs occurring in the
north-west of England; [ei] and [ou] have been supported by the diphthongs of the
west and south-west of England, as well as those of RP, of course.
It is worth emphasizing that Table 2 simplifies a fluid situation. For example,
the accents of particular localities or even individuals exhibit register-sensitive
movement between monophthongal and diphthongal types, especially in the FACE
and GOAT groups. Table 2 also simplifies the overall regional pattern: we can note
here, for example, that neither monophthong nor diphthong dominates in STAY
and SNOW in the northern peripheries.
PALM
There is some evidence from SAWD that PALM words are subject to the same com-
petition between short [a] and long [a˘] that occurs in BATH and, to a lesser extent,
in TRAP. Parry’s phonetic map for calf (1999: 216), for example, shows a sizeable
area in Carmarthenshire and north Pembrokeshire dominated by the short realiza-
tion. However, through the rest of Wales a long vowel dominates and, furthermore,
across mid Wales and in the area surrounding Swansea this long vowel is a back
[A˘]. The short forms recorded for calf are probably not typical of PALM words, in
which the main contest is between non-standard front [a˘] and RP-style back [A˘].
THOUGHT
The dominant realization in THOUGHT words is [ç˘], with, however, a significant
sprinkling of r-coloured versions recorded (Parry 1999: 25) along the south-east-
ern border and in south Pembrokeshire, perhaps under the influence of west of
England accents. For example, the Survey of English Dialects records r-colouring
in saw-dust, slaughter, straw in Shropshire and Warwickshire.
GOOSE
The dominant realization in GOOSE is [u˘], although short [U] is also recorded in
certain words, especially tooth. Parry’s map of tooth (1999: 229) shows the short
form covering the majority of Wales, with the exception of most of the north and a
pocket in the south-west corner. In other GOOSE words used by Parry (goose, hoof,
root, stool), the short form is more sporadic.
PRICE, CHOICE, MOUSE

Common to these three groups is a very close final element in the diphthong: [i]
in PRICE and CHOICE, [u] in MOUSE. The first element in PRICE and MOUSE tends
also to be very open: [a]. There is, however, a major counter-tendency in PRICE
and MOUSE, that is, for a central [´] to be used as the first element. Indeed, Wells
(1982: 385) talks tentatively of the possibility of a phonemic distinction between
[ai] and [í], and between [au] and [ú], although this does seem unlikely. SAWD
data shows a pretty clear regional distribution, with [Í] and [ú] restricted to the
main southern, especially south-eastern, areas. Tench’s (1989: 141) view is that
this variation in PRICE and MOUTH diphthongs tells us something about the chronol-
ogy of English spoken in Wales: diphthongs with central first elements indicate
areas where English was spoken relatively early, while diphthongs with open first
elements indicate the more recent arrival of English.
SQUARE, START, NORTH, FORCE, BOAR

The main point of interest in each of these groups is rhoticity, to which all are
subject. An outline of types of rhoticity and their regional distribution is given in
section 3 below. However, whilst the situation varies from word to word, it is non-
rhotic forms that have the upper hand in terms of frequency of occurrence.
Also worth noting in START is competition between front [a˘] forms and back
[A˘] forms, with front realizations dominating in SAWD data. Parry’s (1999: 215)
phonetic map for arm shows only pockets of back realizations in the south-west
and mid borders (cf. BATH in section 2.1. above).
There is a notable tendency also for a raised [o˘] realization to occur in BOAR
words.
CURE, POWER, FIRE

Of interest in these groups is their tendency to be firmly disyllabic, with /w/
separating the syllables in CURE and POWER, and /j/ separating them in FIRE. The
first syllable in CURE tends towards the /Iu/ found in TUESDAY; the first syllable
in POWER exhibits the variation between [au] and [ú] found in MOUTH; and
the first syllable in FIRE falls in with the division between [ai] and [í] found in
PRICE. In their final syllable, all three tend towards an [√] realization (cf. section
2.2. below).
NEAR, EARS
Two points to note here: a sporadic rhoticity (r-colouring) in both groups in south
Pembrokeshire, Gower, and the borders; and a strong tendency for EARS to have an
initial /j/ followed either by [ø˘] (as in NURSE, above) or [´˘]. This latter feature,
especially as [jø˘], is prevalent throughout south Wales except for pockets in the
west.
TUESDAY
In TUESDAY words we find a Welsh English phoneme, /Iu/. This phoneme is re-
corded in the overwhelming majority of SAWD localities. It is found also in the
CURE group. As both Parry (1999: 28) and Walters (2003: 76) note, it is likely that
there are two separate sources for this /Iu/: one is influence from Welsh-language
/Iu/ (represented in ordinary orthography by <iw>), which probably lies behind
/Iu/ in Welsh English in most regions; the other is influence from similar diph-
thongs occurring in west of England accents, which probably lies behind the forms
recorded in the south-east border regions.
2.2. Unstressed vowels

Walters (2003: 74), referring to Rhondda Valleys English (south Wales), reports
that “the vowel in the final unstressed syllables of butter, sofa etc. is characteristi-
cally lengthened and with a fuller quality than normally ascribed to schwa”, which
he attributes to Welsh-language influence, “which has a single central vowel and
in which final unstressed syllables are said never to be reduced to schwa”. The
data in Parry (1999: 34–35) corroborates this to some extent: [√] is shown as a
widespread realization in the lettER group, but occurring in most other parts of
Wales as well as in the south-east. Its chief competitors are [‘] and [E ~ Er], which
occur chiefly in the long-anglicized areas of south Pembrokeshire, Gower, and the
borders. However, we should remember that the “single central vowel” of Welsh is
actually schwa, and in the STRUT group above (section 2.1.) there is a considerable
trend towards a central vowel. Thus whilst both STRUT and lettER exhibit variation
between [√] and [´] types, in STRUT the movement is towards schwa, in lettER the
movement is away from schwa.
Also worth noting is the widespread tendency in happY for the final unstressed
vowel to be very close and, according to Parry (1999: 36), long.
2.3. Pharyngalization
Just as, for example, [œ˘] in NURSE is particularly associated with southern Welsh
English in popular opinion, so too is a certain ‘throatiness’ associated with northern
Welsh English. This ‘throatiness’ is actually pharyngalization, that is, contraction
of the pharyngeal arches. Jones (1984: 57) has noted that pharyngalization affects
the articulation of the two high central vowels of northern Welsh, but Penhallu-
rick (1991) records it with many Welsh English vowels in the traditional Welsh-
speaking areas of west and central north Wales (Anglesey, Gwynedd, Conwy and
Denbighshire). In Penhallurick (1991: 34–95), the only unaffected Welsh English
vowels are the most open ones. […] tends also to be pharyngalized in northern
Welsh English, as mentioned in section 3 below.
3. Consonants
Strong aspiration of /p, t, k/
In north Wales, strong aspiration (which sometimes approaches affrication) affects
the voiceless plosives /p, t, k/, particularly in word-initial and word-final positions.
This strong aspiration is exceptionally prominent in the north, but Parry (1999:
37–38) notes that throughout Wales each voiceless plosive “normally has strong
aspiration in initial stressed position, and often finally before a pause”.
Dental /t, d, n/
In mid Wales and especially in the north (where they are the norm), dental real-
izations of /t, d, n/ occur. In the Welsh language, /t, d, n/ tend to have dental re-
alizations in northern accents, and presumably Welsh-derived sound-substitution
lies behind dental /t, d, n/ in northern Welsh English. Such dental realizations are
infrequent elsewhere in Welsh English.
Unvoicing of /d/ and /z/

Parry (1999: 37) records the very occasional use of [t] finally in cold, second,
which he links to certain English loanwords in Welsh in which final /ld/ becomes
/lt/, and final /nd/ becomes /nt/ (for example, golt “gold”, diamwnt “diamond”).
Also, in traditional Welsh-speaking regions in the north-west and west-to-south-
west, there is a considerable tendency to use [s] for RP /z/ in word-medial and
word-final positions, for example, in thousand, and cheese. This again can be
explained by influence from the Welsh language, which has no /z/, although the
phoneme can occur in loanwords from English.
Should these cases of ‘unvoicing’ in Welsh English, when compared with RP
phonology, be treated as phonemic substitution (/t/ for /d/, and /s/ for /z/), or as
variant realizations (of /d/, and /z/)? The decision is not altogether straightfor-
ward. Given the evident phonotactic constraints, the latter analysis is perhaps ti-
dier. However, the apparent underlying cause (originating in the Welsh language)
is phonemic.
Initial fricative voicing

Parry (1999: 39) records the use of initial /v/ where RP has initial /f/ in first, four,
furrow in south-eastern Powys, Monmouthshire, south Pembrokeshire and in south
Gower. He also records one instance of /D/ for /T/ in third in west Powys (Parry
1999: 40). Such Initial Fricative Voicing, as Wells (1982: 343) calls it, is associ-
ated with west-country accents of England, where traditionally it can affect /f, T,
s, S/. Penhallurick (1994: 145–148) provides evidence of voicing of initial /f, s/ in
the southern half of the Gower Peninsula from the seventeenth century to the late
twentieth century, though by the 1980s it was very much a relic feature in Gower
English. Where it occurs, or has occurred, in Welsh English, Initial Fricative Voic-
ing is no doubt due to longstanding influence from west English English.
/¬, x/
These two fricatives belong to the sound system of the Welsh language, in which
they are represented orthographically by <ll> and <ch> respectively. Excepting
place-names, they each have a very limited occurrence in traditional Welsh Eng-
lish, in loanwords from Welsh, such as cawellt ‘wicker basket’ and crochon ‘bread-
basket’.
/l/
The detail of the distribution of clear [l] and dark […] in Welsh English is rather
intricate, but the data from SAWD permits the following summary. In the south
and midlands of Wales, [l] dominates in all phonetic environments. In the north,
particularly in Gwynedd, […] dominates in all positions. The peripheral, histori-
cally anglicized regions follow RP, with [l] before a vowel, and […] before a conso-
nant or pause. This Welsh English pattern is influenced by the Welsh language, in
which /l/ is clear in southern Welsh and noticeably dark in northern Welsh, where
it is accompanied by strong pharyngalization. Thus /l/ provides two of the popular
diagnostics of Welsh English: dark, pharyngalized […] in all positions for the main
northern variety, and clear [l] in all positions for the main southern variety.
Dropping of initial /w/

Initial /w/ is foreign to Welsh as an unmutated form (several consonants in Welsh
are subject to mutation rules in word-initial position), and influence from this
may lie behind the occasional dropping of initial /w/ in traditional Welsh English,
particularly in words with a following back, close, rounded stressed vowel, such
as woman, wool. Parry (1999: 40–41) records zero-/w/ initially in these words
scattered through north, mid and south Wales, though forms with initial /w/ are
dominant overall.
/r/
The Welsh language has two r phonemes: a voiced alveolar rolled /r/, which is
sometimes realized as a flap [R] and sometimes, particularly in the Bala area, north
Wales, as a uvular rolled [{] or uvular fricative [“]; and a voiceless alveolar rolled
/r8/ (<rh> in ordinary orthography). Welsh /r8/ impacts little on Welsh English, but
rolled [r] realizations occur often in the spoken English of north and south Wales,
excepting the border areas, and the Gower Peninsula and south Pembrokeshire,
where an approximant [®] dominates. There is also a high frequency of flapped [R]
in Welsh English, particularly in traditional Welsh-speaking areas, and this can be
interpreted as further evidence of Welsh influence on Welsh English /r/. Uvular
realizations of Welsh English /r/ are confined to the north, where they are rare and
possibly usually idiolectal.
Orthographic r is always articulated in the Welsh language, in all word-posi-
tions, and this practice is carried over at times into Welsh English, resulting in
post-vocalic /r/ word-medially and word-finally in the north and the south, this
rhoticity being centred in the traditional Welsh-speaking areas in the west half of
Wales. This Welsh-influenced rhoticity in NURSE, SQUARE, START, NORTH, FORCE,
BOAR sometimes leads to a short vowel followed by /r/ (Parry 1999: 14–17), such
as: /√r/ in first, third, work in western mid Wales; /Er/ in heard (a spelling pronun-
ciation) and in chair, mare, pears in pockets in the west; /ar ~ Ar/ in arm, farmer,
farthing in the west; /çr/ in forks, morning and in boar, four a few times in north,
mid and west Wales. Occasionally the short vowel minus following /r/ is recorded.
Rhotic forms with long vowels are common in NURSE, SQUARE, START, NORTH,
FORCE, BOAR, with the general pattern as follows: long vowel followed by /r/ (that
is, forms influenced by the Welsh pronunciation convention of always articulating
orthographic r), widespread in the western half of Wales; long r-coloured vowel
without a following /r/ (that is, forms influenced by west of England accents), oc-
curring in the mid- and south-eastern border areas, and in south Pembrokeshire
and the Gower Peninsula.
Lengthened consonants
The consonants /p, b, t, d, k, g, v, T, s, S, tS, m, n, N, l/ are all recorded by Parry
(1999: 37–40) as being subject to lengthened duration of pronunciation in Welsh
English, when located in word-medial position. Parry records these lengthened
forms in most parts of Wales. In the Welsh language, medial consonants tend to be
long, especially between vowels when the preceding vowel is stressed. The most
likely cause for these lengthened consonants in Welsh English is therefore once
again influence from Welsh. However, it should be noted that SAWD data shows
lengthening affecting medial consonants when followed by a consonant as well
as when followed by a vowel (for example, [m˘] in thimble). Furthermore, many
instances occur in the more anglicized regions of Wales.
4. Prosody
Wells (1982: 392) notes: “Popular English views about Welsh accents include the
claim that they have a ‘sing-song’ or lilting intonation”, a characteristic associated
particularly with the industrial valleys of south Wales. Comparatively little has
been published on Welsh English intonation, but studies have been carried out
since Wells’s Accents of English. Tench (1989: 140), on the English of Abercrave
in the Swansea Valley, notes “the high degree of pitch movement on an unaccented
post-tonic syllable” and “the high degree of pitch independence of unaccented
syllables in pre-tonic position”, features which, says Tench, lie behind the sing-
song claim. The detailed analysis in Walters (2003: 81–84), which draws on his
substantial 1999 study, describes striking pitch movement in the pronunciation
of Rhondda Valleys English (for example, the tendency for pitch to rise from the
stressed syllable), which Walters connects with influence from Welsh-language
intonation patterns.
Selected references
ROM.
Aitchison, John and Harold Carter

2000 Language, Economy and Society: The Changing Fortunes of the Welsh
Language in the Twentieth Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Coupland, Nikolas and Alan R. Thomas
1989 Introduction: social and linguistic perspectives on English in Wales. In:
Nikolas Coupland and Alan R. Thomas (eds.), English in Wales: Diversity,
Conflict and Change, 1–16. Clevedon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.
Jones, Glyn E.
1984 The distinctive vowels and consonants of Welsh. In: Martin J. Ball and Glyn E.
Jones (eds.), Welsh Phonology: Selected Readings, 40–64. Cardiff: University
of Wales Press.
Parry, David (ed.)
1977–1979
The Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects, 2 Volumes. Swansea: privately pub-
lished.
1999 A Grammar and Glossary of the Conservative Anglo-Welsh Dialects of Rural
Wales. Sheffield: National Centre for English Cultural Tradition.
Penhallurick, Robert J.
1991 The Anglo-Welsh Dialects of North Wales: A Survey of Conservative Rural
Spoken English in the Counties of Gwynedd and Clwyd. Frankfurt am Main:
Lang.
1993 Welsh English: a national language? Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 1: 28–
46.
1994 Gowerland and its Language: A History of the English Speech of the Gower
Peninsula, South Wales. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
Tench, Paul
1989 The pronunciation of English in Abercrave. In: Nikolas Coupland and Alan
R. Thomas (eds.), English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict and Change, 130–141.
Clevedon /Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.
Walters, J. Roderick
2003 “Celtic English”: influences on a South Wales valleys accent. English World-
Wide 24: 63–87.
English dialects in the North of England: phonology
Joan Beal
1. Introduction
1.1. Defining “the North of England”

The North of England is a region whose boundaries have been defined in a num-
ber of different ways by laypersons, members of the tourist industry and linguists.
Wales (2002), using the methodology of perceptual dialectology, demonstrates
that undergraduate students in a British university vary widely in their perceptions
of the geographical boundaries of the North. Typically, when asked to draw a line
on a map of Britain, students resident in the South of England would place this
line much further South than those resident in the North or Midlands. Expressions
such as “North of Watford Gap” testify to the perceptions of southerners in this
“austrocentric” nation (Wales 2002: 46). Historically, we might think of the North
as the area covered by the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, stretching from
the Humber to the Firth, with Sheffield marking its southernmost point on the bor-
der with Mercia. This area would include the modern counties of Northumberland,
Cumbria, Tyne and Wear, Teesside, Humberside, Yorkshire, Merseyside, Greater
Manchester and Lancashire, but exclude Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire
and Lincolnshire. Tourist maps tend to agree with this definition: the National
Trust handbook has Merseyside and Lancashire in the North-west, but Cheshire
in the central area; the route maps in Country Walking magazine place Cheshire
in the “Heart of England”, Lincolnshire in the “East of England” and Derbyshire
alongside Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands. Confirming this last location, a
film released in the cinema in summer, 2002, is set in Nottingham and entitled
Once upon a time in the Midlands.
Dialectologists have attempted to define the North in purely linguistic terms.
Whilst these more objective judgements do not show the same range of divergence
as the students in Wales’s (2000) study, there are differences, particularly apparent
when we contrast accounts of “traditional” dialects with those of “modern” ones.
Ellis (1869–1889) divided England into six major dialect areas, on the basis of
ten isoglosses. His area V, the northern division, covers “the entire North and East
Ridings with some of the West Riding of Yorkshire, northern Lancashire, most of
Cumberland and Northumberland, all Westmorland and Durham” (Ihalainen 1994:
245). Ellis’s divisions are based on four phonological criteria: the pronunciation of
words like some, the pronunciation of r, the pronunciation of the definite article and
the pronunciation of words like house. His northern division excludes the southern
114 Joan Beal
parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the far North of Northumberland and Cum-
bria (these latter belonging to area VI, “the lowland division”). Wakelin (1983) di-
vides the traditional dialects of England into four regions, roughly corresponding
to the dialect areas of Middle English: North, West Midlands, East Midlands and
South-west. Wakelin’s northern region reaches slightly further South than Ellis’s,
with its southern boundary stretching from the Humber to the Ribble. The SED
likewise follows the divisions of Middle English dialects. The Basic Materials
are divided into four volumes: the northern counties and Man; the West Midlands;
the East Midlands and the South. The northern Counties covered in volume I are
Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire and Yorkshire.
By using county boundaries to delimit the regions covered by their volumes, Or-
ton (1962–1971) thus brings the territory covered by “the North” further south
than either Ellis or Wakelin to coincide with Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. Although
Orton and his fellow SED researchers seem to have organised their volumes in
this way for administrative convenience rather than as a theoretical statement, as
Wales (2002: 48) points out, their “northern Counties” division does accord with
popular perceptions, especially those of northerners. Wales herself follows the
SED’s example in her cultural history of northern English (Wales 2002: 48). Most
recently, Trudgill (1999) divides the traditional dialect areas of England into three
regions: North, central and South. Trudgill’s criteria are the pronunciation of long
as /la/ vs. /l/, niht as /nit/ vs. /nait/, blind as /blnd/ vs. /blaind/, land as
/land/ vs. /lnd/, arm as /arm/ vs. m/, hill as /hl/ vs. /l/, seven as /svn/ vs. /z
vn/, and bat as /bat/ vs. /bæt/. Trudgill’s northern region is subdivided into the
Lower North and Northumbria, with Lancashire in the western central and South
Yorkshire in the eastern central regions. Trudgill’s definition of the North is thus
closer to Ellis’s, with Northumberland separated from the rest of the North, and
Lancashire and South Yorkshire outside the North altogether.
Trudgill uses a different set of criteria to classify modern dialects, of which he
writes:
In Britain, they are particularly associated with those areas of the country from which
Standard English originally came – the southeast of England; with most urban areas;
with places which have become English-speaking only relatively recently, such as the
Scottish Highlands, much of Wales, and western Cornwall; with the speech of younger
people; and with middle- and upper-class speakers everywhere. (Trudgill 1999: 6).
These criteria are: the vowel in but /bt/ vs. /b√t/, the pronunciation of arm as
/arm/ vs. /m/, the pronunciation of singer as /si/ vs. /si/, the pronuncia-
tion of few as /fju/ vs. /fu/, the pronunciation of ee in coffee as // vs. /i/, the
pronunciation of gate as /et/ vs. /eit/ and the pronunciation of l in milk
[mlk] vs. [mk]. On the basis of these criteria, Trudgill divides the modern
dialects into two major areas, North and South, with the North subdivided into
northern and central. Merseyside is here classified along with the West Midlands
English dialects in the North of England: phonology 115
and Northwest Midlands as part of the West central group, on the basis of hav-
ing /si/ for singer. The northern division is then further subdivided into the
Northeast (from the Tees to the Tweed) and the Lower North (Humberside, central
Lancashire and the central North). The single criterion for the major division be-
tween North and South here is the vowel in but, pronounced /bt/ to the North of
a line running from the Wash just south of Birmingham to the Welsh border and
/b√t/ South of this line.
Wells likewise uses this feature as one of the main criteria for dividing English
accents into northern and southern types:
We cross from the south to the linguistic north at the point where we pass the northern
limits (in broad local accents) of the FOOT-STRUT split and of BATH broadening. In a
northern accent, then, put and putt are typically homophones, [pt], while gas and glass
rhyme perfectly, [as, las]. (Wells 1982: 349)
Like Trudgill, Wells (1982) notes that the North, so defined, also includes “most of
the midlands. It includes, for example, the Birmingham-Wolverhampton conurba-
tion, Leicester and Peterborough” Wells (1982: 349). He then goes on to subdivide
the North into the Midlands, the middle North and the far North. The geographical
areas covered by these subdivisions are similar to those in Trudgill (1999), except
that, for Wells, Liverpool is in the middle North rather than the Midlands.
The accounts of linguists thus differ according to the type of dialect classified
(traditional vs. modern) and the range of linguistic criteria used in classification.
They do, however, all agree on a core area which is indisputably northern, an area
roughly corresponding to the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northum-
bria, south of the present-day border with Scotland. It is acknowledged that the
far North, or the North-east from Tees to Tweed, has dialects which are mark-
edly different from those of the lower or middle North. Whilst acknowledging
that, according to the criteria selected by Wells, the Midlands share certain highly
salient characteristics with the North, in this chapter I shall define “the North of
England” as coterminous with that of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, i.e. stretching
from Berwick-upon-Tweed and Carlisle in the North, to Sheffield in the South,
and including Merseyside and all of pre-1972 Lancashire (thus Warrington and
Widnes, which are now in Cheshire), and all of Yorkshire and Humberside. This
area is coterminous with the six northern counties of the SED, and is also the area
covered in Wales’s (2002) cultural history of northern English.
1.2. A brief history of northern English

The origins of northern English can be traced to the language of the first settle-
ments of northern Germanic tribes in what was to become the Anglo-Saxon king-
dom of Northumbria. However, as Wales (2002: 47) points out, the Romans had
already divided Britain into Britannia superior (south of the Mersey-Wash line);
116 Joan Beal
Britannia Inferior, north of this line; and Britannia Barbara, north of Hadrian’s
Wall. Thus, even before English was spoken in this country, the threefold cultural
division of South, North and far North was recognised. What can further be es-
tablished is that Britain had been invaded by Germanic tribes before the end of
the 5th century, and that by the 9th century, written records show clear dialectal
differences between texts written in the North and South of what is now England.
Versions of Caedmon’s hymn, which is found in Bede’s History of the English
Church and People, exist in both West Saxon and Northumbrian dialects. Both
these versions were written in the 9th century, when Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
was translated from Latin. Differences between the two texts include West Saxon
<ea> for Northumbrian <a>, and West Saxon <eo> for Northumbrian <e> suggest-
ing that the West Saxon had diphthongs where Northumbrian had monophthongs
in words such as bearn/barn (‘child’, cf. present-day northern bairn) and heofon/
hef n (‘heaven’) (see Freeborn 1998: 32–33 for a full transcription of these two
versions).
Opinion is divided as to whether these dialectal differences in Old English have
their origins in the different tribal dialects of the Angles in the North and the Saxons
in the South, or whether they evolved in the 200 years between the first settlements
and the first written records. Certainly, by the 8th century, the geographical distribu-
tion of the dialects of Old English coincided with some of the political boundaries
of the Heptarchy, but even at this early stage, the differences between northern and
southern dialects were the most distinctive, with Northumbrian and Mercian more
similar to each other than to the dialects of East Anglia, Wessex or Kent.
Texts from the Middle English period provide evidence both of a number of
differences between northern, midland and southern dialects of English, and of a
growing awareness of these distinctions on the part of writers. By the 14th century,
there is clear evidence that northern dialects were becoming stigmatised, at least
in the eyes (or ears) of southerners. Perhaps the most frequently-quoted example
of this is John of Trevisa’s (1380) translation of Higden’s Polychronicon, in which
Trevisa inserts the following comment:
Al the longage of the Northumbres, and speciallich at York, is so scharp, slitting and
frotyng and unshape, that we southerne men may that longage unnethe understonde. I
trowe that that is bycause that they beeth nigh to straunge men and aliens that speketh
strongeliche (cited in Freeborn 1998: 259).
Notable here is the characterisation of northern English as both harsh and unintel-
ligible to “we southerne men”, an in-group whose superiority is assumed. Howev-
er, the superiority of the South did not go unchallenged: in the Second Shepherd’s
Play of the Townley Cycle (Wakefield), the sheep-stealer Mak disguises himself
as a court official in order to trick the locals. His attempt is received with ridicule,
as he is told ‘let be thy southern tooth and set in it a turd’. Thus the stereotypes of
the condescending southerner and the proudly defiant Yorkshireman are already
established by the end of the 14th century.
Some of the dialectal differences between northern and southern dialects of
Middle English are apparent in versions of the Cursor Mundi, originally written in
the North towards the end of the 13th century, but copied by a southern scribe in the
14th century. The southern scribe makes several changes which provide evidence
of dialectal differences. One clear North-South distinction is that between <a>
spellings in the North and <o> spellings in the South for words like know, none
and hold. As the modern spellings show, the <o> spelling has prevailed in Stan-
dard English, but survival of pronunciations with /e/ in Scots provide evidence for
an earlier /a/ or /a/ which is retained in the North, but rounded to /o/ in southern
dialects. This change seems to have happened at least by the 12th century, for texts
from this period show the same pattern of <a> spellings in the North (and Mid-
lands) but <o> in the South (Examples can be found in Freeborn 1998: 116).
Many of the differences between northern and southern dialects of Middle Eng-
lish can be attributed to the greater influence of Scandinavian languages in the
North. The first recorded landing of Viking invaders was the raid on Lindisfarne
in 793, but sustained contact between English- and Scandinavian-speaking people
did not occur until the second half of the 9th century, when the great armies of the
Vikings settled in East Anglia, the eastern part of Mercia, and southern Northum-
bria. Along with those of the Norwegians who sailed from Ireland to the North-
west of England, these settlements make up the ‘Scandinavian Belt’ crossing Eng-
land diagonally from Cumbria to Lincolnshire, in which the greatest concentration
of Scandinavian features in English dialects is still found. In the Middle English
period, northern dialects of English were characterised by Scandinavian features
such as the pronouns they, their, them, as well as the levelling of inflections which
has been attributed to language contact. These morphological features were to be
adopted into the Standard English which developed in 15th century London, and
so are no longer recognised as northern. As Wales (2002: 45) points out, no com-
prehensive history of northern English has ever been written: typically, histories of
English confine their accounts of northern dialects to an enumeration of the char-
acteristics of Middle English dialects and the contributions of northern dialects to
the 15th century standard. References to northern English after 1500 tend to consist
largely of quoting the derogatory remarks of southerners as proof that only Stan-
dard English mattered in the modern period. Perhaps the most frequently-quoted
extract is the following, from Puttenham’s Art of English Poesie, where the author
says of the would-be poet:
…neither shall he take the termes of Northern-men, such as they use in dayly talke,
whether they be noblemen or gentlemen, or of their best clarkes all is a matter: nor
in effect any speach used beyond the river of Trent, though no man can deny but that
theirs is the purer English Saxon at this day, yet it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our
Southerne English is, no more is the far Westerne mans speach: ye shall therefore take
118 Joan Beal
the vsuall speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London
within lx myles, and not much aboue. (1589, cited in Freeborn 1998: 307).
Representations of northern English in 16th-century literature emphasise the out-

landishness of these dialects to Londoners’ ears. In William Bullein’s Dialogue
both Pleasant and Pitifull (1578), the character Mendicus is quite literally the
beggar at the gates of London. His Northumbrian dialect is noticed at once by the
lady of the house, who remarks: “What doest thou here in this Countrie? me thinke
thou art a Scot by thy tongue.” Mendicu’s speech is one of the few 16th-century
representations of Northumbrian dialect, characterised by the use of <o> for <a>
in words such as mare for more and sarie for sorry, as well as a number of words
which would have been familiar to Londoners from the Border Ballads sung in
the streets: limmer ‘scoundrel’, fellon ‘brave’, deadlie feede (the blood feud of the
North Marches). Other words, such as barnes ‘children’ and ne ‘no’, are still used
in Northumberland today. Bullein had spent several years in Tynemouth, and so
had had the opportunity to observe the Northumbrian dialect first-hand. His repre-
sentation of the dialect seems accurate, but the effect in the play is to reinforce the
stereotype of the uncivilised northerner.
The quote from Puttenham suggests that the acceptable model for literary Eng-
lish was that of an area within a 60-mile radius of London, and that the English
spoken north of the Trent was singled out, along with that of the South-west, as
particularly outlandish, albeit northern English is acknowledged to be ‘purer’.
This double-edged attitude towards northern English was to persist throughout the
modern period. John Ray’s Collection of English Words not generally used (1674)
shows an antiquarian interest in northern dialect, and even Dr Johnson acknowl-
edged that, having “many words…commonly of the genuine Teutonic race…the
northern speech is…not barbarous but obsolete” (1755). On the other hand, 18th
century grammarians and elocutionists catered for readers who were anxious to
rid themselves of the stigma of provincialism in an increasingly London-centric
society. John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791), after outlining his
“Rules for the Natives of Scotland, Ireland and London for avoiding their respec-
tive peculiarities”, makes the following remark about “those at a considerable
distance from the capital”:
If the short sound of the letter u in trunk, sunk, &c. differ from the sound of that letter in
the northern parts of England, where thay sound it like the u in bull, and nearly as if the
words were written troonk, soonk, &c. it necessarily follows that every word where the
second sound of that letter occurs must by these provincials be mispronounced. (Walker
1791: xii, my emphasis)
Walker’s remarks here show a clear judgement that any dialect diverging from
the polite usage of London (not that of the Cockneys, who are the “inhabitants of
London” intended to benefit from Walker’s rules) is simply wrong, and must be
corrected with the help of the Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. A by-product of
this is that Walker, along with other 18th-century authors such as Thomas Sheridan,
William Kenrick and the northerner John Kirkby, give us detailed information
about northern pronunciation in the 18th century, if only in order to proscribe it.
The feature described by Walker in the quote above is of course one of the most
salient markers of northern English pronunciation to this day: the lack of what
Wells (1982: 196) terms the “FOOT-STRUT split” (see 2.1.1. below for a further
discussion of this feature). Other features of northern pronunciation particularly
singled out for censure in the 18th century include the Northumbrian burr, first
noticed by Defoe, who wrote:
I must not quit Northumberland without taking notice, that the Natives of this Country,
of the ancient original Race or Families, are distinguished by a Shibboleth upon their
Tongues in pronouncing the Letter R, which they cannot utter without a hollow Jarring
in the Throat, by which they are as plainly known, as a foreigner is in pronouncing the
Th: this they call the Northumberland R, or Wharle; and the Natives value themselves
upon that Imperfection, because, forsooth, it shews the Antiquity of their Blood. (Defoe,
Daniel. 1724–1727. A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain. Volume 3. London,
232–233)
Although Defoe calls this an “imperfection”, he acknowledges that the Northum-
brians themselves take pride in this feature, possibly alluding to the folk-belief that
it arose from copying a speech impediment of local hero Harry ‘Hotspur’ Percy,
heir to the Duke of Northumberland. 18th-century authors, in condemning north-
ern dialects, provide us with a good deal of information about the characteristic
features of these dialects at the time (see 3.4.2. below for further discussion of the
Northumbrian burr).
The 19th century saw the rise of the large industrial towns and cities of the
North, and a corresponding awakening of working-class consciousness and re-
gional pride. This found its expression in various forms of dialect writing: alma-
nacs, poetry, dialogues and music-hall songs and recitations. At the same time, the
new discipline of philology gives rise to scholarly accounts of northern dialects
such as Joseph Wright’s (1892) Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill and numerous
dialect glossaries such as Richard Heslop’s Northumberland Words (1892). By
the end of the 19th century, universal primary education was perceived as a threat
to the survival of traditional dialects: Heslop expresses his concern that “the ten-
dency to assimilate the form of the dialect with the current English of the schools
is increasing”, but the construction which he uses to illustrate this point, Me and
my marrow was ganning to work, is still in use today.
Similar concerns about the viability of English dialects have been expressed
throughout the 20th century, and continue into the 21st. The SED, which began in
the 1950’s, set out with the intention of recording “traditional vernacular, genuine
and old”, before such dialects were irretrievably lost due to the effects of urbanisa-
tion, mobility and the BBC. Echoes of these concerns can be found in accounts of
dialect levelling at the turn of the millennium, both in scholarly texts such as the
120 Joan Beal
papers in Foulkes and Docherty (1999) and in popular accounts of the spread of
Estuary English (see also Altendorf and Watt, this volume). It is certainly the case
that traditional dialects are being replaced by more modern, urban vernaculars, and
that, within certain regions, the dialect of influential towns and cities is spreading
(see Newbrook [1986, 1999] and Llamas [2000] for accounts of the influence of
Liverpool and Newcastle on their respective hinterlands). But even where there
is clear evidence of levelling in the North, this seems to be in the direction of a
regional, or pan-northern, rather than a national model, so that we can confidently
expect northern dialects to remain distinctive for some time yet.
1.3. Differences between dialects in the North of England

According to Wells (1982), “local differences in dialect and accent as one moves
from valley to valley or from village to village are sharper in the north than in
any other part of England, and become sharper the further north one goes” (Wells
1982: 351). In the light of recent studies which provide evidence of levelling in
the North of England (discussed in 1.2 above), this may seem too bold a statement.
Nevertheless, it is certainly the case that, even with regard to modern dialects,
more features differentiate northern dialects from each other than are common to
all of them. Even in areas where levelling occurs, new shibboleths are emerging to
represent perceived differences between speakers living as little as 10 miles apart
(cf. Beal [2000a] for an account of differences between ‘Geordie’ [Newcastle] and
‘Mackem’ [Sunderland]).
Whilst all northern dialects share certain phonological features, notably the
short /a/ in BATH and ‘unsplit’ /u/ in FOOT/ STRUT, others differentiate dialects
within the North. Some of these distinctions are not strictly geographical, except
insofar as they distinguish the more traditional speakers in rural areas from their
urban neighbours. Even in the most remote corners of England today, young peo-
ple attend high school and carry out leisure pursuits in larger towns and cities,
so speakers of traditional dialects are likely to be older as well as rural. An ex-
ample of a distinctive feature of traditional dialect can be found in the North-east,
where increasingly only traditional dialect speakers have the Northumbrian burr
/“/. However, other North-eastern features, such as /h/- retention, would be com-
mon to all speakers in this area, at least north of the Wear.
Other features distinguish dialect areas within the North from each other. In
Trudgill’s account (1999: 65–75), the area which I have defined as the North in
1.1. above includes six dialect areas: Northeast, lower North, central Lancashire,
Merseyside, Humberside and Northwest Midlands (the last of these includes Man-
chester). These divisions are arrived at on the basis of five phonological criteria:
/h/-dropping/retention, monophthong versus diphthong in FACE, velar nasal plus
in SING, rhoticity versus non-rhoticity, and the final vowel of happY. As we shall
see in the next section, whilst these features do serve to distinguish the major
dialect divisions in the North of England, they are not the only features which are
salient.
2. Vowels and diphthongs
KIT FLEECE i ~ i ~ ei NEAR i ~i

DRESS FACE e ~ ei ~ i SQUARE ~ ~Œ
TRAP a PALM a ~ ~ START a ~ ~
LOT THOUGHT ç ~ ~ a NORTH ç ~ ~
STRUT ~ GOAT o ~ o ~ ~ FORCE ç ~ ~
FOOT ~ GOOSE u ~ u CURE jç ~ j ~ j
BATH a PRICE ai ~ ~ i ~i happY ~~i
CLOTH CHOICE ç ~ lettER ~~
NURSE Œ~~ø~ç MOUTH a ~ a ~ u ~ u horsES ~
CommA ~~
2.1. FOOT and STRUT
One of the most salient markers of northern English pronunciation, and the only
one which involves a difference between dialects of the North (and Midlands) and
those of the South as far as their phonemic inventories are concerned, is the lack
of what Wells (1982: 132) terms the “FOOT–STRUT split” everywhere in England
north of Birmingham. This split is of relatively recent origin, and is the result of
unrounding of the Middle English short // in certain environments. By the mid-
dle of the eighteenth century the ‘unsplit’ // was already recognised as a northern
characteristic. The Cumbrian John Kirkby remarked in 1746 that his “seventh
vowel”, found in skull, gun, supper, figure, nature, “is scarce known to the Inhab-
itants of the North, who always use the short sound of the eighth vowel instead of
it.” (quoted in Bergström 1955: 71) (Kirkby’s “eighth vowel” is long in too, woo,
Food, etc., short in good, stood, Foot, etc. and so most likely to be // ~ /u/) This
suggests that 18th century northerners pronounced // where southerners had /√/,
but William Kenrick (1773: 36) indicates otherwise in his New Dictionary of the
English Language.
It is further observable of this sound, that the people of Ireland, Yorkshire, and many
other provincials mistake its use; applying it to words which in London are pronounced
with the u full… as bull, wool, put, push, all of which they pronounce as the inhabitants
of the Metropolis do trull, blood, rut, rush. Thus the ingenious Mr. Ward of Beverley, has
given us in his grammar the words put, thus and rub as having one quality of sound.
Thus both Kirkby and Kenrick (as well as Walker, see 1.2. above) attest to the lack
of any FOOT–STRUT split as a salient feature of northern speech in the 18th century,
122 Joan Beal
but whilst Kirkby suggests that the unsplit northern phoneme is //, Kenrick’s ac-
count indicates that it is more like /√/. In fact, both types of pronunciation exist in
the North of England today. Wells (1982: 132) writes that “relatively open, STRUT–
like qualities may be encountered as hypercorrections in FOOT words, as [√]”
whilst Watt and Milroy (1999: 28) note that in Newcastle “STRUT/FOOT may be
heard as [], among middle-class speakers, particularly females.” Kenrick’s “Mr
Ward of Beverly” could well have been describing a similarly hypercorrect or
middle class pronunciation in his grammar. Quite apart from these hypercorrect
pronunciations, realisations of the FOOT–STRUT vowel vary from [] in the lower
North and central Lancashire to something more like [ ] in Tyneside and Nor-
thumberland.
Distribution of /u/ and // across the FOOT and GOOSE sets also varies within
and between northern dialects. Except in Tyneside and Northumberland, older
speakers throughout the North have /u/ in some FOOT words, notably cook, brook,
hook. These words, along with such as stood, good, foot etc. would have had a
long vowel until the 17th century. 17th century evidence shows that pronunciation
of these words was very variable, with /√/, // and /u/ all attested for the same
words. In the case of words in which the vowel is followed by /k/, this shorten-
ing has simply taken much longer to affect certain northern dialects, but the short
vowel is now spreading. There are also some words in which pronunciation varies
idiosyncratically: in Tyneside, both /fd/ and /fud/ can be heard, but the distribu-
tion seems to be idiolectal rather than regional, and soot is likewise highly vari-
able.
2.2. BATH
Although // exists as a contrastive phoneme in northern English dialects, its dis-
tribution is more restricted than in the South. In the North, this vowel is notably
absent from the BATH set. This feature and the unsplit FOOT–STRUT vowel are the
two most salient markers of northern English, but the vowel in BATH words is the
more stable and salient of the two. Wells (1982: 354) puts this point elegantly:
“there are many educated northerners who would not be caught dead doing some-
thing so vulgar as to pronounce STRUT words with [], but who would feel it to
be a denial of their identity as northerners to say BATH words with anything other
than short [a]”. Like the FOOT–STRUT split, lengthening of an earlier short vowel
/a/ in BATH words dates from the 17th century. The history of these words is very
complex, but the lengthening certainly seems to have been a southern innovation,
which was, in fact, stigmatised as a Cockneyism until well into the 19th century.
Today, it is the northern short /a/ which is stigmatised, popularly described as a
flat vowel, but as Wells’s quote suggests, it is a stigma which is worn with pride
by the vast majority of northerners. Indeed, in northern universities, students from
the South are observed to shorten their pronunciation of the vowel in BATH words,
assimilating to the pronunciation of their peers. In some northern varieties, there
are lexical exceptions to the rule that BATH words have a short vowel: in Tyneside
and Northumberland, master, plaster and less frequently disaster are pronounced
with // (phonetically more like []), but faster with /a/, whilst master alone is
pronounced with // in other varieties (Lancashire, Sheffield). As with unsplit
FOOT–STRUT, the short vowel in BATH words is a feature of all northern English
dialects, but is also found throughout the Midlands, at least as far south as Bir-
mingham. Nevertheless, these are the features most often referred to in stereotypes
of northern speech, and most often mentioned when subjects are asked to name
features of northern dialect. All the features discussed below differentiate dialects
in the North of England from each other.
2.3. GOAT and FACE
These lexical sets have monophthongal pronunciations/o/ and /e/ respectively

in traditional dialects in the lower North, central Lancashire and Humberside,
but diphthongal pronunciations in the far North and Merseyside. In Tyneside
and Northumberland, traditional dialect speakers have centring diphthongs /u/
and /i/ in these words, whilst in Merseyside the corresponding diphthongs are
more like RP. In the North-east, there is evidence of levelling in younger and/
or middle-class speakers, not towards the closing diphthongs of RP, but to the
monophthongal pronunciations found throughout most of the North. Watt and
Milroy (1999) report that, in a study of speech recorded in 1994, only the older,
working-class males used // in the majority of tokens of FACE vowels. Amongst
all other groups, the most frequent variant was /e/, with /e/ emerging as a mi-
nority variant in the speech of young, middle-class males and females. Watt and
Milroy suggest that the younger Tynesiders are signalling that they do not wish
to identify with the old-fashioned cloth-cap-and-whippet image of their fathers,
but still wish to be identified as northerners, so they are assimilating their speech
to a pan-northern norm. At the opposite end of the northern dialect region, pro-
nunciations of FACE words vary between older monophthongal /e/ and the diph-
thongal /e/ found in Merseyside and the Midlands as well as in RP. In these areas,
the monophthongal pronunciations would be the old-fashioned variants, and the
diphthongal variants are spreading from urban centres such as Liverpool. Some
northern dialects retain traces of an earlier distinction between // in e.g. eight,
weight and /e/ in e.g. ate, wait. Both Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 89) and Petyt
(1985: 119–124) note this distinction in speakers from West Yorkshire. However,
the maintenance of a phonemic distinction appears to be recessive in these dia-
lects. Petyt concludes that the influence of RP has led to confusion as to the inci-
dence of these two phonemes, though some speakers retain a distinction between
[e] in wait and [EI] in weight.
124 Joan Beal
To a certain extent, the variants of GOAT words are parallel to those of FACE: tra-
ditional North-eastern dialects have a centring diphthong /u/, most of the North
has a monophthong /o/, whilst Merseyside has /ou/. Some West Yorkshire speak-
ers maintain a distinction between /o/ in e.g. nose and /çu/ in e.g. knows, but, as
with the parallel distribution of variants in the FACE set, this is recessive (Petyt
1985: 124–132). Whilst Watt and Milroy found an overall preference for the pan-
northern monophthongal variant /o/ in every group of their Tyneside informants
except the older working-class males, another conservative variant [] was used
more by young, middle-class males than any other group. Watt and Milroy suggest
that, for this group, the adoption of this variant is a “symbolic affirmation of local
identity” (Watt and Milroy 1999: 37). A similar fronted variant is found in Hum-
berside and South and West Yorkshire, and has become a stereotypical marker of
the dialect of Hull, where humorous texts use semi-phonetic spellings such as fern
curls for phone calls.
2.4. MOUTH
In traditional dialects, especially in the far North (and Scotland), words of this
class are pronounced with [u]. This monophthongal pronunciation is the same as
that of Middle English: in the far North, the Great Vowel Shift did not affect the
back vowels, so that /u/ remains unshifted. In traditional dialects, this pronuncia-
tion could be found north of the Humber, but this receded in the later 20th century.
In Tyneside and Northumberland, it is now used mostly by speakers who are older
and/or working-class and/or male, and most speakers would use a diphthongal
pronunciation [u] for the majority of words in this set. However, in certain words
which are strongly associated with local identity this pronunciation has been lexi-
calised and reflected in the spelling (Beal 2000a). For example, the spelling Toon
(pronounced /tun/) has traditionally been used by Northumbrians to refer to the
City of Newcastle, where they would go for shopping and leisure. The Toon is also
the local name for Newcastle United Football Club, but more recently this spelling
has also been adopted by the national press (“Toon must hit back” Daily Mirror
April 14th 2003). This semi-phonetic spelling and monophthongal pronunciation
can also be found in the words brown (when referring to Newcastle Brown Ale),
down and out, all of which either refer to local items, or are used in collocation
with town in phrases such as down the Town, a night out in the Town.
In some parts of the middle North, especially South Yorkshire, this set is pro-
nounced /a/. According to Petyt (1985: 82–91), accounts of the traditional dialects
of Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield suggest that words such as down, ground,
town had /a/ in Bradford, /e´/ in Halifax, and that there was variation between /a/
and /´/ in Huddersfield. Petyt’s own investigation (conducted from 1970 to 1971)
revealed that the monophthongal pronunciation was recessive, but that a com-
promise between “traditional” /a/ and “RP” /au/, in which the diphthong has a
lengthened first element “may be among the regional features that persist”. (Petyt
1985: 165)
2.5. PRICE
Most words in this set have the diphthong /a/ in the majority of northern English
dialects. In Tyneside and Northumberland, the diphthong is a narrower [], whilst
in parts of the ‘middle North’, including West and South Yorkshire, a monoph-
thongal [], distinct from the monophthongal [a] variant in down, etc., is found in
more traditional dialects. In such dialects, ground and grind would be pronounced
[rand], [rnd] respectively. As with MOUTH words, Petyt found that a com-
promise variant comprising a diphthong with a lengthened first element was more
common in the speech of his 1970–1971 informants. In words such as night or right,
northern dialects retained the consonant /X/ when this was vocalised in southern di-
alects in the 16th century. In dialects which retained this northern pronunciation, the
vowel before /X/ remained short, and so was not shifted to /a/ in the Great Vowel
Shift. When northern English dialects later lost this consonant, the preceding vowel
was lengthened to /i/ giving pronunciations such as /nit, rit/ for night, right etc.
This is now retained mainly in frequently-used words and phrases. Thus [arit] al-
right is a common greeting between working-class males on Tyneside and [nit] is
similarly used for night especially in the expression the night (‘tonight’), but [lit]
would be the more usual pronunciation of light. Petyt (1985: 164) notes that /i/ was
used in words of this subset by his West Yorkshire informants, but that the compro-
mise diphthong described above was also used in these words.
2.6. SQUARE and NURSE
Whilst in RP SQUARE is pronounced with /E/ and NURSE with the central vowel
/´/, the two sets are merged in certain dialects within the North. In Liverpool,
words from either of these sets can be pronounced either as [] or [Œ], thus fur
and fair can both be heard as [f] or [Œ]. The [Œ] pronunciation in SQUARE words
is typical of traditional Lancashire dialects, and so can be heard in e.g. Wigan and
Bolton, but is less common in the city of Manchester. Since Liverpool was in the
old county of Lancashire, the [Œ] pronunciation is perhaps a more traditional vari-
ant, and is heard in smaller Merseyside towns such as St Helens. However, [] in
NURSE is also found in Hull and Middlesbrough on the East coast, but not north
of the Teesside conurbation. More research needs to be carried out on the history
of northern dialects of English before we can know whether this distribution is
significant. In each locality, the [] in NURSE acts as a local shibboleth, distin-
guishing Liverpool from Lancashire, Hull from the rest of Yorkshire, and Teesside
from the rest of the North-east.
126 Joan Beal
2.7. NURSE and NORTH
These are merged for older/working-class speakers in Tyneside and Northum-

berland, where, in traditional dialects the vowel in NURSE words has been re-
tracted to [ç]. Påhlsson (1972) explains this retraction as having been caused by
“burr-modification”, the effect of the following uvular [“], or Northumbrian burr,
prior to loss of rhoticity in this dialect (see section 3.4. below for a discussion of
rhoticity on northern dialects). This merger is a stereotypical feature of Tyneside
and Northumbrian dialects, often referred to in humorous dialect literature (see
Beal [2000a]). However, recent research shows that the retracted pronunciation
of NURSE is found mostly in the speech of older, male speakers, whilst a front,
rounded variant [O] is found in the speech of younger women in particular (Watt
and Milroy 1999).
2.8. happY
The unstressed vowel at the end of words in this set varies between tense and lax
realisations in northern dialects. Dialects with what Wells (1982: 255–256) terms
“happY-tensing” include those of the North-east, Liverpool and Hull. Elsewhere
in the North, lax realisations of this vowel as [] or [] are heard. In the happY-
tensing areas, the realisation may be [i] or even long [i]. Perhaps because the
tense vowel is found throughout the South and Midlands and in RP, both Hughes
and Trudgill (1996: 57) and Wells (1982: 258) describe this as a southern feature,
which has spread to certain urban areas in the North. However, a closer examina-
tion of 18th century sources reveals that the tense vowel was found both in the
North-east and in London, suggesting that this is not such a recent innovation in
these dialects (Beal 2000b). In all the northern happY-tensing areas, the lax vow-
el is a shibboleth of the neighbouring dialects: it marks the difference between
Teesside and Yorkshire, Humberside and West Yorkshire, and Liverpool and
Lancashire. In every case, it is the lax variant which is stigmatised. For example,
young, middle-class women in Sheffield, which is on the border of the North and
the Midlands, are increasingly using either a more tense variant or a compromise
diphthong [e], perhaps in order to avoid the stigmatised Yorkshire [].
2.9. lettER
This unstressed vowel has a range of realisations in different northern dialects.
Whilst the majority of northern speakers have [´] in this context, speakers in Man-
chester and Sheffield have [], whilst Tynesiders have []. In the case of Tyneside,
the [] is also heard as the second element of centering diphthongs in e.g. here, and
poor [hi, pu].
3. Consonants
3.1. // in SING
This phoneme is not part of the inventory of dialects in the south-western corner of
the North as here defined, i.e. from Liverpool and South Lancashire as far across
as Sheffield. Here, [] is only ever pronounced before a velar consonant, e.g. in
singing [s]. Thus [] in these varieties is an allophonic variant of /n/. Speak-
ers in other parts of the North would often have [n] for the bound morpheme -ing,
but would have [] elsewhere, thus singing would be [sn]. In the areas which
retain the velar nasal plus pronunciation, [n] occurs as a less careful, stigmatised
variant, whilst [] is perceived as correct, almost certainly because of the spell-
ing. The [n] pronunciation was not perceived as incorrect until the later 18th cen-
tury, when it began to be proscribed in pronouncing dictionaries. John Rice in his
Introduction to the Art of Reading with Energy and Propriety (1765) writes that
whilst /in/ is “taught in many of Our Grammars” it is “a viscious and indistinct
Method of Pronunciation, and ought to be avoided”. However, well into the 20th
century, this pronunciation was also perceived to be stereotypical of the English
aristocracy, whose favourite pastimes were huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. In the
words something and anything, a variant pronunciation [k] is heard through-
out the North, though in the North-east, the nasal may be dropped altogether to
give [smk]. These words are not used in traditional northern dialects, where the
equivalents would be summat and nowt, so the [k] pronunciation here is perhaps
hypercorrect.
3.2. /h/
Pronunciation of initial <h> is socially stratified in most areas of the North, as in
most of England. Petyt’s study of West Yorkshire (1985: 106) shows that h-drop-
ping is near-categorical for working-class males in casual speech style (93% in
class V), but that class I males in the same speech style only have 12% h-dropping.
The one area of the North in which initial <h> is retained, at least in stressed syl-
lables, is the North-East. Trudgill (1999: 29) shows the isogloss for [hl], [l] (hill)
just north of the Tees, but Beal (2000a) demonstrates that h-dropping is perceived
as a salient feature of Sunderland speech within Tyne and Wear. In fact, close
examination of the SED material shows a set of very loosely bundled isoglosses
for individual words, with that for home as far north as mid-Northumberland, and
those for house, hear and hair following the Tees. Recent studies indicate that
the h-dropping isogloss is moving further north, with even younger speakers as
far north as Newcastle providing some evidence of this. Given that h-dropping is
the most stigmatised feature of non-standard speech in England, this is a surpris-
ing development, but in the context of the spread of other pan-northern features
such as the monophthongal pronunciation of GOAT and FACE, it is perhaps more
128 Joan Beal
understandable. Young north-easterners are converging with their northern peers

rather than with RP speakers.
3.3. /t/, /p/, /k/

The voiceless stops are subject to both regional and social variation within the
North. Of this set, /t/ is the most variable. It can be realised as /r/, as an affricate
[ts], as a glottal [/] or glottalised [/t].
Throughout the North, the pronunciation of /t/ as /r/ is found in certain pho-
nological and morphological environments. Usually, this occurs intervocalically
before a morpheme boundary, as in get off [rf] or put it [prt], or an environ-
ment perceived as a morpheme boundary, e.g. matter [mar]. According to Watt
and Milroy (1999: 29–30), in Newcastle this realisation of /t/ is heard “most often
in the speech of older females”.
In many urban areas of Britain, and in the North-east of England generally, /t/
can be glottalised. Glottalisation of /p/, /t/ and /k/ is a sociolinguistic variable cor-
relating with age and gender in the North-east. According to Foulkes and Docherty
(1999: 54), there are two distinct patterns of what may be loosely termed glottali-
sation in the speech of Newcastle:
First, what sounds on auditory analysis to be a plain glottal stop occurs categorically
before syllabic /l/ (e.g. in battle). The second type of variant presents the auditory
impression of a glottal stop reinforcing any of the three voiceless stops /p, t, k/ when
they occur between sonorants (e.g. in happy, set off, bacon). These variants are usually
labelled ‘glottalised’. (Foulkes and Docherty 1999: 54)
The glottal stop pronunciation, especially of /t/, has been observed to be spreading
to almost all urban centres in Britain, and is often cited as evidence of the influ-
ence of Estuary English (see also Altendorf and Watt, this volume). However, it
was first noticed at the turn of the 20th century as occurring in the North of Eng-
land and in Scotland. In the second half of the 20th century, use of the glottal stop
for /t/ has spread to most urban areas of Britain. Indeed, Trudgill describes this
as “one of the most dramatic, widespread and rapid changes to have occurred in
British English in recent times” (Trudgill 1999: 136). In the North of England, it
is found in every urban centre except Liverpool, and even here, Newbrook (1999:
97) notes glottal pronunciation of pre-consonantal and final /t/ in West Wirral. In
the North-east, the glottalised [/t] pronunciation is more characteristic of tradi-
tional Tyneside speech. However, research carried out at the University of New-
castle shows that younger speakers, and especially middle-class females, use [/] in
the non-initial prevocalic context (as in set off), whilst the glottalised forms tend to
be used mainly by older, working-class males. There is thus a pattern of variation
correlating with age, gender and social class, suggesting that young, middle-class
females are in the vanguard of a change towards a non-localised pronunciation.
(See Watt and Milroy [1999]; Docherty and Foulkes [1999] for further discus-
sion of this.) Although this pattern might suggest that the glottalised forms are
recessive in Tyneside, Llamas (2000) demonstrates that these variants are being
adopted by younger speakers on Teesside, which “suggests that Middlesbrough
English is converging with the varieties found further north in Tyneside, Wearside
and Durham”. (Llamas 2000: 11)
Whilst the glottal stop pronunciation of /t/ is, as reported above, spreading to
all urban areas of Britain, glottal and glottalised forms of /p/ and /k/ are confined
to the North-east. In Tyneside, glottalised forms of these consonants, as of /t/, are
found, though less frequently in the speech of females than males. In Middles-
brough, these glottalised forms are increasingly used by younger speakers, but
there is also a trend towards a full glottal stop for /p/ in younger speakers (Llamas
2000: 10).
In Liverpool, /t/, /p/ and /k/ can be affricated in all positions, thus right, time
[rats, tsam], hope, pay [hupf, pfa], work, cry [wk, kra]. In final position,
they may be realised as full fricatives [∏, s, ]. Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 93)
suggest that this phenomenon may account for the relative lack of glottal forms in
this conurbation.
3.4. /r/
The phonetic realisations and distributions of /r/ vary considerably between dif-
ferent northern dialects. In two areas of the North, /r/ was attested in preconso-
nantal environments in the SED. These rhotic areas were found in Lancashire and
in Northumberland. In the latter case, there was more r-colouring (in which the
articulation of the vowel anticipates the position of the /r/, but the consonant is
not fully realized) than full articulation of /r/. In modern dialects, rhoticity is more
likely to be found in north Northumberland, which borders (rhotic) Scotland, than
further south, and it would certainly not be found in Newcastle. In Lancashire,
rhoticity is still found in central Lancashire, including some of the towns within
Greater Manchester, but not in the City of Manchester itself, except perhaps in the
speech of older people. The dialect of Liverpool was not rhotic even at the time
when the SED data was collected: this lack of rhoticity has been one of the features
distinguishing Liverpool from its Lancashire hinterland, but, increasingly, rhotic-
ity is being lost even in Lancashire.
Where speakers in Lancashire and Northumberland are rhotic, the quality of
the /r/ or /r/-colouring is distinct in each area. In Northumberland, the traditional
dialect has a uvular /“/, known as the Northumbrian burr. As the quote from Defoe
in 1.2. above indicates, this pronunciation has been a source of pride to Northum-
brians, many of whom today will perform the burr as a party-trick even though
they would not use it in everyday speech. In the 18th century, the burr was heard in
Durham and Newcastle as well as Northumberland; however, Påhlsson’s (1972)
130 Joan Beal
study shows that, even in north Northumberland, the burr is now recessive, con-
fined as it is mainly to the speech of older, working-class males in rural or fishing
communities. The influence of the burr remains in the burr-modified vowel of
NURSE, as discussed in 2.7. above.
In Lancashire, the /r/ is a retroflex [], especially in rhotic accents, but in Liver-
pool and the surrounding areas of Lancashire and Cheshire, the /r/ is a flap [R].
3.5. Clear vs. dark /l/

In RP /l/ has clear [l] and dark [¬] allophones, the former occurring intervocali-
cally as in silly, the latter pre- and postvocalically, as in lip, film. In Tyneside and
Northumberland, the dark allophone is not used, so that, e.g. lip, film are pro-
nounced with clear [l]. Where the /l/ occurs before a nasal, an epenthetic vowel
is inserted between the /l/ and the nasal, so that film, elm and the river Aln are
pronounced [fl´m, lm, alń]. Conversely, in Lancashire, the dark [¬] is used in
clear contexts, as in Lancashire, really [¬ak´, i´¬].
4. Prosodic and intonational features
Although popular discussions of dialect often refer to the speech of a certain area as
sing-song, lilting or monotonous, until very recently there has been relatively little
research on the prosodic and intonational features of northern English dialects, ex-
cept for the discussion of the sociolinguistic patterning of intonational variation in
Tyneside English in Pellowe and Jones (1978). However, preliminary results from
the Intonational Variation in English (IviE) project indicate that “dialect variation
is a significant variable in prosodic typology” (Grabe and Post 2002: 346). An in-
tonational pattern known as the Urban Northern British Rise occurs in Newcastle
(as well as in Belfast and Dublin). In this pattern, there is a rise-plateau intonation
in declarative sentences, distinct from the high rising tone heard in Australian and
New Zealand English. This intonation is highly salient for Tyneside English, but can
also be found in other northern British varieties. Grabe and Post (2002) also found
differences between dialects of English with regard to the truncation or compres-
sion of falling accents on “very short IP-final words” (Grabe and Post 2002: 345).
Whereas speakers in Leeds and Liverpool tended to truncate these patterns, those in
Newcastle compressed them. Clearly, there is much work to be done on the study of
intonational variation in English dialects, but these findings support the division of
northern dialects into middle North and far North discussed in 1.1.
Even less research has been carried out on prosodic variation in English dialects.
Here, again, the North-East is distinct from the rest of the North, with a tendency
for level stress, or with the main stress on the second element, in compounds.
The place name Stakeford (in Northumberland) is pronounced with equal stress
on each element, whereas a speaker from outside the region would pronounce it
/»stekf´d/. Likewise, pitheap, the Northumbrian word for a colliery spoil heap, is
pronounced /«p/»hip/.
5. Articulatory setting
We have seen in the sections above that northern English dialects can be differenti-
ated from each other with regard to segmental phonology and intonation. In some
cases, though, the distinctive voice of a region, is produced by the articulatory
setting. The only full and accessible study of articulatory setting in a northern
English dialect is Knowles’, description of what he calls the “‘Scouse voice’, the
total undifferentiated characteristic sound of a Liverpudlian” (Knowles 1978: 88).
This voice quality is described here and elsewhere (Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 94)
as velarization. Knowles describes this in detail as follows:
In Scouse, the centre of gravity of the tongue is brought backwards and upwards, the
pillars of the fauces are narrowed, the pharynx is tightened, and the larynx is displaced
upwards. The lower jaw is typically held close to the upper jaw, and this position is
maintained even for ‘open’ vowels. The main auditory effect of this setting is the
‘adenoidal’ quality of Scouse, which is produced even if the speaker’s nasal passages are
unobstructed. (Knowles 1978: 89)
Hughes and Trudgill describe this more succinctly as “the accompaniment of other
articulations by the raising of the back of the tongue towards the soft palate (as in
the production of dark /l/)”. (Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 94)
Although the articulatory setting of Liverpool English is very distinctive, it
would be interesting to see whether the study of articulatory setting in other north-
ern dialects might indicate typological distinctions parallel to those found for seg-
mental and non-segmental phonology.
Selected references
ROM.
Beal, Joan
2000a From Geordie Ridley to Viz: popular literature in Tyneside English. Language
and Literature 9: 343–359.
2000b HappY-tensing: a recent innovation? In: Ricardo Bermudez-Ortero, David
Denison, Richard M. Hogg and Christopher B. McCully (eds.), Generative
Theory and Corpus Studies: A Dialogue from 10 ICEHL, 483–497. Berlin/
New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
132 Joan Beal
Bergström, F.
1955 John Kirkby (1746) on English pronunciation. Studia Neophilologica 27: 65–
104.
Docherty, Gerard and Paul Foulkes
1999 Derby and Newcastle: instrumental phonetics and variationist studies. In:
Foulkes and Docherty (eds.), 47–71.
Freeborn, Dennis
19982 From Old English to Standard English. Houndmills: Macmillan.
Grabe, Esther and Brechtje Post
2002 Intonational Variation in English. In: Bernard Bel and Isabelle Marlin (eds.),
Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2002 Conference, 343–346. Aix-en-
Provence: Laboratoire Parole et Langage.
Heslop, Richard O.
1892 Northumberland Words. London: English Dialect Society.
Ihalainen, Ossi
1994 The dialects of England since 1776. In: Burchfield (ed.), 197–274.
Johnson, Samuel
1755 A Dictionary of the English Language. London: Strahan for Knapton.
Kenrick, William
1773 A New Dictionary of the English Language. London: John and Francis
Rivington.
Knowles, Gerald
1978 The nature of phonological variables in Scouse. In: Trudgill (ed.), 80–90.
Llamas, Carmen
2000 Middlesbrough English: convergent and divergent trends in a ‘part of Britain
with no identity’. Leeds Working Papers in Phonetics and Linguistics 8: 1–26.
Newbrook, Mark
1986 Sociolinguistic Reflexes of Dialect Interference in West Wirral. Bern/Frankfurt
am Main: Lang.
1999 West Wirral: norms, self-reports and usage. In: Foulkes and Docherty (eds.),
90–106.
Påhlsson, Christer
1972 The Northumbrian Burr. Lund: Gleerup.
Pellowe, John and Val Jones
1978 On intonational variability in Tyneside speech. In: Trudgill (ed.), 101–121.
Petyt, Malcolm K.
1985 Dialect and Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
Benjamins.
Rice, John
1765 An Introduction to the Art of Reading with Energy and Propriety. London:
Tonson.
Wakelin, Martyn
1983 The stability of English dialect boundaries. English World-Wide 4: 1–15.
Wales, Katie
2000 North and South: An English linguistic divide? English Today: The
International Review of the English Language. 16: 4–15.
2002 ‘North of Watford’. A cultural history of northern English (from 1700). In:
Watts and Trudgill (eds.), 45–66.
Walker, John
1791 A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. London: Robinson.
Watt, Dominic and Lesley Milroy
1999 Patterns of variation in Newcastle vowels. In: Foulkes and Docherty (eds.),
25–46.
Wright, Joseph
1892 A Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill in the West Riding of Yorkshire. London:
English Dialect Society.
The English West Midlands: phonology*
Urszula Clark
1. Introduction
Today, the term West Midlands (WM) is generally used to refer to the conurbation
that includes Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Walsall, West Bromwich and Coven-
try, and can also be used to refer to speech associated with the modern urban area,
although the historical Middle English WM dialect covered a much wider area
(see Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 85; Wells 1982: 364). Within the modern urban
area at least two main dialect types can be identified: those of Birmingham, and
those of the Black Country to the west.
The Black Country dialect – currently the focus of a research project, the Black
Country Dialect Project (BCDP) at the University of Wolverhampton – is often
considered to be particularly distinctive. Wells (1982: 364) explains that the va-
riety is linguistically notable for its retention of traditional dialect forms such as
have disappeared from the rest of the Midlands. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 25) de-
fine the Black Country dialect as “a working class dialect spoken in the South Staf-
fordshire area of the English Midlands”, and similarly note that it has “retained
many of its distinctive lexico-grammatical features” (Chinn and Thorne 2001: 30).
At the present state of BCDP research, it is as yet unclear how many of these forms
may survive in widespread use, in the Black Country at least.
It is also unclear whether and if so to what degree the dialect of the large but
geographically distinct city of Coventry may differ from other West Midlands va-
rieties. Therefore, while some data are also available from Cannock (Heath 1980),
which is technically just outside the West Midlands administrative area, the term
West Midlands will be taken to refer to Birmingham and the wider Black Country,
unless explicitly stated otherwise. The wider Black Country here is taken to in-
clude Walsall, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton.
According to Todd and Ellis (1992b), the Midland group of Middle English
(ME) dialects can be considered to have had clearly defined boundaries: north of
the Thames, south of a line from the rivers Humber to Lune, and with the Pennines
subdividing the area into East and West Midlands sub-areas. Brook (1972: 68)
maintains that the WM dialect of ME was intermediate between the East Midlands
and South-Western dialects, with its southern part most resembling the latter. Dur-
ing the Old English period the region had been part of the Mercian dialect area,
The English West Midlands: phonology 135
but following the Danish wars it came under the West-Saxon-speaking kingdom
of Wessex, and it retained a closer connection with Wessex than the South-west,
even after the unification of England. The result is that the ME dialect resembles
the East Midlands in terms of early dialect characteristics, and the South-west in
terms of later ones.
Todd and Ellis (1992b) say some dialectologists consider the ME dialect bound-
aries as still significant in contemporary dialect research, but others maintain that
the post-industrial urban dialects of cities like Birmingham and Wolverhampton
now exert greater influence than those of rural areas.
Chinn and Thorne (2001) suggest that Birmingham was clearly within the ME
West Midlands dialect area: “Beginning as a place of some importance in 1166
when it first had a market, it was a town that was clearly embedded within its rural
hinterland. For centuries it drew most of its people from the surrounding villages”
(Chinn and Thorne 2001: 14–19). They cite evidence regarding the origins of 700
people who came to live in Birmingham between 1686 and 1726, to the effect
that more than 90% came from within 20 miles of Birmingham; of these, more
than 200 had migrated from within Warwickshire and a similar number from Staf-
fordshire; almost 100 came from Worcestershire and some 40 from Shropshire. Of
the remainder, about 60 came cumulatively from Leicester, Cheshire, Derbyshire,
Lancashire and Middlesex, and another 50 from other parts of Britain. For Chinn
and Thorne, it is not surprising that Birmingham speech should have evolved from
the dialect of north Warwickshire, south Staffordshire and north-eastern Worces-
tershire – essentially encompassing the ME West Mercian dialect area. In the 19th
century Birmingham attracted people from further afield (including Cornwall,
Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy and the Jewish pale of settlement in Tsarist Rus-
sia), but Chinn and Thorne (2001: 19) maintain that “local migrants continued to
form the great majority of newcomers, and as late as 1951, 71% of Birmingham’s
citizens had been born in Warwickshire”.
Biddulph (1986: 1) similarly suggests that the conurbation of the Black Country
was populated largely from the surrounding farming counties of Worcestershire,
Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Shropshire.
The Black Country is a relatively small area, centring on the major towns of
Dudley and Walsall, and probably including Wolverhampton, plus surrounding
areas. One reason given for the distinctiveness of the Black Country dialect is its
relative geographical isolation. The local area is essentially an 800ft plateau with-
out a major river or Roman road passing through it, so it was only when the In-
dustrial Revolution got into full swing in the 19th century that the area ceased to be
relatively isolated from other developments in the country. During the Industrial
Revolution, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Walsall grew into large manufac-
turing towns, separated from the centre of the plateau by belts of open land which
provided raw materials – iron and coal – for the heavy industries of the towns. To-
day’s urban areas were originally small villages which developed with the grow-
136 Urszula Clark
ing industries, and with the exception of Birmingham these still have relatively
small populations. Again with the exception of Birmingham, development in the
region was relatively slow and the population remained relatively stable. Until
the 1960s, there was no sudden influx of workers, immigrant or otherwise, who
might have significantly altered the character of the area. Similarly, there was little
out-migration, as the Black Country generally remained prosperous. As a result,
there was little alteration in the population, and communities remained close-knit
and generally introspective. Consequently, although the dialect is usually classed
synchronically as an urban dialect, it has strong links with a recent, rural past
and with traditional dialects. Indeed, the Survey of English Dialects (SED, Orton
1962-1971), a project which concentrates on the traditional dialect typical of rural
areas, nevertheless includes the Black Country village of Himley among the Staf-
fordshire localities covered. Data sources comprise:
(1) For the WM dialect generally:
a. Ongoing work for the BCDP. The corpus used here comprises mainly
younger and young middle-class speakers, especially from the Black
Country;
b. Wells (1982);
c. Lass (1987);
d. Hughes and Trudgill (1996);
e. Todd and Ellis (1992a, 1992b);
f. Material in Chinn and Thorne (2001).
(2) For Black Country specifically:

a. Mathisen (1999): the most extensive study accessed to date. Based
on 30 hours of data from 57 informants, collected in Sandwell
(Wednesbury, Tipton and Rowley Regis), 1984;
b. Painter (1963): Data from three speakers in Rowley Regis, analysed in
detail.. Note that Painter analyses Black Country in terms of a dialect-
specific phonemic system; hence, his citations include both phonemic
and phonetic forms;
c. SED traditional dialect data for Himley (south Staffordshire), from
non-mobile older rural males, collected in the 1960s;
d. Biddulph (1986): a semi-professional analysis of the Black Country
dialect writing material in Fletcher (1975). This includes an attempt
at phonological analysis based on an interpretation of Fletcher’s
respelling rules, combined with Birmingham-born Biddulph’s own
claimed insights into WM accents. The particular variety represented
by Fletcher is intended to be that of Bilston;
e. Dialect writing material from the Black Country Bugle, the Walsall
Observe, Chitham (1972), Parsons (1977), Solomon (2000), and
various websites on the internet (see full bibliography on the CD-

ROM).
(3) For Cannock (south Staffordshire): Heath (1980). Cannock is some nine
miles north-east of Wolverhampton, eight miles north-west of Walsall,
and according to Heath (1980: 1) “just outside the Black Country”.
(4) For Middle English dialects of the West Midlands, Kristensson (1987;
analysis based on place-name data).
(5) For etymological analyses: Oxford English Dictionarly (OED).
Caution has to be exercised with the dialect writing material, since it may contain
inaccuracies, sometimes due to archaising; that is, such forms often reflect canoni-
cal forms for dialect writers, which may in turn reflect traditional dialect forms
that are now highly recessive or obsolete in terms of contemporary usage. Some
distinctive forms, which may indeed be obsolete or recessive, act fairly clearly as
identity markers within the Black Country at least: e.g. [dZEd] dead, [lÅf] laugh,
[saft] soft ‘stupid’, [I´z] years.
2. Vowels
Table 1. Summary of “typical” West Midlands vowels
BC BC BC Bm WM WM
(Himley) (R. Regis) (S’well) (RL) (JW) (BCDP)
(O/B) (CP) (AM)
KIT I I>i I I I I > I¢

DRESS E e>E E E E E
TRAP a>Q a Q > Q˘ a a a > a≠ > Q
LOT Å>U ç Å>ç Å Å Å > Å£
STRUT U>Å Å>U Å>U>´ U>ÅU>√ U>F
ONE Å
FOOT U U U U U U>F
BATH a a > A˘ Q>a a a a > a˘ > Å˘
CLOTH Å ç(˘) Å>ç – Å Å
NURSE ´˘ > ´˘® e´ ´ > ´˘ Œ˘ Œ˘ Œ˘ ~ ø˘
FLEECE i˘ > I > EI Í i˘ > Ii > í Ii i˘ Ii > í > i˘
138 Urszula Clark
Table 1. (continued) Summary of “typical” West Midlands vowels
BC BC BC Bm WM WM
(Himley) (R. Regis) (S’well) (RL) (JW) (BCDP)
(O/B) (CP) (AM)
FACE EI > QI QI ~ e QI > EI √I √I EI ~ QI > √I ~ eI
PALM A˘ A˘ A˘ – A˘ A˘ > Å˘
THOUGHT ç˘ o˘ ç˘ ç˘ ç˘
GOAT oU > U oU ~ ú aU ~ çU √U √U √U > EU > QU
GOOSE u˘ > U u˘ ~ çU ~ ú u˘ u˘ u˘ ¨˘ > ´¨
NEW I´¨ > Iu
PRICE aI ~ ÅI AI aI ~ AI > çI ÅI ÅI ÅI > aI
CHOICE çI > ÅI oI çI ÅI ÅI ç£I
MOUTH aU > QU EU QU ~ EU QU QU QU > EU ~ aU
NEAR I´ > e´ i´ i˘´ > I´ – – i´ > I´ > E´ > e´
SQUARE E(®) I´ > E´ E˘ E˘ E˘ E´ > E˘ ~ ´˘
START A˘ > a˘ – A˘ A˘ A˘ A˘ > Å˘
NORTH ç˘ > ç˘(®) o´ ç˘ – ç˘ ç£˘
FORCE ç˘ > ç˘´ o´ √U´ > ç˘ – √U´ > ç˘ ç£˘
CURE u˘´ u´ u˘´ > ç˘ – u˘´ > U´ U´
happY I Ii Ii > i˘ i˘ i˘ Ii > i˘
lettER ´ ´ ´ ´ ´ ´>Œ
horsES I – I I I I~i>´
commA ´ ´ ´ ´ ´ ´>å
Key:
Bm = Birmingham
BC = Black Country
R. Regis = Rowley Regis
S’well = Sandwell
WM = West Midlands
AM = Mathisen (1999)
BCDP = Black Country Dialect Project
CP = Painter (1963)
JW = Wells (1982)
O/B = Orton and Barry (1998 [1969])
RL = Lass (1987)
2.1. The WM dialect as a Northern variety

It is widely recognised that the broader WM dialect, located as it is just on
the Northern side of the main North-South dialect isoglosses, has features typi-
cal of both Northern and Southern British English accents (see Todd and Ellis
1992b).
As Wells (1982: 349, 353) explains, the main isoglosses dividing North from
South are the FOOT-STRUT split and BATH-broadening. Under such a criterion, the
linguistic North includes the Midlands, incorporating the Birmingham-Wolver-
hampton conurbation, i.e., the West Midlands. Wells notes that the local accent
of the WM dialect is markedly different from that of the East Midlands, although
there is a transitional area including Stoke and Derby.
Trudgill (1999; see also Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 85) provides a fuller list
involving nine diagnostic features for British English dialects. In terms of this
analysis, the West Midlands:
(1) lacks a FOOT-STRUT distinction (shared with Northern Anglo-English
varieties; note “fudged” realisations [Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 55]);
(2) lacks a TRAP-BATH distinction (shared with Northern Anglo-English
varieties);
(3) has happY-tensing (shared with Southern Irish, many Northern, and with
Anglo-Welsh and Southern accents);
(4) is non-rhotic (like most varieties of British English except those of the
South-West, parts of Wales and the North of England, and those of
Scotland and Ireland);
(5) distinguishes FOOT from GOOSE and LOT from THOUGHT (like most
varieties of British English except Scots);
(6) has /h/-dropping as a normal feature (like most varieties of British
English except those of the South-West, Wales, parts of the North of
England, Scotland and Ireland);
(7) has velar nasal plus – i.e. the possibility of [Ng] in cases where other
varieties have [N] or [n] (occurring in a band stretching from the West
Midlands as far as Lancashire, and including the urban vernaculars of the
WM dialect, Stoke, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield);
(8) retains yod in the NEW subset of GOOSE (like most varieties of British
English except those of the East Midlands, South Midlands and East
Anglia);
(9) has broad diphthongs for FACE and GOAT (shared with other Midlands
varieties, the South-East and East Anglia). As Hughes and Trudgill (1996:
140 Urszula Clark
66) note, Southern and Midlands dialects have undergone long mid
diphthonging (Wells 1982: 210–211), such that the more southerly an
accent is, the wider are its FACE and GOAT diphthongs.
Such an analysis supports the contention that the WM accent evidences features
typical of both the Northern and Southern dialect types. Typical Northern features
include (1) and (2), whereas more typically Southern features include (3) and (9)
(as well as partial PRICE-CHOICE merger, shared with some London accents).
Of the two main North-South isoglosses (for FOOT-STRUT and TRAP-BATH), the
former clearly runs to the South of the West Midlands, while the situation for the
latter is much less clear. However, it is perhaps significant that the WM dialect
also shares features particularly with North-Western varieties, including (7), as
well as [u˘] in the BOOK subset of GOOSE, and [Å] in the ONE subset of STRUT.
Trudgill’s (1999: 68) diagnostic test sentence, “Very few cars made it up the
long hill”, would therefore yield, for the West Midlands generally, something
close to the following:
very fyoow cahs meid it oop the longg ill
[»vE®i˘ »fju˘ »kha˘z »mEId It Up D´ »lÅNg »Il]
For Birmingham (Bm) and the Black Country (BC) specifically (and more pre-
cisely), the following broad-accent realisations would probably be typical:
Birmingham: [»vE®Ii »fj¨˘ »kha˘z »m√Id ith Uph D´ »lÅNg »Il]
Black Country: [»vE®Ii »fIu˘ »kha˘z »mQId ith Uph D´ »lUNg »Fl]
Wells (1982: 363) claims the shifted diphthongs in parts of the WM dialect system
resemble London diphthongs, while other parts of the system resemble more typi-
cally Northern accents.
Wells (1982: 351–353) notes that in the area that has not undergone the FOOT-
STRUT split there is sociolinguistic variation with the prestige norm. In the WM
conurbation probably all speakers distinguish STRUT from FOOT, although the
distinction is variably realised and sometimes of uncertain incidence. For instance,
he notes that Heath’s (1980) study of Cannock found that all except the lowest
of five socio-economic classes had some kind of opposition. Wells notes that in-
termediate accents or speech styles may have either a fudge between STRUT and
FOOT, such as [U£ ~ F ~ √_ ~ ´£ ~ ´], or hypercorrect avoidance of [U] in FOOT, for
example as [´]. However, Wells notes that short-vowel BATH is retained higher
up the social scale than unsplit FOOT-STRUT.
Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) also comment on the fudging issue, maintain-
ing that it is especially younger middle-class speakers in the south Midlands who
tend to fudge the vowel. The phenomenon is also dealt with in some detail in
Upton (1995).
2.2. The WM dialect as a distinctive variety

Gugerell-Scharsach (1992) is an attempt to discover whether the Middle English
WM dialect as defined by Moore, Meech and Whitehall (1935) can be traced in the
SED material. Glauser (1997: 93) notes that Moore, Meech and Whitehall defined
their WM dialect with the help of a single phonological feature, ME /o/ before
nasals, locating it in a semicircular territory with the Welsh border as its diameter
and reaching as far east as Derbyshire and Warwickshire. Glauser further notes that
19th-century evidence in favour of a single WM dialect is scanty, with Wright (1905)
showing no east-west divide at all, Bonaparte (1875–1876) setting up an area similar
to the ME one, and Ellis (1889) delimiting the WM with the aid of the criterion used
by Moore Meech and Whitehall. Glauser says the SED still documents TRAP/BATH
rounding before nasals in much the same area Moore, Meech and Whitehall did, but
notes (1997: 95) that Gugerell-Scharsach finds herself able to identify (partially us-
ing phonological data) three main WM dialect areas from the SED data, namely a
Staffordshire, a Shropshire and a Southern WM dialect. Of these, the dialects of the
WM urban conurbation are likely to constitute the latter grouping.
Brook (1972: 68–69) claims that certain phonological features can indeed be
taken to be characteristic of a WM (traditional) dialect area, the most important
being:
(1) Retention of late ME /Ng/ as WM [Ng], where other dialects have [N] (e.g.
in among, hang, sing, tongue);
(2) Rounding of ME /a/ and /o/ to WM [Å] before nasal consonants, where
other dialects have [a ~ Q] (the correlation highlighted by Moore, Meech
and Whitehall 1935). However, Wakelin notes (1981: 164) that in parts
of the WM, with great variation from word to word, [Å] occurs in other
positions also (e.g. rat, apples, latch); also Brook (1972: 68) points out
that OE /a/ before nasals remained /a/ under non-heavy stress);
(3) OE /o/ tended to become ME /u/ before /Ng/; see LOT below.
Chinn and Thorne (2001: 22) propose that the WM accent once had much more in
common with general Northern speech, but has been gradually pulled in the direc-
tion of prestige Southern variants (see his data on LOT below).
2.3. Birmingham versus Black Country

According to Gibson (1955, cited in Heath 1980: 87), it is apparent “even to the
casual visitor” that the phonetic system of the Black Country differs fundamen-
tally from that of other localities in the neighbourhood of the Black Country – or
at least, it was so in the 1950s. However, Heath (1980: 87) considers this an exag-
gerated claim.
142 Urszula Clark
Biddulph (1986: 17) claims (anecdotally) to have noted significant differences

between the Black Country (Bilston) dialect as represented by Fletcher (1975),
and his own native dialect, that of the Nechells area of Birmingham. Specific dif-
ferences he proposes would seem to include (at least):
(1) MOUTH: Bilston [a˘] versus Nechells [EU];
(2) TRAP/BATH: Bilston [Å] versus Nechells [Q] before nasal consonants;
(3) D: Bilston [dZ] versus Nechells [d] in dead, death;

(4) H: Bilston [j] versus Nechells ∅ in head;
(5) H: Bilston ∅ versus Nechells [j] in year.
2.4. Prosodic features

Wells (1982) points out that many Northern dialects, the WM dialect included,
tend not to reduce vowels in unstressed Latinate prefixes (e.g. con-, ex-) as much
as do RP and Southern-based varieties. Such a tendency was indeed noted in the
BCDP audio data.
Although relatively little work has so far been done on dialect intonation, Wells
(1982: 91) points out that certain British accents (including Birmingham, Liver-
pool, Newcastle and Glasgow) appear to have some tendency to use rising tones
where most other accents have falling tones. Such tendencies are also noted by
Biddulph (1986: 3), who suggests that WM speech characteristically has a “pecu-
liar” intonation involving terminal raising in statements, as well as negative verbs
(such as <wor> wasn’t/weren’t) taking a markedly high tone.
Wells (1982: 93) also points out that the working-class accents of the WM dia-
lect (as well as Liverpool and some New York) characteristically have a velarised
voice quality (with the centre of gravity of the tongue backer and higher than for
other accents).
2.5. Vowels
KIT
All data sources indicate a characteristic strong tendency towards high realisations
for the WM dialect – BCDP [i£] or even [i]; Wells (1982: 28, 363) and Mathisen
(1999: 108) close to [i]; Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 85–86) [IÀ]. Chinn and Thorne
(2001: 20) note /i/-like realisations as typical of Birmingham in both stressed and
unstressed position, e.g. in stressed lip, symbol, women; also unstressed women,
ladies, lettuce, private, bracelet, chocolate, necklace, harness. Painter (1963: 30–
31) has Black Country /I/, realised as stressed [i≠] and unstressed [I£], with sporadic
stressed [E_I] and unstressed [e_]. Heath (1980: 87) has [I£] for Cannock.
Audio and written data also suggest that in the WM dialect generally there is a
tendency to lower KIT to [F] or [´] before /l/ (which typically appears to be dark),
e.g. in will (as dialect spellings such as Bm <ull>, BC <wool> suggest). That there
has been a historical tendency towards backing before /l/ is suggested by Kristens-
son’s (1987: 209) claim that /y/ in forms derived from OE hyll ‘hill’ was retained
at least until the ME period in place names in much of the WM area, including
Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Shropshire.
DRESS
Most data sources suggest [E], including BCDP and Mathisen (1999: 108). How-
ever, Painter (1963: 30–31) records BC /e/, realised as [e_], with sporadic [E] > [e
~ E£]. Heath (1980: 87) has [E] for Cannock.
Furthermore, the BCDP data indicate that before /l/ (which is typically dark)
there is a strong tendency towards lowering and/or breaking (e.g. [we´…], [wF…],
well). There is some written evidence for BC lowering to [a], especially before /l/
in <bally> belly, <ballies> bellows, belluck ‘to bellow’, but also in other environ-
ments, e.g. <zad> zed, <franzy> frenzy ‘fretful’. Similar realisations occur in the
SED data for localities close to Black Country.
Written data also suggest possible [I]-type realisations in some words, e.g. Bm
<git> ‘get’, Bm/BC <bibble> ‘pebble’.
TRAP
As noted, the WM dialect, being a Northern accent, generally lacks a TRAP/BATH
distinction.
Most data sources suggest a typical realisation [a] (BCDP; Painter 1963: 30),
with a tendency in more formal styles to approximate to [Q] (BCDP). Chinn and
Thorne (2001: 20) note [a]-like realisations as typical of Bm in e.g. cat, plait, and
Heath (1980: 87) also has [a] for Cannock.
For Sandwell (Black Country), Mathisen (1999: 107) found the TRAP vowel to
be fronter than most Northern varieties, closer to [Q] and very short. The older,
overlong [Q˘˘] occurred occasionally, even among teenagers.
There is also evidence, although so far mainly only from written, SED or in-
formants’ anecdotal material, for rounding of TRAP (to [Å]) especially before na-
sals. This may in fact be the only phonological characteristic of the historical WM
dialect area (see section 2.2. above), although its relative absence from the inter-
view material may indicate it is now recessive. Pre-nasal examples include: Bm/
BC <’ommer/’omber> hammer; BC <clomber> clamber; Bm/BC <mon> man,
<donny> danny ‘hand’; BC <con> can (v.), <pon> pan, <’ond> hand, <sond>
sand, <stond> stand, <caercumstonces> circumstances; Bm/BC <bonk> bank
‘hillock’; Bm <Bonksmen> Banksmen ‘Black-Countrymen’; Bm <donky> danky
‘damp, dank’; BC <ronk> rank.
144 Urszula Clark
As also noted in section 2.2. above, Wakelin (1977: 96) points out that rounding
of ME [a] to WM [Å] can occur other than prenasally. Written examples in other
environments include: BC <scrobble/scromble> scrabble/scramble ‘tangle’, <op-
ple> apple, <thot> that, <gobble> gabble; Bm/BC <boffle> baffle ‘hinder; thwart’;
BC <motches> matches, <sholl> shall, <gollopin > galloping, <volve> valve.
There is written evidence for TRAP-raising in some words, e.g. Bm <ess-hole>
ass-hole, BC <ketch> catch, Bm <ketchpit> catch-pit, <reddle> raddle, <sleck>
slack ‘small coal’. Many of these forms are evidenced in the SED material.
LOT
The BCDP data indicate that the WM dialect typically has [Å], with some raising.
However, for Sandwell, Mathisen (1999: 108) characterises the LOT vowel as [Å >
ç], and Painter (1963: 30–31) has BC /ç/, realised as [ç], with sporadic (rare) [U_].
Heath (1980: 87) has [Å] for Cannock.
The [U]-type realisations are particularly interesting. Chinn and Thorne (2001:
21–22, 30) suggest that for Bm speakers, LOT is typically [Å ~ U], with [Å] espe-
cially for younger speakers and [U] especially for WC and/or older speakers. He
claims that the latter pronunciation is still largely retained in the Black Coun-
try and the more westerly parts of Birmingham; as noted above, he suggests the
historically Northern-type WM accent has been influenced by Southern variants.
There is indeed evidence (especially written, but some audio) for [U] realisations
(especially before nasals, and especially /N/), e.g. Bm <lung> long; BC <sung>
song, <(w)rung> wrong, <frum> from, <bunnyfire> bonfire, <Aynuk> Enoch,
<wuz> was. This alternation would seem to go back to ME times: as noted above,
Brook (1972: 69) claims as a defining characteristic of the Middle English WM
dialect the tendency for OE /o/_ to become ME /u/ before /Ng/.
There is written evidence for unrounded realisations in words such as BC <drap>
drop, <shaps> shops; similar failure to round also occurs in some cases of CLOTH
(e.g. soft, wasp) and THOUGHT (e. g. water); see below.
STRUT
As noted above, the WM dialect maintains the typically Northern lack of distinc-
tion between STRUT and FOOT, with STRUT typically realised as [U]. However, the
BCDP data revealed a tendency in more formal styles to produce a more RP-like
fudge vowel with [F].
Wells (1982: 363) claims that the Bm FOOT-STRUT opposition is apparently
variably neutralised (e.g. as [F]), while Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM
[U > ´]. Broad WM accents typically have [U], less broad accents [´].Chinn and
Thorne (2001: 21) indicate that in Bm, STRUT is typically [U], e.g. in tuck, putt,
cud, stud, while Heath (1980: 87) also has [U] for Cannock.
In the subset ONE, the WM dialect is typical in having [Å] (see Hughes and
Trudgill 1996: 55; Chinn and Thorne 2001: 21). Wells notes (1982: 362) that there
is a difference in lexical incidence from RP and many other accents as regards this
subset, in that parts of the North (including Birmingham, Stoke, Liverpool, Man-
chester and Sheffield) have [Å] in one; accents in a more restricted area also have
this vowel in once, among, none, nothing.
However, Mathisen (1999: 108) claims that Sandwell actually has [Å] as the
most common variant, for all generations, and especially in words where most
Northern varieties have [U]. It occurs frequently with the elderly, in all phonetic
contexts, and especially before /l/ and /N/_ for younger speakers (as the BCDP
data also suggest). Mathisen also notes the appearance of fudge-type, closer vari-
ants (occasionally even [´]), especially in disyllables and quite frequently among
teenagers in monitored speech. Painter (1963: 30), too, notes a lower rounded
vowel: BC /o/, realised as [o+].
One salient feature (attested in speech as well as writing) is [Å]-type realisa-
tions (especially before nasals) in Bm <mom> mum; Bm/BC <lommock> lummox,
<ackidock> aqueduct, <bost(in’)> bust(ing), Bm <chock> chuck (v.) (note chuck
may derive from French chuquer, choquer ‘to knock’).
FOOT
Chinn and Thorne’s (2001: 21) analysis suggests Bm speakers typically have [U],
e.g. took, put, could, stood. BCDP data show that FOOT is typically [U]. However,
there is some tendency towards (probably hypercorrect) unrounding to [F], par-
ticularly for younger speakers. Painter (1963: 30) has BC /U/, realised as [U£].
Wells (1982: 362) and Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) point out that there is
a difference of lexical incidence in much of the North in that several words spelt
<-ook> (the subset BOOK) have kept their historically long vowel, [u˘]. This is
evidenced in the BCDP data, although it is recessive, and Wells notes that Bir-
mingham conversely has some shortened vowels in [tUT] tooth, which is echoed
in some of the SED data. Heath (1980: 87) has Cannock [U].
BATH
As an essentially Northern accent, the WM dialect generally lacks a TRAP/BATH
distinction. According to the BCDP data (and see Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 55),
BATH is typically [a]. Some speakers (in more formal registers) may have long
realisations. According to Painter (1963: 30) BC has /a/, realised as [a]. Heath
(1980: 87) has Cannock [a], while Chinn and Thorne’s (2001: 20) analysis simi-
larly suggests that for Bm speakers, BATH is typically [a], e.g. in fast, mask, grass,
bath, daft, after, chance, command. However, he suggests that this is a relatively
recent development, since older speakers often produce a long sound similar to
Cockney [A˘].
Mathisen (1999: 108) notes [Q] predominantly for Sandwell, with typically North-
ern [a] occurring less commonly, perhaps associated especially with older males.
Middle-class users (especially females in monitored speech) sometimes use [A˘].
146 Urszula Clark
There is evidence that some speakers (particularly in Birmingham rather

than in the Black Country) may have a TRAP-BATH contrast. Chinn and Thorne
(2001: 20) provide written evidence for long vowels in Bm <larst> last ([a˘]?
[A˘]), <cor/cawn’t> can’t ([ç˘]); also <arter> after (although compensation for /f/-
loss could also be implicated here; see F below). They claim that many work-
ing-class Bm speakers vary between a “short and long vowel sound” for af-
ter <arfter> ([A˘ft´]) and <after> ([aft´]), also <barstud> vs <bastard>. Such a
distinction may be what is intended in the spelling BC <aste> asked. However,
there is also written evidence for a short, rounded realisation ([Å]) in <loff(in’)>
laugh(ing).
CLOTH
According to the BCDP data, this vowel is typically [Å]; Wells (1982: 357) notes
that CLOTH is short throughout the North.
Although there is written evidence for long vowels ([ç˘]) in Bm <’orspital/
orsepickle> hospital, <orf> off, there is also written and audio evidence for a more
widespread process: unrounding.
A salient example involves the locally distinctive pronunciations of soft ‘stupid’.
Mathisen (1999: 108) notes that many adults in Sandwell have [saft], while older
speakers may have [sQft ~ sEft]. Such pronunciations, indicated by the typical
Bm/BC dialect spelling <saft>, are claimed by Chinn and Thorne (2001: 141) to
be especially typical of Black Country; these forms may perhaps be compared to
Early OE se#fte. For failure to round following /w/ (as in wasp), see W below. Un-
rounding may also affect some LOT words; see LOT above.
NURSE
The BCDP data indicate that NURSE is somewhat variable, between [ø˘ ~ Œ˘].
Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [ø˘].
According to Wells (1982: 360–361, 363), Northern accents often have [Œ˘], but
some western Midland accents (such as Birmingham and Stoke) typically have [´¢˘
~ ˆ£˘]. He suggests that merger with SQUARE may variably occur in the WM dia-
lect (probably as [Œ˘]). For Sandwell, Mathisen (1999: 108–109) notes that while
teenagers and elderly both typically have [´£˘], teenage women and middle-class
speakers prefer the RP-type [´˘]. Some speakers, especially the elderly and work-
ing class, have [´±]. Heath (1980: 87) has Cannock [´£˘].
Painter (1963: 30) has BC /e_´/, realised as [´£´4]. He notes that speakers using
[e_´] for NEAR do not also use the “common free variant” [e_´] for NURSE.
Written evidence (note conventions) suggests a typically non-RP-like pronun-
ciation in various cases. Given that typically the same conventional spellings are
used as for (some) FACE, START and THOUGHT words, the intended pronunciation
may be in the region of [e´ ~ e˘], which may in turn represent a merger or near-
merger for dialect writers. Examples include:
(1) Bm <Baernegum> Birmingham, <taerned> turned; Bm/BC <taernip(s)>

turnip(s); Bm <Gaertie> Gertie; BC <shaerty> shirty; Bm <thaerteen>
thirteen; BC <baerk> burke; Bm <waerks> works; BC <caercumstonces>
circumstances; Bm <Aerbut> Herbert, <distaerbed> disturbed; BC
<’aeard> heard, Bm <baerd> bird, BC <waerd> word, <occaerred>
occurred; <Baertha> Bertha, <baerthday> birthday, <naerse> nurse,
<paerse> purse, <caerse> curse, <faerst> first; Bm <thaerst> thirst,
<naerves> nerves, <saervice> service, <Waerthingtons> Worthington’s;
BC <paerchase> purchase, <chaerch> church; Bm <early> early; BC
<waerld> world.
(2) Bm/BC <werk> work; Bm <shert> shirt; BC <werds> words, <tern(ed)>
turn(ed).
(3) Bm <Pairsher> Pershore.
(4) BC <wourkin> working.
There is written evidence for shortened realisations ([U]) before historical /rs/ in
BC <fust> first (though compare <faerst>), <puss> purse, <cuss> curse (but com-
pare <caerse>; see also Wells [1982: 356]), <wuss/wussen> worse, <wust> worst
(but compare <wurse>). Written evidence also suggests shortened realisations in
Bm/BC <gansey> guernsey ‘long johns’ ([a]) and BC <gel> girl ([E]).
FLEECE
The BCDP data confirm that, as in South-East England, there is a definite tenden-
cy towards diphthongisation, typically [Ii]; compare GOOSE. Hughes and Trudgill
(1996: 55) have WM [Œi], while Mathisen (1999: 109) maintains that in Sandwell,
diphthongal variants often occur, especially with working-class and elderly speakers.
Painter (1963: 30) has BC /Í/, realised as [´£I], with sporadic unstressed [I ~ e_I].
Wells (1982: 357) notes that FLEECE merger has not fully carried through eve-
rywhere in the North, so that one can find the historical opposition preserved, es-
pecially in traditional dialect, but also in some less broad dialects. For example,
a distinction is found in Staffordshire between MEET [EI] and MEAT [i˘]. Wells
(1982: 363) notes, for Birmingham, [Ii ~ í]. It is possible that some speakers
(particularly in Black Country) may retain a distinction between MEET and MEAT.
Chinn and Thorne (2001: 21) maintain that Bm speakers’ realisation of FLEECE
is typically “closer to an ‘ay’ sound” ([í ~ Ii]), e.g. need, these, disease, piece,
receive, key, quay, people, machine. Indeed, there is considerable written evidence
for Bm/BC diphthongisation (to [Ii ~ í]), possibly representing (partial?) lack of
operation of the FLEECE merger (or MEET-MEAT merger). Various spellings are
employed, especially representing StE <ea> spellings (i.e. representing Middle
English /E˘/):
148 Urszula Clark
<ay> e.g. Bm <pays> peas; Bm <spayk> speak;

BC <Aynuk> Enoch, <kay> key;
Bm/BC <tay> tea; Bm <nayther> neither = StE <e>, <ey>, <ea>
<ai> e.g. Bm/BC <aive> heave, <naither> neither,
<aither> either = StE <ea>, <ei>
<ae> e.g. BC <flae> flea, <tae> tea = StE <ea>
<aCe> e.g. Bm <tagious> tedious; BC <spake>
speak, <clane> clean, <chate> cheat,
<stale> steal = StE <ea>
Chinn and Thorne (2001: 138–139) note that many local Birmingham pla-
cenames with spellings in <ea> have a FACE-type pronunciation, e.g. (River)
<Rea>, <Weaman> (Street). There appears to be a potential shortening (to [])
before obstruent in BC <chep> cheap. Chinn and Thorne also note that short [I]
is usual in week, seen, been, a claim supported for Black Country also by writ-
ten, SED and audio evidence (apparently for shortening before an obstruent), but
especially involving words with <ee> spellings (i.e. usually derived from ME
/e˘/).Examples include BC <bi> be; Bm/BC <bin> been; BC <(tha) bist> (thou)
art; Bm/ BC <sin> seen; BC <sid> seed ‘seen’; BC <kippin’> keeping; Bm/ BC
<wi(c)k> week (from OE wice); BC <wi(c)k> weak, <Haysich Brook> Hayseech
Brook.
Heath (1980: 87) has [ïi] for Cannock.
FACE
This is one of the few variables for which there appears to be a consistent differ-
ence between the Black Country and Birmingham conurbations.
As Wells (1982: 210–211) explains, the West Midlands variety has undergone
long mid diphthonging, producing diphthongs rather than pure vowels in FACE.
It appears from the BCDP data that Birmingham typically has [√I], much as in
South-East England, while the Black Country typically has [QI]. In more formal
styles, [EI] occurs in both areas.
According to Wells (1982: 357), the long mid mergers (see also GOAT) were
generally carried through in the Midlands, so that distinctions are no longer made
between pairs like mane and main.
Mathisen (1999: 109) maintains that Sandwell speakers typically have [Qi],
compared to Bm [√i]; elderly speakers also have [Ei], or [E] as in TAKE. Hughes
and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [QI]. Painter (1963: 30) similarly has BC /QI/,
realised as [a_I], alternating with /e/, realised as [e_], the latter presumably in the
TAKE subset. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 22) maintain that Bm speakers’ realisa-
tion here is typically “very open, similar to (…) Cockney speakers” ([√I]), e.g.
in break, way, waist, weight. However, he notes [E] in various verb forms of the
TAKE subset, e.g. make, made, take.
There is evidence for various non-short realisations (quality unclear – possibly

[QI]). See also NURSE, START, THOUGHT, PALM, where the same written conven-
tion may be used:
<aer> e.g. Bm <taerter> potato; BC <aerprun>
apron, <baerked> baked, <baersun>
basin, <caerke> cake, <caerse> case,
<aerl> ale, <paerstin’> pasting, <paerpers>
papers, <thraerpe> thrape “a hiding”,
<waerst> waste = StE <aCe>
<ae> e.g. BC <naeme> name = StE <aCe>
<air> e.g. BC <fairce> face, <mairt> mate,
<tairter> potato = StE <aCV>
<aa> e.g. Bm <baacon> bacon, <caake> cake = StE <aCV>
<ay> e.g. BC <rayn> rain, <payn> pain, <tayste>
taste, <Ayli> Eli (possibly ‘eye-dialect’?) = StE <ai>; <aCe>, <e>
<er> e.g. BC <wert> weight, <nerbours>
neighbours, <wertin> waiting = StE <eigh>, <ai>
There is evidence (written, also audio) for various short-vowel realisations, ap-
parently:
(1) [E] in verb forms in Bm <en’t/ennit> ain’t; Bm/ BC <tek/tekkin’/tekin>
take/taking; Bm/ BC <mek/mekin/med> make/making/made (the TAKE
subset).
(2) [I] in Bm <in’t/inarf> ain’t/ain’t half (isn’t/isn’t half), <agin> again(st),
<allis> (also Bm/ BC <allus>) always. Note especially [I] or [i˘] in Bm
<causey> causeway (as in other dialects, e.g. North-eastern place-name
Causey Arch).
(3) [a] in Bm/ BC <babby> baby.
Heath (1980: 87) has [EI] for Cannock.
PALM
Data from the BCDP, Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) and Mathisen (1999: 109)
suggest that the WM dialect typically has [A˘]; Wells (1982: 360) claims this is typi-
cal of the Midland cities. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 23) similarly maintain that Bm
speakers’ realisation here is typically long ([A˘]), e.g. half, aunt, laugh, laughter.
Painter (1963: 30) has BC /a/, realised as [a], apparently alternating with /A˘/,
realised as [A±˘].
There is written evidence for a BC pronunciation of (grand)father possibly in
the region of [e´ ~ eI], with spellings <faerther>, <fai(r)ther> and <grandferther>
(as for NURSE and FACE).
150 Urszula Clark
THOUGHT
BCDP found that THOUGHT was typically higher than RP, i.e. [ç£˘]. Mathisen
(1999: 109) maintains that Sandwell speakers typically have [ç˘], while Painter
(1963: 30) has BC /o˘/, realised as [o4˘]. There is written evidence for BC shorten-
ing (to [Å]) before stops in <brod> broad, <ockerd> awkward and for BC failure
to undergo rounding, along with other processes:
(1) apparently to [a˘] in <dahb> daub, <aanchboon> haunchbone;
(2) in <allus> always;
(3) after /w/ in <wairter>, <waerter>; see section 3 below.
GOAT
According to the BCDP data, typically [√U]. Before /l/, there is a tendency for
onset lowering (e.g. GOAL [gQU…]). It is possible that some speakers, particularly
in the Black Country, may retain a lack of distinction between NOSE and KNOWS,
although according to Wells (1982: 357), the long mid mergers (see also FACE)
were generally carried through in the Midlands (typical realisations being [çU ~
√U]). Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [√U], while Mathisen (1999: 109)
has [aU > çU] for Sandwell.
Painter (1963: 30) has BC /çU/, realised as [ç4U], with sporadic [åU ~ åU_], as well
as sporadic [u_ ~ ç4w´] or (rare) [e_U_], while Chinn and Thorne (2001: 22) maintain
that Bm speakers’ realisation here is typically “something similar to ‘ow’” ([´¨]),
e.g. in do, mood, rude, group, flew, shoe, juice, blue.
There is some evidence (mostly written, some audio) for lack of a NOSE/KNOWS
merger, in the form of /U/-type vowels at least in forms of the verb go (e.g. Bm
<goo/a-gooin’/gu/guin’/guz>), as well as <’um/um> home, <wunnarf> won’t half,
<dun’t> don’t. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 160) claim that the feature also occurs in
home in Worcestershire and Black Country, although in the latter case <wum> is
said to be more frequent.
In fact, the written material may provide evidence for lack of NOSE/KNOWS
merger: words especially with StE <oCe> may be respelt as follows (suggesting
something like [U ~ uU ~ u˘]):
<oo> e.g. Bm/ BC <goo> go; BC <boone> bone,
<wool> whole, <Joones> Jones = StE <oC(e)>
<oo> e.g. BC <coot> coat = StE <oa>
<u> e.g. Bm <’um> home, <gu> go, <dun’t> don’ t;
Bm/ BC <wum> home; BC <su> so = StE <oC(e)>
There is also some written evidence for variable [ç˘]-type realisations in Bm/ BC
<grawt>/<grort> groat(s) (cf. <grawty/grorty dick>, but also <grawty/greaty pud-
ding>).
Heath (1980: 87) has [ç4U > çU] for Cannock.
GOOSE
The BCDP data indicate that as in South-East England, there is a definite tendency
towards diphthongisation, typically [´¨]; compare FLEECE. Also as in the South-
East, there is some tendency towards fronting, particularly among younger people.
In the subset NEW, it appears that Black Country speakers (at least) typically have
older [IU] rather than [ju˘].
Wells (1982: 359, 363) notes that Northern accents usually have [u˘ ~ Uu], but
[u˘ ~ ú] is characteristic of Bm and some other urban dialects. Some speakers
retain contrastive [u] in words of the NEW subset, like blue, suit, although this
appears to be quite sharply recessive against the RP-type [u˘ ~ ju˘], so that there
is a tendency to lose the historical distinction between threw and through. Tradi-
tional-dialect possibilities include [EU] in parts of Staffordshire and Derbyshire,
although Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [Eu].
Mathisen (1999: 109) notes [u˘] generally, but diphthongised variants for older
Sandwell speakers, while Painter (1963: 30) has BC /u_/, realised as [u+˘], alternat-
ing with /çU/, realised as [ç4U], with sporadic [u_ ~ ç£w´] or (rare) [e_U_].
There is written evidence for an [ç˘]-type realisation in Bm <chaw> ‘chew’
(compare, for example, US dialects; OE ce#owan), for an [a˘]-type realisation in
WM <mardy> (if this = moody; compare other dialects, e.g. Yorkshire <mardy>),
and for early shortening to [Å] in Bm <goss> (OE go#s).
A typical feature of the WM dialect is that of markedly diphthongal realisations
in (stressed) you-forms. Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 85) characterise a Walsall
speaker as having [jau], while Chinn and Thorne (2001: 168) claim that, typically,
Bm has <yo> ([j√U]) and BC has <yow> ([jaU]). For BC, you-forms – including
e.g. you’d, you’ve, you’m (the latter being the contracted form of dialectal you am)
– are often conventionally represented as <yow/yoe/yo>, <yer>, <ya>. Analysis
of usage in Bm/BC dialect writing suggests that <yow/yoe/yo> represent stressed
forms like [jaU], [j√U], while <yer>/<ya> represents unstressed forms like [j´].
Biddulph (1986: 12) suggests that written forms such as <yow> should be taken
to represent [jQw] or [jQww].
Heath (1980: 87) has [´£u_] for Cannock.
PRICE
The BCDP evidence suggests that WM PRICE is typically [ÅI] but approaches [aI]
in more formal registers.
Wells (1982: 358, 363) notes that the Midlands rang from most typical [AI] to
[ÅI ~ çI]. PRICE-CHOICE merger may be possible because the [ÅI ~ oI] opposition
is apparently variably neutralisable, often as [çI] (see CHOICE).
Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [çi], while Chinn and Thorne (2001:
22) maintain that speakers with broad Bm accents barely differentiate the vowel
sounds in five and noise. Mathisen (1999: 109) claims [çi] occurs “occasional[ly]”
152 Urszula Clark
in Sandwell, allowing potential merger with CHOICE, while Painter (1963: 30–31)
has BC /AI/, realised as [A+I], with sporadic unstressed [A+˘].
Heath (1980: 87) has Cannock [A_I].
CHOICE
As noted above, PRICE-CHOICE confusion may occur in the WM dialect due to
merger under [çI]. However, there is also written evidence for PRICE-CHOICE con-
fusion as [aI], in Bm <chice> choice, <nineter> ‘mischievous or disobedient boy’
(according to Chinn and Thorne [2001: 126] apparently from anointer, cf. <nine-
ted> anointed (by the devil?); also BC <biled> boiled, <spile(’t)> spoil(t).
Heath (1980: 87) has Cannock [ç£I].
MOUTH
The BCDP data suggest that as in South-East England, MOUTH is typically [QU]
> [EU], approaching [aU] in more formal styles. Wells (1982: 359) notes that
MOUTH is generally of the [aU]-type in the Midlands, although there is quite a lot
of phonetic variation. Bm typically has [QU > Q´], although realisations like [EU]
are not as common as in the South.
Mathisen (1999: 109–110) notes that Sandwell speakers usually have [Qu ~
Eu], with an occasional [eu] among working-class males. She adds that MOUTH-
GOOSE merger may be possible. Painter (1963: 30) has BC /E_U/, realised as [E_U],
with sporadic [E_U_ ~ E_˘ ~ E_´ ~ å˘].
There is written evidence for:
(1) monophthongal realisations in Bm/BC <dahn>/<darn> down; Bm
<rahnd> round, <abaht/abart> about, <tha> thou; BC <ar> our;
(2) raised onsets (of [QU ~ EU]-type) in Bm <deawn> down, <geawnd>
gown; BC <aer> our;
(3) reduction to schwa when unstressed, in BC <broo ’us> brew-house,
<glass ’us> glass-house.
Heath (1980: 87) has [a_U] for Cannock.
NEAR
The BCDP data indicate typical [I´ ~ i´]. Wells (1982: 361) notes that the more
conservative Northern accents have disyllabic (but recessive) [i˘´].
Mathisen (1999: 110) notes [i´] for all Sandwell speakers, also /i˘/ with link-
ing /r/, while Painter (1963: 30–31) has BC /I´/, realised as [I´], evidencing a
(potential) NEAR-SQUARE merger. There is written evidence for an /e´/-type
realisation in <nayer> near.
Heath (1980: 87) has [ïi´] for Cannock.
SQUARE
The BCDP data indicate that SQUARE typically has [E´ > E˘ ~ ´˘]. According
to Wells (1982: 361), merger with NURSE may variably occur in the WM dia-
lect (probably as [Œ˘]). Where there is no merger, Northern speakers often have
monophthongal [E˘]. Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [ø˘], evidencing
NEAR-SQUARE merger.
Mathisen (1999: 110) holds that most speakers have a monophthong, although
some older speakers may have [E´], while Painter (1963: 30) has BC /I´/, real-
ised as [I´], but alternating with /E_´/, realised as [E4´ ~ E´]. Again, these can be
interpreted as instances of NEAR-SQUARE merger. A similar phenomenon can be
observed for onset raising (apparently yielding [I´]) in Bm/BC <theer>/<thee’er>
there, <w(h)eer> where, for which there is written evidence.
Heath (1980: 87) has [E˘] for Cannock.
START
The BCDP data indicate typical [A˘]. Wells (1982: 360) notes that this is typical of the
Midland cities. Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) also have WM [A˘], but Painter (1963:
30) has BC /a/, realised as [a], apparently alternating with /A˘/, realised as [A+˘].
Heath (1980: 87) has [A_˘] for Cannock.
NORTH
The BCDP data indicate typical [ç£˘], although some speakers may retain a NORTH-
FORCE distinction (see FORCE). However, Wells (1982: 360) notes that Northern
speakers typically have [ç˘], which is being extended to the FORCE set. Painter
(1963: 30) has BC /o˘/, realised as [o4˘], alternating with /o´/, realised as [o+´],
while Heath (1980: 87) has Cannock [ç+˘].
FORCE
The BCDP data indicate typical [ç£˘]. As noted, some speakers may retain a NORTH-
FORCE distinction, with FORCE having [√U´] instead. Older speakers of the WM
dialect may retain [U´ ~ o´]. Mathisen (1999: 108) has Sandwell [jaU] your (see
<yow>-forms under GOOSE above) while Painter (1963: 30) has BC /o˘/, realised
as [o4˘]. There is written evidence for:
(1) an [√u´]-type realisation in Bm <fower> four (OE fe#ower), BC <yower/
yoer/yo’re> your (versus unstressed <yer/ya>);
(2) raising (to [u˘]) in BC <cootin’> courting.
Heath (1980: 87) has Cannock [ç´˘].
CURE
The BCDP data indicate that [ç£˘] is typical (especially for younger speakers); [u´]
is common for older speakers. Indeed, Wells (1982: 361) notes that the more con-
154 Urszula Clark
servative Northern accents have [u˘´] or even [Iu´], although these are receding in
the face of the RP-type [ç˘].
Chinn and Thorne (2001: 22) maintain that Bm speakers’ realisation here is
typically “similar to ‘ooa’” ([u˘å]), e.g. in cure, endure, lure, mature, poor, pure,
sure, tour. For Mathisen (1999: 110), potential Black Country variants include
[ju˘´ ~ jç˘ ~ ú˘´ ~ U´ ~ ç˘], although Painter (1963: 30–31) has BC /u_´/, realised
as [u+´], with sporadic [´£w´].
happY
The BCDP data suggest that this is typically tense and with diphthongisation, i.e.
[Ii > i˘]. Wells (1982: 362) notes [i˘] in the peripheral North (including Birming-
ham), and Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) also note WM [i˘]. However, Painter
(1963: 30–31) has BC /Í/, realised as [´£I], with sporadic unstressed [I ~ e_I]; simi-
larly, Chinn and Thorne (2001: 21) maintain that Bm speakers’ realisation here is
typically “close to ‘ay’” ([í ~ Ii]), e.g. in pretty, family, money, gulley.
lettER
The BCDP data suggest that this is typically [´], with a marked tendency towards
lowering to [å]; /r/ usually reappears in linking positions.
Chinn and Thorne (2001: 20–21) maintain that Bm speakers’ realisation here is
typically “a”-like ([å]), e.g. in mother, computer, water, Christopher, mitre, doc-
tor, razor, sugar, pillar, picture, mixture, sulphur, colour, amateur. Hughes and
Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [´], but for Mathisen (1999: 110) this vowel is often
/E/. Painter (1963: 30–31) has BC /´/, realised as [´4 ~ ´£] (following close/half-
close vowel versus open/half-open vowel respectively).
horsES
Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 55) have WM [´z].
commA
The BCDP data indicate that this is typically [´], with a marked tendency towards
lowering to [å]. Painter (1963: 30–31) has BC /´/, realised as [´4 ~ ´£] (following
close/half-close vowel versus open/half-open vowel respectively), while Chinn
and Thorne (2001: 20–24) maintain that Bm speakers’ realisation here is typically
“a”-like ([å]), e.g. in China, dogma.
3. Consonants
Regarding the Black Country, Painter (1963: 31–2) maintains that:

(1) consonants are slightly labialised before stressed THOUGHT, NORTH,
FORCE, LOT and GOAT;
(2) consonants are slightly palatalised before stressed FLEECE or GOOSE;

(3) voiced initial and final consonants are usually fully voiced;
(4) final voiceless stops are ejective;
(5) final voiced stops are fully exploded and fully voiced;
(6) in the case of the -ing suffix, BC phrase-final [-In] contrasts with
Bm [-INg];
(7) intervocalic /r/ = [R];
(8) “linking” /r/ is common;
(9) [®] is rare;
(10) BC often evidences the “T-to-R” rule (with /t/ realised as [R] especially in
intervocalic environments).
Biddulph (1986: 2, 17–18) claims WM accents have so-called doubled or emphatic
consonants (apparently geminate obstruents in medial position) – although so far
no instances of such a phenomenon have been noted in the research literature or
fieldwork data – as well as some aspiration on final plosives for Bm speakers (see
D below). He claims the emphatic consonants are more prevalent in Birmingham
than in the Black Country.
N
There is written evidence for the potential realisation of /n/ as [d] in <chimdy>
chimney.
NG
As noted above, the NG variable provides one major distinguishing factor as re-
gards the WM dialect. As Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 63) explain, most varieties
do not, in informal speech, have [N] in <-ing>, but rather [n]. However, in a
West-Central area of England (including Birmingham, Coventry, Stoke, Manches-
ter, Liverpool and Sheffield, as well as rural counties including Staffordshire and
parts of Warwickshire) there is a form [Ng] for cases showing <ng> in the spelling.
Thus, as Wells (1982: 365–366) notes, while most accents of English have a three-
term system of nasals, the West Midlands and parts of the (southern) North-West
have a two-term system whereby [N] is merely an allophone of /n/. Wells calls
this phenomenon velar nasal plus. Most accents (including RP) have [N] in words
like song, hang, wrong; but some Northern accents are non-NG-coalescing and so
disallow final [N] (at least after stressed vowels).
Chinn and Thorne (2001: 22) go so far as to suggest that while [Ng] frequently
occurs in the speech of younger Birmingham speakers, this pattern may actually be
156 Urszula Clark
a recent development, as it is “not altogether true” of older speakers. Wells notes

that [Ng] occurs well up the social scale; Heath (1980) found it in all social classes
in Cannock, while in the BC [N] has been reported as occurring in unstressed word-
final syllables (thus [»mo˘niN] vs. [sINg]). Indeed, although NG is stereotypically re-
alised as [Ng] in the WM dialect, analysis of the BCDP data makes it clear that there
is variation (particularly among younger speakers) between [Ng] and [n] and [N].
Similarly, for Sandwell, Mathisen (1999: 111) notes word-final [Ng ~ N] and
[Ng] before a word-initial suffix, but comments that it is subject to considerable
stylistic variation, with [Ng] favoured by teenage women and for monitored
speech.
The potential alternation between [n] and [Ng] in BC is noted also by Biddulph
(1986: 12).
PLOSIVES
BCDP data reveal that there may be marked aspiration in syllable-final position
for all the plosives.
B, D, G
There is (particularly) written evidence for fortition (following /h/ loss) of the onset
of OE e#a to [j], [dj] and especially [dZ] in BC <yed> head, <d’yed> dead; Bm/BC
<jed> dead; BC <jeth> death. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 106) claim that such forms
are today found mainly in BC, but were formerly also widely found in Bm.
There is written evidence for excrescent [d] following /n/ in Bm <aprond/ap-
pund/haprond> apron (from ME naperon), <gownd/geawnd> gown (from ME
goune), <saucepand> saucepan (from ME sauce + OE panne), <drownded>
drowned (from (Northern)ME drun(e), droun(e)). But note the legitimate pres-
ence of [d] in <lawnd> lawn (from ME laund(e) ‘glade’, ultimately from Celtic),
<riband> ribbon (ribbon = variant of riband from ME riband).
There is written evidence for [D] rather than /d/ in Bm/BC <blather> bladder
(compare OE blæ#dre but Old Norse bláðra) and BC <lather> ladder. A change of
/d/ to /D/ before /r/ is attested for local ME dialects by Kristensson (1987: 213).
There is written evidence for affrication before a high front segment in Bm
<tagious> tedious (probably [»t√IdZIs]).
There is some written evidence for final devoicing in Bm <fount> found, <olt>
hold. According to Brook (1972: 69), one of the defining characteristics of the
Middle English WM dialect was word-final devoicing of /b d g/ following liquids
or nasals, as well as of /d/ in final position in unstressed syllables (e.g. hadet ‘be-
headed’).
P
Mathisen (1999: 110) notes that glottalling for P is quite frequent, but less so than
for T. There is apparent /p/-voicing in Bm/BC <bibble> pebble.
T
Mathisen (1999: 110) identifies [t] as the standard realisation, with T-glottalling
frequent for younger speakers but infrequent for the elderly. Tap [R] is considered
mainly a male variant.
The BCDP data do indicate that many speakers have such a T-to-R rule (tap-
ping of /t/ in intervocalic position), while T-glottalling occurs especially among
younger speakers.
As Wells (1982: 261) notes, T-glottalling is widespread in most of the British
Isles. Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 62) certify that this is indeed prevalent among
younger urban working-class speakers in the UK. It is therefore not surprising to
find this feature in the West Midlands. There is written evidence for word-final T-
glottalling (or deletion) in Bm <wha’> what, <doan> don’t, <las’ night>, <in’ arf>
isn’ t half, <ackidock> aqueduct.
However, Chinn and Thorne (2001: 23) maintain that there are “relatively few
glottal stops [replacing /t/] in Birmingham speech”, whether occurring medially
(e.g. daughter, cutlery, butter) or finally (e.g. feet, that).
There is considerable written evidence for the T-to-R rule (noted also by Bid-
dulph 1986: 12), e.g. in Bm <gerra/gerron/a-gerrin’/gerrout/gerraway> get a/get
on/getting/get out/get away, <gorra/gurra/gorrin/gorrall> got a/in/all, <irrin/irrup>
it in/up, <marrer/marra> matter, <birra> bit of, <purron> put on; BC <gerroff> get
off, <bur ’e> but he, <bur at> but at, <ger ’undred> get hundred.
There is also written evidence for anticipatory realisation of /t/ as [k] between
/I/ and syllabic /l/, as in Bm/BC <lickle> little or Bm <orsepickle> hospital. Note
apparent hypercorrection in BC <pittle> pickle, <tittle> tickle. Furthermore, there
is audio and written evidence for yod-coalescence to /tS/ before high front seg-
ments, e.g. in Bm <ackchullay> actually.
K
Mathisen (1999: 110) notes that glottalling of K is quite frequent, but less so than
for T. There is written evidence for [tS] rather than /k/ in Bm <reechy> reeky
‘smoky’ (from OE reìc,*riec).
F
There is written evidence for medial and final deletion of /f/ (paralleled for V, see
below) in Bm <arter>; BC <airta> after. There is written evidence for [g] rather
than /f/ in <durgey> ‘dwarf; small, diminutive’ (note also variation in OE dweorg
vs dweorh ‘dwarf’).
H
As Wells points out (1982: 371; see also Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 85; Chinn
and Thorne 2001: 22), /h/-dropping is prevalent in the vernacular accents of the
Midlands and Middle North in initial or medial position. /h/ is especially likely to
158 Urszula Clark
be canonically deleted in word-initial position (as shown by numerous audio and

written examples, and noted also by Biddulph 1986: 3).
The BCDP data suggest that /h/-dropping is near-canonical in the WM dialect,
although Mathisen (1999: 110) in Sandwell found it to be typical of teenage and
working-class speech.
There is also written evidence for epenthetic (hypercorrect) /h/ in Bm <hap-
rond> apron, and for realisation as [w] initially in BC <wum> home (also <hum>,
<’um>).
GH
There is SED and written evidence for cases of ME /x/→ WM [f] in contexts
where RP might have different realisations, e.g. Bm <duff> dough (from OE da#g),
<sluff> slough ‘midden pool’ (from OE slo⎯h, slo#g), WM <suff> sough ‘drain’
(compare other dialects; RP rough, tough, enough, slough (v.) etc).
V
There is written evidence for deletion of /v/ in medial and final position, possibly
in low-stressed or unstressed syllables. This is paralleled for F, see above. Ex-
amples include Bm/BC <gi’/gie> give; Bm <gin> given; WM <ne’er/nare> never,
<nerrun> never a one (compare other dialect or archaic forms like nary (a one),
ne’er), BC <o’> of, <gimme> give me, <atta> have to.
TH
For Sandwell, Mathisen (1999: 111) notes [T ~ D] for adult speakers, but [f ~ v]
for a growing number of teenagers, especially males.
There is written evidence for /T/-deletion in BC <wi’> with, <wie ’er> with
her, <wi’outen> without; for /D/-stopping in BC <furder> further (an archaism,
cf. burthen ~ burden; see D), and for rhoticisation of /D/ (to a tap, [R]) in Bm/BC
<Smerrick> Smethwick. A sporadic local change of OE /rD/ to ME /rd/ is noted by
Kristensson (1987: 213).
Z
There is written evidence for /z/-deletion (as well as possibly /t/-deletion) in isn’t
in Bm <in’ arf> isn’t half.
W
There is written evidence for /w/-deletion in unstressed initial and medial posi-
tion in Bm <ull> will, <’ud> would, <(big) ’uns> (big) ones, <back’ards> back-
wards, <forrards> forwards (compare data from the OED: colloquial can’t get any
forrader; maritime usage forr’ard), <arse-uppards> arse-upwards ‘topsy-turvy’,
<causey> causeway (as in other dialects, e.g. North-Eastern place-name Causey
Arch); also BC <ud/ood> would, <udn’t> wouldn’t, <oot> wouldst (thou).
There is also written and anecdotal evidence of cases of failure to round his-
torical /a/ following /w/ (relating to instances of CLOTH and THOUGHT; see
above); sometimes this appears to be accompanied by fronting. Thus, Chith-
am (1972: 171–172) claims that in BC wasp rhymes with clasp (presumably
as [wasp]); for wash, Mathisen (1999: 108) has Sandwell [wQS], for which
note also BC <wesh> ([wES]). There is also Bm/BC <wairter>/<waerter> water,
where presumably raising of historical /a˘/ to something like [e´ ~ e˘] occurred
(see also FACE, NURSE, START, PALM, where the same convention may be
used). In the cases of fronting, OE (Mercian) second fronting may have been
involved (note the derivations of wash and water in OE wæscan and wæter
respectively).
WH
Wells (1982: 371) notes that historical /hw/ has become /w/ in all English urban
accents; certainly the BCDP data reveal no /w/ ~ /hw/ distinction. However, there
is written evidence for /hw/-simplification to [w] rather than [h] in BC <wool>
whole (possibly represents [wU…]).
R
WM accents, like those of the South-East, are non-rhotic (Wells 1982: 360), but
have both linking and intrusive /r/. While the SED material does show that loca-
tions near and within the Black Country (Himley and other areas nearby) were at
least partially rhotic until comparatively recently, the current isogloss separating
the rhotic South-West from the non-rhotic Midlands (and indeed most of the coun-
try) runs some way to the South of the West Midlands conurbation.
Chinn and Thorne (2001: 23) maintain that tapped realisations of /r/ are fre-
quent in Birmingham speech, occurring especially in disyllabic words such as
marry, very, sorry, perhaps, all right, but also in monosyllables such as bright,
great, cream. They note that tap production varies considerably between speakers
and sociolinguistic contexts.
Mathisen (1999: 110) explains that Sandwell usually has [®], but there are
some instances of prevocalic [R]. Linking-R is categorical and intrusive R very
frequent.
Y
The West Midlands has some degree of yod-dropping, as the BCDP data reveal
(e.g. new [nUu]). Mathisen (1999: 111) also found some instances of yod-drop-
ping in Sandwell, especially with teenagers and especially with new. Yod-drop-
ping is also evidenced in Bm <dook> duke, <dooks> dukes ‘fists’, BC <noo> new,
possibly <tewns> tunes; also in BC <’ears> years. Note also written evidence for
(hypercorrect?) yod-insertion in BC <unkyoothe> uncouth.
160 Urszula Clark
L
According to BCDP, L typically appears to be dark. Mathisen (1999: 111) notes
that L is frequently dark in all positions for males, but usually clear for females,
with some L-vocalisation among younger speakers. Note Mathisen’s (1999: 108)
datum for Sandwell: [fAUd] fold.
There is written evidence for medial preconsonantal L-vocalisation or loss in
Bm <mawkin> malkin ‘scarecrow’ (from pet-name for Matilda); Bm/BC <fode>
fold ‘backyard’, <ode> old; BC <tode> told, <code> cold, <sode> sold, <onny>
any, <bawk> ba(u)lk.
4. Morphophonological processes
The Black Country is noted for its highly contracted negative modal forms, evi-
denced where possible using Painter’s (1963: 32–33) transcriptions, as well as
respelling conventions, as follows:
[QI] <ay/ai’> ain’t ‘am not/isn’t/aren’t, hasn’t/haven’t’
[bQI] <bay/bey> bain’t ‘am not/isn’t/aren’t’
<in’> isn’t
<wor(e)> wasn’t/weren’t
<doe/doh/dow> doesn’t/don’t
[de_´sn`t] <dursn’t>? don’t
<day> didn’t
[wçU] <woh/wo’/woa> won’t
[So˘] <share> shan’t
[ko˘] <cor(e)/caw> can’t
[mo˘] <mo> mustn’t
Note also Mathisen (1999: 108) [kç˘] can’t, [kç˘® Qvit] can’t have it.
Written evidence from Chinn and Thorne (2001: 74, 121) suggests that similar
phonological processes may operate in Birmingham (at least in traditional work-
ing-class dialect), e.g. <dain’t>/<dain> didn’t. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 121) cite
a form <mon’t> mustn’t. This could perhaps be a contraction of mustn’t, or derived
from earlier (ME) maun ‘must’ + -n’t (Bm <mun>).
There is evidence for the retention of the reflex of the OE form axian ‘to ask’
(rather than OE ascian) in <aks> ask.
5. Current issues
The English West Midlands dialect is an under-researched area in all its linguistic
aspects, which is surprising given its continued widespread use in both speech
and writing. Mathisen (1999) found that in Sandwell the exogenous factor T-glot-
talling was spreading, but the local identity marker [Ng] was robust and not sig-
nificantly eroded. Changes seem to be largely brought about by females within the
speech community.
Research in progress includes work on language change in the Black Country,
attitudes to the Black Country and Birmimgham accents, and the relationship be-
tween language and identity.
* Project leader, Black Country Dialect Project, University of Wolverhampton. Phonological

analysis undertaken with the assistance of Peter Finn, research assistant, BCDP.
Selected references
ROM.
Biddulph, Joseph
1986 A Short Grammar of Black Country. Pontypridd: Languages Information
Centre.
Bonaparte, Prince Louis Lucien
1875–1876
On the dialects of Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire,
Gloucestershire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, South Warwickshire, South
Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex and Surrey,
with a new classification of the English dialects. Transactions of the
Philological Society: 570–581.
Brook, George L.
1972 English Dialects. London: Deutsch.
Chinn, Carl and Steve Thorne (eds.)
2001 Proper Brummie: A Dictionary of Birmingham Words and Phrases. Studley,
Warks.: Brewin Books.
Chitham, Edward
1972 The Black Country. London: Longman.
Fletcher, Kate
1975 The Old Testament in the Dialect of the Black Country, Part I: Genesis to
Deuteronomy. Tipton: Black Country Society.
Gibson, P. H.
1955 Studies in the linguistic geography of Staffordshire. M.A. thesis, Department
of Linguistics, University of Leeds.
Glauser, Beat
1997 Review of Heide Gugerell-Scharsach. The West Midlands as a dialect area: A
phonological, lexical and morphological investigation based on the Survey of
English Dialects. Anglia 115: 92–97.
162 Urszula Clark
Gugerell-Scharsach, Heide
1992 The West Midlands as a Dialect Area: A Phonological, Lexical and
Morphological Investigation Based on the Survey of English Dialects.
München: Awi.
Heath, Christopher D.
1980 Pronunciation of English in Cannock, Staffordshire: A Socio-Linguistic Survey
of an Urban Speech-Community. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kristensson, Gillis
1987 A Survey of Middle English Dialects 1290–1350: The West Midlands Counties.
Lund: Lund University Press.
Lass, Roger
1987 The Shape of English: Structure and History. London: Dent.
Mathisen, Anne Grethe
1999 Sandwell, West Midlands: Ambiguous perspectives on gender patterns and
models of change. In: Foulkes and Docherty (eds.), 107–123.
Moore, Samuel, Sanford B. Meech and Harold Whitehall
1935 Middle English Dialect Characteristics and Boundaries. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Orton, Harold and Michael Barry
1998 Survey of English Dialects (B) Basic Material, Volume 2: The West Midlands
Counties, Parts 1–2. 2nd edition. Leeds: Arnold.
Painter, Collin
1963 Black Country speech. Maître Phonétique 120: 30–33.
Parsons, Harold (ed.)
1977 Black Country Stories. Dudley: Black Country Society.
Solomon, Philip
2000 Philip Solomon’s On-line Dictionary of Black Country Words. http://www.
philipsolomon.co.uk/page20.html.
Thorne, Steve
1999 Accent and prejudice: a sociolinguistic survey of evaluative reactions to
the Birmingham accent. M.A. thesis, Department of English, University of
Birmingham.
Todd, Loreto and Stanley Ellis
1992a The Midlands. In: McArthur (ed.), 660.
1992b Birmingham. In: McArthur (ed.), 130–131.
Upton, Clive
1995 Mixing and fudging in Midland and Southern dialects of England: The cup
and foot vowels. In: Jack Windsor Lewis (ed.), Studies in General and English
Phonetics, 385–394. London: Routledge.
The dialect of East Anglia: phonology
Peter Trudgill
1. Introduction
1.1. East Anglia
As a modern topographical and cultural term, East Anglia refers to an area with
no official status. Like similar terms such as “The Midlands” or “The Midwest”,
the term is widely understood but stands for an area which has no clear boundar-
ies. Most people would agree that the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk are
prototypically East Anglian, although even here the status of the Fenland areas of
western Norfolk and northwestern Suffolk is ambiguous: the Fens were for the
most part uninhabited until the 17th century, and the cultural orientations of this
area are therefore less clear. The main issue, however, has to do with the extent
to which the neighbouring counties, notably Cambridgeshire and Essex, are East
Anglian or not.
Historically, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia was bordered in the
south by the river Stour, and in the west by the Ouse, the Lark and the Kennett,
thus leaving the Newmarket and Haverhill areas of Suffolk, from a modern per-
spective, on the ‘wrong’ side of the border. The Kingdom later expanded further
west, however, up to the River Cam; Anglo-Saxon East Anglia at its greatest ex-
tent therefore consisted of the habitable parts of Norfolk and Suffolk plus eastern
Cambridgeshire.
East Anglian English has probably always been a distinctive area. Fisiak
(2001) discusses its distinctive character in Old English and Middle English
times. It has also played an important role in the history of the language. If it is
accepted that the English language came into being when West Germanic groups
first started to settle in Britain, then East Anglia – just across the North Sea from
the coastline of the original West Germanic-speaking area – has a serious claim
to be the first place in the world where English was ever spoken. Subsequently,
East Anglian English played an important role in the formation of Standard Eng-
lish. East Anglia was one of the most densely populated areas of England for
many centuries, and until the Industrial Revolution Norwich was one of the
three largest provincial cities in the country. Together with the proximity of
East Anglia to London and large-scale migration from the area to London, this
meant that a number of features that came to be part of Standard English had
their origins in East Anglia. East Anglia also played an important role in the
development of colonial Englishes, notably the American English of New Eng-
164 Peter Trudgill
land. The New England short o clearly has its origins in East Anglian pronuncia-
tions such as home /hUm/; and yod-dropping (see below) and ‘conjunction do’
(see Trudgill, other volume) were also transmitted to the USA from this area.
East Anglian English also formed part of the input for the formation of the Eng-
lishes of Australia and New Zealand (see Trudgill 1986; Trudgill et al. 2000).
More recently, however, East Anglia, particularly the northern area, has become
much more isolated, and its English has retained a number of conservative fea-
tures.
As a distinctive linguistic area, East Anglia is clearly smaller today than it was
two hundred years ago: it has shrunk over the past many decades under the influ-
ence of English from the London area. In the 19th century, it would probably have
been reasonable to consider parts of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire as linguisti-
cally East Anglian; now it would no longer be so (see Trudgill 1999a). On the
other hand, there are still parts of Essex which are linguistically very similar to
Norfolk and Suffolk.
Modern linguistic East Anglia consists of a core area together with surround-
ing transition zones. The core area, as defined by Trudgill (2001), consists of the
counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, except for the Fenland areas of western Norfolk
and northwestern Suffolk, plus northeastern Essex. The transition zones consist of
the Norfolk and Suffolk Fens, together with eastern Cambridgeshire, central Es-
sex, and a small area of northeastern Hertfordshire (see Map 1).
This definition of linguistic East Anglia is based on traditional dialect features
(see Wells 1982) as presented in the Survey of English Dialects (SED). As far as
Modern Dialects are concerned (see Trudgill 1999b), the transition zones of north-
eastern Hertfordshire, central Essex and southern Cambridgeshire can no longer
be considered East Anglian. Within the core region, urban areas such as Norwich,
the largest urban centre in the region, and Ipswich are still solidly East Anglian.
Colchester, however, shows much southeastern influence; and the East Anglian
character of King’s Lynn and Thetford has been somewhat weakened by consider-
able in-migration from London and elsewhere.
1.2. Phonology
Within the core area of East Anglia, the biggest regional differentiation pho-
nologically is between the north and the south. As indicated in Map 1, the
northern area includes Norfolk, with the exception of some of the Fens, as well
as the northeastern part of Suffolk as far south, approximately, as Southwold.
The southern area includes the rest of Suffolk, and those areas of northeastern
Essex which are still East Anglian-speaking. King’s Lynn, Norwich, Yarmouth
and Lowestoft are thus in the northern area, Ipswich and Colchester in the south-
ern.
The dialect of East Anglia: phonology 165
Map 1. East Anglia
2. Vowels
2.1. Short vowels
The system of short, checked vowels in modern East Anglia is the normal south-of-
England six vowel system involving the lexical sets of: KIT, DRESS, TRAP, FOOT,
STRUT, LOT.
KIT
The phonetic realisation of this vowel in the modern dialect is the same as in RP.
Older speakers, however, have a closer realisation nearer to, but not as close as
[i].
One of the most interesting features of the older East Anglian dialect short vow-
el system was that, unlike most other varieties, /I/ did not occur at all in unstressed
syllables. Unstressed /´/ continues to be the norm to this day in words such as
wanted, horses, David, naked, hundred. More striking, however, is the fact that
166 Peter Trudgill
/´/ was the only vowel which could occur in any unstressed syllable. This was
true not only in the case of word-final syllables in words such as water, butter,
which of course also have /´/ in RP, and in words such as window, barrow, which
are pronounced /wInd´, bær´/ in very many other forms of English, but also in
items such as very, money, city which were /vEr´, m√n´, sIt´/. In the modern
dialect, dedialectalisation has taken place in that words from the very set are now
pronounced with final /I/ by older speakers and /i/ by younger speakers, as is now
usual throughout southern England.
The KIT vowel occurred not only in items such as pit, bid in the older dialect
but also in a number of other words, such as get, yet, head, again. There is little
predictability as to which items have or had the raised vowel, but in all the words
concerned the vowel was followed by /n/, /t/ or /d/.
DRESS
The vowel /E/ in the older dialect was a rather close vowel approaching [e]. Dur-
ing the course of this century, it has gradually opened until it is now much closer
to [E]. In Norwich, it is now also very retracted before /l/ and in the most modern
accents has merged with /√/ in this context, i.e. hell and hull are identical (Trudgill
1988).
In older forms of the dialect, /E/ occurred not only in the expected bet, help,
bed, etc., but also in a number of items which elsewhere have /æ/, such as catch,
have/has/had.
In the traditional dialect of northern Norfolk, /E/ has become /æ/ before /v/ and
/D/: never /næv´/, together /t´gæD´/. In the older dialect, shed is /S√d/.
TRAP
The vowel /æ/ appears to have undergone a certain amount of phonetic change.
For older speakers for whom /E/ was [e], /æ/ was closer to [E], while in the modern
dialect it is a good deal more open. In the urban dialect of Norwich it has now
also undergone a further change involving diphthongisation in some phonological
environments: back [bæEk] (see further Trudgill 1974).
FOOT
The FOOT vowel /U/ was rather more frequent in the older East Anglian dialect
than in General English (Wells 1982). Middle English /ç˘/ and /ou/ remain distinct
in the northern dialects e.g. road /ru:d/, rowed /r√ud/ (see further below). However,
there has been a strong tendency in East Anglia for the /u˘/ descended from Middle
English /ç˘/ to be shortened to /U/ in closed syllables. Thus road can rhyme with
good, and we find pronunciations such as in toad, home, stone, coat /tUd, hUm,
stUn, kUt/. This shortening does not normally occur before /l/, so coal is /ku˘l/. The
shortening process has clearly been a productive one. Norwich, for example, until
the 1960s had a theatre known as The Hippodrome /hIp´drUm/, and trade names
such as Kodachrome can be heard with pronunciations such as /kUd´krUm/. The

feature thus survives quite well in modern speech, but a number of words appear
to have been changed permanently to the /u:/ set as a result of lexical transfer (see
below). Trudgill (1974) showed that 29 different lexemes from this set occurred
with /U/.
The vowel /U/ also occurs in roof, proof, hoof and their plurals, e.g. /rUfs/. It also
occurs in middle-class sociolects in room, broom; working-class sociolects tend to
have the GOOSE vowel in these items.
In the older dialect, a number of FOOT words derived from Middle English /o˘/
plus shortening followed the same route as blood and flood and had /√/: soot, roof
/s√t, r√f/.
STRUT
There have been clear phonetic developments over the past century in the pho-
netic realisation of this vowel. It has moved forward from an earlier fully back
[√] to a more recent low-central [å], as in much of the south of England. The
movement has not been nearly so extensive, however, as the actual fronting
which has taken place in London (see Wells 1982: 305). This movement (see
Trudgill 1986) started in the south of East Anglia and has gradually spread north,
so that the vowel is backer in Norwich than in Ipswich, and backer in Ipswich
than in Colchester. The Kings Lynn area has a distinctive closer quality to this
vowel around [´].
LOT
In the southern area, rounded [] is usual. In the older accents of the northern area
unrounded [A] is the norm, but this is gradually being replaced by the rounded
vowel in the speech of younger people.
The lexical set associated with this vowel was formerly rather smaller in that,
as in most of southern England, the lengthened vowel /ç˘/ was found before the
front voiceless fricatives, as in off, cloth, lost. This feature survives to a certain
extent, but mostly in working-class speech, and particularly in the word off. The
word dog is also typically /dç˘g/. On the other hand, traditional dialect speak-
ers also have LOT in un- and under rather than STRUT. Nothing also has LOT:
/nATn/.
NURSE
Older forms of the dialect have an additional vowel in this sub-system. If we ex-
amine representations of words from the NURSE set in twentieth-century dialect
literature, we find the following (for details of the dialect literature involved, see
Trudgill 1996):
168 Peter Trudgill
Item Dialect Spelling

her har
heard hard
nerves narves
herself harself
service sarvice
earn arn
early arly
concern consarn
sir sar
fur far
daren’t dussent
first fust, fasst
worse wuss
church chuch, chatch
purpose pappus
turnip tannip
further futher
hurl hull
turkey takkey
turn tann
hurting hatten
nightshirt niteshat
shirts shats
girl gal
On the subject of words such as these in East Anglian dialects, Forby (1830: 92)
wrote:
To the syllable ur (and consequently to ir and or, which have often the same
sound) we give a pronunciation certainly our own.
Ex. Third word burn curse
Bird curd dirt worse
It is one which can be neither intelligibly described, nor represented by other
letters. It must be heard. Of all legitimate English sounds, it seems to come
nearest to open a [the vowel of balm], or rather to the rapid utterance of the a
in the word arrow, supposing it to be caught before it light on the r... Bahd has
been used to convey our sound of bird. Certainly this gets rid of the danger of
r; but the h must as certainly be understood to lengthen the sound of a; which is
quite inconsistent with our snap-short utterance of the syllable. In short it must
be heard.
My own observations of speakers this century suggest that earlier forms of East
Anglian English had a checked vowel system consisting of seven vowels. The ad-
ditional vocalic item, which I represent as /å/, was a vowel somewhat more open
than half-open, and slightly front of central, which occurred in the lexical set of
church, first. Dialect literature, as we have seen, generally spells words from the
lexical set of first, church as either as <fust> or <chatch>. The reason for this vac-
illation between <u> and <a> was that the vowel was in fact phonetically interme-
diate between /√/ and /æ/. This additional vowel occurred in items descended from
Middle English ur, or and ir in closed syllables. Words ending in open syllables,
such as sir and fur, had /a˘/, as did items descended from ME er, such as earth and
her (as well as items descended from ar such as part, cart, of course). The vowel
/Œ˘/ did not exist in the dialect until relatively recently.
During the last fifty years, the /å/ vowel has more or less disappeared. In my
1968 study of Norwich (Trudgill 1974), /å/ was recorded a number of times, but
the overwhelming majority of words from the relevant lexical set had the originally
alien vowel /Œ˘/. Only in lower working class speech was /å/ at all common in 1968,
and then only 25 percent of potential occurrences had the short vowel even in infor-
mal speech. The vowel did not occur at all in my 1983 corpus (Trudgill 1988).
The older checked stressed vowel system of East Anglian English was thus:
/I/ kit, get /U/ foot, home, roof
/e/ dress, catch /√/ strut
/E/ trap /A ~ / top, under
/å/ church
The newer short vowel system looks as follows:
/I/ kit /U/ foot, home, roof
/E/ dress, get /å/ strut, under
/æ/ trap, catch /a ~ / top, off
2.2. Upgliding diphthongs

Characteristic of all of the upgliding diphthongs, of which there is one more than
in most accents of English (see below), is the phonetic characteristic that, unlike in
other south-of-England varieties, the second element is most usually a fully close
vowel, e.g. the FACE vowel is typically [æi] rather than [æI].
FLEECE
The /i:/ vowel is an upgliding diphthong of the type [Ii], noticeably different from
London [Í]. The modern accent demonstrates happy-tensing, and this vowel
therefore also occurs in the modern dialects in the lexical set of money, city, etc.
170 Peter Trudgill
Unstressed they has /i˘/ Are they coming? /a˘Di:k√mń/ (see also Trudgill, other
volume). In the traditional dialect, mice was /mi˘s/, and deaf could be /di˘f/.
FACE
In the traditional dialects of East Anglia, the Long Mid Mergers have not taken
place (Wells 1982: 192–194). The vowel /æi/ in these lects occurs only in items
descended from ME /ai/, while items descended from ME /a˘/ have /e˘/ = [e˘ ~ E˘].
Thus pairs such as days-daze, maid-made are not homophonous. (The /e˘/ vowel
also occurred in the older dialect in a number of words descended from ME /E˘/
such as beans, creature [k®E˘/´].) This distinction, which now survives only in the
northern area, is currently being lost through a process of transfer of lexical items
from /e˘/ to /æi/ (Trudgill and Foxcroft 1978). The most local modern pronuncia-
tion of /æi/ is [æi], but qualities intermediate between this and RP [eI] occur in
middle-class speech (see Trudgill 1974).
PRICE
There is considerable variation in the articulation of the /ai/ vowel, as described
in detail for Norwich in Trudgill (1974, 1988). The most typical realisation is [åi],
but younger speakers are increasingly favouring a variant approaching [Ai] (see
further below).
CHOICE
It is still possible to hear from older speakers certain words from this set, notably
boil, with the PRICE vowel, although this is now very recessive. The vowel /oi/
itself ranges from the most local variant [Ui] to a less local variant [çi], with a
whole range of phonetically intermediate variants.
GOOSE
The vowel /¨˘/ is a central diphthong [¨4¨] with more lip-rounding on the second ele-
ment than on the first. Since northern East Anglia demonstrates total yod-dropping
(see below), there is in this part of the area complete homophony between pairs of
words which have this vowel, such as dew = do, Hugh = who, cute = coot. In northern
East Anglia, many words in this set may also occur with the vowel /u˘/ (see below).
GOAT
As we saw above, the Long Mid Mergers have not taken place in East Anglia. There
are therefore two vowels at this point in the East Anglian vowel system. Paralleling
the vestigial distinction in the front vowel system between the sets of made and maid,
corresponding to the distinction between the ME monophthong and diphthong, there
is a similar distinction in the back vowel system which, however, is by no means
vestigial in the northern part of the area. The distinction is between /u˘/ = [Uu], de-
scended from ME /ç˘/, and /√u/ = [åu], descended from ME /ou/. Thus pairs such as
moan ≠ mown, road ≠ rowed, nose ≠ knows, sole ≠ soul are not homophonous.
ME /ç˘/ plus /l/ also gives /√u/, as in hold. Words such as bowl and shoulder
have /au/ in the older dialect, however.
One further complication is that, in modern speech, adverbial no has /u˘/ while
the negative particle no has /√u/: No, that’s no good /n√u, Dæs nu˘ gUd/.
There are two additional complications. One is that, as we have already seen,
words descended from the ME monophthong may also have /U/, i.e. road can be
either/rUd/ or /ru˘d/.
Secondly, as was mentioned briefly above, many words from the set of GOOSE
which are descended from ME /o˘/ may have /u˘/ rather than /¨˘/. That is, words
such as boot may be pronounced either /b¨˘t/ or /bu˘t/. In the latter case, they are
of course then homophonous with words such as boat. Therefore rood may be ho-
mophonous either with rude or with road which, however, will not be homopho-
nous with rowed.
It is probable that this alternation in the GOOSE set is the result of lexical trans-
fer, perhaps under the influence of earlier forms of RP, from /¨˘/ to /u˘/. Forms in
/u˘/ are more typical of middle-class than of working-class speech; and phonologi-
cal environment can also have some effect: /¨˘/ before /l/ as in school has much
lower social status than it does before other consonants. Words which in my own
lower-middle class Norwich speech have /¨˘/ rather than /u˘/ include: who, whose,
do, soon, to, too, two, hoot, loot, root, toot, soup, chose, lose, loose, through, shoe.
I have no explanation at all for why, for example, soon and moon do not rhyme in
my speech. There is also considerable individual variation: my mother has /u˘/ in
chose and root, for instance, and my late father had /u˘/ in who. Note that this al-
ternation never occurs in the case of those items such as rule, tune, new etc. which
have historical sources other than ME/o˘/; these words always have /¨˘/. For very
many speakers, then, rule and school do not rhyme.
In summary:
rowed /√u/
road /u˘/ ~ /U/
rude /¨˘/
rood /¨˘/ ~ /u˘/
Two modern developments should also be noted. First, the phonetic realisation of
/u˘/ in the northern area is currently undergoing a rather noticeable change (see
below), with younger speakers favouring a fronter first element [Pu] (see Trudgill
1988; Labov 1994). This is more advanced in Lowestoft, Gorleston and Yarmouth
than in Norwich. Secondly, in the southern zone, the moan: mown distinction is
now very recessive, so that for most speakers /√u/ is used in both lexical sets and
172 Peter Trudgill
/u˘/ has disappeared. As a consequence, GOOSE words can no longer alternate in

their pronunciation.
MOUTH
The most typical realisation of the /æu/ vowel in the northern area is [æ¨], al-
though there is some variation in the quality of the first element, e.g. qualities such
as [´¨] can also be heard. In the south a more typical realisation is [E¨].
2.3. Long monophthongs

NEAR/SQUARE
These two lexical sets are not distinct in northern East Anglian English. The most
usual realisation of this single vowel, which I symbolise as /E˘/, is [e4 ~ E3˘]. It is pos-
sible that some speakers thus pronounce items such as fierce and face identically.
In the southern area, NEAR is [I´], SQUARE is [E˘].
THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE
The /ç˘/ vowel has a realisation which is approximately [ç˘] without, however, very
much lip-rounding. It occurs in items such as poor, pore, paw. As is typical of
more conservative south-of-England varieties, it also occurs frequently in the lexi-
cal set of CLOTH.
START/BATH/PALM
In its most local realisation the vowel /a˘/ is a very front vowel approaching [a˘],
but in more middle-class speech more central variants occur. Typical London and
RP back variants around [A˘] are not found. As we saw above, in the older dialect
this vowel also occurs in sir, fur, earth, her.
NURSE/CURE
It was pointed out before that the vowel / ˘/ is a relative newcomer into East An-
glian English. Its phonetic realisation is perhaps a little closer than in RP [Œ˘]. It
occurs in all items from the set of NURSE, but it also occurs in words from the
CURE set that are descended from ME /iu/ or /eu/ before r, so that sure rhymes with
her (see also below on ‘smoothing’). Note also that, because of yod-dropping (see
section 3), the following are homophones in northern East Anglia: pure = purr,
cure = cur, fury = furry.
2.4. Smoothing
We have already noted that earlier ingliding diphthongs have become monoph-
thongs: /I´/ > /E˘/ in near, /E´/ > /E˘/ in square. This is also true of /U´/ > /ç˘/ in
poor, /ç´/ > /ç˘/ in pore, and (presumably) /¨´/ > /Œ˘/ in pure. This development
has also occurred in original triphthongs, giving tower /tA˘/ and fire /fA˘/ in work-
ing-class speech – the vowel /A˘/ occurs only as a result of smoothing. In middle
class speech, however, in which /a˘/ is more central, /A˘/ does not occur, and tar
and tower are homophonous.
This historical process involving lowering before /´/ and then loss of /´/ is par-
alleled by a synchronic phonological process which carries across morpheme and
word boundaries, and extends to additional vowels. (In examining the following
examples, recall that East Anglia has /´/ in most unstressed syllables where many
other accents have /I/.) The full facts can be summarised as follows:
Vowel + // Example Output

/i˘/ seeing /sE˘n/
/æi/ playing /plæ˘n/
/ai/ trying /tra˘n ~ trA˘n/
/oi/ annoying /ńç˘n/
/¨˘/ do it /dŒ˘t/
/u˘/ going /gç˘n/
/ou/ know it /nÅ˘t/
/æu/ allow it /´la˘t/
Thus, do it is homophonous with dirt and going rhymes with lawn. The vowels
/æ˘/, /A˘/, /Å˘/ occur only as a result of smoothing. Interestingly, some speakers in
Norwich pronounce towel as /tŒ˘l/. Smoothing is most typical of the northern zone
of East Anglia, but is currently spreading southwards (Trudgill 1986).
3. Consonants
/p, t, k/
Intervocalic and word-final /p, k/ are most usually glottalised. This is most notice-
able in intervocalic position where there is simultaneous oral and glottal closure,
with the oral closure then being released inaudibly prior to the audible release of
the glottal closure, thus paper [pæip/´], baker [bæik/´].
This also occurs in the case of /t/, as in later [læit/´], but more frequently, es-
pecially in the speech of younger people, glottaling occurs: [læi/´]. East Anglia
(see Trudgill 1974) appears to have been one of the centres from which glottaling
has diffused geographically in modern English English. Trudgill (1988) showed
for Norwich that [/] is the usual realisation of intervocalic and word-final /t/ in ca-
sual speech, and that it is now also increasingly diffusing into more formal styles.
There is an interesting constraint on the use of [/] and [t/] in East Anglian English
174 Peter Trudgill
in that these allophones cannot occur before [´] if another instance follows. Thus
lit it has to be [lIt´/] rather than *[lI/´/].
In /nt/ clusters, the /n/ is frequently deleted if (and only if) the /t/ is realised as
glottal stop: twenty [twE/Ii], plenty [plE/Ii], going to [gç:/´].
/d/
Northeastern Norfolk Traditional Dialects had word-final /d/ merged with /t/ in
unstressed syllables, e.g. hundred /h√ndr´t/, David /de:v´t/.
/kl, gl/
In the older dialect, these clusters could be pronounced /tl, dl/: clock [tlAk/], glove
[dl√v].
/Tr, Sr/
The older East Anglian dialect had /tr/ from original /Tr/ and /sr/ from original /Sr/.
Thus thread was pronounced /trId/, threshold /trASl/; and shriek /sri˘k/. My own
surname appears to be an East Anglian form of Threadgold. /tw/ could also occur
for original /Tw/, as in the placename Thwaite /twæit/.
/h/
Traditional Dialects in East Anglia did not have h-dropping. Norwich and Ipswich,
however, have had h-dropping for many generations. Trudgill (1974) showed that
in Norwich in 1968 levels of h-dropping correlated with social class and style,
ranging from 0 percent for the Middle Middle Class (the highest social class
group) in formal speech to 61 percent for Lower Working Class informants in
casual speech. It is interesting that these levels are much lower than in other parts
of the country, and that hypercorrect forms do not occur.
/v/
The present-tense verb-form have is normally pronounced /hæ ~ hE ~ h´ ~ ´/, i.e.
without a final /v/, unless the next word begins with a vowel: Have you done it?
/hE j´ d√n ´t/. This has the consequence that, because of smoothing (see above),
some forms involving to have and to be are homophonous: we’re coming /wE˘
k√mń/, we’ve done it /wE˘ d√n ´t/.
In many of the local varieties spoken in the southeast of England in the 18th and
th
19 centuries, prevocalic /v/ in items like village was replaced by /w/. Most reports
focus on word-initial /w/ in items such as village, victuals, vegetables, vermin. It
would seem than that [v] occurred only in non-prevocalic position, i.e. in items
such as love, with the consequence that [w] and [v] were in complementary distri-
bution and /w/ and /v/ were no longer distinct. Ellis (1889) describes the southeast
of 19th century England as the “land of wee” and Wright (1905: 227) says that
“initial and medial v has become w in mid-Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, Suffolk,
Essex, Kent, east Sussex”. Wakelin (1981: 95–96) writes that the SED materials
show that: “In parts of southern England, notably East Anglia and the south-east,
initial and medial [v] may appear as [w], cf. V.7.19 vinegar, IV.9.4 viper (under
adder), V.8.2 victuals (under food). […] The use of [w] for [v] was a well-known
Cockney feature up to the last century.”
Wakelin (1984: 79) also says that “Old East Anglian and south-eastern dialect
is noted for its pronunciation of initial /v/ as /w/ in, e.g., vinegar, viper; a very old
feature, which was preserved in Cockney up to the last century”. The SED materi-
als show spontaneous responses to VIII.3.2 with very with initial /w/ in Grimston,
North Elmham, Ludham, Reedham, and Pulham St Mary, Norfolk. Norfolk is one
of the areas in which this merger lasted longest. The merger is ‘remembered’ by
the local community decades after its actual disappearance: most local people in
the area over a certain age ‘know’ that village used to be pronounced willage and
that very used to be pronounced werra, but discussions with older Norfolk people
suggest that it was in widespread normal unselfconscious use only until the 1920s.
We can assume that it died out in the southern part of the East Anglian area even
earlier. The fact that modern dialect writers still use the feature is therefore highly
noteworthy. For example, Michael Brindred in his local dialect column in the
Norwich-based Eastern Daily Press of August 26th, 1998 writes anniversary <an-
niwarsary>.
/l/
/l/ was traditionally clear in all positions in northern rural East Anglian dialects,
and this can still be heard from speakers born before 1920, but modern speech now
has the same distribution of clear and dark allophones as RP. Vocalisation of /l/
does not occur in the north but is increasingly common in the south of the region.
/r/
East Anglian English is non-rhotic, although the SED did record a few rhotic to-
kens on the Essex peninsulas.
Intrusive /r/ is the norm in East Anglia. It occurs invariably where the vowels
/E˘, a˘, ç˘, ´/ occur before another vowel both across word and morpheme bound-
aries: drawing /drç˘rń/, draw it /drç˘r´t/. Because of the high level of reduction
of unstressed vowels to /´/ (see above), intrusive /r/ occurs in positions where it
would be unusual in other accents: e.g. Give it to Anne /gIv ´t t´r æn/. Linking /r/
is essentially the same phenomenon and occurs additionally after /Œ˘/.
/j/
The northern zone (as well as adjacent areas of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and
even parts of Leicestershire and Bedfordshire, see Trudgill 1999a) demonstrates
total yod-dropping (Wells 1982). That is, earlier /j/ has gone missing before /¨˘/
not only after /r/, as in rule, as in all accents of English; and not only after /l, s, n,
176 Peter Trudgill
t, d, T/, as in lute, sue, news, tune, duke, enthuse, as in many accents of English;
but after all consonants. Pronunciations without /j/ are usual in items such as mu-
sic, pew, beauty, few, view, cue, hew. The word ewe now begins with /j/, although
this was formerly not the case, and education is now /EdZ´kæiSn/ although it was
formerly /Ed´ke˘Sn/. The southern part of East Anglia does not have yod-dropping
but typically has /I¨˘/ rather than /j¨˘/ in such words.
4. Rhythm and intonation
East Anglian English has a distinctive rhythm. This is due to the fact that stressed
syllables tend to be longer than in RP, and unstressed syllables correspondingly
shorter. The reduction of unstressed vowels to schwa appears to be part of this
same pattern. Indeed, unstressed syllables consisting of schwa may disappear al-
together in non-utterance final position, e.g. forty two [fç˘/t¨˘]; what are you on
holiday? [wA/ jA˘n hA˘ld´]; half past eight [ha˘˘p´s æI/]; have you got any coats?
[hæj´ gA/n´ kU/s]; shall I? [Sæl´].
Intonation in yes-no questions is also distinctive. Such questions begin on a
low level tone followed by high-level tone on the stressed syllable and subsequent
syllables:
[wA/ jA˘n hA˘ld´]

__ __
__ __
What are you on holiday?
Selected references
ROM.
Fisiak, Jacek
2001 Old East Anglian: a problem in Old English dialectology. In: Fisiak and
Trudgill (eds.), 18–38.
Fisiak, Jacek and Peter Trudgill (eds.)
2001 East Anglian English. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.
Forby, Robert
1830 The Vocabulary of East Anglia. London: J.B. Nichols and Son.
Trudgill, Peter
1988 Norwich revisited: recent changes in an English urban dialect. English World-
Wide 9: 33–49.
Trudgill, Peter
1996 Two hundred years of dedialectalisation: the East Anglian short vowel system.
In: Mats Thelander (ed.), Samspel och variation, 469–478. Uppsala: Uppsala
Universitet.
1999a Norwich: endogenous and exogenous linguistic change. In: Foulkes and
Docherty (eds.), 124–140.
1999b The Dialects of England. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
2001 Modern East Anglia as a dialect area. In: Fisiak and Trudgill (eds.), 1–12.
Trudgill, Peter and Tina Foxcroft
1978 On the sociolinguistics of vocalic mergers: Transfer and approximation in
East Anglia. In: Trudgill (ed.), 69–79.
Trudgill, Peter, Elizabeth Gordon, Gillian Lewis and Margaret MacLagan
2000 The role of drift in the formation of native-speaker southern hemisphere
Englishes: Some New Zealand evidence. Diachronica: International Journal
for Historical Linguistics 17: 111–138.
Wakelin, Martyn F.
1984 Rural dialects in England. In: Trudgill (ed.), 70–93.
The dialects in the South of England: phonology
Ulrike Altendorf and Dominic Watt
1. Introduction
From a dialectological point of view, the South of England falls into three main
dialect areas: the Southeast, centred on the Home Counties area; the Southwest of
England, which covers the area known as the “West Country”; and East Anglia,
which comprises Norfolk and Suffolk, together with adjacent parts of Essex and
Cambridgeshire. This article will focus on two of these three areas: the Southeast
and the Southwest.
2. North and South
According to Trudgill in his The Dialects of England (1999), the major dialect
boundary in England today is the line separating the North from the South. This
line also has an acknowledged folk-linguistic status since it is used “informally to
divide ‘southerners’ from ‘northerners’” (Trudgill 1999: 80; see also Wales 2002).
In linguistic terms, it consists of two major isoglosses marking the northern limit
of two historical developments which are referred to by Wells (1982) as the FOOT-
STRUT split and as BATH broadening. The FOOT-STRUT split is a sound change by
which the Middle English short vowel u underwent a split resulting in phonemic
contrast between [U] and [√] in words such as put and putt. The term BATH broad-
ening refers to a historical process by which /a/ preceding a voiceless fricative, a
nasal + /s, t/, or syllable-final /r/, was lengthened (e.g. from [baT] to [ba˘T]) in the
late 17th century, and then later retracted to [A˘] (giving [bA˘T]) sometime in the 19th
century. These changes mark the vowel systems of the South but are absent from
the North. Local accents in the South therefore tend to have separate phonemes
for the vowels in FOOT and STRUT and a long (in popular terminology “broad”)
vowel /A˘/ in BATH (although the situation is more complicated in the Southwest;
see section 5.5.). Their northern counterparts have the same vowel – /U/ – in both
FOOT and STRUT, and a short front (“flat”) /a/ vowel in BATH. According to the
Survey of English Dialects (SED) (see e.g. Chambers and Trudgill 1998, Fig. 8-I;
here: Map 1), the FOOT-STRUT isogloss runs from the Severn estuary in the West
to the Wash in the East. The BATH isogloss follows a similar path, but at its western
The dialects in the South of England: phonology 179
end starts somewhat further south, crossing the FOOT-STRUT line in Herefordshire, then
continuing to run north of it up to the Wash.
Map 1: England, showing the southern limit of [U] in some (solid line) and the short
vowel [a] in chaff (broken line)
3. Southeast and Southwest
The major subdivision of southern accents into Southeastern and Southwestern ac-
cents is based on the pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/ in syllable-final pre-pausal
and pre-consonantal position, as in far or farmer. In these positions /r/ is preserved
in local accents of the Southwest, whereas it is absent or rapidly disappearing from
180 Ulrike Altendorf and Dominic Watt
accents in the Southeast. In the Southeast, rhoticity used to be a characteristic of

rural accents in Kent, Sussex and Surrey where it has been recessive for quite a
while (see Trudgill 1999: 27, Map 5 and 1999: 55, Map 12; here: Map 2 and Map
3). According to Wells (1982: 341), “traces of variable rhoticity may be found” in
Reading, formerly in Berkshire. As Trudgill (1999: 54) puts it, “[e]very year the
r-pronouncing area gets smaller”.
Map 2. Arm; r = [r] pronounced in arm etc.; (r) = some [rs] pronounced
Map 3. Areas where [r] is pronounced in arm
4. The Southeast
4.1. The Home Counties Modern Dialect area
The Southeast of England is here loosely equated with the Home Counties, these
being the counties adjacent to London: Kent, Surrey, East and West Sussex, Essex,
Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and Bedfordshire. In the
past, however, the accents of the Home Counties used to belong to very differ-
ent dialect areas. Trudgill (1999: 44–47) labels these traditional dialect areas the
Southeast (Berkshire, north-eastern Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Surrey), the Central
East (parts of Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, non-metropolitan Hertfordshire
and Essex) and the Eastern Counties (Norfolk, Suffolk, north-eastern Essex) plus
London, which was considered a “separate branch of the Eastern dialects” (Trud-
gill 1999: 46). Note that the Eastern Counties are also referred to as East Anglia
(see Wells 1982: 335), an area treated separately in this handbook.
The accents of these areas have been undergoing extensive dialect levelling in
recent decades (see e.g. Kerswill 2002). As a result, a considerable part of these
different dialect areas are now joined together to form one large modern dialect
area, called by Trudgill the “Home Counties Modern Dialect area” (see Trudgill
1999: 65, Map 18; here: Map 4).
[...] the non-traditional dialect area of London has now expanded enormously to
swallow up the old Southeast area, part of East Anglia, most of the eastern Southwest,
and most of the Central East, of which now only the South Midlands remain. The new
London-based area we call the Home Counties Modern Dialect area. (Trudgill 1999:
80)
The exact degree of linguistic uniformity within this area is still unclear. Research
on urban accents in the Southeast (see e.g. Williams and Kerswill 1999; Altendorf
2003) indeed points to an increase in homogeneity, in particular with regard to
middle-class accents. However, local and regional accent differences also persist
(see also section 4.2.).
4.2. Dialect levelling in the Southeast

The restructuring of the Southeastern dialect area is in large part due to processes
of linguistic convergence (e.g. Williams and Kerswill 1999; Kerswill 2002). These
processes have, it is argued, been promoted by an increase in geographical mobil-
ity in the second half of the 20th century. Mobility and migration have taken place
in three different directions:
(1) Trend I: Centrifugal migration:
Londoners have been moving out of the capital since the Second World War,
during which time London was the most heavily bombed city in Britain. The
Blitz forced millions of families out of their London homes into the country.
After the war, and for less dramatic reasons, around one million overspill
Londoners were re-housed in municipal re-housing schemes designed to de-
centralize the metropolitan population. For this purpose, a number of new
towns, among them Milton Keynes, Stevenage, Hemel Hempstead, Bracknell
and Basildon, were founded within an eighty-kilometre radius of London. In
more recent years, young families and old-age pensioners have also often
moved out of the city. Young families have been moving into the London
suburbs or the neighbouring Home Counties to bring up their children in a

safer and more pleasant environment. Old-age pensioners have been moving
away to realize, where feasible, the English dream of buying a house by the
seaside or a cottage in the country, or for less idealistic motives such as unaf-
fordable London rents and living costs, spiralling crime and alienation. Lately,
the increased necessity and willingness to commute has further enhanced the
interchange between London and elsewhere.
Map 4. Modern Dialect areas

(2) Trend II: Centripetal migration (Moving to the Southeast and the “North-
South divide”):
Since the economic revival of the Thatcher era, employment growth in
Southeastern England has outstripped that in the rest of the United King-
dom. The media regularly report on the “North-South divide”, a term used
to imply stronger economic growth and higher living standards in the South
of England than in the North. This economic prosperity has attracted many
(work) migrants, mostly to Southeastern areas outside London. The popula-
tion in these areas has therefore grown at a faster rate than in the rest of the
country. Today, about one third of the population of the United Kingdom
lives in Southeast England.
(3) Trend III: Internal migration within the Southeast:
As people resident in the Southeast now tend to change their place of work
more often than they used to, there has been a resultant increase in the levels
of admixture of the population within the region. These processes of mobility
have increased face-to-face interaction among speakers of different accents.
This kind of communicative situation tends to bring about short-term accom-
modation among the interlocutors, which in turn can then lead to long-term
accommodation, accent convergence and change, providing that attitudinal
factors are favourable. In addition, mobility has been shown to weaken net-
work ties and to promote the diffusion of “new” variants. In the Southeast,
these processes have been dominated by the “London element”. Faced with a
choice between a London variant and one associated with a rural or provincial
accent, most young speakers have tended to opt for the former. This is likely
to be particularly true for those young professionals who have been moving
to the Southeast from other parts of Britain. To employ a term coined in the
1980s, a metropolitan accent is higher on “street cred” than a provincial one.
This does not mean, however, that local accent features have been completely
lost. The dialect survey by Williams and Kerswill (1999), for instance, has
shown that there are still qualitative and quantitative differences between the
accents of adolescents in the two Southeastern towns of Milton Keynes and
Reading.
4.3. London as “innovator”

An important aspect in the linguistic development and folk-linguistic perception
of the Southeast is the presence of the capital London within this area. London has
a long tradition as a source of linguistic innovation for accents of the surrounding
area as well as for RP itself. In recent years, a number of London working-class
variants have not only been spreading to areas outside London but also to higher
social classes, including the RP-speaking upper and upper middle classes. Wells
describes this trend in a series of articles, in one of which he states that “some of
the changes … can reasonably be attributed to influence from Cockney – often
overtly despised, but covertly imitated” (Wells 1994: 205). This development is
currently exciting a high degree of public attention.
Another phenomenon connected with the Southeast of England which is attract-
ing much public attention is the occurrence of variants associated with London
English in urban accents as distant from Southeast England as Hull (in east York-
shire) and Glasgow (in central Scotland). These variants are, in particular, T-glot-
talling, TH-fronting and labio-dental [V] (for a more detailed discussion of these
variants, see section 4.6.). The British media have had a tendency to attribute, in a
very simplistic way, the presence of these features in the speech of younger speak-
ers of these accents to the direct influence of metropolitan London English. This,
some media observers believe, is linked closely to the popularity throughout the
United Kingdom of the London-based television soap opera EastEnders, which has
for nearly two decades been one of Britain’s most popular television programmes.
A product of this alleged connection is the label Jockney – a blend of Jock (a
nickname for a Scotsman) and Cockney – which has been used by some journal-
ists to describe a new form of Glaswegian dialect borrowing from the television
series EastEnders. However, in view of (a) the substantial body of evidence which
points to the crucial role of face-to-face interaction in the transmission of changes
in pronunciation, and (b) the continuing absence of any compelling evidence of
the adoption of innovative forms as a direct consequence of television viewing,
it is problematic to attribute the occurrence of these variants in accents outside
Southeast England to the dissemination of London English in public broadcasting.
Furthermore, it does not seem very likely that attitudes toward London English
among speakers in cities like Hull and Glasgow are generally favourable (for more
detailed discussion, see Foulkes and Docherty 1999: 11; Williams and Kerswill
1999: 161–162). In any case, many of the so-called London variants have long
existed in the accents of areas surrounding cities such as Glasgow and Norwich,
and appear more likely to have originated from accents of the immediate vicinity
than to have spread from London (see e.g. Trudgill [1999]) on the antiquity of T-
glottalling in geographically dispersed regions of the British Isles).
4.4. “Estuary English”

The changes described above are often referred to as being characteristic of Estu-
ary English, a term coined by David Rosewarne in 1984. He defines it as follows:
‘Estuary English’ is a variety of modified regional speech. It is a mixture of non-regional
and local Southeastern English pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum
with RP and London speech at either end, ‘Estuary English’ speakers are to be found
grouped in the middle ground (Rosewarne 1984: 29).
Since the appearance of Rosewarne’s article, Estuary English has been discussed
among laypeople and linguists with increasing frequency and unreduced contro-
versy, although linguists have tended to adopt the term as shorthand rather more
sceptically than have the general public (see e.g. Przedlacka 2002; Altendorf 2003).
Journalists and literary authors make frequent use of the term to label a number of
different and divergent trends. For example:
(1) socio-phonetic changes within the accents of Southeastern England in the
direction of a supra-local regional accent (see also section 4.1.).
(2) the social spread of London working-class variants into higher social classes,
including the advanced version of RP (see also section 4.3.).
(3) the situation-related use of London working-class variants by speakers who
are otherwise speakers of RP.
(4) the retention of Southeastern regional accent features by speakers who would
otherwise have been expected to become speakers of adoptive RP.
(5) the occurrence of variants which are (rightly or wrongly) associated with the
Southeastern England in accents in which they were not used before (see also
section 4.3.).
The existence of these developments, with the exception of (5), is not disputed by
linguists; what they dispute is the practice (a) of subsuming all these developments
under the same name, (b) of choosing a new name to describe them, and (c) of
choosing the particular name ‘Estuary English’. With regard to the choice of name,
Trudgill (1999) remarks:
This [Estuary English] is an inappropriate term which [...] has become widely accepted.
It is inappropriate because it suggests that we are talking about a new variety, which we
are not; and because it suggests that this is a variety of English confined to the banks of
the Thames Estuary, which it is not. (Trudgill (1999: 80)
With regard to choosing a new name, Wells (1997) remarks:
Estuary English is a new name. But it is not a new phenomenon. It is the continuation of
a trend that has been going on for five hundred years or more – the tendency for features
of popular London speech to spread out geographically (to other parts of the country)
and socially (to higher social classes). (Wells 1997: 47)
Here, Wells touches on one of the central aspects of the Estuary English contro-
versy. To the layperson, the situation has changed in such a way (and/or is brought
to his/her attention in such a way) that it is perceived as a new phenomenon requir-
ing a new name. For the linguist, on the other hand, the current linguistic situation
is just another phase within a longer historical process which does not merit a
distinct designation, at least no more so than any other phase in the development
of any particular accent.
4.5. Southeastern phonology: vowels and diphthongs

Table 1 shows the inventory of London vowels and diphthongs on the basis of
Wells (1982: 304). For the purposes of comparison, Table 2 gives an overview of
the variants used by adolescent speakers from the Southeast of England, including
London, in the late 1990s. The forms for Milton Keynes and Reading are taken
from Williams and Kerswill (1999: 143), those for London from Tollfree (1999:
165) and, in individual cases, from Altendorf (2003). Altendorf’s study covers
fewer variables and will only be cited when results do not tally with those reported
by Tollfree.
Table 1. London vowels – summary
KIT I FLEECE Ii NEAR i´

DRESS e FACE √I SQUARE e´
TRAP Q PALM A˘ START A˘
LOT Å THOUGHT o˘, ç´ NORTH o˘, ç´
STRUT √ GOAT √U FORCE o˘, ç´
FOOT U GOAL ÅU CURE u´
BATH A˘ GOOSE ¨˘ happY Ii
CLOTH Å PRICE AI lettER ´
NURSE Œ˘ CHOICE çI commA ´
MOUTH QU
happY
Accents in the South of England have undergone happY tensing, a term coined by
Wells (1982: 257–258) to describe a historical process by which the short final
[I] in happY has been replaced by a closer vowel of the [i(˘)] type. There is still
uncertainty about the exact phonetic quality of [i(˘)] but the general consensus
is that it patterns with FLEECE rather than KIT. In addition, London and South-
eastern accents have diphthongal happY variants. With regard to these variants,
the general socio-phonetic principle is: the more central the starting-point, the
more basilectal the variant. The most basilectal variant is [í] with a fully central
starting-point. Suburban working-class speakers and middle-class speakers use
a variant with a less central starting point, which we have chosen to transcribe
as [í].
Table 2. The vowels of London, Milton Keynes and Reading – summary
STANDARD London Milton Keynes Reading

LEXICAL SET (middle class) (middle class and (middle class and
working class) working class)
KIT I ~ I_ I > I¢ ~ i¢ I > I¢ ~ e¢

DRESS E ~ E4 E3 > e4 E3 > e4
TRAP Q a ~ a3 a ~ a=
LOT Å ~ Å_ Å3 Å3 ~ A
STRUT å ~ √À √ > √À ~ å √ > √À ~ å ~ ´˘4
FOOT U ~ U7_ (Tollfree)
P (Altendorf) P > UÀ ~ O= ~ Y P > UÀ ~ O= ~ Y
BATH A˘ ~ AÀ˘ ~ A¶˘ A˘ > AÀ˘ ~ a=˘ AÀ˘ > a=˘
CLOTH Å ~ Å_ Å3 Å3 ~ A
NURSE Œ˘ ~ ´˘ ´4˘ ´4˘
FLEECE i˘~ I_(˘)
(Tollfree)
i˘ ~ Ii > í > í
I
(Altendorf) i > í i˘ ~ Ii > í
FACE eI ~ e4I ~ e4_I Ei > QI ~ åI ~ e4I Ei > Qi ~ e4I
PALM A˘ ~ AÀ ~ A¶ A˘ > AÀ˘ ~ a=˘ AÀ˘ > a=˘
THOUGHT ç˘ ~ oÀ˘ o4˘ > oU= o4˘ > oU=
w
GOAT √U( ) ~ FU ~ F´ ~ ´£U
(Tollfree)
Ú ~ å¨ > åU
(Altendorf) Ý ~ åY ~ Í ~ åI Ý ~ Í ~ ´ÀY ~ ÚÀ
w
GOAL ÅU( ) ~ ÅF ~ a=U √U > ç£U √U > ç£U
GOOSE uÀ(w) ˘ ~ ¨˘ ~ ¨4˘
(Tollfree)
¨˘ ~ Y˘ > ˆ˘ ~ I˘ ¨˘ ~ ¨À˘ ~ Y˘ ~ y˘
(Altendorf) ¨˘ ~ ¨À˘ ~ Y˘ ~ y˘ > ´¨À˘ > ´¨À˘
PRICE aI ~ a=I ~ a_I AI > AÀI ~ A˘ ~ çI ~ √ÀI AI ~ çI ~ √ÀI > A˘
CHOICE çI ~ oI ç£I ~ çI ç£I ~ çI
MOUTH aU ~ aF (Tollfree)
aU ~ QU
(Altendorf) aU > a˘ ~ E˘ ~ QU aU > a˘ ~ EI ~ EUÀ
´
NEAR I˘ ~ I e4˘ ~ e´ e4˘ ~ e´
SQUARE E£˘(´) ~ e¢˘(´) E˘ ~ E££´ E˘ ~ E££´
START A˘ > AÀ˘ ~ A¶ A˘ > AÀ˘ ~ a≠˘ AÀ˘ > a≠˘
NORTH ç˘ ~ oÀ˘ o4˘ > oU= o4˘ > oU=
Table 2. (continued) The vowels of London, Milton Keynes and Reading – summary
STANDARD London Milton Keynes Reading

LEXICAL SET (middle class) (middle class and (middle class and
working class) working class)
FORCE ç˘ ~ oÀ˘ o4˘ > oU= o4 > oU=
CURE j¨7´ ~ jU7´ ~ jç£˘ jo4˘ jo4˘
happY i(˘) (Tollfree)
i(˘) > í (Altendorf) i¢ i¢
lettER ´ ~ ´£ Å˘ ~ ´4 å ~ ´4
horsES I ~ I_ I I
commA ´ ~ ´£ ÅÀ˘ ~ ´4 å ~ ´4
FLEECE, FACE, PRICE, CHOICE, GOOSE, GOAT, MOUTH

If described with reference to traditional RP, London and Southeastern long vow-
els and diphthongs are involved in a diphthong shift which Labov (1994: 170)
describes as “the closest replication of the Great Vowel Shift that can take place
under the present conditions”. In addition, there is social variation within the
Southeastern system with working-class variants being even more advanced than
their middle-class counterparts (see Table 3).
Note that Wells (1982: 302–303) defines Popular London (PL) as the accent of
suburban working-class speakers and Cockney as the accent of the inner-London
working class.
Table 3. London Diphthong Shift (adapted from Wells 1982: 308, 310)
RP: i˘ eI aI çI AU Ú u˘
Ê Ê Ê Ê Â Â Â
PL: I77i √I AI ç8I QU √U U¨
Ê Ê Ê Ê Â Â Â
Cockney: í aI ÅI oI Q˘ a-U ´¨ ∼ ¨˘
FLEECE
The London and Southeastern FLEECE variant is a diphthong. The general socio-
phonetic principle is again: the more central the starting-point, the more basilectal
the variant. The most basilectal variant is [í] with a full central starting-point.
Suburban working-class speakers and middle-class speakers use a variant with a
less central starting-point, which we transcribe as [í].
GOOSE
London and Southeastern English have monophthongal and diphthongal GOOSE
variants. The occurrence of the monophthongal variants is favoured by preceding
/j/ and disfavoured by following dark […].
In the 1980s, the most common Mainstream RP variant was reported to be a
“slight glide” (Gimson 1984: 192) of the [Uu] type or a more central monophthong
of the [y] kind. If the first element of the diphthong was further centralized or the
monophthong further fronted, Gimson did not regard the resulting variants as rep-
resentative of RP but as characteristic of Southeastern English. This principle still
applies in the case of the diphthongal GOOSE variants. The general socio-phonetic
principle is the same as for happY and FLEECE: the more centralized the first ele-
ment of the diphthong, the more basilectal the variant. The most basilectal variant
is [ú] with a full central starting-point. Suburban working-class and middle-class
speakers tend to use a diphthong with a less central starting-point, which we tran-
scribe as [ú].
In the case of the monophthongal GOOSE variants, a new set of variants has
emerged. These variants represent the continuation of an already existing trend.
The process of fronting has been taken a step further, producing variants rang-
ing between the central variant [¨˘] described above, and a mid-front variant [Y˘],
which is, incidentally, also a characteristic of rural Southwestern accents (see sec-
tion 5.5.). Variation between these two variants is continuous rather than discrete.
The same development can be noted in the case of the central unrounded variant
[ˆ˘]. Here fronting can also be more advanced, leading to alternation between [ˆ˘]
and [I˘]. These variants were found by Altendorf (2003) in London, Colchester
and Canterbury and by Williams and Kerswill (1999) in Milton Keynes and Read-
ing. Williams and Kerswill (1999: 144–145) can trace a change in apparent time.
For both towns, they report that elderly speakers still have [¨˘], whereas younger
speakers have [Y˘], or even more front [y˘] in palatal environments.
GOAT-GOAL split and GOAT

London English and other Southeastern accents are subject to a phoneme split
whereby oppositions such as goal [gÅU…] and goat [g√Ut] have developed (see
Wells 1982: 312–313). Interaction of this alternation with L vocalization has led to
the emergence of further contrasts between pairs like sole-soul [sÅU] and so-sew
[s√U] (see section 4.6.).
In London and Southeastern varieties the GOAT vowel is diphthongal. The ba-
sic socio-phonetic principle is: the more front and open the starting-point, the
more basilectal the variant. The most basilectal form is a variant approaching [aU]
with a full front and open starting-point. Suburban working-class and middle-class
speakers use a variant with a less open starting-point in the area of [Q_ ~ å]. Re-
cently, an additional new set of variants has emerged. The first element is similar
to the old mesolectal London GOAT variant [åU], but the endpoint is different. This
element has been considerably advanced and has variable lip rounding resulting
in alternation between [å¨] and [åÆ]. These new variants were found by Alten-
dorf (2003) in London, Colchester and Canterbury and by Williams and Kerswill
(1999) in Milton Keynes and Reading. Williams and Kerswill (1999: 143) report
even further fronting of the second element resulting in variants of the [åY ~ åI]
type. In addition, they have found an extra set of variants in Reading. The Reading
adolescents have variants with a more central onset of the [Ý ~ Í] type which
they use alongside with the Milton Keynes set.
MOUTH
In London English, MOUTH has diphthongal and monophthongal variants. For the
social stratification of London English the general principle is: the weaker the end-
point, the more basilectal the variant. According to Wells (1982: 309), the MOUTH
vowel monophthong is a “touchstone for distinguishing between ‘true Cockney’
and popular London”. Only “true Cockney” working-class speakers have a long
monophthong of the [Q˘ ~ a˘] kind or alternatively a diphthong with a weak second
element of the [Q´ ~ Q´] type. Suburban working-class speakers and middle-class
speakers have a closing diphthong of the [QU] type.
According to the Survey of English Dialects (SED), the prevalent variant in
most Southeastern accents used to be a variant of the [EU] type. In the speech of
younger speakers, this “provincial” variant was neither found by Altendorf (2003)
in Colchester and Canterbury nor by Williams and Kerswill (1999) in Milton
Keynes. Adolescent speakers in these towns use “metropolitan” [QU] rather than
the older “provincial” form [EU]. In Milton Keynes and Reading, they even prefer
[aU]. Williams and Kerswill (1999: 152) comment that this is a case in which
levelling in the Southeast has led to a compromise on the RP form rather than the
intermediate London variant.
FOOT
Another recent trend in London and Southeastern accents is FOOT fronting. In the
1980s, Gimson (1984: 119) and Wells (1982: 133) agreed that the FOOT vowel
showed little variability. The only variability they conceded consisted in the oc-
casional occurrence of “more centralized and/or unrounded” variants (Wells 1982:
133). Wells (1982: 133) described them as characteristic of “innovative or urban
speech” in England, Wales and Ireland. In the meantime, this innovative tendency
has led to further fronting of the FOOT vowel resulting in variants of the [ü ~ P]
type.
Tollfree (1999) has found such variants in London and Altendorf (2003) in Lon-
don, Colchester and Canterbury. Williams and Kerswill (1999) have found even
more front variants of the [O ~ Y] type in Milton Keynes and Reading, these
variants being particularly favoured by middle-class speakers. Torgersen (2002)
reports on patterns of FOOT fronting in Southeastern English, which reveal effects
for speaker age and speaking style, as well as effects for phonological context and
lexical item.
4.6. Southeastern phonology: consonants

H
London and Southeastern accents have sociolinguistically variable H dropping
(see Tollfree 1999: 172–174). The zero form tends to be avoided by middle-class
speakers, except in contexts in which H dropping is “licensed” in virtually all
British accents (in unstressed pronouns and verbs such as his, her, him, have, had,
etc.).
TH
London and Southeastern accents have sociolinguistically variable TH fronting
(i.e. the use of [f] and [v] for /T/ and /D/, respectively). In these accents, TH front-
ing can apply to /T/ in all positions (e.g. think, something, mouth) and to /D/ in
non-initial position (e.g. brother, with). In the case of /D/ in initial position, /d/ (or
O, as in [ńQ/] for and that) are more likely alternatives (see e.g. Wells 1982: 328;
Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 71).
The labio-dental variants have traditionally been socially stigmatized, and
therefore tend to be avoided by middle-class speakers. Neither Altendorf (2003)
nor Tollfree (1999) found them in the speech of their middle-class informants.
However, there are reports that TH fronting is now on the verge of spreading
into Southeastern middle-class accents (see e.g. Williams and Kerswill 1999;
Kerswill 2002). Williams and Kerswill (1999: 160, Table 8.8) have found in-
stances of TH fronting in male and female middle-class speech in Milton Keynes
and male middle-class speech in Reading. In both towns, TH fronting affects sex-
es and classes in the following order: working-class boys > working-class girls
> middle-class boys > middle-class girls. In terms of change in apparent time,
this pattern is indicative of a “change from below” in the social sense of the term
(see e.g. Trudgill 1974: 95). It has started in male working-class speech and is
now working its way “upwards” to female middle-class speakers. At the moment,
this development is still at an early stage. Accordingly, labio-dental fricatives
in the speech of female middle-class speakers in Milton Keynes (14.3%) and
Reading (0%) are infrequent or altogether absent. This could also explain why
they do not occur in the London surveys by Altendorf (2003) and Tollfree
(1999).
P, T, K
Pre-glottalization and glottal replacement of syllable-final /t/ and (to a lesser ex-
tent) /p/ and /k/ are very common in London and the Southeast. Despite its wide
geographical dissemination, T glottalling has a tradition of being regarded as a
stereotype of London English. Its current spread (at least in the Southeast) is
equally ascribed to the “influence of London English, where it is indeed very
common” (Wells 1982: 323). In recent years, glottalling – and in particular T
glottalling – has increased dramatically in all social classes, styles and phon-
etic contexts. Social differentiation is, however, retained by differences in fre-
quency and distribution of the glottal variant in different phonetic contexts. The
result of this interplay can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, taken from Altendorf (2003).
These data show the frequency of T glottaling in two styles of speech produced
by schoolchildren drawn from three school types (comprehensive, grammar,
and public) and demonstrate marked contextual effects for some speaker groups.
Phonetic constraints affect the occurrence and frequency of the glottal variant in
the following order: pre-consonantal position (Scotland, quite nice) > pre-vocalic
across word boundaries (quite easy) and pre-pausal position (Quite!) > word-in-
ternal pre-lateral position (bottle) > word-internal intervocalic position (butter).
Their effect is further enhanced by social and stylistic factors:
(1) Middle-class speakers differ from working-class speakers by avoiding the
glottal variant in socially sensitive positions when speaking in more formal
styles. They reduce the frequency of the glottal variant in pre-pausal and pre-
vocalic positions (as in Quite! and quite easy), and avoid it completely in the
most stigmatized word-internal intervocalic position (as in butter).
(2) Upper-middle-class speakers differ from all other social classes in that they
avoid the glottal variant in these socially sensitive positions in both styles.
They have a markedly lower frequency of pre-pausal and pre-vocalic T glot-
taling in the most informal style and avoid it almost completely in the more
formal reading style. T glottaling in the most stigmatized positions, in pre-lat-
eral and intervocalic position (as in bottle and butter), does not occur at all for
these speakers.
The results for the London upper middle class reported by Altendorf (2003) con-
firm those of Fabricius (2000). In the results for her young RP speakers, there is no
intervocalic T glottaling in any style, and no pre-pausal or pre-vocalic T glottaling
in the more formal style. Fabricius also shows that the effect of phonetic context
and style is highly significant.
Examination of the result for environment using the Newman Keuls test for pairwise
comparison showed that the consonantal environment was significantly different from
the pre-vocalic and the pre-pausal environments (p<0.02). The prevocalic and prepausal
results were not significantly different from each other. (Fabricius 2000: 140)
It is also interesting to note that T glottaling displays regional variation within
Fabricius’ group of RP speakers.
Figure 1. T glottaling by phonetic context and school: London – Interview Style

(N=436)
Figure 2. T glottaling by phonetic context and school: London – Reading Style (N=313)
Pre-consonantal glottalling can reasonably be regarded as the ‘first wave’ of glottalling.

The ‘second wave’ seems to be the prepausal category, which shows a significant
difference between the Southeastern category and the ‘rest of England’ category. As we
have seen, London and the Home Counties pattern together on this feature, while the rest
of England lags behind. The ‘newest’ wave of glottalling is evident in the pre-vocalic
category, where the London-raised public school speakers use pre-vocalic t-glottalling at
a significantly higher rate than speakers from other parts of England in less formal styles
of speech. (Fabricius 2000: 134)
R
/r/ is generally realised in Southeastern accents as an alveolar or post-alveolar ap-
proximant, [®]. Southeastern accents are non-rhotic, but /r/ is pronounced in post-
vocalic position if the following word begins with a vowel (so-called linking /r/,
thus ['khA˘®´'lA˘m] car alarm, but ['khA˘'phA˘k] car park). Intrusive /r/ is used in
sequences in which an epenthetic /r/ is inserted in contexts which do not histori-
cally contain /r/: either, like linking /r/, across word-boundaries (as in pizza [®] and
pasta), or word-internally (as in ['sç˘®IN] sawing; cf. the hypercorrections found in
Southwestern accents, discussed in section 5.6.). The latter habit is stigmatised to
some degree, especially where it occurs in word-internal positions. Post-vocalic
rhoticity appears to have vanished altogether from the relic area (Reading and Berk-
shire) mentioned by Wells (1982: 341), and appears to be advancing westward at
a fairly rapid pace. In terms of the phonetic quality of /r/ in pre-vocalic positions,
there is plentiful evidence of a dramatic rise in the frequency of the labiodental ap-
proximant [V] in southern England, and indeed also in parts of the North. This fea-
ture, formerly regarded as an affectation, a speech defect, or an infantilism, is now
heard very frequently in the accents of a wide range of English cities, and appears
generally to be more favoured by young working-class speakers than by middle-
class ones. Kerswill (1996: 189) suggests that the increased usage of [V] (and [f,
v] for /T, D/) among younger speakers represents a failure to eradicate immature
pronunciations as a result of an attrition of the stigma attached to these forms.
L
London and Southeastern accents have variable L vocalization in post-vocalic po-
sitions (as in mill, milk), but instances of vocalization of /l/ in pre-vocalic position
across word boundaries (as in roll up, peel it) have been reported by, for example,
Wells (1982: 313) and Kerswill (1996: 199) in the local accents of London and
Reading respectively.
The phonetic quality of the resulting pronunciation is variable and phonetic rep-
resentations of it vary a great deal. Gimson (1984: 202), for instance, transcribes
the resulting vocoid as alternating between [ö] and [F], while Wells (1995: 263)
indicates a range between [F], [o], [U] and [u].
Another intricacy of the process of vocalization is its impact on the preceding
vowel. One of the most common allophonic effects is neutralization. The vowels
in meal and pool, for example, are lowered to such an extent that they become
(almost) homophonous with mill and pull. Whether they can still be distinguished
by length is a matter of some uncertainty. The precise workings of these processes
are rather complex (for a more detailed discussion, see Wells 1982: 314–317).
Another consequence of the process of vocalization might be the rise of new

diphthongs consisting of the preceding vowel and the resulting vocalized variant.
Like R dropping, L vocalization may lead to a re-organization of the vowel sys-
tem. According to Wells (1982: 259), it “offers the prospect of eventual phonemic
status for new diphthongs such as /IU/ (milk), /EU/ (shelf), etc.”.
Like T glottaling, L vocalization is spreading regionally, so far mostly within
the Southeast, and socially to higher social classes. In London, Kent and Essex
(see Altendorf 2003), it is already very frequent, almost categorical, in the accents
of young middle-class speakers.
YOD
London and Southeastern English accents have variable Yod dropping and Yod
coalescence. These processes affect initial consonant clusters in stressed syllables
consisting of the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ and a following palatal glide /j/, as in
tune, duke. In addition, Yod dropping can affect syllable initial /n/ plus /j/ (as in
[nUu˘z] news). Yod coalescence involves the “merging” of /tj/ and /dj/ to [tS] and
[dZ] respectively, such that dune and June, for instance, may be homophonous. In
the 1980s, Wells (1982: 331) had already observed that in working-class London
English the “older” phenomenon of Yod dropping was faced with competition
from Yod coalescence. Whether the same is true for other Southeastern accents
has not yet been reported.
5. The Southwest
5.1. The West Country
The West Country is a region with imprecise boundaries. According to Wells (1982:
335–336), three main areas can be identified: The centre of the region is formed
by the “cider counties” of Gloucestershire, the former county of Avon, Somerset
and Devon. To the East and nearer to London lies “the transitional area of Wessex”
(Wells 1982: 335), which comprises Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire and parts
of Oxfordshire. To the far West, “Cornwall stands somewhat apart” (Wells 1982:
335). This area differs from the two other areas with regard to its distinctive Celtic
background and its Cornish language. Cornish became extinct in the late 18th cen-
tury but has been revived to a small degree in recent decades.
Trudgill (1999: 76–77) agrees with Wells (1982) in dividing the Southwest into
three dialect areas. He differs from Wells with regard to the (northern) extension of
this area and its internal structure. Trudgill’s centre, the Central Southwest, com-
prises most of the central and eastern regions identified by Wells, i.e. Somerset,
the former county of Avon, and parts of Gloucestershire, together with parts of
the more eastern counties of Wells’ transitional area, i.e. Dorset and Wiltshire, and
western districts of Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hampshire. In
addition, Trudgill distinguishes between the Upper and Lower Southwest. The
Upper Southwest covers much of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire as well as
areas as far north as Herefordshire and Shropshire up to Shrewsbury. The Lower
Southwest is formed by Devon and Cornwall.
Another attempt to establish dialect areas in the Southwest has been proposed
by Klemola (1994). Klemola’s study is based on cluster analysis making use
of SED material for 80 variables (25 phonological, 30 morphosyntactic and 25
lexical) in nine Southwestern counties. The results of this study do not coincide
completely with the structures proposed by Wells and by Trudgill but show in-
teresting parallels. Klemola (1994: 373) has found a very stable cluster in a re-
gion comprising Eastern Cornwall and Devon (cf. Trudgill’s Lower Southwest).
Typical phonological features of this area at the time of the SED fieldwork are
initial fricative voicing, /Y()/ in GOOSE and /d/ in butter (see sections 5.5. and
5.6.). The second relatively stable cluster is formed at the eastern end of the re-
gion comprising Berkshire, Oxfordshire and eastern parts of Gloucestershire and
Hampshire (cf. Wells’ transitional area). Typical phonological features of this
area are the absence of initial fricative voicing, /u(˘)/ in GOOSE and /t/ in butter.
The internal structure of the “central” areas identified by Klemola is more vari-
able.
5.2. The influence of the Home Counties Modern Dialect Area

The internal structure of the Southwestern group of dialects does not seem to have
changed to the same extent as that of the Southeastern group (see sections 4.1. and
4.2.). More recently, however, it has also been reported that parts of the Southwest
are changing more markedly and are, moreover, doing so under the influence of
the expanding Home Counties Modern Dialect Area. Trudgill (1999: 76) claims
that this is true for coastal cities such as Southampton, Portsmouth and Bour-
nemouth. From a geographical point of view, these cities are part of the Central
Southwest. From a dialectological point of view, they may not belong to this area
any longer. Similar developments can also be observed in the more easterly re-
gions of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
5.3. The West Country “burr”

Southwestern accents are characterized by post-vocalic rhoticity, a feature known
informally as the “West Country burr”. Post-vocalic /r/ is retroflex in many South-
western accents (see section 5.6.). This feature is perceived as particularly pleas-
ing by many speakers from outside the area, but is at the same time one of the
major stereotypes responsible for the impression of rusticity also often associated
with Southwestern accents. McArthur (1992) describes this image:
Two particular shibboleths are associated with ‘yokels’ leaning on gates and sucking
straws: a strong West Country burr, as in Arr, that it be ‘Yes, that’s so’; voiced initial
fricatives, as in The varmer zeez thik dhreevurrow plough ‘The farmer sees that three-
furrow plough’. (McArthur 1992: 1112)
Initial fricative voicing (see section 5.6.) appears to have been stereotyped for
several hundred years: it is a feature of the stage accent “Mummerset”, a form of
which is used by the disguised Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear (see e.g. McAr-
thur 1992: 1112). It is now recessive, and virtually extinct in urban areas and in
the speech of the young.
5.4. Bristol /l/

Another stereotype of Southwestern English is Bristol /l/. This term refers to the pres-
ence of epenthetic /l/ following word-final /´/ in words of the lexical set commA (e.g.
America) and in words that in RP end in [Ú], such as window. Thus America is pro-
nounced [´'mE®Ik´l] and Eva becomes homophonous with evil (Hughes and Trudgill
1996: 78). Bristol /l/ is a stereotype which has become the butt of many jokes (for
examples, see Wells 1982: 344; Trudgill 1999: 76). It is, however, confined to the
Bristol area, and is not as common as its folk-linguistic status might suggest.
5.5. Southwestern phonology: vowels and diphthongs

Table 4 shows the inventory of Bristol vowels and diphthongs, based on Wells
(1982: 348–349).
Table 4. Bristol vowels – summary
KIT I FLEECE i NEAR ir [I”]

DRESS E FACE EI SQUARE EIr [E”]
TRAP Q PALM a START ar [a” ~ a}]
LOT A THOUGHT ç NORTH çr [ç” ~ ç}]
STRUT √ GOAT çU FORCE çr
FOOT U GOOSE u* CURE ur ~ çr
BATH a PRICE AI happY i
CLOTH Å CHOICE oI lettER ´r [‘]
NURSE Œr [Œ’] MOUTH aU commA ´ ~ ´l
*see also GOOSE below
Vowel Length:
Short vowels in Southwestern accents tend to be lengthened somewhat relative
to their counterparts in other English accents. This applies in particular to vowels
in monosyllabic lexical items when they occur in phrase-final or in intonationally

prominent position: e.g. trap [t®a>p], did [dI>d], top [tA>p] (see Hughes and Trudgill
1996: 78).
STRUT
There is some uncertainty about the phonetic quality of the STRUT vowel in South-
western accents (see Wells 1982: 48). Wakelin (1986: 23) cites [´] and [å] for Bris-
tol, [I] in words such as dozen and brother in some accents of Devon and Cornwall,
a range of rounded variants including [U] and [Y˘] in certain areas, and even some
diphthongal pronunciations such as [aU] and [øY] in dust and sludge.
TRAP
In many Southwestern accents the TRAP vowel is realized as [a]. This realization
is typical of rural accents in the region, but it also occurs in urban accents. Bris-
tol and Southampton, however, are reported to have [Q] rather than [a] (Wells
1982: 345; Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 57, 77), as are Somerset and West Cornwall.
(Wakelin 1986: 21)
BATH, PALM
The phonetic qualities of the BATH and PALM vowels depend on their phonetic
environments, and vary in different areas and localities. The exact phonetic quality
and distribution of the Southwestern variants is not fully understood. Wells (1982:
345–346) and Hughes and Trudgill (1996: 57) suggest the following description:
(1) In the standard lexical set of BATH, two vowels are possible: (a) [a>] and
(b) [Q˘]. In those accents which have BATH [a>] and (lengthened) TRAP [a>],
phonemic contrast is absent or variable. However, neither TRAP [a>] nor the
TRAP-BATH merger are categorical. According to Wells (1982: 346), Bristol
and Southampton, for instance, retain an opposition between TRAP and BATH
as in “gas [gQs] vs. grass [grQ˘s ~ gra˘s]”.
(2) The situation becomes yet more complex when we consider the vowel of the
lexical set PALM. Wells (1982: 346) suggests the following rule of thumb: If
historical /l/ in words such as palm and calm is retained, which is the case
in some parts of the Southwest, the vowel is probably a back unrounded [A],
such that palm is pronounced as [pA…m]. PALM words without historical /l/,
such as father, bra, spa, tomato, banana, etc., have the same vowel as that
found in BATH items.
FACE and GOAT
Traditional rural accents in Devon and Cornwall have the monophthongal FACE
and GOAT variants [e˘] and [o˘] (see e.g. Wakelin 1986: 27). Wakelin also reports
some instances of centring and opening diphthongs (e.g. [e´], [I´], [j´]) which ap-
pear to be rather like those used in north-eastern England. These pronunciations
and the close-mid monophthongs [e˘] and [o˘] are, however, recessive and appear
to be giving way to (closing) diphthongal variants resembling those used in South-
eastern England. Such diphthongal variants have fairly open starting points in the
vicinity of [E] and [ç]. (see Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 64, 109)
PRICE
The quality of the vowel in words of this set is often quite close to that of CHOICE in
accents such as RP, although Wells (1982: 347) contends that a PRICE-CHOICE op-
position is usually (but not always) maintained by Southwestern speakers. This fea-
ture is nonetheless stereotyped to the extent that pseudo-phonetic spellings like roit
(right) and Vroiday (Friday) are commonly found in attempts to render West Country
accents orthographically (see e.g. McArthur 1992: 674). Wakelin describes the first
element of the diphthong as being heavily centralized in the eastern part of the re-
gion, but as one proceeds westward [Q_] becomes increasingly common. He also cites
monophthongal pronunciations as [Q˘ ~ a˘] for Devon (Wakelin 1986: 27–28).
MOUTH
According to Wells (1982: 347–348), typical Southwestern qualities of MOUTH are
“perhaps [QU] and [åU]” and [EI ~ eI] in Southwestern areas nearer to London. This
vowel and PRICE exhibit what Wells terms “crossover” (1982: 310, 347), whereby
the first elements of the diphthongs are the opposite in front-back terms from those
found in RP.
GOOSE and FOOT

Rural accents in Devon and parts of Somerset and Cornwall have GOOSE and
FOOT fronting (see section 4.5.). Wells (1982: 347) quotes the Linguistic Atlas of
England (LAE) variants [Y˘] for GOOSE and [Y] or [OY] for FOOT.
LOT
The LOT vowel is frequently [Å], but also [A], as in varieties of US English. Con-
servative pronunciations featuring [ç˘] in items like off, cross and broth are cited
by Wakelin (1986: 23) on the basis of SED responses.
Gradation
In some words, vowels in unstressed syllables retain full vowel quality. Goodness,
for instance, can be pronounced as ['gUdnEs]. (Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 79)
5.6. Southwestern phonology: consonants

Rhoticity:
Most Southwestern accents preserve post-vocalic /r/, which is frequently retroflex
in quality (i.e. [”]). Wells (1982: 342), quoting LAE results, reports that the iso-
gloss separating retroflex from post-alveolar /r/ runs from Bristol to Portsmouth.
The retroflex areas are thus Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and
Cornwall. Full rhoticity occurs in a wide range of social and local accents ranging
from the working to the middle class and from rural to urban accents. According to
Wells (1982: 341), rhoticity can be found in Bristol, Exeter and (to a lesser extent)
in Southampton, but not in Plymouth and Bournemouth.
The exact workings of rhoticity in the Southwest of England are complex and
not yet fully understood. According to Wells (1982: 342), rhoticity in the Southwest
means R colouring of the preceding vowel. In words of the lexical sets NURSE and
lettER, the entire vowel receives R colouring, but for words of the START, NORTH,
FORCE, NEAR, SQUARE and CURE sets, it is either the whole vowel or just the end-
point of the diphthong/triphthong which receives R colouring. As with L vocaliza-
tion, R colouring affects the phonetic quality of the preceding vowel and has led to
the rise of new monophthongs and diphthongs. These processes and the theoretical
problems that they pose are discussed in Wells (1982: 342–343).
Southwestern middle-class speakers sometimes have a pronunciation where
post-vocalic /r/ is not phonetically realized but the effects of rhoticity are still pre-
served. These speakers have, for instance, a centring diphthong in START words,
[stA´t], but not in words such as spa, [spA˘ ~ spa˘] (Wells 1982: 343).
Hyper-rhoticity can also occur, especially in commA words, which then end
in /r/. It can also be sporadically heard in items such as khaki ['ka˘”ki] for which,
presumably, Southwestern speakers have mistakenly reconstructed a post-vocalic
/r/ on the basis of productions they have heard produced by speakers of non-rhotic
accents such as RP (see Wells 1982: 343). Wakelin (1986: 31) lists path, nought,
idea, yellow and window as items recorded with hyper-rhotic pronunciations, and
also cites post-vocalic /r/ in words in which metathesis may take place (e.g. ‘purty’
for pretty, ‘gurt’ for great, etc.).
H
As with the Southeastern accents discussed above, Southwestern accents have so-
ciolinguistically variable H dropping. According to Upton, Sanderson, and Wid-
dowson (1987: 104), H dropping occurs in house in Cornwall, Devon, western
Somerset, northern Wiltshire, and southern Dorset, but does not occur in other
areas of the Southwest. According to Wakelin (1986: 31), aspiration may occur
before /r/ in word-initial clusters (i.e. /hrV/) in southern Somerset, while in West
Somerset and North Devon the aforementioned metathesis of a syllable onset /r/
and its following vowel may result in the pronunciation /h´rd/ red.
F, TH, S, SH
Southwestern accents traditionally featured initial fricative voicing, a process by
which the otherwise voiceless fricatives /f, T, s, S/ are voiced to [v, D, z, Z] respec-
tively. This feature, which Wakelin (1986: 29) dubs “the [Southwestern] feature
par excellence”, has long been a stereotype of rural West Country accents (see
section 5.3.); yet it is highly recessive today.
TH
Southwestern accents, like those of Southeastern England, have sociolinguisti-
cally variable TH fronting (for Bristol, see Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 78). Wake-
lin (1986: 29) reports [f] for /T/ in think, through and mouth for Bristol, as well as
stopped pronunciations of /T/ and /D/ as [d] in e.g. three, thistle, the, and then (see
also Wells 1982: 343). There is, however, something of a lack of recent published
research on this variable in accents of the Southwest.
T
Southwestern accents have variable T glottaling in syllable-final pre-pausal and
intervocalic position (for Bristol, see Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 78). Wells (1982:
344) gives ['dŒ’˘/i 'wç˘/´’] dirty water as an example of the sort of glottalled pro-
nunciation frequently found in Bristol, and cites a study in which it is stated that
glottalling of /k/ renders lot and lock homophonous at [lÅ/]. In intervocalic posi-
tion, a widespread alternative to T glottaling is T voicing (see [d]in butter in sec-
tion 5.1.). Wells (1982: 344) reports tapping of /r/ to be “certainly very common”
in butter, beautiful, hospital in urban areas of the Southwest. voicing of intervo-
calic /p/ and /k/ is also said to occur. (see Wells 1982: 344)
Syllabic consonants
Word-final vowel + nasal sequences (as in button) are often pronounced as such,
rather than as syllabic consonants. In these circumstances, happen would be
['hapń] rather than ['hapn1]. (Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 790)
Selected references
ROM.
Altendorf, Ulrike
2003 ‘Estuary English’:Levelling at the interface of RP and Southeastern British
English. Tübingen: Narr.
Fabricius, Anne
2000 T-glottalling between stigma and prestige. Ph.D. dissertation, Copenhagen
Business School.
<http//www.babel.ruc.dk/~fabri/pdfdocs/Fabricius-2000-PhD-thesis.pdf>
Gimson, Alfred C.
1984 An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. London: Arnold.
Kerswill, Paul
1996 Phonological convergence in dialect contact: evidence from citation forms.
Language Variation and Change 7: 195–207.
2002 Models of linguistic change and diffusion: new evidence from dialect level-
ling in British English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 6: 187–216.
Klemola, Juhani
1994 Dialect areas in the Southwest of England: an exercise in cluster analy-
sis. In: Wolfgang Viereck (ed.), Verhandlungen des internationalen
Dialektologenkongresses, Volume 3: Regional Variation, Colloquial and
Standard Languages, 368–384. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Przedlacka, Joanna
2002 Estuary English? A Sociophonetic Study of Teenage Speech in the Home
Counties. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
Rosewarne, David
1984 Estuary English. Times Educational Supplement, 19th October 1984.
Tollfree, Laura
1999 South East London English: discrete versus continuous modelling of conso-
nantal reduction. In: Foulkes and Docherty (eds.), 163–184.
Torgersen, Eivind Nessa
2002 Phonological distribution of the FOOT vowel, /U/, in young people’s speech
in Southeastern British English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 6:
25–38.
Wakelin, Martyn F.
1986 The Southwest of England. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Wales, Katie
2002 ‘North of Watford Gap’: a cultural history of northern English (from 1700).
In: Watts and Trudgill (eds.), 45–66.
Wells, John
1994 The cockneyfication of R.P.? In: Gunnel Melchers and Nils-Lennart
Johannesson (eds.), Nonstandard Varieties of Language, 189–205. Stockholm:
Almqvist and Wiksell.
1995 Transcribing Estuary English: a discussion document. Speech, Hearing and
Language 8: 261–267.
1997 ´What is Estuary English? English Teaching Professional 3: 46–47. <www.
phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/whatis.htm>.
Williams, Ann and Paul Kerswill
1999 Dialect levelling: change and continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull.
In: Foulkes and Docherty (eds.), 141–162.
Channel Island English: phonology*
Heinrich Ramisch
1. Introduction
The Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark) are regarded as a
French-speaking area in traditional dialectology, as can be seen in J. Gilliéron and
E. Edmont’s Atlas Linguistique de la France (1902–1920), and also in the regional
dialect atlas for Normandy, Atlas Linguistique et Ethnographique Normand (Bras-
seur 1980–1997). This is certainly justified, because the original language in the
islands is a form of Norman French that has been spoken there for centuries. But
there can be no doubt that English is the dominant language in the islands today.
The number of speakers of Norman French is relatively small and constantly de-
creasing. Over the last 200 years, English has gained more and more influence and
has gradually replaced the local Norman French dialects. Indeed, there are clear
indications that they will become extinct within the foreseeable future. A detailed
account of the past and present sociolinguistic situation in the Channel Islands can
be found in Ramisch (1989: 5–62) and Jones (2001); for the general history of the
Channel Islands see in particular Lemprière (1974), Guillot (1975: 24–55) and
Syvret and Stevens (1998).
A brief look at Map 1 shows that the Channel Islands are much closer to France
than to England. Alderney is just 9 miles away from Cap de la Hague in France,
while Jersey is only about 15 miles from the French coast but 90 miles south of
England. Therefore, it comes as no real surprise that the native language in the
Channel Islands is Norman French rather than English. From a political point
of view, however, the islands have been connected with England for a long time.
Originally, the islands were part of the Duchy of Normandy, but after the Battle of
Hastings in 1066 Duke William II of Normandy (William the Conqueror) became
King of England, and the Duchy of Normandy was united with England under one
ruler. Thus, 1066 is the date that first associates the Channel Islands with England
and the English Crown, and this association has existed ever since. 1066 also pro-
vides the background for a longstanding joke. When asking local people whether
they think that the Channel Islands belong to England they will tell you that just
the opposite is true. They will point out that after all they were on the winning side
in the Battle of Hastings and it was they who conquered England. The exceptional
political situation of the Channel Islands really arose after the year 1204, when
Channel Island English: phonology 205
King John (Lackland) lost all his territories on the Continent to King Philippe
Auguste of France, but the Channel Islands were not conquered by the French. As
a result, they became the only part of the former Duchy of Normandy to remain
in the possession of the English king, who continued to reign in the islands in his
function as Duke of Normandy.
Because of their strategic importance the French repeatedly tried to capture the
Channel Islands during the following centuries, but never succeeded. The islands
stayed loyal to the English Crown which in turn granted them special privileges
and a high degree of autonomy; to this day the islands do not belong to the United
Kingdom and are not directly subject to the British Government. They have their
own legislative assemblies (called States), and their own legal and tax systems,
which is in fact the reason why they have become a tax haven and international
centres of banking and finance.
After the separation of the Channel Islands from the Norman mainland in 1204,
their political links with England at first had no far-reaching consequences (see
Guillot 1975: 31–32 and Le Patourel 1937: 35). The native inhabitants, their cul-
ture and their language were Norman, keeping them in close contact with their
neighbours on the Norman mainland. At a time when distances played a far greater
role than today, trade with the outside world mainly took place with Normandy.
On the whole, it seems that English influence in the Channel Islands during the
Middle Ages was rather limited. However, the situation began to change in the late
18th and early 19th centuries, when larger military units from England were brought
to the islands to defend them against the French. It was above all the tradespeople
and the inhabitants of the capital towns St. Helier (in Jersey) and St. Peter Port (in
Guernsey) who first came into contact with English through the soldiers stationed
in the area. Furthermore, English merchants had also settled in these towns, which
had developed into international trade centres.
But during the first half of the 19th century the islands were still largely French-
speaking. There is an interesting comment from the 1830s by the English travel
writer Henry Inglis. He writes in a guidebook:
[...] there are certain points of interest attached to the Channel Islands, peculiarly their
own [...] their native civilized inhabitants, their vicinity to the coast of France, and the
general use of the French language. (Inglis 1844: 2)
Talking about Jersey, he makes clear what he means by “French language”:

“The universal language is still a barbarous dialect.” (Inglis 1844: 72)
But Inglis also reports on the beginnings of a process of anglicization:
Children are now universally taught English; and amongst the young, there is an evident
preference of English. The constant intercourse of the tradespeople with the English
residents; and the considerable sprinkling of English residents in Jersey society, have
also their effect. (Inglis 1844: 73)
206 Heinrich Ramisch
Map 1. The Channel Islands

English influence really started to grow after the Napoleonic wars (1815), when a
larger number of English immigrants came to live in the Channel Islands. Immi-
gration from Britain continued throughout the 19th century. The census figures of
1891 (Census of the Channel Islands 1891: 4) reveal, for instance, that 5,844 peo-
ple (or 15.5%) of the inhabitants of Guernsey and 8,626 people (or 15.8%) of the
inhabitants of Jersey were immigrants from England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland.
At the same time, immigration from France was much lower, namely only 2.92%
in Guernsey and 10.22% in Jersey. Other factors that contributed to an increased
influence of English are to be seen in the growing trade relations with England,
the emergence of tourism, and improvements in communication and traffic links.
For example, the introduction of steamboats played an important role. From 1824
onwards a regular service between England and the islands was established, which
offered new opportunities for commerce and made it much more convenient for
British tourists to visit the islands (cf. Tupper 1876: 403). Towards the end of the
19th century a historian comments:
During the present century the English language has made vast strides both in Guernsey
and Jersey, so that it is difficult now to find a native even in the country parishes who
cannot converse fairly well in that tongue. (Nicolle 1893: 387)
The influence of English continued to rise during the 20th century. The mass media,
such as radio and television, brought English into practically every home. Tour-
ism greatly increased and became a major industry. Moreover, immigration from
Britain has been very strong. A high proportion of the present population of the
Channel Islands are non-natives. The 2001 census figures show that 33.5% of the
resident population of Jersey (total: 87,186) were born in the UK and 2.3% in the
Republic of Ireland. In Guernsey 27.4% of the population (total: 59,807) origi-
nally came from the UK and 0.7% from Ireland.
The decline of the Norman French dialects has rapidly progressed over the last
100 years, and it seems certain that they will not survive as a living language. In
Alderney, Norman French has already disappeared. The number of dialect speak-
ers on the other islands has constantly decreased. The results of the 2001 census
show that only 3.3% (2,874 people) of the population in Jersey still claim to be
active speakers of Jersey French (see Table 1). About two-thirds of these speakers
are in fact aged 60 and above. In Guernsey 1,327 people (2.2% of the total popula-
tion) stated that they “speak Guernsey French fluently”. But most of them (934
or 70.4%) are 65 or older. A further 3,438 people (5.7% of the total population)
reported that they “speak Guernsey French a little” (Census of Guernsey 2001:
109). As for Sark (total population: 550) local estimates assume that 50 people still
speak Sark French.
All present speakers of Norman French are bilingual, i.e. they are also speakers
of English. They are local people who live mainly in the rural areas, where they
typically work as farmers, growers, fishermen or craftsmen. Moreover, the use of
Table 1. Languages spoken in Jersey (Census of Jersey 2001: 23)
Main Secondary Total number Percentage

language language of speakers of population
English 82,349 3,443 85,792 98.4%

Jersey French 113 2,761 2,874 3.3%
Portuguese 4,002 3,303 7,305 8.4%
French 338 14,776 15,114 17.3%
Other languages 384 4,496 4,880 5.6%
the Norman French dialect is limited to family members, friends and neighbours
of whom the speaker knows that they are able to understand the language. It is
particularly in the case of older couples where both husband and wife are dialect
speakers that Norman French is still the daily language at home.
Probably the most important reason for the decline of the dialects has been their
low social prestige. They have generally been regarded as an uneducated, inferior
tongue spoken by ordinary people in the country and, what is more, as a corrupt
form of Standard French, which is commonly called “good French” in the Channel
Islands. It is revealing that before the arrival of English it was not Norman French
but Standard French which was preferred in public and official domains such as
in the debates of the local parliaments (States), in the courts, in newspapers or in
church.
2. Phonological features
As far as the phonological variation of English in the Channel Islands is concerned,
the following three major aspects should be taken into account. (For a detailed
description of phonological features to be found in Channel Island English, see
Ramisch 1989: 164–178.) First of all, due to the language contact between English
and the local Norman French dialects, one may expect to find features in English
which can be attributed to an influence from Norman French. In this context it is
of particular interest to verify whether such features only occur with speakers of
Norman French or whether they are also used by monolingual speakers of English.
Secondly, Channel Island English is likely to include non-standard features that
equally occur in other varieties of British English. These features may easily have
arrived in the Channel Islands with the large number of immigrants from Britain.
Thirdly, Channel Island English may be characterised, at least theoretically, by
independent phonological developments with no influence from either Norman
French or other varieties of English.
2.1. Vowels
Table 2. Vowel realisations in Channel Island English – summary
KIT I~ï FLEECE i ~ i NEAR ~ i

DRESS ~ FACE e ~ e SQUARE ~
TRAP æ PALM ~ START ~
LOT ~ _ THOUGHT ç ~ o NORTH ç ~ o
STRUT ç~ GOAT ç ~ FORCE ç ~ o
FOOT GOAL ç ~ CURE j
BATH ~ ! GOOSE u ~ " happY i ~ i
CLOTH ~ _ PRICE ~ lettER ~œ
NURSE ~ CHOICE ç o horsES ~ï
MOUTH a commA
Table 2 lists the typical vowel realisations in Channel Island English. Two promi-
nent features will be discussed here in more detail, namely the realisations of the
PRICE diphthong and the STRUT vowel.
PRICE
The starting point of the PRICE diphthong tends to be further back than in RP.
Words such as fight or buy are pronounced [ft] and [b]. Additionally, the first
element of the glide may be rounded, resulting in [ft] and [b]. The realisation
of the PRICE diphthong as [] or [] is certainly not restricted to the Channel
Islands, but commonly found in many other accents of English. It is particularly
typical of the Cockney accent (London) and of urban areas in the south of England
in general (cf. Wells 1982: 149, 308). Certain varieties of Irish English equally
have [] or [] for the PRICE glide, which has led to the stereotype view in the
United States that speakers of Irish English pronounce nice time as ‘noice toime’
(cf. Wells 1982: 425–426).
The question of whether the variable pronunciation of the PRICE diphthong in
the Channel Islands may also be due to a influence from Norman French can-
not be resolved conclusively. It cannot be a case of phone substitution, since the
diphthong [a] does exist in Channel Island French. But it is noteworthy that the
diphthong [] is a typical and frequently occurring sound in the local French
dialects. Verbs which end in -er in Standard French have the diphthong [] in the
same position in Guernsey French, for example: [dun] (Standard French donner
‘give’). Similarly, the ending [] is used in the second person plural of the present
tense [vu dun] (Standard French vous donnez), in the imperative plural [dun]
(Standard French donnez!) and in the past participle forms of verbs [dun] (Stan-
dard French donné).
Table 3. Realisation of the PRICE diphthong as [] or [] in Guernsey
informant group percentages
MO 35.8
FO 21.0
MY 27.1
FY 12.2
Table 3 presents the results for the PRICE diphthong among 40 informants
in Guernsey, divided into 4 different groups: MO = older (60+) male infor-
mants and speakers of Guernsey French; FO = older (60+) female informants
and speakers of Guernsey French; MY = younger (19–32) male informants and
monolingual speakers of English; FY = younger (19–32) female informants and
monolingual speakers of English. The feature occurred most frequently with
group MO. In slightly more than a third of all cases the glide was realized as
[] or []. The feature was quite common with the younger men (group MY) as
well. Their percentage value is still above that of group FO. The younger women
(group FY) clearly came closest to RP in their pronunciation of the PRICE glide.
STRUT
The STRUT vowel may be pronounced as [ç] in Channel Island English. Words
such as sun or duck are locally realised as [sçn] and [dçk]. In comparison to the
RP vowel [ç] is further back and above all, the vowel is rounded. Parallels to this
feature in other varieties are rather difficult to find. In the data of the Survey of
English Dialects (SED; Orton 1962–1971), [] is very occasionally used for the
STRUT vowel. In the responses to question IV.6.14 (‘ducks’), [] occurs three
times in Kent, once in Essex and once in Hampshire. In question IX.2.3 (‘sun’),
[] was recorded twice in Kent, once in Wiltshire and once in the Isle of Man. An
influence from Norman French seems more likely in this case. Channel Island
French does not have a vowel sound comparable to English //. One can therefore
assume that a phone substitution takes place in English, replacing // by [ç]. This
hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that the same phone substitution occurs in
English loanwords in Channel Island French. Thus, the word bus is pronounced
[la bçs] in the local French dialects.
Table 4. Realisation of the STRUT vowel as [ç] in Guernsey
informant group percentages
MO 19.6
FO 18.0
MY 8.7
FY 10.3
The results for the STRUT vowel among the same 40 informants in Guernsey
equally lend support to the hypothesis. The quantitative analysis of the variable
shows a generational difference. The older informants (and speakers of Guern-
sey French) scored about 10% higher than the younger informants (monolingual
speakers of English).
2.2. Consonants
R (non-prevocalic /r/)
Channel Island English is variably rhotic, but only to a lesser degree. Thus, non-
prevocalic /r/ may be pronounced in preconsonantal (e.g. farm) or in absolute
final positions (e.g. far). The typical local realisation is a retroflex approximant,
e.g. [f#m], [f#]. The pronunciation of non-prevocalic /r/ in accents of British
English is of a complex nature, involving both regional and social factors. In the
traditional rural accents of England, three areas can generally be described as still
preserving non-prevocalic /r/: Northumberland, Lancashire and a larger area in
the south-west, ranging from Kent to Cornwall in the west and to Shropshire in
the West Midlands (see Upton and Widdowson 1996: 30–31). In recent times, the
rhotic areas have definitely become smaller.
The realization of non-prevocalic /r/ in the Channel Islands can certainly be
attributed to an influence from other varieties of English. But on the other hand,
an influence from Channel Island French seems equally possible. Speakers of the
Norman French dialects are accustomed to pronouncing [r] (normally an apical
type of r, pronounced with different degrees of vibration) both in preconsonan-
tal (e.g. [parti], Standard French parti ‘gone’) and in absolute-final position (e.g.
[vr] Standard French vert ‘green’). Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that Nor-
man French speakers of earlier periods who learnt English only at school tended
to realize non-prevocalic /r/ under the influence of English orthography; in other
words, their pronunciation of non-prevocalic /r/ would be based on a spelling pro-
nunciation.
A clear indication that the realization of non-prevocalic /r/ is indeed influenced
by Norman French becomes apparent in the ending -er in Guernsey English,
which can be pronounced as [œr] (recall Table 2 above). Thus, the pronuncia-
tion of words such as better or youngster is ['betœr] and ['jstœr]. There is evi-
dently an influence from Norman French here, the same ending [œr] also being
used in Guernsey French as in [l pçrtœr] (Standard French le porteur ‘carrier’).
Another argument for the English ending -er being identified with the ending
[œr] of Guernsey French is the fact that the latter is also found in English loan-
words used in Guernsey French. In this way, the English words shutter and
mourner have become [l çtœr] and [l mçrnœr] in Guernsey French (Tom-
linson 1981: 265, 325). The realisation of non-prevocalic /r/ was not very wide-
spread among the 40 informants in Guernsey. The feature was mostly found
in group MO at a rate of 9.2%. With the younger informants, it occurred only
very occasionally, and solely in group MY. One can conclude, therefore, that the
pronunciation of non-prevocalic /r/ is becoming increasingly rare in the Channel
Islands as well.
H
H-dropping or the non-realisation of /h/ in initial position in stressed syllables
before vowels (e.g. in happy ['æpi] or hedge [d$]) is one of the best-known
non-standard features of British English. It has achieved a high level of public
awareness, is clearly stigmatized and commonly regarded as uneducated. For
Wells (1982: 254) H-dropping is even “the single most powerful pronunciation
shibboleth in England”. Its presence in Channel Island English is hardly surpris-
ing. Moreover, there are individual items in which the initial position of /h/ is
filled by a semivowel [j], as for example in hear [j(#) or head [jd], parallels
of which can be found in English dialects, too (see SED questions VI.4.2 ‘hear’,
VI.1.1 ‘head’). It is an intriguing question to ask whether there possibly is an influ-
ence from Channel Island French on H-dropping. Nearly all varieties of French,
including Standard French, do not realise initial /h/. But the Norman French dia-
lects of the Channel Islands belong to the few varieties of French that have indeed
preserved initial Germanic /h/, as e.g. in [ha] (Standard French hache ‘axe’) or
[humar] (Standard French homard ‘lobster’). Consequently, initial /h/ is a familiar
sound for speakers of Norman French and should not lead to H-dropping in Eng-
lish. However, it has to be pointed out that the realisation of initial /h/ in Channel
Island French is by no means categorical. Individual speakers may vary consider-
ably in their use of initial /h/ and it appears likely that this variability has some
effect on H-dropping in English.
NG
As in many other varieties of English, the pronunciation of the ending -ing in words
such as working or fishing varies between velar [] and alveolar [n], the latter form
being more informal and possessing less social prestige than the former. There are
no indications that an influence from Channel Island French has ever played a role in
the realisation of -ing. The variable is well established and can be regarded as a gen-
eral non-standard feature that has also found its way into Channel Island English.
2.3. Suprasegmentals
Channel Island English is characterised by features on the suprasegmental level
(stress, intonation) which sound ‘foreign’ and which are either caused by an in-
fluence from Norman French or can at least be explained originally in terms of
non-natives using English. Such features are most common with older people who
are still regular speakers of Norman French. One may come across unusual stress
patterns as for example in Guernseyman ['g nzi'mæn], educated [edju'ketd] or
grandfather [%rænd'f]. Alternatively, the difference between stressed and
unstressed syllables may be less marked, with the use of secondary stresses on
normally unstressed syllables as in potatoes ['pç%te%tz], tomatoes ['tç%ma%tz],
English ['%gl].
3. The particle eh
This feature is strictly speaking a syntactic one, but it amply illustrates the in-
terrelationship of different influences on Channel Island English also becoming
apparent on the phonological level. Eh is a high-frequency particle in the Chan-
nel Islands (cf. Ramisch 1989: 103–113). Its normal phonological realisation is a
diphthong [eI], but it can also be pronounced as a short [e(]. Three different modes
of usage can be distinguished.
(1) eh is used as a request to repeat an utterance that the listener has not heard
properly (rising tone on eh):
Interviewer: What sort of trouble did you have there?
Informant: Eh?
(2) eh is employed as a tag that is added to a statement to induce the listener to
express his/her opinion on what is said by the speaker (rising tone on eh):
You grow your own stuff, eh - eh?
(3) eh is used as a phatic element which serves to establish or to maintain the
contact between speaker and listener. It can occur repeatedly at relatively
short intervals within one speech cycle, without giving the listener a real
opportunity to voice his/her opinion. The aim of the speaker is merely to
secure the listener’s attention. The length of articulation of eh is often re-
duced, and the rising intonation which is typical of (1) and (2) is frequently
omitted:
In the old days, you see, when we were children, there was no television
eh, we had no electric [sic] anyway eh – yes a gramophone eh, that’s all
what we had you see, music eh, there was no wireless eh.
Eh has indeed the status of a stereotype in the Channel Islands. People refer to
it when they are asked about typical features of their local variety of English. It
is certainly true that eh generally occurs in present-day English as an invariant
tag question that invites the listener’s response to a preceding statement (see e.g.
Quirk et al. 1985: 814). But the question remains why eh occurs with such a high
frequency in the Channel Islands. An influence from Norman French immedi-
ately suggests itself, because eh is equally common in the local French dialects
and is employed in the same way as in English. Moreover, there is a tendency among
older speakers to use a short [e(] for eh both in Norman French and in English.
4. Conclusion
Channel Island English is a variety that is characterised by a unique blend of

features originating from different sources. On the one hand, one encounters non-
standard features of British English that have arrived in the Channel Islands as
a result of the close connections with Britain and because of the many British
immigrants. This influence has existed for a long time and continues to be ef-
fective today. One can observe, for example, features such as T-glottalisation
(the glottaling of intervocalic and word-final [t]) or TH-fronting (the use of [f]
and [v] instead of [] and []), especially in the speech of younger people in St.
Helier (Jersey) and St. Peter Port (Guernsey). These features clearly are recent
takeovers from British English. Yet on the other hand, Channel Island English
comprises features that have their origin in Channel Island French. It is of par-
ticular relevance that they occur not only with speakers of Norman French but
also with (younger) people who are monolingual speakers of English. Conse-
quently, features of this type are not just transitional phenomena in the process
of acquiring English. Some of the features have become an integral part of the
local language variety and continue to exist even if the speakers themselves are
no longer bilingual.
Our discussion of various phonological features has shown that in quite a
number of cases the analysis is rather complex because both a Norman French
influence and an influence from other varieties of English seem plausible. It can
be confirmed that the same holds true for morphological and syntactic features
(cf. Ramisch 1989: 91–163). If there is more than one explanation for a particu-
lar feature, these explanations should not necessarily be regarded as mutually
exclusive; rather, it is reasonable to assume that there is a convergence of differ-
ent sources of influence, reinforcing and complementing each other.
* I would like to thank my informants in the Channel Islands for their helpfulness and
hospitality. The fieldwork in Guernsey and Jersey has always been a unique personal
experience to me. I am particularly grateful to Michèle, Neil and Ross Tucker for their
constant support and friendship over the years.
Selected references
ROM.
Brasseur, Patrice
1980–1997
Atlas Linguistique et Ethnographique Normand. Paris: Editions du CNRS.
Census of the Channel Islands
1891 Census 1891. Islands in the British Seas. Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and
Adjacent Islands. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Census of Guernsey
2001 2001 Guernsey Census. Report on the Census of Population and Households.
Guernsey: States of Guernsey.
Census of Jersey
2001 Report on the 2001 Census. Jersey: States of Jersey.
Gilliéron, Jules and Edmond Edmont
1902–1920
Atlas Linguistique de la France. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Guillot, Claude
1975 Les Iles Anglo-Normandes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Inglis, Henry
18444 The Channel Islands. London: Whittaker.
Jones, Mari C.
2001 Jersey Norman French: Study of an Obsolescent Dialect. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lemprière, Raoul
1974 History of the Channel Islands. London: Robert Hale.
Le Patourel, John
1937 The Medieval Administration of the Channel Islands 1199–1399. London:
Nicolle, E. Toulmin (ed.)
18933 The Channel Islands. London: Allen.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Ramisch, Heinrich
1989 The Variation of English in Guernsey/Channel Islands. Frankfurt am Main:
Lang.
Syvret, Marguerite and Joan Stevens
1998 Balleine’s History of Jersey. West Sussex: Phillimore.
Tomlinson, Harry
1981 Le Guernesiais – Etude grammaticale et lexicale du parler Normand de l’Ile
de Guernesey. Ph.D. dissertation, Edinburgh.
Tupper, Ferdinand B.
18762 The History of Guernsey and its Bailiwick. London: Simpkin and Marshall.
Upton, Clive and John D.A. Widdowson
1996 An Atlas of English Dialects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Received Pronunciation*
Clive Upton
1. Finding a model
Early in the twentieth century Daniel Jones described the model accent presented
in An English Pronouncing Dictionary as
that most usually heard in everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons
whose men-folk have been educated at the great public [in the English sense of the
word, i.e. private fee-paying] boarding-schools. This pronunciation is also used by a
considerable proportion of those who do not come from the South of England, but who
have been educated at these schools. The pronunciation may also be heard, to an extent
which is considerable though difficult to specify, from persons of education in the South
of England who have not been educated at these schools. It is probably accurate to say
that a majority of those members of London society who have had a university education,
use either this pronunciation or a pronunciation not differing very greatly from it. (Jones
1917: viii)
Jones’s location of his model accent reflects social considerations of his time,
with its reference to “men-folk” (then overwhelmingly the products of the pub-
lic-school system) and the socially and economically dominant “London society”,
and emphasis on the normalizing force of public school education: indeed, so
crucial is this element to his divination of his model that Jones initially calls it
Public School Pronunciation, or PSP. Although non-Southerners might acquire the
accent through privileged schooling, its possession is much more likely amongst
educated Southerners.
Living in a hierarchical, south-east-focused and male-dominated world, Jones’s
stance on a model accent was understandable, and might be expected to have
passed unquestioned in his day. Early twentieth-century assumptions are not nec-
essarily ours, however: education is now more democratic in respect of both gen-
der and class, and Southern England no longer holds a grip on linguistic prestige
which it had on Britain a century ago. And to be fair to Jones, he himself was not
completely locked into a narrow description of the accent. Despite the time-bound
socio-cultural assumptions apparent in his description of his model, as the century
progressed, although the essential prescription remained “public school” turned to
“boarding school”, “London society” became “Londoners”, and by 1926 his label
had become “Received Pronunciation” or RP (a term first used, though not as a
specific label, by A.J. Ellis [1869: 23]). Further, he shows himself to be prepared
to keep the boundaries of the accent and its speaker-base fuzzy, from the first not-
218 Clive Upton
ing “the delusion under which many lexicographers appear to have laboured, viz.
that all educated speakers pronounce alike” (Jones 1917: viii).
If Jones could be open-minded about his model and its speakers, it is now time
for us to be still more relaxed about the RP we acknowledge. The accent that has
for a long time been regarded as a model in dictionaries and language-teaching
texts is becoming much more widely based than it once was. There will always be
a rearguard that deplores changes in the accent, as it will language change of any
kind, and even some linguists out of touch with developments in England might
misunderstand, but we should not on their behalf make the model too precious or
confine its speaker-base to an elite.
Gimson makes the case for the acknowledgement of ongoing developments in
the accent when, having outlined tendencies being shown by the accent in 1984,
he writes:
[I]f a different set of criteria for defining RP […] is adopted, together with a range of
acceptable tolerances within the model, which will result in a somewhat diluted form
of the traditional standard, the re-defined RP may be expected to fulfil a new and more
extensive role in present-day British society. (Gimson 1984: 53)
That new role can most prominently be observed in the use of RP as the scarcely
remarked-upon ‘background’ accent of the media newsreader. But despite Gim-
son’s counsel, a commonly-held view persists that RP is a very narrow class-based
and region-based variety of English pronunciation. This is in part the result of a
peculiarly British attitude towards accent variety:
The British are today particularly sensitive to variations in the pronunciation of their
language. […] Such extreme sensitivity is apparently not paralleled in any other country
or even in other parts of the English-speaking world. (Cruttenden 1994: 76)
Britons are indeed remarkably judgemental about all accents. That RP, when
judged in the abstract, tends to be considered remote from the speech of most
Britons suggests that a rarified version of the accent remains the target of people’s
perceptions, unsurprising if one considers the transcriptions which are frequently
offered up, where the model lags behind Gimson’s expectations.
The RP model with which native speakers and learners alike continue to be
confronted is ultimately, of course, a matter of sounds: that is, phonetic realization
of the phonemes of Received Pronunciation dictates the variety. But creating no
little problem for the model is the choice of symbols by which those phonemes
are described. The phonemic inventory of RP is often represented by a symbol set
that was entirely appropriate when Jones began its description. Such have been
the developments in the accent, however, that another transcription might now be
thought more appropriate for some phonemes. Yet still the old description persists,
a tradition of transcription being retained that fully supports Wells’s description of
the accent as “characteristic of the upper class and (to an extent) the upper-middle
Received Pronunciation 219
class” (Wells 1982: 10). The result is a situation in which traditionalists feel justi-
fied in insisting on the sounds transcribed, as if the symbols were phonetic rather
than phonemic representations (while pragmatic users reproduce whatever sounds
seem appropriate to them when they see the symbols).
Important to this chapter are transcription conventions first deployed in The
New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) and subsequently in all the larg-
er native-speaker dictionaries of Oxford University Press, and, alongside North
American transcriptions, in The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current
English (Upton, Kretzschmar and Konopka 2001). These transcriptions are differ-
ent in some small but significant particulars from those that might be encountered
elsewhere in descriptions of Received Pronunciation, most notably as regards the
TRAP, PRICE, and SQUARE vowels. They are descriptive of the reality of the kind
of modern, “diluted” Received Pronunciation called for by Gimson twenty years
ago.
2. RP and its lesser forms
There are, of course, various kinds of Received Pronunciation. A well-known clas-

sification aimed at making sense of this range is that devised by Wells (1982).
There we find an upper-class accent labelled “U-RP”, and a less marked form,
taken in 1982 to be the most usual and unexceptionable variety, designated “main-
stream RP”. To these are added in close company “adoptive RP”, “Near-RP”, and
“quasi-RP”.
Simplification is sought in this chapter, with concentration on an accent that
will not be the object of comment as regards elevated upbringing or social preten-
sion. Furthermore, it is not to be associated with any one geographical region in
England. This accent is simply labelled ‘RP’. One stage removed from this is a
variety that Ramsaran (1990: 179) calls “traditional” (here trad-RP). In most re-
spects RP and trad-RP are identical. But they are different in important particulars
that, since they are apparent to native British English speakers, should generally
be made known to the speaker-learner who wishes to avoid being judged old-fash-
ioned or affected. To trad-RP are consigned a range of sounds that many Britons
are still wont to consider what is meant by “RP”, leading them to think of it as
“posh” (its almost universal pejorative label). Even further back in time and still
more restricted socially than trad-RP is a version that does nevertheless continue
to be heard as the accent of a few older speakers and as the affectation of some
others. It also exists as a folk-memory in British society generally. Outmoded
and, when heard (typically in old movies and newsreel commentaries), attracting
amused comment, this is Cruttenden’s “Refined RP” (1994: 80). The literature
also abounds with speculation on possible innovations manifesting themselves in
the speech of the young. Neither Refined RP nor speculative RP are treated spe-
220 Clive Upton
cifically here, not because they are not interesting to debate, but because they do
not belong in a purely descriptive setting, and for reasons of space.
3. The vowels of RP
There is an extensive literature in which a good deal of agreement, if not absolute

unanimity, can be seen in the discussion of changes in RP. There is also, however,
some disagreement about precisely how the accent is to be represented, because
some commentators are more inclined to hold the line on the older transcriptional
and realizational forms than others. (See for example Ramsaran’s [1990: 180]
critique of Bauer.) Given the fact of language change, there comes a time when
certain sounds, conventionally labelled in a previous time, alter to such an extent
that different symbols represent them more accurately: the phonetic symbols be-
ing absolutes, their interpretation cannot be altered to suit the new development,
so that if anything is to change in the interests of accuracy and clarity it must be
the label that is applied to the sound. This is especially important since transcrip-
tions in dictionaries and English language teaching texts are invariably broadly
phonemic, and if their users are to be properly served they need to be provided
with transcriptions that correspond as honestly as possible to the sounds of the
modern accent. The RP vowel inventory incorporates some judicious relabelling
from that which is often to be seen. It contains nineteen stressed vowels, /I, E, a,
A, √, U, E˘, i˘, A˘, ç˘, u˘, ´˘, eI, çI, √I, aU, Ú, I´, U´/ and two unstressed vowels,
/i/ and /´/.
RP and trad-RP share the same phonemic structure but differ in realizational
(and hence labelling) particulars, and differ also occasionally in the lexical dis-
tribution of phonemes. Table 1 combines the accents in most of the lexical sets.
Where there are differences, these are shown in separate columns.
It will be evident from Table 1 that RP and trad-RP coincide on KIT, LOT,
STRUT, FOOT, FLEECE, FACE, PALM, THOUGHT, GOOSE, CHOICE, MOUTH, NEAR,
START, NORTH, FORCE, happY, lettER, and commA. NURSE shows only a slight
difference, in which the RP transcription is indicative of a less restrictive ren-
dering of the typical sound than is the trad-RP transcription. The BATH vowel
coincides on [A˘] in both varieties, with the addition of a further [a] variant in RP.
CLOTH similarly coincides, though with a short vowel, in both varieties, with a
long-vowel alternative in trad-RP. Both accents share [Ú] in GOAT, with trad-RP
having alternative [oU], and both share [U´] in CURE, with RP having alternative
[ç˘]. Most significant developments have taken place, and so distinguish RP from
trad-RP, in DRESS, TRAP, PRICE, and SQUARE.
Table 1. The vowels of RP and trad-RP
Vowel RP shared RP/trad-RP trad-RP
KIT I
DRESS E e
TRAP a Q
LOT Å
STRUT √
FOOT U
BATH A˘ ~ a A˘
CLOTH Å Å ~ ç˘
NURSE ´˘ Œ˘
FLEECE I˘
FACE eI
PALM A˘
THOUGHT ç˘
GOAT Ú Ú ~ oU
GOOSE u˘
PRICE √I aI
CHOICE çI
MOUTH aU
NEAR I´
SQUARE E˘ E´
START A˘
NORTH ç˘
FORCE ç˘
CURE U´ ~ ç˘ U´
happY i
lettER ´
commA ´
KIT
This is generally realized as half-close and retracted; one might expect a somewhat
closer variant in some older speakers, although this is not a particular feature of
trad-RP. The vowel is the norm in unstressed position in the morphemes -ed, -es,
222 Clive Upton
as in hunted, faces, and in such words as minutes, David. Elsewhere in unstressed

syllables, reduction to [´] is variably to be expected: vowel reduction is less likely
in words where stressed [I] is in the preceding syllable, as in significant, than when
it is not, as in horrible, happily. Gimson (1984: 50–53) closely examines many of
the details of this phenomenon.
DRESS
The RP vowel is half open front spread. Trad-RP has a raised variety that is best
represented as /e/, although it does not typically reach the height of a half-closed
vowel.
Recent change in this vowel is apparently part of a general lowering of the short
front vowels, involving KIT and, most markedly, TRAP.
TRAP
Associated with the general tendency of the modern RP front vowels to lower ar-
ticulation (see also KIT and DRESS), the movement by younger speakers from trad-
RP [Q] to RP [a] is arguably one of the most striking changes that has taken place
in the accent group in recent years. (This “classical” chain shift, it should be noted,
is being recognized in the accents of some non-standard dialects too, as in Ashford,
Kent, by Kerswill [2002: 201].) It is also undoubtedly a most controversial matter.
This is seemingly at least in part because the newer form corresponds with what is
perceived by many to be a ‘Northern’ sound (sometimes described rather curiously
as “flat a”), on which see the discussion of the BATH vowel below.
Beyond this simple issue of regional prejudice, [a] is also a problematic sound
for some Southern speakers, since, as Wells (1982: 291–292) explains, it is little
different from a fronted version of their /√/ (‘their’ since Northern accents do not
possess this phoneme): with [a] and [√] falling (close) together (see STRUT), dis-
tinctions between fan and fun blur or disappear in the perception of those used to
the more obvious distinction between [Q] and [√].
Although an issue for some, this trad-RP to RP change is a matter of which Brit-
ish English native-speakers are aware (mimicking trad-RP bet for bat and so on). It
is also coming to be remarked upon in the usually conservative English Language
Teaching field (Weiner and Upton 2000).
LOT
This is realized as a fully open to slightly raised rounded back vowel, whatever
the variety of RP.
STRUT
The vowel is pronounced by many RP and by trad-RP speakers as a centralized
and slightly lowered [√]. For many speakers /√/ is raised centralized [a]: the more
central and lowered the vowel is, the more likelihood there is for confusion over
RP [a] (see TRAP). There is an increasing appearance, however, of an innovation
in which [√] is raised and retracted from the centralized, towards (though not to) a
half-close advanced position.
Variation in the STRUT vowel is a most prominent feature of north-south distinc-
tion in British English accents, and the recent RP raising development might be
seen as a ‘fudge’ (Chambers and Trudgill 1998: 110–113) between the Northern
[U] and Southern [√]. Interestingly, this feature was noted as the most usual form
in the speech of mid-twentieth century traditional dialect speakers in the South
and south Midlands (Orton 1962–1971; Upton 1995).
FOOT
Quite uncontroversially, this is realized as a half-close and advanced rounded
vowel in all types of RP. The set gives rise to some of the most obvious and fre-
quently-remarked hypercorrections amongst Northern STRUT [U]-speakers striv-
ing to acquire RP when, aware that RP STRUT is invariably [√], not [U], they con-
sciously change their FOOT vowel to [√], producing [p√t] put, [b√tS´] butcher.
BATH
The Received Pronunciation vowel is characteristically described as exclusively
a long back spread vowel, its position being advanced from full retracted. This is
undoubtedly a correct description for the vowel of very many speakers. Two mat-
ters must be taken into account for a proper description of RP, however. Firstly, the
long vowel is becoming both increasingly centralized and more shortened, while
the more retracted sound is perceived by most native speakers now to be worthy
of Refined RP caricature as being unacceptably ‘plummy’. It would seem that the
forward movement is being led by those words in the set where the vowel has a
following nasal, as chance, sample.
This development might be connected with a second, the inclusion in the model
adopted here of ‘Northern short a’ in the RP inventory. Many RP speakers, whose
accent corresponds with that of other speakers on all other features, diverge par-
ticularly on this one variable, and might themselves use both [A˘] and [a] variants
interchangeably. (The other widespread Northern feature characterizing difference
from the South, [U] in the STRUT vowel, is, unlike this BATH-vowel feature, usu-
ally attended by other markers of northernness, such as long monophthongal FACE
or GOAT vowels.) The use of BATH-[a] will essentially be because the RP speaker
has Northern or north Midland origins, in the regional accents of which areas there
is no TRAP/BATH distinction; the use of [A˘] will either be because the speaker has
Southern or south Midland origins, and so comes from an area with vernacular
TRAP/BATH distinction, or because their speech is conditioned by trad-RP.
224 Clive Upton
Wells’s classification (1982: 297) of features as “Near-RP” on grounds of their

not conforming to “phonemic oppositions found in RP” (of which [his] /Q ~ A˘/
here is one) makes an assumption about RP structure supportable if one remains
wedded to a south-centric view of the accent. Inclusion of BATH-vowel [a] in RP
is on grounds already claimed: the accent is not to be thought of as an exclusively
southern-British phenomenon (Upton, Kretzschmar and Konopka 2001: xii), and
the inclusion of “a different set of criteria” resulting in “a somewhat diluted form
of the traditional standard” (Gimson 1984: 53) is a description which well suits
this move.
CLOTH
This vowel is in RP short, fully open, fully retracted and rounded. Trad-RP [ç˘] (a
feature now more associated with Refined RP) is invariably judged risible by na-
tive British English speakers, RP and non-RP alike.
NURSE
There is some considerable variation in the realization of this central vowel, from
half open to half close or slightly higher for some RP speakers. [´˘] is chosen as the
transcription here, reflecting the considerable variation apparent amongst speak-
ers: it subsumes the more restrictive [Œ˘] used by many transcribers of RP (also
reducing by one the number of symbols in the transcription set).
FLEECE
In both varieties this is a long high front vowel, articulated with lips spread. The
tongue is typically slightly lowered from the fully close position. Some slight glid-
ing from the KIT-vowel position is usual, with [Ii] being more usual than [i˘].
FACE
This short upgliding diphthong shows little if any variability. Its startpoint is at or
slightly below half-close front, from where movement is to the KIT vowel. Trad-
RP speakers are likely to begin the diphthong high, at rather than below the half
open position.
PALM
For both RP and trad-RP speakers, realization is as a fully open, advanced or cen-
tralized long spread vowel. The more retracted the form, the nearer it approaches
that of Refined RP.
THOUGHT
This is [ç˘]. Compare this in all words in the set with the sounds applying at
NORTH/FORCE below.
GOAT
Starting at a central position, this glide moves to or in the direction of RP /U/, giv-
ing [Ú]. Trad-RP has variant [oU], with a somewhat centralized startpoint, though
by no means all speakers of that accent are characterized by its use.
GOOSE
In all forms this is a long high back vowel with lip rounding. The characteristic
point of RP articulation is slightly relaxed from fully raised, and also somewhat
advanced, with fronting becoming evident among many speakers, especially the
young. A fully retracted form might be heard before [l], as in pool, rule, in all va-
rieties (and in all positions in Refined RP). A short diphthong, [Uu], is often to be
heard word-finally, in such words as sue, who.
PRICE
RP starts this diphthong at a low central point, and moves in the direction of the
KIT vowel /I/. The startpoint is conventionally set at [a]. However, as the RP start-
vowel can in fact be at any point from centralized front to centralized back, and
is raised from the fully open position, [√] is most usefully to be identified for its
description (see STRUT above). The RP transcription /√I/ was first used for the
PRICE-vowel by MacCarthy (1978), and the [√] startpoint is acknowledged as
likely by Cruttenden (1994: 122). [aI], with just a slightly retracted startpoint, can
be heard from some trad-RP speakers.
CHOICE
RP and trad-RP have a startpoint at a fully back half open position, the tongue
moving in the direction of KIT.
MOUTH
The RP diphthong begins near the front open position, lips spread: some retrac-
tion is to be expected, although this is not considerable. The glide then proceeds
towards, though not completely to, FOOT. Trad-RP sees a startpoint that is central-
ized rather than only retracted, and may encompass [AU] as well as [aU]. (The most
retracted forms, accompanied by lengthening of the first element of the diphthong,
are typical of Refined RP.)
NEAR
Beginning at KIT, the RP and trad-RP diphthong glides to a mid- to low-central
position. (Refined RP characteristically places prominence on the second element,
which might typically be rendered as [´˘] or [A˘]: these, and especially the latter,
are, like [EU] for GOAT, likely to be singled out as features worthy of caricature.)
226 Clive Upton
SQUARE
In RP this is a long monophthong at a front half-open position, articulated with
lips spread: there might or might not be some slight off-gliding present, giving [E˘´
~ E˘], but the dominant effect is of a single sound here. Trad-RP SQUARE is char-
acterized by a centring diphthong [E´]. The monophthong-diphthong distinction
between RP and trad-RP is, with TRAP-variation, one of the clearest that can be
identified between the most modern and more dated varieties of the accent.
START
This vowel is essentially the same as that for BATH for those speakers who have
a long vowel there. RP speakers with the short-vowel BATH variant have a long
START vowel, but are likely to be among the speakers who have the most fronted
versions.
NORTH/FORCE
RP and trad-RP vowels here are identical to that for THOUGHT, namely the half-
open lip-rounded back vowel [ç˘].
CURE
A frequent realization of this phoneme is [U´], the centring diphthong starting at
FOOT and gliding to a mid to open central position. This sound is to be heard from
trad-RP speakers, and from many speakers of RP of the middle and older genera-
tions especially.
Increasingly occurring as a feature of RP, however, is long monophthongal [ç˘],
explained by Cruttenden (1994: 134) as a stage further than the [ç´] made possible
for CURE by the loss of that sound as a feature of FORCE, where it was formerly
heard: hence Shaw, sure, shore, formerly likely to be rendered in RP as /Sç˘, SU´,
Sç´/ fall together for many present-day RP speakers as /Sç˘/.
FIRE, POWER
These are most usually realized as triphthongs in RP, [√I´] and [aU´] respectively.
“Smoothing” (Wells 1982: 286, 288, 292–293) of these to diphthongs [√´], [a´ ~
A´] or to monophthongs [√˘], [a˘ ~ A˘] can readily be heard from all speakers in
rapid speech (and especially from speakers of Refined RP in words in isolation).
happY
RP has a tense [i] for this unstressed vowel, where trad-RP has [I]. RP [i] is some-
times attended by some, though not by full, length.
lettER
The mid-vowel [´] is the realization for this in all RP varieties. Rhoticity is never
a feature of RP, so that in final position no [r] is pronounced. However, [r] is used
as a linking feature, when in speech a word ending in <r> is followed by another

starting with a vowel. Thus better or worse is in RP [«bEt´r ç˘ »w´˘s].
commA
[´] is the sound in all RP varieties, as with lettER. In the case of RP, [r] is used to
create a link to a following word beginning with a vowel although, unlike with
lettER, this is not supported by the orthography. This so-called intrusive <r>, al-
though now “used freely in mainstream (native) RP” (Wells 1982: 284), is ab-
horred by many advocates of more restrictive varieties of the accent, and rarely
features in its description in teaching texts or dictionary transcriptions.
4. The consonants of RP
RP and trad-RP correspond as regards their consonant phoneme inventory, and

essentially in realization. Cruttenden (1994: 196) provides statistics for consonant
frequencies in Received Pronunciation, based on the work of Fry (on “Southern
English”) and Perren, and these data introduce the twenty-four phonemes.
Table 2. Text frequencies of consonants in Received Pronunciation (Cruttenden 1994:
196)
% %
n 7.58 b 1.97
t 6.42 f 1.79
d 5.14 p 1.78
s 4.81 h 1.46
l 3.66 N 1.15
D 3.56 g 1.05
r 3.51 S 0.96
m 3.22 j 0.88
k 3.09 dZ 0.60
w 2.81 tS 0.41
z 2.46 T 0.37
v 2.00 Z 0.10
Total all consonants: 60.78%
Some of these frequencies are, of course, structurally conditioned. Frequent oc-

currence of determiner the and pronouns in <th-, wh-> will account for compara-
tively high scores for [D] and [w]. This aside, it is noteworthy that, as Cruttenden
228 Clive Upton
(1994: 196) observes, “the alveolar phonemes emerge as those which occur most
frequently in English, this being a generalization which appears to be applicable to
many languages”. There is also some dominance of the voiceless over the voiced
in sounds thus paired.
The phonology of the RP/trad-RP consonantal system is widely known and has
been extensively discussed (see especially the seminal work begun by Gimson,
manifested in Cruttenden 1994). The account below concentrates on particular is-
sues in this area rather than on an account of each phoneme in turn.
Glottalisation
Existence of a glottal plosive in non-RP accents of English is well-known and
much researched. It is often fondly supposed that this does not occur in RP. How-
ever, whilst it is true that, at least at present, [?] does not occur in RP intervocali-
cally within a word (Ramsaran 1990: 181), it is to be encountered elsewhere.
RP glottaling is most associated with /t/. Whilst it might be avoided in careful
speech and is less likely to be heard in citation forms than in conversation, it is
quite regularly to be expected in RP in syllable-final position preceding a non-syl-
labic consonant, as rat trap, postbox, tentpeg, catflap, Rottweiler. Like Gatwick,
which regularly exhibits the glottal, another of London’s airports, Luton, is also
increasingly to be heard pronounced with [?] preceding a syllabic /n/.
[?] is frequently to be heard intervocalically at a syllable boundary, where the
second syllable is stressed, giving [rI»?Entrńt] re-entrant, [dI»?aktIveIt] de-ac-
tivate. Trad-RP makes use of this device too in the break or hiatus created by the
avoidance of intrusive /r/ (see below), as in drawing, law and order.
Linking and intrusive /r/

Linking /r/, retained historical post-vocalic word-final /r/ occurring before a vowel
in the following word, is, as stated above at lettER, a normal feature of Received
Pronunciation. In the most careful, mannered forms this might be avoided, render-
ing far away [fA˘ ?´»weI] rather than [fA˘r ?´»weI]: it is unlikely that many speak-
ers feel under special pressure to avoid such an hiatus now.
The insertion of a non-historical intrusive /r/, referred to in commA above,
when following word-final /´/, /A˘/, or /ç˘/ before a word beginning with a vowel,
has typically been proscribed for users of Received Pronunciation. This creates
an hiatus between the adjacent vowel sounds or, alternatively, a glottal plosive
might be interposed between them, giving [lç˘ ńd »ç˘d´] or [lç˘ ?ńd »ç˘d´] law
and order. RP shows no such inhibitions, with intrusive /r/ being the norm: [lç˘r
ńd »ç˘d´], [DI √I»dI´r ´v It] the idea of it. Similarly, intrusive /r/ occurs as the
RP norm word-internally where the need is to avoid the hiatus, thus [»drç˘rIn]
drawing.
Yod coalescence and yod deletion

Coalescence of /tj/, /dj/, /sj/, and /zj/ to /dS/, /dZ/, /S/, /Z/ is a general feature of
Received Pronunciation (Ramsaran 1990: 187–188; Cruttenden 1994: 192), heard
regularly for example in attitude, residue, tissue, usual. Coalesced forms are be-
coming increasingly apparent in all positions in RP, where they provide a less
formal alternative to the more “careful” forms. The resistance to coalescence word-
initially and before stressed vowels (dune, reduce) to which Ramsaran refers is
more a feature of trad-RP speakers than of those of RP, although non-coalesced
forms might be expected to be more regularly heard in their pronunciation of high-
er-level lexical items: for example pendulate is likely to be [»pEndjUleIt] as well
as [»pEndZUleIt].
It is usual in RP for the combination /lu˘/ to occur word-initially and following
unaccented vowels in those words where historically /lju˘/ occurred and where it
is in consequence found in Refined RP and some trad-RP. Thus RP lute and loot
are homophonous.
Yod deletion is similarly characteristic word-initially in RP in such words as
super and suit, where [sju˘] is found variably with [su˘] in trad-RP.
<wh->
RP /w/ represented by the spelling <wh> in such words as when, while, whistle is
invariably [w]. In trad-RP [w] is variable with [hw] (the regular form in Refined
RP). In recent years “the use of /hw/ as a phoneme has declined rapidly (even
though it is often taught as the correct form in verse-speaking)” (Cruttenden 1994:
195): the last part of this observation points to the somewhat rarified and self-con-
scious status now attaching to the feature.
Syllabic consonants
“The syllabic sound of a syllable is generally a vowel, but consonants may also be
syllabic. The more sonorous consonants such as n, l often are so, as in the English
words people »pi˘pl, little »litl, button »btn” (Jones 1969: paragraph 213). The
morpheme -ment is typically [mn2t].
It is normal for the syllabic consonant to be retained when a morpheme spelt with
an initial vowel follows it, giving littler [»lItl™], buttoning [»b√tn2IN]. (Jones uses
the distinctive pair lightening [»l√Itn2IN] and lightning [»l√ItnIN] to illustrate this
point.) It is frequently the case, however, that syllabicization does not occur before
an unstressed vowel, especially in rapid connected speech, so that both RP lighten-
ing and lightning might be rendered as [»l√ItnIN].
* I am most grateful to Dr Richard Matthews of the University of Freiburg for invaluable

comments made on a draft of this paper. Any flaws remaining in its final form are to be
laid entirely at my door, not his.
230 Clive Upton
Selected references
ROM.
Cruttenden, Alan
1994 Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. 5th edition. London: Arnold.
Gimson, Alfred C.
1984 The RP accent. In: Trudgill (ed.), 32–44.
Jones, Daniel
1917 An English Pronouncing Dictionary. London: Dent.
1969 An Outline of English Phonetics. Cambridge: Heffer.
Kerswill, Paul
2002 Models of linguistic change and diffusion: new evidence from dialect leveling
in British English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 6: 187–216.
MacCarthy, Peter
1978 The Teaching of Pronunciation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ramsaran, Susan
1990 RP: fact and fiction. In: Susan Ramsaran (ed.), Studies in the Pronunciation
of English: A Commemorative Volume in Honour of A.C. Gimson, 178–190.
London: Routledge.
Upton, Clive
1995 Mixing and fudging in Midland and Southern dialects of England: the cup and
foot vowels. In: Jack Windsor Lewis (ed.), Studies in General and English
Phonetics: Essays in Honour of Professor J.D. O’Connor, 385–394. London:
Routledge.
Upton, Clive, William A. Kretzschmar Jr. and Rafal Konopka
2001 The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Weiner, Edmund and Clive Upton
2000 [hat], [hæt], and all that. English Today 61: 44–46.
British Creole: phonology
Peter L. Patrick
1. Introduction
British Creole (BrC) is spoken by British-born people of Caribbean background

whose parents, grandparents or great-grandparents migrated to Britain since 1948.
It is an ethnic variety, rather than a regional or local one. BrC is the product of dia-
lect contact between West Indian migrants, the largest group of whom during the
period of critical formation (1950–1970) were Jamaican, and vernacular varieties
of urban English English (EngE). I use dialect contact advisedly in view of the
relative structural similarity between Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles (CarECs)
and EngE, especially at the phonological level; the alternative, language contact,
suggests the non-genetic relation between these varieties that most creolists assert,
primarily on the basis of contrasts in morphology and syntax.
Because of the Jamaican input, most apparent at the lexical and grammatical lev-
el, BrC has been described as “a collection of local British varieties of J[amaican]
C[reole]” (Sebba 1993: 139). This verdict derives from grammar-focused descrip-
tions, however, which privilege the range of varieties most divergent from British
English (BrE), and may not reflect the complexities of phonological variation and
assimilation to British models, especially for UK-born speakers. Grammar-fo-
cused investigations of BrC (as most of them are) insist that “intermediate forms
[...] [a]re sufficiently few in number to be excluded” from analysis (Edwards 1986:
50). This is not true of phonology. Moreover, as phonological markers of BrC are
often the easiest to acquire, and present the weakest claim to British Black identity,
as the range of speech including them is much wider than the range including only
core grammatical features. Accordingly this chapter casts a wide net.
Languages brought by immigrant minorities to a new urban environment typ-
ically suffer one of two fates. They may die out as and when the immigrants
or their descendants assimilate fully into the target society, and become native
speakers of one of its existing varieties (often contributing a few loanwords, a
grammatical construction or phonological pattern or two). They may be main-
tained as minority languages, serving the needs of an in-group which remains
culturally distinct. This is the stance from which existing treatments of BrC are
written: they emphasize its retention of Jamaican features, its systematic nature
and distinctive properties. There are good social and pragmatic reasons for doing
so in the case of discriminated languages and groups, quite apart from linguistic-
theoretical imperatives.
232 Peter L. Patrick
Much more rarely, a deeper fusion of incoming and target languages occurs,
wherein significant elements of language structure are retained, serving the so-
cial purposes of a group which becomes established on the local scene but never
fully assimilates, often for reasons of oppression and discrimination. African
American Vernacular English (AAVE), assuming its input languages included a
(Caribbean or American) plantation Creole as well as African ancestral variet-
ies, is a very relevant example. In such cases, analysis that focuses purely on
retention of conservative features and systemic distinctness would miss much of
what is most important. The description below presumes that a similar outcome
(partial retention and incomplete assimilation) is possible for BrC, and deserves
attention.
1.1. Input and diffusion

Linguistic variation among receiving communities in Britain, especially on the
phonological level, is responsible for considerable diffuseness, so much so that it
is incorrect to describe BrC as comprising a single accent. Indeed, BrC is found
both north and south of England’s principal dialect boundaries, and in all major
dialect areas of the South of England. BrC speakers in Ipswich or Reading, with
strong Barbadian input, or Dominican-ancestry speakers in Bradford, may differ
systematically from London Jamaicans, whose speech contrasts with Dudley’s
Jamaican-derived population due to the West Midlands input in Dudley. Since
Afro-Caribbeans, over time, moved beyond the initial entry points of migration
to a range of urban areas (including Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester, Notting-
ham, Sheffield), and their children and descendants have become well-integrated
into these speech communities (whose English dialect is their primary vernacular),
such diffuseness in phonology may have increased rather than abated. Some au-
thors (e.g. Sutcliffe and Figueroa 1992) describe BrC as a stable variety, meaning
that it shows considerable continuity with Jamaican Creole (JamC). Indeed it does,
but it is not known how far into the future this can be projected. Linguists can
hardly focus only on how thoroughly Caribbean characteristics are retained, given
the primacy of BrE for most UK-born speakers; investigation of a possibly-emerg-
ing, ethnically-distinctive dialect is an important research target.
With respect to ancestral Island Creoles (IslCs), i.e., source varieties of English-
lexicon Creole spoken natively in the West Indies, and by Caribbean-born migrants
overseas, BrC may be called a post-native variety. For its canonical speakers today
it is a second or later variety, and their (other) first variety is not an Island Creole.
It may occasionally be spoken indistinguishably from an Island Creole: Sutcliffe
(1982: 132) notes that some British-born speakers in Bedford had essentially full
native command of Jamaican Creole (JamC), while Tate (1984) describes Ras-
tafarians of Dominican descent in Bradford whose accent passed for Jamaican
among Jamaicans. BrC may also be acquired in childhood within the critical pe-
British Creole: phonology 233
riod: Sebba (1993: 37–40) reports that the age of acquisition varies (though studies
of Afro-Caribbean child language socialisation into BrC are needed). Yet it seems
clear that most speakers of BrC do not acquire it as a primary vernacular, and do
not use it in preference to EngE, in a sustained fashion, across a wide range of
domains. It is thus characteristic of BrC that, in any given community of speakers,
a range of competence exists from token to full.
However, IslC input persists, via both earlier and current immigrants and family
visits, as well as mass media (again largely Jamaica-focused). The presence of IslC
speakers in British Afro-Caribbean communities ensures that adaptation, accom-
modation and acquisition remain a two-way street, with IslC speakers targeting
EngE (and perhaps BrC) norms while BrC speakers are influenced by IslC norms.
Although local British icons and exemplars have also arisen, BrC thus cannot be
called normatively autonomous. As BrC serves different social purposes, Island
JamC (Patrick, other volume) cannot reasonably be the touchstone for full com-
petence. Given this, and the present focus on phonology (which shows perhaps
greater assimilation to BrE norms than grammar), the description below attempts
to avoid idealising BrC at its Creole extremity: not to police the distance between
it and EngE, but to explore the linguistic space between that Creole pole and the
possibly-now-emerging new dialect of BrE spoken by Caribbean-origin Britons.
BrC arose via the development of a generalised ‘Black British’ identity, partly
externally imposed, as Caribbean people of many colours, ethnicities and class
backgrounds found themselves viewed in Britain as black, West Indian and work-
ing-class (Gilroy 1987). Caribbean English (Island) Creoles are uniformly lan-
guages of ethnic and/or national identification; not so, BrC. Elements of BrC
are used both between whites and blacks, as well as among white working-class
(Rosen and Burgess 1980; Hewitt 1986) and Asian youth (Rampton 1995). Such
‘crossing’ indexes complex social meanings (like outgroup use of AAVE in the
US), but appears both socially limited and grammatically restricted by comparison
to British Afro-Caribbean community speech.
Little research exists on BrC; no sociolinguistic speech community survey has
been performed in twenty years. The summary below, which follows earlier work
by Sutcliffe (1982 in Bedford, 1992 in Dudley), Edwards (1986 in Dudley), and
Sebba (1993 in London), must be considered tentative pending further investiga-
tion. However, it is not only lack of research that makes the picture more complex
than most immigrant varieties. The principal causes can be identified, if their work-
ings are not fully understood: (1) the structural relation between input varieties
(CarECs and vernacular EngE), which is closer than for most genetically unrelated
languages, yet further apart than that of many dialects; (2) the tangled history of
language subordination, ideology and attitudes held by Caribbean peoples towards
British English, and all it represents, as well as vice versa (Mühleisen 2002); and
(3) the social and demographic factors relating to acquisition.
1.2. Forms of speech and social demographic factors

The forms of speech created by this contact situation are multiple, as are their
labels, including Black London English, British Black English, London Jamai-
can, London/Jamaican, British/Jamaican Creole, and such less-discriminating
terms as Patwa (~ Patois), Creole, ‘dialect’, West Indian English, Afro-Lingua,
and Nation Language (which specify no particular source or British community).
Such names for language varieties and people, though worthy of sociolinguistic
study, cannot be explored here. An important research problem, only partially at-
tempted to date (Sebba 1993: 10), is to identify, constrain and describe the major
modes of BrC.
One might not wish to call all the forms of speech described below by the label
BrC, but they exemplify the variety of language within the community:
(1) a. Use of partly-assimilated vernacular elements of British English into
Island Creole (e.g. accent, lexicon);
b. IslC that has undergone long-term accommodation to BrE, in face-to-
face interactions by adult Caribbean immigrants (Wells 1973);
c. use of IslC in code-switching with BrE by people who natively speak
both;
d. Creole-like speech learned young from native IslC-speaking family,
by Afro-Caribbean native speakers of BrE;
e. Creole-like speech learned later from IslC-speaking peers, by Afro-
Caribbean native speakers of BrE;
f. Creole-like speech learned late from non-native-IslC-speaking sources,
and incorporated into BrE;
g. token elements of Creole speech, not sustained or sustainable,
acquired unsystematically by Afro-Caribbean native speakers of BrE,
or
h. …by non-Afro-Caribbean native speakers of BrE, and
i. emerging ethnically-distinctive varieties of BrE spoken primarily by
Caribbean-origin Britons, incorporating various elements from Creole-
like speech.
A range of factors combine in three major dimensions to shape these speech-
forms: Caribbean family input (i.e. Jamaican/other English Creole/other Carib-
bean/none); community-type in Britain (i.e. urban South East England/other ur-
ban/rural, varying in degree of contact with London); and nativeness/degree of
acquisition (i.e., acquisition from birth/before circa twelve years/afterwards; plus,
generational status relative to immigration). While distinguishable in the abstract,
these necessarily overlap in practice to produce the major modes of BrC, and are
not exhaustive.
Little is known of linguistic variation according to classic sociolinguistic fac-

tors such as age, sex, and class, though it is clear that the great majority of BrC
speakers are working-class, and that age has no simple relationship to generation
of immigration. The complex role of ethnicity in acquisition has been explored
mainly in terms of individual agency via “acts of identity” (LePage and Tabo-
uret-Keller 1985), especially regarding assimilation into British nationhood and
preservation of distinctive minority status. People of Caribbean heritage are of
mixed background by definition, and mixing continues to occur in England across
regional, social and racial lines. To the extent that “mixed-race” children represent
linguistically heterogeneous family backgrounds, they will influence the develop-
ment of BrC.
1.3. Linguistic convergence

Insofar as BrC possesses a stable phonological structure, it is the result of linguis-
tic convergence between (i) JamC, as speakers perceive it; (ii) local vernacular
BrE; and possibly (iii) another Caribbean English variety (though few traces of
this type surface). The best-known variety, treated below, takes London Vernacu-
lar English (LonVE) as input (ii); other varieties are subject to some London influ-
ence as well. At the level of the phonological inventory, BrC as expected has the
more numerous phonemic contrasts of LonVE, plus some phonetic realizations
typical of JamC. Social pressures may also influence speakers to converge with
“proper English” (as likely to be vernacular BrE as Received Pronunciation [RP])
in formal settings, producing a more British-sounding result than conversational
speech, as in the word-lists recorded.
2. Vowels and diphthongs
Nearly a dozen analyses of JamC vowel and diphthong systems exist, positing
inventories from 8–17, and variously motivated by historical transparency (Cas-
sidy 1961), symmetry (Devonish and Harry, this volume) or phonetic accuracy
(Beckford Wassink 1999). This last, the most detailed empirical analysis, de-
scribes JamC as a V-shaped, peripheral, symmetrical system with five front and
five back vowels and two at the low apex, and demonstrates that contrasts often
attributed to length alone, an important distinctive feature of JamC, are supported
by systematic quality distinctions as well. BrC however relies primarily on vowel
quality, and vowel length generally patterns with LonVE. Variants which might
be contrastively associated with Standard Jamaican English (StJamE) are rare in
BrC, where vernacular structures (both British and Jamaican) predominate, and
are more often encountered in the speech of Caribbean-born migrants than later
generations.
(2) Jamaican Creole vowel inventory (based on Beckford Wassink 1999)

i˘ u˘
I U
e˘ o˘
E √
aI ç
a A˘
The inventory in (2) is fairly typical, except that it explicitly recognises quality
distinctions as well as length in every sub-system. Analyses with fewer mem-
bers inevitably dephonemicise some regular and salient distinctions; those with
more typically admit debatable separate subclasses, such as rhotic vowels (Veatch
1991). Beckford Wassink concludes that /ç/ is not phonetically distinguishable for
most speakers from /a/, as suggested in Patrick (1995), thus giving only five short
vowels and six long ones or diphthongs.
Table 1. Variants in British Creole (South East England variety).
KIT i~I FLEECE i ~ Ii NEAR ier ~ iEr > I´ ~ i˘

DRESS e_ ~ E FACE ie ~ iE ~ e˘ ~ EI SQUARE ier ~ iEr ~ e˘ ~ E˘
TRAP a~Q PALM a˘ ~ A˘ START a˘ ~ a=˘ > A˘(r)
LOT a~Å~ç THOUGHT a˘ ~ ç˘ ~ o˘ NORTH a˘ ~ A˘(r) ~ ç˘ ~ o˘
STRUT ç ~ ç_ ~ å ~ √ GOAT uo ~ Uo ~ U´ ~ o˘ ~ ó_ FORCE uo ~ Uo ~ o_˘(r)
~ ç £˘
FOOT u~U GOOSE u˘ ~ u_˘ ~ ¨˘ CURE jç˘ ~ jo˘(r)
BATH a˘ ~ a_˘ ~ A˘ PRICE ai ~ aI ~ AE, Ae happY I~i
CLOTH a˘ ~ A ~ Å CHOICE ai ~ çI ~ çE lettER a~å
NURSE ç_r ~ Pr ~ ¨´ ~ MOUTH çU ~ aU ~ Q´ horsES I
Œ˘ ~ Œr˘ commA a~å
Table 1 summarises the principal vowel variants; the general effect is a London-
like system with a variably Jamaican-like sound. It is difficult, in the present
state of knowledge, to make quantitative statements about preference, and it can-
not be asserted (without premature idealisation) that all variants even belong to
the same system, given such factors as variable rhoticity, vowel quality dis-
persion and overlap, alternation of centring glides with monophthongs with
upglides in the same word-class, etc. Nevertheless, all variants may be encoun-
tered in the speech of Caribbean-origin Britons who claim to be using ‘Patwa’

or ‘Creole’.
There are often differences, however, between speakers who were born and
spent at least early childhood years in the Caribbean, and those born in Britain like
Sally, the twenty-something speaker of the word-list sample on the accompanying
CD-ROM. Though both Sally’s parents are from Kingston, she identifies herself
during the recording saying, “Yeah but I’m Cockney!” Her mother and Paulette, a
British-born but Jamaica-raised woman a generation older, tease her saying “You
fly the flag”, and “You Londoner... Cockney”. Sally’s assimilated speech may rep-
resent the future of London Jamaican pronunciation, though the chart captures a
range of variants (hers are generally rightmost, Paulette’s to the left).
KIT, DRESS, FOOT, STRUT

For short non-low vowels, BrC realisations are often more peripheral and tenser
than the London norm, accurately reflecting JamC. Most authors typically phone-
micise the STRUT items as /o/ although they never reach [o]; however, they are
relatively back and often rounded to [ç].
TRAP, LOT, BATH, PALM

Southern BrC is a “broad-BATH” dialect like its input varieties. Short-O (ME o) and
short-A (ME ) merged in the formation of JamC, as the latter never raised from
[a] to [Q] according to Cassidy and LePage (1980: xlix), so pronunciations with
[Q] represent StJamE or, more probably, BrE influence. Again targeting basilectal
JamC as reference variety, BrC may dramatically reduce vowel-quality contrasts
among low vowels (Patrick 1999). Though their ranges do not entirely overlap, all
four word-classes share front, open variants, sometimes centralised (e.g. Sally); for
some speakers TRAP and LOT may be merged, though others retain rounding on the
latter. However, length distinctions are robust and may even be exaggerated rela-
tive to London English (Beckford Wassink [1999: 186] finds a 1.6:1 ratio for long-
to-short in JamC, typical of languages where quantity is the primary distinction).
Some Jamaican-born speakers alternate [a˘] and [A˘] in succession, both long.
The possibly greater salience of quantity contrasts may account for the length-
ening tendency observed in CLOTH words (normally short in South East England,
Wells 1982) pronounced with front vowels; UK-born assimilated speakers tend to
have short, backer vowels.
FLEECE, GOOSE
BrC long vowels appear to be only sporadically and lightly affected by the London
Diphthong Shift, for UK-born speakers only (e.g. Sally has slightly centralised
monophthongs such as [u_˘] for GOOSE); Jamaican-born ones generally follow both
JamC and StJamE in having tense monophthongs. The fully centralised variants of
/i˘/ [í] and /u˘/ [´¨] do not seem to co-occur with BrC grammar and lexis, even
in code-switching. One wonders whether BrC, like AAVE (Labov 2001), might
provide a locus for non-participation in predominant vowel-shifts.
PRICE, CHOICE, MOUTH

The PRICE/CHOICE merger, general in JamC (Thomas 2001: 163) but carefully
distinguished by StJamE speakers, does not hold for BrC, where some back round
diphthongs occur in CHOICE words. Use of /w/ to distinguish these (/bwai/ ‘boy’,
as in JamC) from PRICE words is a salient marker of BrC, and may occur even
where vowel quality makes it redundant. Both diphthongs contain strong glides;
they may be more peripheral before unvoiced consonants. For UK-born speakers,
both onset and target may be slightly retracted or lowered. However, Sutcliffe
and Figueroa (1992: 98) observe a fronting and raising of the onset in Rastafarian-
identified speakers in Dudley.
MOUTH generally does not show the [o] or [U] starting point common in JamC
but is lowered and/or fronted, converging with London realizations; the glide may
be abbreviated to a centring one, targeting [´]. Exceptions to this are lexicalized
pronunciations of common words ending in a velar nasal, realised /√N/ in BrC,
where LonVE has the MOUTH diphthong followed by /n/ or /nd/, as in down [d√N
~ dç_N] town, round.
FACE, GOAT
These word-classes, among the most various and stigmatized in JamC, lend them-
selves to a host of realisations in BrC. They occur as down-gliding or, more com-
monly, in-gliding diphthongs, e.g. [gu´t], mid monophthongs, e.g. [go˘t], or even
London-like up-gliding diphthongs, e.g. [gó_t] (rarely as the high monophthongs
occasionally found in Jamaica). They do not seem to participate in the London
Diphthong Shift, which lowers the starting point for both right down to [a], since
they rarely dip below [E]. While Sally’s FACE is London-like, her GOAT [gó_t] is
a classic BrC hybrid: it has a central starting-point like many London speakers,
but the [o] target is typical of JamC, with none of the fronting to [I], [Y] found in
recent years (Altendorf and Watt, this volume). Despite some l-vocalization, the
vowel quality in GOAT ~ GOAL is similar.
Beckford Wassink (1999: 161) notes that [ie] is more prevalent and less stig-
matised for FACE in urban Jamaican than [uo] is for GOAT; it is expected that
frequency would be reversed in BrC, since what is not prestigious in Kingston may
be a source of covert prestige or basilectal focussing in Britain. Lexical exceptions
mek [mEk] ‘make, let’ and tek [tEk] ‘take’ are common markers of BrC, but do not
vary as often with [miek] and [tiek] as in JamC.
happY, lettER, COMMA

The reduction vowel for weak syllables in JamC is generally closer to [å] or even
[a] in JamC than to schwa; /a/ is a plausible phoneme assignment. This has led
some analysts to mistakenly posit /a/ as the target of all in-gliding and down-glid-
ing diphthongs, as well, though there is no evidence that such glides ever terminate
in [a]. It is common for native speakers of both JamC and StJamE to produce full,
unreduced vowels in non-final environments where BrE varieties reduce them,
but this is less true of BrC. HappY is occasionally lax for Jamaican-born speakers,
whose open syllables regularly end in short lax vowels.
NEAR, SQUARE
JamC is variably (semi-)rhotic but BrC is less so. This may be due to the socio-
linguistic confusion of values attached to rhoticity, which is more often present
in StJamE than basilectal JamC, but less often present in both standard and ver-
nacular varieties of South East England. Rhotic pronunciations may be interpreted
as either basilectal or acrolectal in Jamaican contexts, depending on linguistic
environment, but are non-local in London and thus not especially likely to sur-
face in BrC, on either count. These two word-classes are salient environments for
post-vocalic /r/ appearance in BrC, as it may coincide with basilectal in-glides
[ier, iEr], which are less stigmatised in this environment. However, both in BrC
and basilectal JamC, non-pre-vocalic /r/ is generally limited to morpheme-final
position. Wells (1973: 95–101), describing JamC adults undergoing long-term ac-
commodation to BrE, gives frequencies of appearance before a variety of final
consonants.
In BrC focused on basilectal JamC, the two word-classes may merge in NEAR
with an in-glide, thus contrasting strongly with LonVE. For British-born speakers,
the occasional acrolectal StJamE merging in SQUARE (in which cheers may be
pronounced with a mid monophthong, as though it were chairs ) is not typical of
BrC, since the two word-classes may be distinguished on height, as [I˘] and [E˘],
with or without a centring glide.
NURSE
This vowel is not normally a distinct one in JamC, being simply the STRUT vowel
plus /r/. In BrC a range of somewhat higher, mid-central pronunciations also occur.
In both varieties, rounding is common. R-coloration is most frequent morpheme-
finally, but may occur before /rC/ combinations, especially /rt, rd/. With mid-cen-
tral pronunciations it is less common, unlike the StJamE long monophthong, but
does occur in BrC. Sutcliffe and Figueroa (1992: 103) record for Dudley a close
central onset /¨´/, “a new sound... not noted for JC formerly” in wok ‘work’, tod
‘third’, church ‘church’, etc.
START, NORTH, FORCE

As with TRAP etc., the START and NORTH vowels in BrC often merge in a front
open vowel for JamC-focussed speakers, typically long and with no r-coloration
[a˘], though much backer and rounded pronunciations of NORTH words commonly
occur for UK-born speakers (Sally has [o_˘]). FORCE is merged with NORTH in many
dialects, including South Eeast English, but not in JamC or the Caribbean gener-
ally, which Thomas (2001: 47) calls “[p]erhaps the last stronghold of the /çr/ - /or/
distinction”. Sutcliffe and Figueroa (1992: 102) hypothesise that this merger is
underway in BrC, but in the London area they may still be distinguished, even in
the most British-assimilated pronunciations, despite being frequently merged in
RP and South East England: for Sally, FORCE remains /ç˘/ but NORTH is /o˘/.
3. Consonants
t, k, g
In many BrE dialects including LonVE, syllable-final and word-medial /t/ are often
subject to glottal substitution, glottal reinforcement, and other forms of glottalisation.
This highly salient and stigmatised vernacular feature is not noticeable in JamC, but
occurs regularly in BrC and is assimilated even by Caribbean-born adult migrants.
Straw (2001) examines glottal features in the Suffolk town of Ipswich, in the
English of Caribbean-born speakers from Jamaica, Nevis and Barbados (it occurs
natively in the last, uniquely in the West Indies [Roberts 1988], but in a pattern dif-
ferent from EngE). She finds different frequencies and environmental constraints
among them, and between the accents of Caribbean and white Ipswich residents.
Analysing spectrograms, Straw and Patrick (forthcoming) observe that the Bar-
badians partly exhibit general configurations allegedly diffusing across England,
partly resemble white Ipswich speakers (in a departure from known patterns of
glottalisation elsewhere), and partly show distinctive features which may reflect
IslC usage. Only the youngest Barbadian immigrants may have acquired local Ips-
wich patterns. T-glottalling is thus a candidate not only for incorporation into BrC,
but also for phonological diversity within its varieties, and possibly for helping to
distinguish a new ethnic dialect of BrE.
Palatalization of JamC /k, g/ and insertion of /j/ glides is studied in Patrick
(1995) and Beckford Wassink (1999); nothing different has emerged in BrC. Ini-
tial consonant clusters, especially /sCC/, e.g. spring, strong, are more likely in BrC
than JamC.
th-stopping
The most salient contrast with prestigious English accents is th-stopping, which
uses alveolar stops [t, d] to correspond to dental fricatives [P, D]. This describes
JamC and BrC; the stops themselves are sometimes fronted. This contrasts
straightforwardly with LonVE, which instead substitutes [f, v], though only non-
initially, for the voiced case. (Word-initial [D]-stopping also occurs sometimes in
LonVE; this environment is discounted below.) The [f] variant is more common; it
is regularly assimilated by older Caribbean-born speakers, and surfaces unadapted,
or misadapted (Sebba 1993: 53–56), in the BrC of the UK-born younger genera-
tion, in words such as both, mouth, north and Samantha. In a study of two Lon-
don-born brothers whose parents were Jamaican-born, Knight (2001) found that
David and Gary both avoided standard variants [P, D] entirely over several hours
of speech (700 tokens). However, compared across three situations, David’s use
of the JamC/BrC variants ranged from 18% to 55%, while Gary’s never surpassed
6%. Other variants were all LonVE forms, so both were highly vernacular speak-
ers, but David was much more Creole-focussed, although even he used fewer such
forms than the Dudley study found (Edwards [1986: 110] reports 41% to 100%).
The pattern, confirmed with morphological data (plural-marking), suits their cul-
tural styles: though close and involved in overlapping networks, the two contrast
in their musical preferences, racial integration of football teams and school-friend
networks, hair and clothing style, etc. In each case David’s associations are more
overtly Caribbean or Black British than Gary’s. The family maintain strong con-
tact with Jamaican culture, and neither boy is a ‘lame’ (Labov 1972): the language
difference is down to individual agency, given joint exposure to varied resources.
As the likelihood of /v/ appearing intervocalically is bolstered by the [D]-to-[v]
rule, the old-fashioned occurrence of /b/-for-/v/ in JamC is not salient in BrC,
though it happens for frequent forms such as neba ‘never, not’ or beks ‘vexed’.
h-dropping
Except as a recessive feature in western dialects of the island, [h] is not contrastive
in JamC but rather variably appears in syllable onsets, independent of historical or
spelling patterns, to mark emphasis. It also signals social maneuvering in the style
known as ‘speaky-spoky’ (Patrick 1997). In LonVE [h] also occurs noncontrastively
to mark emphasis, a function it shares with glottal stops (Sivertsen 1960). Sebba
(1993: 158) suggests that glottal stopping may be replacing h-dropping in this func-
tion for Creole-influenced LonVE. A possible motivation for this is that indiscrimi-
nate emphatic h-dropping invokes a “stereotype of rural, parental speech” for British-
born black speakers (Sutcliffe and Figueroa 1992: 97), while glottal stopping retains
local, covert prestige and is compatible with BrC norms. Regardless, Sutcliffe ob-
serves that younger British-born speakers seldom use emphatic h-dropping.
r, l
Rhoticity is slightly more frequent in JamC than in LonVE, where it only occurs
post-vocalically in linking or intrusive mode. Wells (1982: 577) describes the vari-
able occurrence of /r/ in historically r-ful words as semi-rhotic, noting that /r/ is
lost more often before consonants in JamC than syllable-finally. It undergoes fur-
ther attrition in BrC. While /r/ is retained most often in JamC for NURSE, NORTH
and START words, no pattern has emerged in BrC.
In both JamC and StJamE, all laterals are clear including syllabics. Consequent-
ly there is no l-vocalization. This feature was notoriously not assimilated to EngE
by the adult immigrant generation of Jamaicans (Wells 1973). They did alter the
JamC rule for velarizing alveolar stops before syllabic /l/, adapting /bakl/ ‘bot-
tle’, /niigl/ ‘needle’ to /batl/, /niidl/. Both pronunciations are found in the BrC of
younger generations, who are not prestige-driven in the same way, and so produce
basilect-focused tokens like Ku kekl a kos pot ‘Look at the kettle cursing the pot’
(Sutcliffe and Figueroa 1992: 83). There is some evidence for dark […] creeping into
the speech of Jamaicans who came as children to London, where L-vocalization
continues apace in LonVE: such speakers retain clear [l] in chil(d) but may have […]
in goal, ghoul, and even vocalization in old and syllabic fatal, beetle (with /t/).
4. Prosody and intonation
The BrC prosodic system’s interactive functions for turn-taking are studied by
Local, Wells and Sebba (1985), who show that pitch characteristics of the final
syllable of a syntactic unit help delimit turns in a way that contrasts with BrE.
Prosody and intonation are treated in depth for JamC and BrC by Sutcliffe and
Figueroa (1992: 107–124), who regard them as syllable-timed tone languages
with two contrastive tones, downstep and upstep. English word stress is most of-
ten associated with low tone, rather than high, resulting in English monolinguals’
perception that stress is often oddly misplaced in BrC (they mistakenly interpret
high pitch as stress). Sutcliffe records several cases where British-born speakers
pointed explicitly to grammatical patterns differentiated by tone for his benefit.
He outlines a number of patterns contrasting question types, consecutive verb
constructions, relative clauses, conditionals and indicatives by consistent devices
such as marked tones on subject pronoun and main verb. There is little doubt that
such elements have carried over from JamC productively, and yet it is difficult to
reconcile them with more assimilated aspects of BrC phonology, suggesting that
not only is further research required, but fundamental alterations in the sound sys-
tem of BrC may take place in rising generations.
* I thank David Sutcliffe for introducing me to the study of British Jamaican speech, and
for discussion during the writing of this article; thanks also go to Michelle Straw and
Pamela Knight, for allowing me to draw on their unpublished data and research, and
contributing crucially to the fieldwork.
Selected references
ROM.
Beckford Wassink, Alicia

1999 A sociophonetic analysis of Jamaican vowels. Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Gilroy, Paul
1987 There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchinson.
Knight, Pamela
2001 London/Jamaican in the speech of two subjects. B.A. thesis, Department of
Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester.
Labov, William
1972 The linguistic consequences of being a lame. Language in Society 2: 81–115.
Local, John K., William H.G. Wells and Mark Sebba
1985 Phonology for conversation: phonetic aspects of turn delimitation in London
Jamaican. Journal of Pragmatics 9: 309–330.
Patrick, Peter L.
1995 The urbanization of Creole phonology: variation and change in Jamaican
(KYA). In: Guy, Baugh, Feagin and Schiffrin (eds.), 329–355.
1997 Style and register in Jamaican Patwa. In: Schneider (ed.) 1997b, 41–56.
Rosen, Harold and Tony Burgess
1980 Languages and Dialects of London School Children. London: Ward Lock
Educational.
Sivertsen, Eva
1960 Cockney Phonology. Oslo: Oslo University Press.
Straw, Michelle
2001 Caribbeans in Ipswich – dialect contact and variation: a study of t-glottali-
sation. M.A. thesis, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of
Essex, Colchester.
Straw, Michelle and Peter L. Patrick
forthcoming Dialect acquisition of glottal variation in /t/: Barbadians in Ipswich. In:
Patrick Honeybone and Philip Carr (eds.), special issue of Language
Sciences.
Sutcliffe, David
1982 British Black English. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sutcliffe, David and John Figueroa
1992 System in Black Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Tate, Shirley
1984 Jamaican Creole approximation by second generation Dominicans? The use
of agreement tokens. M.A. thesis, Department of Language and Linguistics,
University of York.
Thomas, Erik R.
2001 An Acoustic Analysis of Vowel Variation in New World English. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Veatch, Thomas C.
1991 English vowels: their surface phonology and phonetic implementation in ver-
nacular dialects. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Wells, John C.
1973 Jamaican Pronunciation in London. Oxford: Blackwell.
Introduction: varieties of English in the Americas and
the Caribbean
Edgar W. Schneider
1. Introduction: One region?
Dealing with the Americas and the Caribbean jointly, in a single volume and chap-
ter, is a decision that requires some discussion, perhaps justification. Of course, in
a global geographical perspective it comes natural, focusing upon a continent that
is separated from other world regions by the globe’s largest oceans on both sides.
History also justifies such a perspective, with roughly similar population move-
ments having occurred at similar times. All parts of the American continent were
originally populated by Native Americans. After the “discovery” of the continent
by Columbus and during the period of colonial expansion the indigenous tribes
were subdued and cruelly decimated by European settlers, who, in turn, forced
millions of Africans to be transported to the region, with the descendants of these,
plus some smaller groups of later arrivals, making up for the major population
segments. Close economic connections have prevailed to the present day, and
substantial migration in both directions has occurred (and provided for mutual
linguistic influences). On closer examination, however, there are of course also
fundamental differences to be discerned in their economic, social, demographic
and cultural make-up. North American settlers were attracted by the prospect of
religious freedom and economic prosperity, while for a long time the Caribbean
was not deliberately settled but rather exploited mainly as the site of the mass
production of cash crops, most notably sugar cane, resulting in plantation societies
which rested upon the infamous institution of slavery. Hence, while the descen-
dants of Europeans predominate in North America, those of Africans constitute
the majority throughout the Caribbean. Politically and socially, the Caribbean was
much more fragmented and disputed by several European colonial powers, while
on the North American continent the British secured their predominance (with the
exception of remaining French enclaves and, around the Gulf of Mexico, Span-
ish traces and neighbors). Most importantly in the present, linguistic perspective,
different settlement patterns have resulted in North American varieties of English
being characterized by dialect transmission (with some degree of koinéization but
also innovation) as against Caribbean forms of English being shaped by processes
of creolization.
248 Edgar W. Schneider
2. Historical background
Disregarding Sir Walter Raleigh’s late-fifteenth century “Lost Colony” of Roa-

noke, permanent English settlement in North America started early in the seven-
teenth century, and the fact that the earliest settler groups tended to be religious
dissenters predominantly from southern parts of England has resulted in the fact
that the dialects of the regions where they established their bridgeheads (1607:
Jamestown, Virginia; 1620: the Pilgrim Fathers landing on Plymouth Rock in
Massachusetts) have retained higher degrees of similarity to southern forms of
British English. Later streams of settlers, migrating from landing sites in or near
Pennsylvania into the interior North, the Midlands and the Upper South in search
of new lands, brought their northern English or Scottish-derived forms of English
and caused these to diffuse, thus giving them a particularly strong role in the evo-
lution of distinctly American ways of speaking. The first two centuries of British
settlement (and the French and Indian War of 1756–1763) secured English as the
language of the Atlantic seaboard and beyond, the area occupied by the thirteen
original colonies that declared their independence in 1776. As a consequence of
relatively homogeneous settler groups and long-standing stability in this eastern
region along the Atlantic coast, regional dialect differences have been found to be
stronger there than further to the West. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 opened
up the continent for further exploration and settlement expansion throughout the
nineteenth century, invigorated by the California Gold Rush after 1848 and the
construction and completion (in 1869) of the transcontinental railway. Linguisti-
cally speaking, these processes resulted in even more dialect mixing and relatively
higher degrees of linguistic homogeneity. At the same time, for centuries Africans
had been brought to the South forcedly as slaves. Emancipation after the Civil
War, in 1865, gave them freedom but did not prevent social segregation, which to
some degree has persisted to the present day – developments which have resulted
in and are reflected by the emergence and evolution of African American Vernacu-
lar English and Gullah and which in some respects may be taken to have resulted
in a linguistic bridge between inland varieties and the Caribbean. In Canada, the
British possession of Newfoundland dates back to the 16th century, caused it to be
settled by people from Ireland and southwestern England, and has left a distinc-
tive dialect there. On the other hand, Canadian English in general is said to have
been characterized by a tension between its British roots (reinforced by loyalists
who opted for living in Canada after America’s independence) and the continu-
ous linguistic and cultural pressure (or attractiveness, for that matter) exerted by
its big southern neighbor. Furthermore, varieties of American English comprise
accents forged by immigrant groups from a host of countries of origin, including
southern and eastern Europeans, Asians, and South and Central Americans: Today,
the most important of these are certainly the forms of English created by contact
with Mexican Spanish.
Introduction: varieties of English in the Americas and the Caribbean 249
In the Caribbean, the British entered the stage more than a century after the
Spanish had established themselves; and the struggle for superiority and influ-
ence between these two and a few more European powers (most importantly, the
French and the Dutch) shaped the ragged history of the region for centuries. The
agents of these struggles were not primarily settlers but buccaneers, planters, and
slaves, and many islands changed hands repeatedly (31 times, it is reported, in the
case of Tobago). Such political turnovers and other activities resulted in high rates
of cross-migration and mutual influences, also linguistically (Holm 1983). The
earliest British possessions in the region were St. Kitts (1624; said to have been
highly influential in the shaping and dispersal of Caribbean language forms: Baker
and Bruyn 1998) and Barbados (1627). Jamaica, the largest and most important
stronghold of Caribbean English (and Creole), became British in 1655. Suriname,
located on the South American continent but culturally a part of the Caribbean
in many ways, presents an exceptional and also linguistically extraordinary case:
An English colony for only 16 years (from 1651 to 1657, when it was exchanged
for New Amsterdam, which thus became New York), it has retained the English-
related creole of its founder years, now called Sranan, and its maroon descendant
forms of the interior to the present day, thus being the site of the most conservative
and radical creoles in the region. In Trinidad, English and English-based creole
replaced French creole only in the course of the nineteenth century. Finally, vari-
ous historical incidents (minor settlement migrations, like from the Caymans to
the Bay Islands of Honduras; logwood cutting, buccaneering and even shipwrecks
in Belize and Nicaragua; economic activities, like railroad construction in Costa
Rica and the building of the canal in Panama) established pockets of English cre-
oles throughout central America.
3. Research coverage and main topics of investigations
All of these processes have resulted in a diverse range of varieties of English, which
have attracted the attention of observers and scholars for centuries. Early accounts
tended to be anecdotal records or short literary representations by native users
or outside observers (except for sketchy dictionaries and grammars produced by
missionaries, notably for Sranan, which is therefore historically uniquely well re-
searched). Serious and systematic scholarly investigation of these varieties began
with the launching of dialect geography in North America in the late 1920s. As
a consequence, regional varieties of American English (as well as some degree
of social variation), based upon data from the 1930s to the 1970s, are thoroughly
documented by a series of regional atlas projects, most importantly the Linguistic
Atlas of New England (Kurath 1939–43), the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and
South Atlantic States, directed first by Kurath, then by Raven McDavid, and now by
William Kretzschmar (Kretzschmar 1994; see the web site with data for download-
ing at <us.english.uga.edu>) and the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (Pederson
et al. 1986-92), along with several others (see Davis 1983 for a survey). These
projects were analyzed in several studies, three of which, covering the levels of
vocabulary, morphology and pronunciation, respectively, count as classics, having
established the conventional division of American English into three main regions
– North, Midland, and South (Kurath 1949; Atwood 1953; Kurath and McDavid
1961). Carver (1987) later challenged this division and proposed to consider the
northern Midlands and southern Midlands as divisions of extended North and South
regions, respectively – a recategorization which is less dramatic than it might look
at first sight. Since the 1990s the second major project of investigating the regional
dialects of all of the US, Labov’s Telsur survey, has been under way; it looks into
phonological differences and analyses ongoing sound changes (Labov, Ash and Bo-
berg fc.). This project has grown out of the second major discipline that has investi-
gated variation within and varieties of American English, sociolinguistics, founded
by Labov in the 1960s (Labov 1966, 1972). Employing conversational interviews
and quantitative techniques of analysis, sociolinguists have investigated patterns of
variation and change in many different cities and communities (Chambers 2003),
including, most importantly, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and, in
recent years, dialect enclaves. The 1960s also saw the growth of creole studies as a
distinct paradigm of linguistic investigation, with many of its early classics being
concerned with the English-based creoles of Jamaica (Bailey 1966) and Guyana
(Bickerton 1975; Rickford 1987). In addition to many important book-length stud-
ies of individual varieties (listed in the general bibliography and referred to in the
individual articles of this book), many collective volumes, reflecting a variety of
research activities, have been published, including Williamson and Burke (1971),
Allen and Underwood (1971), Allen and Linn (1997), Preston (1993) and Schneider
(1996) on North American varieties in general, Montgomery and Bailey (1986),
Bernstein, Nunnally and Sabino (1997), Montgomery and Nunnally (1998) and
Nagle and Sanders (2003) on Southern English, Frazer (1993) on the Midwest, as
well as Carrington, Craig and Dandare (1983), Christie (1998), several volumes of
the “Creole Language Library” series published by Benjamins, and, most recently,
Aceto and Williams (2003) on Caribbean creoles and dialects.
Schneider (1996a), in a volume that uniquely unites dialectologists, sociolin-
guists and creolists, surveys ongoing research activities on North American Eng-
lishes, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Updating and supplementing these ob-
servations a little, we can observe the following major trends of ongoing research:
– computational and statistical procedures applied to dialect atlas data (Kretzschmar
and Schneider 1996 and other work by Kretzschmar and, more recently, John
Nerbonne);
– the study of variation and change of specific variables in select communities
(for broad surveys, see Chambers 2003; Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Es-
tes 2002), in particular
– investigations of enclave communities and their trajectories of change (Wol-

fram, Hazen and Schilling-Estes 1999 and other work by Wolfram and associ-
ates in North Carolina, and work by Cukor-Avila in Texas);
– investigations of ongoing sound changes in AmE (work by Labov and asso-
ciates, most notably Labov 1994; Labov, Ash and Boberg fc.; Gordon 2001;
Thomas 2001);
– investigations of ethnolinguistic differences, in particular cultural and pedagog-
ical implications of the uses of AAVE (Mufwene et al. 1998; Rickford 1999;
Lanehart 2001);
– historical investigations of regional varieties (in particular, Southern English:
Nagle and Sanders 2003);
– improved diachronic documentation and interpretation of pertinent sources on
the history of AAVE (Schneider 1989; Bailey, Maynor and Cukor-Avila 1991;
Poplack 2000; Poplack and Tagliamonte 2001; Kautzsch 2002; Wolfram and
Thomas 2002).
In a similar vein, it is also possible to survey the major research fashions, re-
current themes and basic concerns, in the investigation of the Caribbean English
creoles. These include the following:
– the genesis of creoles (the perennial issue of universalism vs. substratism; cf.
Alleyne 1980; Bickerton 1981; Muysken and Smith 1986) and the diffusion of
creole forms (Huber and Parkvall 1999; Baker and Huber 2001)
– a search for historical documentation of earlier stages of Caribbean creoles (to
provide improved empirical evidence for the aforementioned discussion; cf.
for Jamaica D’Costa and Lalla 1989; for Guyana Rickford 1987; for Barbados
Rickford and Handler 1994)
– acceptance of the fact that creoles come in different “degrees of creoleness”, i.e.
that differences between “deep / radical” creoles on the one hand and “lighter”
creoles with few basilectal features, sometimes called “semi-creoles” or “creo-
loids”, exist and blur the very category of “creole languages” (Schneider 1990;
Neumann-Holzschuh and Schneider 2000; Holm 2004), and increased empha-
sis on the importance of mesolects (Patrick 1999);
– consequently, the questioning of the distinctness of creoles as a language type
altogether, thus regarding them as varieties of their lexifiers rather than distinct
languages (Mufwene 2001; but cf. McWhorter 1998, 2000) and ultimately the
recognition of language contact as the appropriate overarching topic and field
of study (Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001; Myers-Scotton 2002;
Winford 2003)
– increased emphasis on empirical documentations, primarily with respect to
relatively “minor”, hitherto underinvestigated varieties (Aceto and Williams
2003; James and Youssef 2002) but also in association with typological and
sociolinguistic thinking (e.g. Winford 1993; Hackert 2004).
– the emergence of an increasingly positive attitude toward creoles in public dis-

course, recognized as carriers of regional identities and gradually encroaching
into the public domain (Shields-Brodber 1997; Mühleisen 2002).
4. Parameters of variation by language levels
The varieties of English in the Americas, like everywhere else, correlate with the
parameters of region, social class, and style, and in most cases it is impossible
to draw clear-cut, qualitative distinctions. Typically, select features tend to oc-
cur more frequently in certain varieties than in others; hardly ever are there any
uncontroversial shibboleths to be observed (for instance, even the prototypically
Southern pronoun y’all has been shown to be spreading outside of the South; Til-
lery, Wikle and Bailey 2000). Nevertheless, it is possible to state some broad ten-
dencies which as such are of interest.
Broadly speaking, phonology tends to vary regionally while grammar varies
socially in the first place. Pronunciation differences delimitate dialect regions of
North American English most clearly and consistently, and the contributors to the
pronunciation papers point out local, regional and supraregional phonological or
phonetic features. Of course, accents go by social class as well, but the standard
assumption for American English is that even educated speakers, from certain
regions at least (most notably New England and the South), at times use regional
pronunciation characteristics and thus speak “with an accent”; hence, despite the
persistent belief in a homogeneous “General American” accent or notions like
“network English” there is in fact no single American norm of pronunciation that
corresponds to RP in England, being a non-regional class dialect. (Kretzschmar, in
this volume, defines a “Standard American English” as an accent deliberately held
free of features associated with particular regions.) In contrast, the phonologies
of Caribbean varieties of English are underresearched – the strong focus of the
discipline upon creole genesis, reflected in the grammar of creoles, has made this
a Cinderella of creole studies (Plag 2003 deliberately sets out to remedy this situ-
ation). Clearly there are both supra-regional features and tendencies and regional
or local forms of pronunciation, but no systematic survey of such similarities or
differences is available to date.
Unlike phonology, in North American English grammatical variation is primar-
ily socially determined. This is perhaps less true for nonstandard morphology (like
irregular nonstandard verb forms or noun plurals), where dialectological research
has identified some regional correlations (Atwood 1953), and a small number of
minor syntactic patterns may be pinned down to specific regions; but basically
using nonstandard grammar betrays a speaker’s social class background, not his
or her regional whereabouts. Many of these patterns (like multiple negation, left
dislocation, or intonation-marked but uninverted questions) are not even distinctly
American but constitute elements of informal English, presumably British-derived,

in many countries around the globe. Quantitative distinctions from one dialect to
another exist in America (i.e. some features occur more frequently in certain regions
or contexts than others), but basically it is the particular configuration, the specific
sub-set of such forms and patterns available in a given region or community, that
identifies and distinguishes individual varieties of North American English.
This particular aspect, the uniqueness of the mixture of forms at a given lo-
cation rather than a diagnostic role of any individual variant, can be stated for
the Caribbean situation as well, although the creole continua found there provide
for quite different, and certainly no less complex, linguistic ecologies. As is well
known, creole grammars are characterized first and foremost by the use of pre-
verbal markers for categories of tense, mood and aspect, in addition to several
other “characteristically creole” features (e.g. specific copula uses, the functional
conflation of pronoun forms, or serial verb constructions), while, conversely, they
display very little inflectional morphology on verbs, nouns, or other word classes.
Some of these forms characterize certain sub-regions (most importantly, a few
forms appear to mark off the eastern as against the western Caribbean), but the
most important parameter of variation here is the class and style stratification that
is captured by the notion of a creole (or “post-creole”) continuum, the systematic
variation between acrolectal (or near-standard), mesolectal and basilectal (“deep
creole”) choices. Bickerton (1975), following deCamp (1971), described this vari-
ation as “implicational scales”, with both lects (distinct “grammars”) and their
features arranged in such a tabular format that the presence of certain forms in
certain lects predicts the presence of all other “more basilectal” forms in all other
“more basilectal” lects. On the other hand, several aspects of this model have been
challenged in recent years, including its monodimensionality and its diachronic
implications (the assumption that creoles started out as basilects and have “decre-
olized”, i.e. exchanged basilectal creole forms by corresponding acrolectal Eng-
lish forms, in the course of time). In fact, the scholarly concentration upon the pu-
tatively pure, basilectal creole has led to the paradoxical situation that basilects are
at the center of creole studies even if no one has ever documented a pure basilectal
creole, while mesolects, the forms that are really in use, have only recently begun
to be the objects of scrupulous investigation (Patrick 1999).
Words, finally, vary readily and mostly by region, with the range of their
spread extending from the strictly local through the regional to the quasi-national
domain. Variation in the lexicon is considerably more resistent to systematic inves-
tigation – which is why the contributions to this handbook project cover regional
vocabulary only incidentally or not at all. Regional lexicography identifies the
ranges and conditions of the uses of individual words (Kurath 1949; Carver 1987),
and in the present context the main dictionaries to be consulted are the Dictionary
of American Regional English for North America (Cassidy et al. 1985-) and the
Dictionary of Caribbean Usage (Allsopp 1996) for the Caribbean.
5. Chapters selected for this handbook
The general considerations outlined above, in particular with respect to the exis-
tence of distinct dialectal forms, have guided the selection of individual varieties
for coverage in this handbook. Their arrangement roughly follows geographical and
historical patterns, with the US and Canada followed by the Caribbean and varieties
being strung together according to their geographical proximity (moving from north
to south and east to west in most instances) and their historical patterns of diffusion.
The first part covers phonological variation. For American English, Kretzschmar’s
paper describes a baseline “Standard” variety, devoid of distinctly regional traces;
this is followed by papers which focus upon the most distinctive regional varieties:
New England (Nagy and Roberts), the staging cities of the East Coast and the urban
dialects of the interior North, including the ongoing change known as the “North-
ern Cities Shift” (Gordon), the South (with Thomas documenting the richness of
rural Southern pronunciations and Tillery and Bailey discussing ongoing changes
in the wake of urbanization), and the West and Midwest (Gordon, again). Boberg
covers Canadian English, and Clarke describes the Newfoundland dialects. Ethnic
varieties of AmE include AAVE (Edwards), Gullah (Weldon), Cajun Vernacular
English (Dubois and Horvath), and Chicano English (Santa Ana and Bailey). In
the Caribbean, the varieties represented are the Bahamas (Childs and Wolfram),
Jamaica (with Devonish and Harry describing both English and Creole), smaller
islands of the Eastern Caribbean (Aceto), Barbados (Blake), Trinidad and Tobago
(Youssef and James), and Suriname (Smith and Haabo).
The morphosyntax part also starts with a baseline paper, covering structural phe-
nomena which occur widely in colloquial AmE (Murray and Simon). Regionally
distinctive grammatical variation in North America has been investigated in a small
number of salient locations, including the Appalachians (presented in the chapter
by Montgomery), enclave communities in the Southeast (discussed by Wolfram),
and Newfoundland (documented by Clarke). The primary topics of grammatical
research have been ethnic varieties, most notably AAVE (its urban form, discussed
by Wolfram; its historical evolution, described by Kautzsch; and the extant creole
form of Gullah, studied by Mufwene), but also Chicano English (see the chapter
by Bayley and Santa Ana). For the Caribbean, on the other hand, regional differ-
ences from one island or region to another are obvious enough to justify such an
arrangement, so there are papers on the Bahamas (Reaser and Torbert), Jamaica
(Patrick), eastern islands (Aceto), Trinidad and Tobago (James and Youssef), Su-
riname (Winford and Migge), as well as Central America with special emphasis
on Belize (Escure). Coverage of Barbadian Creole (Bajan) and Guyanese Creole
would have been desirable, but, regrettably, papers commissioned on these topics
failed to materialize.
Every selection of this kind requires decisions and categorizations, of course;
I trust that the decisions made reflect the directions and intensity of ongoing re-
search activities. This applies in the few cases where the commissioned papers for
phonology and grammar do not match, for instance: Investigations of Cajun Eng-
lish have taught us much about the dialect’s phonology but little about its gram-
mar; conversely, an extensive debate on the emergence of AAVE has been con-
cerned with grammar almost exclusively; and many writings on Caribbean creoles
have discussed grammatical but not primarily phonological features (hence the
coverage of Belize plus Central America, focussing on grammar only). Of course,
other considerations also applied, including space restrictions and the amount of
existing research documentation: a handbook survey like the present one requires
a certain degree of comprehensiveness and systematicity of earlier investigations
of specific varieties, which is not available in many cases. It would have been very
interesting to include papers on native American or Asian forms of English, for
instance, but publications and research on these dialects have been eclectic so far;
a great many facts are either unknown or assumed to be largely similar to “main-
stream” forms of AmE. Space constraints and the fact that our project set out to
describe “major” varieties exclude strictly local dialects, like, for example, those
spoken by the Texas Seminoles in Bracketville (Hancock 1980), on small islands
like the Caymans (Washabaugh 1983), or in the city of Americana, Brazil (Mont-
gomery and Melo 1990). The same applies to Falkland Islands English (Sudbury
2001) and, of geographically uncertain association with any continent, the dialect
of Tristan da Cunha – well documented and interesting in the light of dialect con-
tact (Schreier 2002, 2003) but spoken by less than three hundred people. Finally
Hawai’i, even if politically a part of the US, is discussed in the Pacific (and Aus-
tralian) part of this handbook, in line with its geographical location.
Selected references
Baker, Philip, and Magnus Huber

2001 Atlantic, Pacific, and world-wide features in English-lexicon contact languages.
English World-Wide 22: 157–208.
deCamp, David
1971 Toward a generative analysis of a post-creole speech continuum. In: Hymes (ed.),
349–370.
Hancock, Ian
1980 The Texas Seminoles and Their Language. Austin: University of Texas.
Holm, John
1983 The spread of English in the Caribbean area. In: Görlach and Holm (eds.), 1–22.
2004 Languages in Contact. The Partial Restructuring of Vernaculars. Cambridge:
McWhorter, John
1998 Identifying the Creole prototype: vindicating a typological class. Language 74:
788–818.
2000a Defining ‘creole’ as a synchronic term. In: Neumann-Holzschuh and Schneider

(eds.), 85–123
Montgomery, Michael, and Cecil Ataide Melo
1990 The phonology of the lost cause: The English of the Confederados in Brazil.
English World-Wide 11:195–216.
Rickford, John, and Jerome Handler
1994 Textual evidence on the nature of early Barbadian speech, 1676–1835. Journal of
Pidgin and Creole Languages 9: 221–255.
Schneider, Edgar W.
1990 The cline of creoleness in English-oriented creoles and semi-creoles of the
Caribbean. English World-Wide 11: 79–113.
1996a Introduction: Research trends in the study of American English. In: Schneider
(ed.), 1–12.
Schreier, Daniel
2002 Terra incognita in the anglophone world: Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic Ocean.
2003 Isolation and Language Change: Contemporary and Sociohistorical Evidence
from Tristan da Cunha English. Houndsmills, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shields-Brodber, Kathryn
1997 Requiem for English in an “English-speaking” community: The case of Jamaica.
In: Schneider (ed.), 57–67.
Sudbury, Andrea
2001 Falkland Islands English: a southern hemisphere variety? English World-Wide 22:
55–80.
Tillery, Jan, TomWikle, and Guy Bailey
2000 The nationalization of a Southernism. Journal of English Linguistics 28: 280–
294.
Washabaugh, William
1983 Creoles of the off-shore islands: Providencia, San Andrés and the Caymans. In:
Holm (ed.), 157–179.
Standard American English pronunciation
William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.
1. Introduction
The idea that there should be a “standard” form of a language is a relatively recent
development in western culture, at least in the way that “standard” is usually un-
derstood in this usage today. People seem always to have noticed language varia-
tion, for instance the shibboleth story in the Bible about recognition of spies, and
the uses of language variation for more comic effect by Greek and Roman drama-
tists. However, our modern sense of a “standard language” emerged only during
the Neo-Classical period, during the seventeenth century in parts of Europe (as for
the Encyclopedists in France) and during the eighteenth century in England. The
first citation for the collocation standard English in the Oxford English Dictionary
comes even later, from the nineteenth century.
The word standard possesses a set of meanings related to criteria for measure-
ment. The original fifteenth-century literal sense of objects, such as standard
weights used to compare to working scale weights to enable fair commercial trans-
actions, still survives, but today more emphasis falls on attributive or metaphoric
senses in which there is comparative measurement of qualities. In actual use in
American English as demonstrated in corpus evidence, standard(s) most frequent-
ly refers to a general level of quality, not to a particular authoritative statement of
criteria for evaluation. The attributive use of the word in the collocation Standard
English may therefore raise the expectation for some people that there must be a
perfect and exemplary state of the language, just as there are perfect exemplars for
a one-ounce weight or for a measure of length such as a yardstick. The way that
most people interpret the collocation, however, will be as a general level of quality.
Thus Standard English may be taken to reflect conformance to a set of rules, but
its meaning commonly gets bound up with social ideas about how one’s character
and education are displayed in one’s speech.
The term “General American” is sometimes used by those who expect for there
to be a perfect and exemplary state of American English (see below). However,
in this essay the term “Standard American English” (StAmE) is preferred; it des-
ignates the level of quality (here of pronunciation) that is employed by educated
speakers in formal settings. StAmE pronunciation differs from region to region,
even from person to person, because speakers from different circumstances in and
different parts of the United States commonly employ regional and social features
to some extent even in formal situations.
258 William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.
2. Demographics and education in the development of a standard
The American attitude towards StAmE developed from two different forces, de-
mographics and public education.
2.1. Colonial settlement

The first settlement of America occurred in the seventeenth century within the
different original colonial hearth areas (see Kretzschmar 2002 for a more detailed
treatment of what follows). Travel was difficult enough so that the separate colo-
nies developed cultural differences early on, including linguistic differences. No
colony was settled exclusively from any single region of England; early settlers in
every colony came from a variety of areas in England, and thus brought with them
various regional English speech characteristics. Kretzschmar (1996) suggests on
the basis of dialect evidence that the word stock of the different colonies was
largely shared, but preserved differently in each place; in similar fashion, pronun-
ciations characteristic of different parts of England were available in every colony.
Out of the pool of language characteristics available in each colony there emerged,
within a few generations, the particular set of features that would form the char-
acteristic speech of the colony. No colony sounded too much like any particular
area of England because of the mixture of settlers, and for the same reason the
different American colonies sounded more similar to each other than to the speech
of the old country. At the end of the seventeenth century settlers began to arrive
in larger numbers from non-English-speaking places in Europe and Africa, but
by then English was well established in most areas of the colonies by the English
founder population (for this term see Mufwene 2001), and the later arrivals needed
to fit themselves into English-speaking communities. The new settlers brought
their own language characteristics, and some of these later became established in
the speech of the communities that they entered. Of course there were also Na-
tive Americans in the colonies before the English founders and features from their
languages did and do survive, particularly place names and the names for the flora
and fauna of the New World (see Marckwardt 1960 for contributions from various
languages to American English, particularly the lexicon).
The first standardizing effect to be seen in the colonies, then, was the establish-
ment of English as a common community language, out of the welter of languages
spoken by the Native Americans and the different settlers. The appearance of a
new American English, relatively shared between the colonies when viewed in
comparison with the different British regional varieties of the time, does not come
from the imposition of a standard, or from the recovery of some basic, essential
variety of English from which the British dialects had diverged, but instead from
the demographic conditions – mixed settlement – of the founding population that
formed communities in each colony. The new American English was also not the
Standard American English pronunciation 259
same as the emerging standard for English in Britain (see Upton, this volume), and
was criticized on those grounds at the time, as for example by John Witherspoon,
the first president of Princeton University (Mathews 1931). At the same time,
American English and the need of new settlers to learn it became a hallmark of
the American experience, part of the voluntary social movement that Crevecoeur
(1782) described in “What is an American.”
Along with the formation of new political and social practices in the new Ameri-
can communities came a new commitment to public education. So-called “com-
mon schools” were created throughout the states, more quickly and completely in
the North but also in the agrarian South. The one-room schoolhouse became an
icon of American community action, and whenever the population and resources
became dense enough, more elaborate “graded” schools and academies sprang up
as well. Basic education in reading and writing began to have an effect on Ameri-
can English from the beginning.
2.2. Westward expansion and urbanization

As the United States expanded, the speech habits of the hearth colonies were car-
ried along with the settlers. Settlement generally proceeded from east to west, and
so the influence of colonial speech was carried from east to west. Kretzschmar
(1996) shows that the linguistic characteristics of several eastern inland towns are
most similar to the characteristics of the coastal cities directly to their east. This
fact is not a result of influence of an emerging standard language, but instead
a consequence of the economic dominance of the coastal cities over the hinter-
lands (see McDavid 1948), again a matter of demographics. The younger sons and
daughters of the population that occupied the coast moved west in search of more
land and opportunity, and they carried their speech with them. New immigrants
also often spent time in coastal embarkation areas before they moved west to the
frontier (see, e.g., the story of Andrew the Hebridean in Crevecoeur 1782), and so
began to acquire American English from established colonial models on the coast.
Inland speech, however, was never exactly the same as the speech of coastal cities,
because the effects of population mixture, and thus the creation of and selection
from a pool of linguistic features, operated inland as it had on the coast.
Coastal cities did become wealthy, and so did develop a social hierarchy which
allowed for the emergence of sociolinguistic differences. McDavid (1948) care-
fully separates the loss of postvocalic r in Charleston (which is associated with
demographic factors) from nonstandard verb forms and other features that mark
socially dispreferred speech. In America just as in England, increasingly during
the eighteenth century the notion of a standard began to be associated with social
status, so that Swift, Johnson, and other highly cultivated authors came to prefer
the usage of the “best” authors over the common parlance. Such preferences be-
came entrenched in the first prominent English grammars, like those by Lowth
and Murray. The same attitude is expressed by Anne Royall, a social columnist
who often wrote about—pilloried—varieties of American pronunciation that she
did not find to be socially acceptable (Mathews 1931). The continuing prevalence
of public education extended the influence of such grammars, including Webster’s
in America, and thus social preferences in speech became teaching standards. A
prime example is the influence of Webster’s “blue-backed speller”, which became
one of the most successful textbooks of all time through wide use in American pub-
lic schools. It thereby succeeded in the creation of particular American habits of
spelling (e.g. –er instead of –re, -or instead of –our, and so forth), and a particular
American habit of spelling pronunciation, i.e. of attempting to pronounce a sound
for every letter in the spelling of a word. The American educational system abet-
ted the social hierarchy in the maintenance of qualitative linguistic preferences by
the creation and promulgation of rules of grammar, spelling, and other matters of
linguistic propriety. The prevalence of common schools ensured that the emerging
idea of a linguistic standard was widely accepted, but it is also the case that citi-
zens with the means to obtain better educational opportunities for their children,
or to allow their children to spend more time in the educational system rather than
going to work at an early age, were better able to enact the standards in their own
speech. Thus was created a cycle that still operates today for the establishment and
maintenance of language standards in linkage to the social hierarchy.
Continuing westward settlement in the nineteenth century followed essentially
the same patterns, but the connection with eastern colonial speech ways became
more diffuse the further west the frontier. West of the Mississippi River, settlement
is still not dense enough and is still too recent to have allowed for very extensive
development of the local speech patterns characteristic of eastern areas. Continu-
ing urbanization added more ethnic neighborhoods, but again the essential pat-
tern remained the same. Each of the main regional variants of American English
– Northern, Midland, and Southern, as described by Kurath (1949) and Kurath
and McDavid (1961) – had its own linguistic characteristics, and each region had
its own socially preferred models of pronunciation prevalent among the socially
prominent and more educated population.
2.3. Twentieth-century changes

The twentieth century brought different demographic movements and associated
linguistic change. Initial settlement of the western part of the country by home-
steading was essentially complete, and demographic change then occurred by in-
ternal migration. In the first half of the century Southerners both black and white
left the untenable agricultural conditions of their region and looked for new op-
portunities in the North and West. In the second half of the century Northerners
sometimes moved away from the Rust Belt in search of opportunities in emerging
industries in the South. These population movements often created speech islands
in the regions to which the migrants traveled, such as African American or South-
ern White neighborhoods in Northern cities.
The greater change, however, stemmed from an essential change in the urban
demographic pattern from residential neighborhoods within cities to the model
of an urban core surrounded by suburbs. Suburban housing changed the essential
interactions of the community, because people no longer lived with the people
they worked with: in sociolinguistic terms, suburban social networks often be-
came characterized by weak ties (i.e., the density and multiplexity of linguistic
interactions decreased; see, e.g., J. Milroy (1992) for discussion of social network
issues). In addition, because American suburban housing has most often been eco-
nomically stratified, the social networks that did develop were more likely to be
class-bound, unlike the situation in older cities where there was more mingling on
a daily basis between people of different economic registers.
At the same time that suburban residential patterns were developing, improve-
ments in transportation (highways, airlines) created a super-regional marketplace
for the highly educated. While the American population has always been mobile,
the most highly educated segment of the population has become nationally mo-
bile to a much greater extent than the working and lower-middle class population,
which tends to move around locally, often within the same metropolitan area or the
same state. This change has led to the growth of the notion that highly educated
speech should not show evidence of regional affiliation. Highly educated speak-
ers in formal settings tend to suppress their regional features (to the extent that
they have them in the first place, owing to suburban housing patterns; see Milroy
and Milroy (1999) for the idea of suppression of variation). The typical speech of
national news broadcasters is symptomatic – not a cause of the change, as many
suppose.
The contemporary situation for StAmE pronunciation, then, is that the most
highly educated speakers in formal settings tend to suppress any linguistic fea-
tures that they recognize as marked, i.e., regionally or socially identifiable. Many
educated speakers therefore think that language variation in America is decreas-
ing. On the other hand, the economically-stratified suburban residential pattern
promotes the continued existence, even expansion of local varieties (cf. Labov
and Ash 1997: 508), though perhaps varieties with fewer strongly marked charac-
teristics than were maintained before in the previous era of stronger, denser ties in
social networks. American English, paradoxically, in some ways has more local
variation than ever before, at the same time that in other ways it has less varia-
tion than before. The linkage between demographic trends and education remains
the central fact for any discussion of standards in American English: those with
the resources to proceed the furthest in the educational system have the greatest
commitment to and investment in the idea of linguistic standards, now expressed
particularly through their suppression of marked regional and social characteris-
tics, while those with fewer resources and less investment in the educational sys-
tem generally accept the idea of formal educational standards but do not routinely
enact them in their own linguistic behavior. That said, it is of course true that
many educated speakers value their regional affiliations and refuse to suppress, or
even take pride in the display of, their regional speech characteristics, while some
speakers without a high level of educational achievement may choose to suppress
their regional features.
2.4. “General American”

The term “General American” arose as a name for a presumed most common or
“default” form of American English, especially to be distinguished from marked
regional speech of New England or the South. “General American” has often been
considered to be the relatively unmarked speech of “the Midwest”, a vague des-
ignation for anywhere in the vast midsection of the country from Ohio west to
Nebraska, and from the Canadian border as far south as Missouri or Kansas. No
historical justification for this term exists, and neither do present circumstances
support its use. While population mixture did make the different colonial variet-
ies of American English more similar to each other than to any form of old-world
British English, and there remain some relatively common pronunciation (and
other) features that continue to justify use of the term “American English” in
opposition to other national terms for English varieties, there has never been any
single best or default form of American English that might form the basis for
“General American”. Take for example the state of Ohio, often seen as a model
for “General American”: the state is divided by Kurath’s major Northern/Midland
dialect boundary, and Labov’s more recent Telsur field work yields a map in which
no fewer than five boundaries crisscross the state (Labov, Ash and Boberg fc.).
Even Ohio’s educated speakers, speaking in formal settings, tend to make differ-
ent pronunciation choices. For example, Cleveland speakers might routinely pro-
nounce a common word like on as [An], while the speakers from Columbus might
routinely pronounce the word as [çn]. No particular notice of the difference would
be taken, because these pronunciations are not marked regional or social variants;
neither pronunciation needs to be suppressed in order to achieve a StAmE level of
quality. Thus a term like “General American” does not represent the condition of
American English with respect either to StAmE or to regional and social varieties,
because it implies that there is some exemplary state of American English from
which other varieties deviate.
On the contrary, StAmE can best be characterized as what is left over after
speakers suppress the regional and social features that have risen to salience and
become noticeable. Decisions about which features are perceived to be salient
will be different in every region, even different for every speaker, depending on
local speech habits and the capacity of speakers to recognize particular features
out of their varied linguistic experience. Some speakers are better than others at
suppression of regional features, and some listeners are more subtle than others at
detection of non-local features. The result of such decisions and perceptions is a
linguistic continuum for American English in which no region or social group has
pride of place (except for Southern American English, which is commonly singled
out as a dispreferred variety by speakers from other regions), and a relative level
of quality for StAmE that varies from place to place and person to person. When
speakers travel outside of their native region, aspects of their pronunciation that
are perfectly standard at home can be recognized by local speakers as being out of
conformance with local StAmE preferences. This is just as true when Northerners
travel South as when Southerners travel North, and people recognized as outsiders
because of their speech must face the social consequences.
3. StAmE pronunciation
The model for StAmE pronunciation presented here is composed of features that
most highly educated speakers would not recognize as regionally or socially iden-
tifiable. For application of the model to particular words, the Oxford Dictionary
of Pronunciation for Current English (ODP; Upton, Kretzschmar and Konopka
2001) will be a useful reference. ODP features both British and American English
transcriptions for comparison by readers, and offers many phonotactic (but not
recognizably regional or social) variants. To these features may be added those
characteristics that commonly occur in educated speech in different regions of
the country, generally unnoticed and preferred by educated speakers within the
region but often noticed and sometimes stigmatized by educated speakers from
other regions. Table 1 lists general features first (“unmarked”), and some regional
standard features in a second group (“marked”).
Table 1. Unmarked and marked vowel pronunciation (lexical sets)
word unmarked marked word unmarked marked

pronuncia- pronuncia- pronuncia- pronuncia-
tion tion tion tion
KIT I CHOICE çI
DRESS E MOUTH aU QU
TRAP Q NEAR i‘, I‘
LOT A ç SQUARE E‘
STRUT √ MARRY E Q
FOOT U MERRY E
BATH Q a MARY E e
Table 1. (continued) Unmarked and marked vowel pronunciation (lexical sets)
word unmarked marked word unmarked marked

pronuncia- pronuncia- pronuncia- pronuncia-
tion tion tion tion
CLOTH ç, A START A‘
NURSE ‘ Œ NORTH ç‘
FLEECE i FORCE ç‘ o‘
FACE eI ORANGE ç A, o
PALM A ç CURE jU‘
THOUGHT ç, A happY i I
GOAT oU lettER ‘
GOAL oU horsES ´, i
GOOSE u commA ´
PRICE AI
3.1. StAmE phonological patterns

Kurath and McDavid (1961) distinguished four different phonological patterns
for cultivated speakers of American English in the Atlantic States: I: Upstate New
York, Eastern Pennsylvania, and the South Midland; II: Metropolitan New York,
the Upper South, and the Lower South; III: Eastern New England; and IV: Western
Pennsylvania. All of these sets held the high and central front vowels and the high
back vowels in common /i, I; eI, E; Q; u, U/, with some variation in the low vowels.
The same patterns exist today, with the American West generally following the
pattern Kurath and McDavid described for Western Pennsylvania. Discussion of
three ongoing sound changes by Labov (1981, 1991, 1994), called the Northern
Cities Shift, the Southern Shift, and Western Merger (for details see the sections
elsewhere in this volume that report on these regions), has focused on working and
lower-middle class speakers, and so it is difficult to estimate the extent to which
these changes have penetrated StAmE.
KIT, DRESS, TRAP

These so-called “checked” vowels are not invariant in StAmE, although they are
usually represented as such. They may be realized with glides or extra length
by different speakers. More prominent use of glides, sometimes with changes in
vowel height as well, may be recognized as part of Labov’s Southern Shift.
LOT, CLOTH, PALM, THOUGHT

The low-back vowels are historically unstable in StAmE. The /A~ç/ merger is said
by Labov to be characteristic of the speech of the West, but instability in these
vowels also characterizes Eastern New England (in which one also hears fronted
pronunciations, as [a]) and Western Pennsylvania. “Merger” may be too strong a
term here; there is some evidence that words historically with /A/ retain it in some
areas (so that a pronunciation with [ç] might be recognized as “different”), while
words historically with /ç/ more freely show alternation within the /A~ç/ range.
The [ç] pronunciation in palm may be related to the American spelling pronun-
ciation that inserts unhistorical [l], to yield [pAm, pçlm]. ODP represents words
of the historical /A/ class with [A], and words of the historical /ç/ class with both
sounds [A, ç].
STRUT, FOOT
StAmE does not share the British tendency to raise the vowel of strut towards [U]
(this vowel is represented with [´] in ODP). However, StAmE has a long history of
alternation of the vowel in roof, root (but not foot) as [u, U], with the short vowel
more common in the North. The same is true, through with [u] in the North and [U]
in the South, for coop. Route is another word with alternation, this time commonly
between [u] and [aU]. These alternations do not apply across the entire word class
of [U] words, although there is some evidence that there used to be more words
that showed the alternation (e.g. gums).
BATH
New England preserves the [a] pronunciation in words of the half, glass class, and
has [A] in aunt. These pronunciations are sometimes heard from educated speakers
in other regions of the country, possibly as a consequence of the historical impor-
tance of New England in American education.
NURSE
Loss of postvocalic r is receding in StAmE, even in its historical urban strong-
holds in Boston, New York, and the plantation South. One is most likely to hear
r-less pronunciations from older educated speakers from these regions, while
younger speakers commonly employ pronunciations with r. That said, it has al-
ways been true that a wide range of realizations of r after vowels has been and
still is employed, even in StAmE, ranging from fully constricted [r] to different
levels of constriction (so-called “r-coloring”) to compensatory lengthening of
the vowel to vocalization of the r to create a diphthong. Pronunciations similar
to [nçIs], which used to qualify as StAmE in New York, Charleston, and New
Orleans, are now stigmatized, as in the pronunciation of the cartoon character
Bugs Bunny.
FLEECE, FACE, GOAT, GOAL

These long vowels differ characteristically by environment in StAmE: they are
longest and most likely to be diphthongal before juncture, next most likely to be
long and/or diphthongal before voiced consonants, and most likely to be real-
ized without added length and without glides before unvoiced consonants. Thus in
word sets like the following there may be graded variation in the vowel: flee, feed,
I I U
fleece [flIi, f id, flis]; fay, fade, face [feI, fe d, fes]; go, goad, goat [goU, go d,
got]. Monophthongized variants in all environments are characteristic of educated
speakers from the Upper Midwest.
GOOSE
This high back vowel has a relatively wide range of realizations in StAmE, from
somewhat lowered pronunciations more likely in the North, such as [gUs], to fully
raised and fronted realizations in the South, such as [gYs]. Still, words of the
goose class are not recognized as having regular alternants like root, roof, route
(for which see above, under strut, foot).
PRICE, CHOICE
Educated speakers in the South commonly pronounce these vowels with weak-
ened glides. The pronunciations are affected by environment: /aI/ is more likely
to show glide reduction before voiced consonants, as in possible graded variation
I
in the series rye, rice, ride [raI, ra s, rad]. /çI/ is more likely to show reduction
before [l], as in boil, oil.
MOUTH
This diphthong has a long history of pronunciation as [QU] by some educated
speakers, especially those from the Midland region, and this pronunciation seems
to be on the increase.
NEAR, SQUARE, START, NORTH

The loss of postvocalic r is recessive, as indicated for nurse. With these vowels,
before juncture, it is common for educated speakers to insert a schwa glide before
the r-coloring, such as square [skwE‘]. However, when the r is intervocalic, for
example when a participial ending is added, then the schwa glide typically does
not appear, yielding pronunciation pairs like near, nearing [nI‘, nIrIN].
MARRY, MERRY, MARY

While these words have become homophones for a great many StAmE speakers,
some or all of them are still distinguished in some regions by educated speakers.
The pronunciation with [E] for the set of words has spread from the North and
North Midland regions. In the South, educated speakers still pronounce Mary with
[e], and in the mid-Atlantic region educated speakers commonly pronounce words
like marry, carry with [Q]. In the New York metropolitan area, educated speakers
still commonly distinguish all three words.
FORCE, ORANGE
Historically the horse/hoarse pair was distinguished by pronunciations with [ç]
and [o], respectively. Now most educated speakers no longer make the distinction,
but the [o] pronunciation is still sometimes heard, primarily from older speakers.
This vowel is particularly unstable before intervocalic r, so that words like orange,
forest may still be heard not only with [ç] and [o] but also with [A].
CURE
Words like cure not only show the effects of varying realizations of postvocalic
r, but the palatal onset for the vowel also seems to create instability and a wide
range of realizations [u~U~´]. A somewhat narrower range of realizations occurs
in educated speech in similar words without the palatal, as poor [u~U].
happY
The word-final sound is now commonly pronounced with [i], but older [I] may
still be heard, especially from educated Southern speakers.
lettER, horsES, commA

Vowels in unstressed final syllables vary between [I~´], often in harmony with
the preceding vowel in suffixes like –ness, -ity, -es. This yields pairs of possible
pronunciations like [-n´s, -nIs; -´Ri, -IRi; -´z, -Iz], where the [´]-form occurs after
most vowels and the [I]-form occurs after high-front vowels. That said, vowel
harmony is only suggestive, not controlling, in such situations. Unstressed final
–er and –a are of course distinguished by r-coloring in StAmE.
3.2. StAmE consonants

There are only a few notable StAmE consonantal practices aside from the issue of
postvocalic r already covered with the vowels in the previous section. The most
prominent concern /t/. Intervocalic t is most often realized as a tap or flap, fre-
quently with voicing, so that latter/ladder are homonyms for educated Americans,
as [lQR‘]; this pronunciation is transcribed as [lQd´r] in ODP, because the diction-
ary uses a restricted symbol set that does not include the R or ‘. /t/ is also frequently
voiced prevocalically in consonant clusters such as –kt–, –pt–, –ft–, and –rt–. /t/ is
typically deleted from –nt– clusters between vowels (unless separated by stress),
for example making homonyms of the words winter/winner. The palatal glide /j/
remains firmly in place in words like cure, music, but in other words like Tuesday,
coupon, neurotic it is frequently lost. Postvocalic /l/ is vocalized more and more
often by educated speakers, except before juncture, to yield pronunciations like

U
alcohol, milk [QUk´hçl, mI k]. Educated speakers sometimes voice other conso-
nants as well, such as [Eks-, Egz-] as variant pronunciations of the ex- prefix.
3.3. StAmE stress patterns

As clearly exemplified in the transcriptions in ODP, StAmE pronunciation shows a
different pattern of stress from British English. StAmE pronunciation tends more
to preserve secondary stress, and thus more fully-realized vowels, than British
English, as in StAmE [»sEkr´«tEri] versus British English [»sEkrItri]. This results
in a characteristically different rhythm for StAmE pronunciation as compared
to British and other world English varieties. Educated Southern speakers tend
to prefer strong initial stress (and are recognized for it) in words like insurance,
police, Thanksgiving, umbrella, while other Americans place strong stress on the
second syllable of these words. It is possible that a general American tendency
towards strong initial stress is responsible for vowel alternations between the use
of stressed and unstressed vowel forms in the weakly-stressed initial syllables of
many words, such as electric [´»lEktrIk, i»lEktrIk] or retain [r´»teIn, ri»teIn].
4. Conclusion
Because StAmE pronunciation is characterized negatively, by the suppression of

identifiable regional and social variants, instead of positively by a collection of its
own features, there is less to say about StAmE than about positively-defined vari-
eties from different regions. It is clearly the case, however, that StAmE pronuncia-
tion is not somehow a perfect or correct exemplar of American English pronun-
ciation, from which American regional and social varieties are deviant offshoots.
StAmE pronunciation is the product of demographic factors, just as American
regional and social varieties are. In common usage StAmE refers not to any set of
“correct” pronunciations, but to a level of quality in pronunciation that corresponds
to the degree of suppression of marked regional and social features.
Selected references
ROM.
Bronstein, Arthur J.
1960 The Pronunciation of American English. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John

1782 (1981) Letters from an American Farmer. Ed. by A. Stone. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Kretzschmar, William A., Jr.
1996 Foundations of American English. In: Schneider (ed.), 25–50.
2002 American English: Melting Pot or mixing bowl? In: Katja Lenz and Ruth
Möhlig (eds), Of Dyuersitie & Chaunge of Langage: Essays presented
to Manfred Görlach, 224–239. Heidelberg: C. Winter.
Labov, William
1981 Resolving the Neogrammarian controversy. Language 57: 267–309.
1991 The three dialects of English. In: Eckert (ed.), 1–44.
Labov, William, and Sharon Ash.
1997 Understanding Birmingham. In: Bernstein, Nunnally and Sabino (eds),
508–573.
Mathews, Mitford
1931 The Beginnings of American English. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
McDavid, Raven I., Jr.
1948 Postvocalic /-r/ in South Carolina: A social analysis. American Speech
23: 194–203.
Marckwardt, Albert
1960 American English. New York: Oxford University Press.
Milroy, James
1992 Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Milroy, James, and Lesley Milroy
1999 Authority in Language. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
Upton, Clive, William A. Kretzschmar, Jr, and Rafal Konopka
2001 Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
New England: phonology*
Naomi Nagy and Julie Roberts
1. Introduction
The six states that make up New England (NE) are Vermont (VT), New Hampshire
(NH), Maine (ME), Massachusetts (MA), Connecticut (CT), and Rhode Island
(RI). Cases where speakers in these states exhibit differences from other American
speakers and from each other will be discussed in this chapter. The major sources
of phonological information regarding NE dialects are the Linguistic Atlas of New
England (LANE) (Kurath 1939-43), and Kurath (1961), representing speech pat-
terns from the first half of the 20th century; and Labov, Ash and Boberg, (fc);
Boberg (2001); Nagy, Roberts and Boberg (2000); Cassidy (1985) and Thomas
(2001) describing more recent stages of the dialects.
There is a split between eastern and western NE, and a north-south split within
eastern NE. Eastern New England (ENE) comprises Maine (ME), New Hamp-
shire (NH), eastern Massachusetts (MA), eastern Connecticut (CT) and Rhode Is-
land (RI). Western New England (WNE) is made up of Vermont, and western MA
and CT. The lines of division are illustrated in figure 1. Two major New England
shibboleths are the “dropping” of post-vocalic r (as in [ka:] car and [ba:n] barn)
and the low central vowel [a] in the BATH class, words like aunt and glass (Carver
1987: 21). It is not surprising that these two features are among the most famous
dialect phenomena in the region, as both are characteristic of the “Boston accent,”
and Boston, as we discuss below, is the major urban center of the area. However,
neither pattern is found across all of New England, nor are they all there is to the
well-known dialect group. We present a brief description of the settlement of the
region as a whole and give examples of past and current pronunciation patterns
to illustrate both how New England differs from the rest of the country and what
region-internal differences exist. The material is rather thin in some areas, due to
a dearth of recent research on New England English. Nevertheless, the resulting
pattern is one that reflects the richness and diversity of the region itself.
2. European settlement of New England
Our story begins with the European settlement of a region that was previously
populated by a variety of indigenous peoples. There has been no systematic study
of the possible influences of the indigenous languages on English, but we can see
New England: phonology 271
Figure 1. Eastern and Western New England according to Carver (1987: 31). Reprinted
with permission from the University of Michigan Press.
their influence in local toponyms, for example the Piscataqua River in NH, the
Kennebec River in ME, Lake Memphremagog in VT, and Contacook, a town in
Rhode Island, as well as the word Massachusetts.
European settlers in Eastern New England came primarily from Boston, on the
Massachusetts Bay, and were of English stock. This coastal area, originally home
to indigenous groups, was settled by English immigrants in the early 1600’s and
became one of the country’s cultural hearths. In search of better farm land, some
of these original European settlers moved west from the coast and settled the
Lower Connecticut River Valley in central CT. They were joined soon after by
new immigrants from eastern and southern England, and later from Italy, Scotland
and Ireland, among other places. Settlement spread, generally along river valleys,
into NH, VT, ME, and RI (Carver 1987: 7).
272 Naomi Nagy and Julie Roberts
WNE was settled by migration from central MA and central and western CT,
including Hartford, Springfield, and New Haven, towns originally settled in the
1630s (Boberg 2001: 4). Following this movement, Eastern and Western NE re-
mained isolated from each other until the early 18th century (Rosenberry 1962: fac-
ing 70; Kurath 1972: 42, cited in Boberg 2001: 4). Western VT was settled in the
late 18th century by English-speaking migrants from western CT and MA (Kurath
1939-43: 104, cited in Boberg 2001: 5) and from NY (Rosenberry 1962: 136, cited
in Boberg 2001: 5), as well as some settlers from east of the Green Mountains (NH,
ME, and RI) (Kurath 1939-43: 103-4, cited in Boberg 2001: 5). WNE, in turn, was
“the staging ground for the initial English-speaking settlement of the Inland North”
(Boberg 2001: 9).
WNE also “received a considerable admixture of Scotch-Irish in the half cen-
tury preceding the Revolution [early 18th century]” (Kurath 1928: 391, cited in
Boberg 2001: 9), though they did not form a sizeable percentage of the population
at any time. Also present in NE are Franco-Americans who moved south from
French-speaking parts of Canada, and large Irish and Italian groups. Upper ME
(north of Penobscot Bay) is quite distinct from the rest of the region, due to ties
with New Brunswick, Canada (Carver 1987: 31).
Boston, the largest New England city, is still known as the hub, hearkening
back to its position as the center from which settlements radiated in New England.
Much of the rest of NE, however, is more rural, with many farms, forests, and un-
developed areas surrounding small towns and cities. Like many rural communities,
NE is undergoing changes including increased highways, in-migration from other
dialect areas, and change from small family farms to agribusiness (Frazer 1983;
Labov 1994). The rural, regional dialects appear threatened with obsolescence due
to the decrease in agriculture and increase in in-migration by speakers from other
states. This loss evokes mixed reactions within the communities, where it may be
seen as a sign of progress and increasing sophistication as well as a loss of cultural
identity (Ring 1997).
3. New England dialect regions
The Linguistic Atlas of New England (Kurath 1939-43) divides the area into
Eastern (ENE) and Western (WNE) (divided by the Green Mountains of VT in
the north, the Berkshires in the middle, and the Connecticut River in the south),
with seven subregions dictated by settlement patterns (Carver 1987). However,
today there is little in the way of linguistic markers of these sub-regions, aside
from some distinctive characteristics of ENE. A Word Geography of the Eastern
United States (Kurath 1949) divides New England into only three regions (North-
eastern, Southeastern, and Southwestern), better representing current linguistic
differences.
As table 1 demonstrates, the English of NE is in many ways similar to that heard

in many other regions of the United States. In the following section, we will dis-
cuss the ways in which NE English may be different from other regions.
4. Vowels
Table 1. New England vowels — summary
KIT FACE e START a() ~ ()

DRESS PALM a ~ NORTH ç() >
TRAP æ > E´ THOUGHT ~ç FORCE ç()
LOT ~ GOAT ó > ç CURE jU´()
STRUT ´ GOOSE u ~ Uu˘ happY i
FOOT U PRICE AI > Í lettER ´(®)
BATH Q > E´ > a CHOICE çI horsES ´>I
CLOTH A MOUTH aU>Ú commA (®)

NURSE (®) NEAR i(®) kittEN n ~ n
FLEECE i SQUARE (®) aunt nt
In discussing the vowel patterns, we begin with the elements considered essential as
points of departure for the phonological analysis of North American English dialects,
according to Labov (1991: 21). The lack of a merger between low, back, unrounded
/A/ (LOT) and mid, back, rounded, lengthened /ç/ (THOUGHT) and the behavior of
low front /Q/ (TRAP/BATH) as a unified phoneme (rather than split into tense and lax
classes) is seen as essential conditions for the Northern Cities Chain Shift (NCCS), a
major ongoing change in American phonology. The presence of these two phonemic
patterns is necessary for the onset of the NCCS: TRAP/BATH raises, leaving a space
for LOT to move forward and maintain its distinction from THOUGHT (Boberg 2001:
11; Labov 1994: 184; Gordon, this volume), thus initiating a chain shift.
4.1. TRAP, BATH, HAPPY AND DANCE
At the time of the Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE) fieldwork, both BATH
and TRAP comprised a unified low front vowel across New England (Kurath 1939–
43: Maps 150 sack, 344 pantry, and 371 dad, cited in Boberg 2001: 13). Laferri-
ere’s (1977: 102–3) findings from urban Boston show a less uniform picture. She
reported for BATH a non-productive backing: lexicalized and categorical before

many /f/ and / / words and in some /n/ words (e.g., half, rather, aunt) and lexical-
ized but variable before /s/ and in other /n/ words (e.g., last, dance). Supporting
evidence comes from Calais, ME, where a majority of speakers report saying [ant]
for aunt. Some speakers report [Ant], but none report [Qnt]. This differs from
much of the US, where [Qnt] is used (Miller 1989: 124). Our NH speakers use [æ]
for all of these word classes except aunt, which is [A].
Laferriere (1977) also reports a productive, phonological process raising TRAP
and BATH to [´], demonstrated by her younger speakers. As this process was
found to affect both TRAP and BATH vowels, it thus encroaches on the lexical BATH
class that had been subjected to backing.
A more recent study of WNE found raising of the nucleus in TRAP and BATH in
all environments and tensing (as well as raising) before nasals (DANCE) (Boberg
2001: 17–19). A small sample of telephone survey data (Labov, Ash and Boberg
fc.) showed this to be the case across WNE with exception of the very northern
city of Burlington, Vermont. Words like bad and stack are pronounced with [e],
and words like stand and can are pronounced [].
Labov (1991: 12) suggests that unified raising of TRAP/BATH/DANCE is a pivot
condition for the NCCS (Northern Cities Chain Shift). Boberg (2001: 11) further
argues that the NCCS may thus have had its beginnings in northwestern NE. The
existence of this raising pattern is surprising if one accepts the reported lack of
BATH-raising in the LANE data (Kurath 1939-43), especially given that Labov, Ash
and Boberg (fc.) does not show this to be an incipient vigorous change: older
speakers show more raising than younger speakers in Hartford, CT, Springfield,
MA, and Rutland, VT (Boberg 2001: 19).
4.2. LOT, CLOTH AND THOUGHT
There was a major split within New England as early as the 1930s at which point
ENE did not have a distinction between LOT and THOUGHT, while WNE had two
distinct phonemes, (Kurath 1939-43, discussed in Boberg (2001: 13). ENE pro-
nounced both LOT- and THOUGHT-type words with [Å], while virtually all of WNE
used [A] and [ç:] respectively, resembling NYC.
One modern exception to this pattern is Providence, RI, where the two vowels
are distinct (Labov 2000: Map 1). Another may be Calais, ME, where no speakers
reported a merger in Miller (1989: 101). More recent data (Labov, Ash and Boberg
fc.) presents a strikingly different picture for the LOT/THOUGHT merger. While all
western CT speakers keep the two values clearly distinct, resembling the Inland
North pattern, seven of eight VT speakers have completely merged the two vow-
els. One older northern VT woman did not merge these vowels, suggesting that the
merger is more recent in VT than CT (Boberg 2001: 20). This trend is supported
by unpublished data from the McGill-Vermont-New Hampshire Survey (Nagy,
Roberts and Boberg 2002) which shows most New England speakers report merg-
ing these two vowels. Our two recorded NH speakers produced LOT, CLOTH and
THOUGHT with []. One of them also produced PALM with this vowel.
Boberg (2001: 22) attributes the presence of the merger in VT to lack of contact
with the Inland North (due to the barrier of Lake Champlain) combined with con-
tact over the Green Mountains with the merged speakers of NH. In contrast, CT
speakers have more contact with NY and thus retain the distinction. Geographi-
cally located between CT and VT, western MA speakers exhibit an intermediary
variable pattern. In our data, however, MA has the highest rate of merger. Interest-
ingly, Burlington, VT speakers show a tendency to merge LOT and THOUGHT in
low back position, similar to the ENE merger (and to the Canadian merger just
north of them), whereas the two Rutland speakers, 67 miles south, show a merger
in low-central position (like that of southwestern NE) (Boberg 2001: 24), provid-
ing a gradual transition between the northern and southern WNE patterns.
To summarize, with respect to the LOT/THOUGHT merger and BATH/TRAP/
DANCE raising, ENE has full merger of LOT/THOUGHT (except RI) and no BATH/
TRAP/DANCE raising, except for that reported in Boston by Laferriere (1977).
WNE is more complex:
The CT portion of the lower Connecticut Valley (the Hartford area) is a pure Northern
[NCCS] system, with raised [bath/trap] and centralized [lot], distinct from mid-back
[thought]. Northwestern VT (Burlington) is a pure “third dialect” system, not unlike
the Canadian systems to the north of it [with no bath raising and a lot/thought merger].
Between Burlington and the lower Connecticut Valley are two transitional types.
Springfield, and perhaps western MA in general, is basically Northern [NCSS] but shows
a reduction of contrast between the low-back vowels, which may be tending toward
merger among the youngest speakers in that area. Southwestern VT (Rutland) shows a
solid merger of the low-back vowels but in the phonetic position characteristic of [lot] in
western MA and CT (Boberg 2001:25-6).
4.3. FACE AND FLEECE
In general, there is nothing remarkable about these tense front vowels. However,
Duckert (1986: 141) reports diphthongs in words like [maSi'jan] machine and
[dreijan] drain as a feature of rural New England dialects. Laferriere (1979: 431)
lists the variable pronunciation of FACE as [i] or [e] as a marker of Boston
speech.
4.4. GOAT
Avis (1961) described a complex pattern involving GOAT in ENE. Reporting on the
data from LANE, Avis argues that there are, in fact, two phonemes: an upgliding
phoneme that appears word-finally, and another phoneme in which alternation can
be found between monophthongal [o] and one with a fronted inglide [o]. Avis
(1961: 552) also notes that the monophthongal vowel is more likely to be found in
“dialectal” speech than in words “learned in school”. Avis does not report on this
vowel in WNE. Roberts (1997) indicates that GOAT is produced as a lowered, lax
vowel with either no glide or a shortened upglide in VT. All older and younger adult
speakers produce low, lax GOAT, overlapping with their productions of FORCE.
Laferriere (1977: 431) reports GOAT as [] as a feature of Boston English.
4.5. GOOSE
Kurath (1939-43) found that both a tense ([u]) (as in too) and a lax ([
]) (as in
took) production of GOOSE occurred in NE, but we hear only [u] or [
u] today.
4.6. PRICE AND MOUTH
Miller (1989: 110) reports Canadian raising (the production of PRICE and MOUTH be-
fore voiceless vowels as [´
]and [´] respectively) in Calais, ME –not surprising
as this town is on the border of Canada. Raising was reported in Calais in LANE
(Map 354, vol. II, Part 1; Map 481, vol. II, Part 2; Map 53, vol. I, Part 1, cited in
Miller 1989: 110), but not in neighboring towns. Kurath and McDavid (1961: 109-
10, cited in Miller1989: 112) cited patterns similar to Canadian raising for coastal
ME and southern NH. However, Canadian raising has not been reported elsewhere
in NE. Our NH speakers do not produce raised nuclei in these diphthongs.
A pattern that may be seen as similar to Canadian raising, however, has been
reported in Vermont for some time. Kurath (1939–43) reported a fronted, raised
nucleus of MOUTH was being overtaken by a fronted, but low production in VT.
He also found that change in progress was occurring with PRICE, in that the raised
nucleus was receding in favor of a lowered, more “standard” pronunciation. Work
by Amblo and Roberts (1997) notes the continuation of this trend in VT in that
women and younger speakers are pronouncing these vowels in a more standard-
sounding way than older rural men.
4.7. START
Some variation between the central and back variants is seen for this vowel in NH.
Our older male western NH speaker produced START with the central [a], while the
younger female eastern NH speaker produced it with []. The vowel /A/ before /®/
appears as [A] even along the ME/New Brunswick border, in spite of the contact
with Canadian [çr] pronunciations (Miller 1989: 88). Examples include tomorrow,
sorry and borrow. This pattern was also reported in LANE (Kurath 1939–43: Map
72, vol. I, Part 1 and Map 564–5, vol. III, Part 1). However, all of Miller’s sixteen
speakers report [ç®IndZ] for orange (Miller 1989: 89), while LANE (Map 273, vol.
II, Part 1) reported [®IndZ] for this area.
4.8. NORTH/FORCE
ENEers traditionally made a distinction between pairs like for and four, or horse and
hoarse, which is not heard in most of the rest of the U.S. As a result of this distinc-
tion, combined with r-dropping, a Boston pronunciation of short rhymes with shot;
north rhymes with moth. This distinction may be disappearing among young people
(Labov, Ash and Boberg fc.). Our NH speakers have merged these two vowels.
Laferriere (1979: 428) defines the vowel in short and forty (NORTH) as [Å´],
in contrast to the standard [o´()]. The words that have this vowel in standard
American English are divided (apparently arbitrarily, cf. McCarthy 1999) into two
classes in the Boston dialect, some of which allow this alternation and some of
which use only [o´] (Laferriere 1979: 429).
4.9. BOTHER AND FATHER
Bostonians and Northern New Hampshirites generally maintain a distinction be-

tween the vowels in the first syllables of bother [A] and father [a], while many
residents of VT and southern NH, especially younger people, have merged those
vowels (Nagy 2001). Miller’s respondents (Miller 1989: 124) report that father
and bother do not rhyme in Calais, ME.
4.10. mary, merry and marry

Many speakers in eastern MA and northern NH have three distinct pre-rhotic front
vowels, differentiated in the triplet Mary [e:] ~ merry [E] ~ marry [Q], while those
in VT and southern NH pronounce the three words alike (Nagy 2001; Nagy and
Roberts 1998). Miller (1989: 99) reports that most speakers in Calais, ME, have a
two-way merger: for 80% of the speakers, Mary and marry are [meri] and merry
is [mEri]. 13% of the speakers surveyed have merged all three. (7% have slightly
different two-way mergers.) This indicates a marked change from LANE, where a
three-way distinction was maintained across NE (Miller 1989: 100).
4.11. Mergers before L

Pre-lateral mergers that occur in other parts of the U.S. are documented as not oc-
curring in NE in Labov, Ash and Boberg (fc). These include the following tense
and lax vowel pairs before /l/: /i/ and /i/ (pill and peel), /u/ and /u
/ (pull and pool),
and /e/ and /e/ (well and wail).
5. Consonants
5.1. T, D
Several types of substitutions involving the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ appear in
the New England area. These include both substitutions of spirantized variants
for alveolar stops as well as alveolar stops substituting for interdental fricatives.
Glottal stop replacement of /t/ (e.g., [mn] mitten, [vm] Vermont, [r n]
Right on!) in VT appears to be a robust dialect phenomenon. Although considered
to be a traditional rural phenomenon most common to older male speakers, these
glottal forms are found in speakers of all ages in VT. Children produced at least as
many glottal stop forms as their parents, with girls producing more // than boys
(Roberts 2001). These findings demonstrate that dialect obsolescence, common
in rural areas, does not necessarily mean a change toward “Standard English.” In
this case, girls appear to be leading a change toward a resurgence of glottal stop
replacement. Similar findings have been reported in the United Kingdom where
research on the glottal stop has been going on for years (cf. Milroy et al. 1994;
Foulkes, Docherty and Watt 1999).
Nagy and Ryback-Soucy (2000) indicates the frequent use of alveolar stops /t/
and /d/ in place of interdental fricatives /T/ and /D/ among speakers who self-iden-
tify as members of the Franco-American community of Manchester, NH.
Finally, Miller (1989: 104) reports categorical flapping in butter for the speak-
ers he surveyed in ME. LANE also reports flapping for most of NE (Map 496, vol.
III, Part 1, cited in Miller 1989: 105). This is in keeping with the general pattern of
northern AmE: categorical post-tonic flapping for all speakers (Strassell 1997).
5.2. Word-initial H
The Franco-American speakers studied in Manchester, NH, who substitute [t,d] for
/ , /, also variably omit word-initial H and insert an initial 10 H in underlyingly
vowel-initial words (e.g., [oli hnd´l a] Holy Angel High). Interestingly, several
of these speakers are monolingual Anglophones, so this is not a case of mother
tongue interference in a second language, but rather a marking of cultural identity.
5.3. W/HW distinction

The distinction between word initial <wh> and <w> words, as in which and witch,
is retained to some extent in parts of NH, VT, and MA (Labov 2000). This pattern
was reported in LANE (Map 163, vol. I, Part 2, and Map 179, vol. I, Part 2, cited
in Miller 1989: 108). However, the distinction was not maintained by Miller’s ME
speakers. Kurath and McDavid (1961: 178) mention this merger as occurring “in a
narrow coastal strip of NE extending from Boston to the Kennebec in Maine.”
5.4. JU (JOD-DROPPING)
Our survey data (Nagy and Roberts 1998) show the continuing presence, mostly
among older speakers, of a palatal glide or jod between alveolar consonants and
[u] in words such as new [n(j)u] and Tuesday [t(j)uzde]. This was also noted by
Duckert (1986: 141) as a feature of rural NE speakers. Interestingly, LANE shows
a preference for the jod-less pronunciation even among the oldest speakers (Ku-
rath 1939-43: Map 4, vol. I, Part 1). Sixteen speakers from Calais, ME, surveyed
in the late 1980’s showed no use of the jod in either relevant survey question (the
pronunciation of during and reduce) (Miller 1989:86).
5.5. R vocalization and intrusive R

Finally, a frequently noted feature of ENE, also exhibited by speakers in the Vir-
ginia and North Carolina hearth areas, is the vocalization (popularly referred to as
“dropping”) of // in post-vocalic position. People talk about “New Hampsha” and
“Woosta” for New Hampshire and Worcester. Similarly, Laferriere (1979: 431) in-
dicates that the R-less production of START with [a:] is a marker of Boston speech.
Linking R is produced: if the following word begins with a vowel, the R is rhotic
(hear it). A related NE pattern is the appearance of inter-vocalic // where the stan-
dard spelling does not indicate it, referred to as intrusive R, as in [sa: t] saw it.
According to Labov (1966), “the vocalization of // is eroding under the in-
fluence of the post World War II convention that constricted // is the appropri-
ate standard for careful speech.” However, all three Boston speakers included in
Labov (2000) show some vocalization of //, and one Bostonian shows 50%. In
contrast, most of WNE shows consistent [].
Our recorded NH speakers vocalize // in reading the word list, in words such as
CURE, LETTER, FORCE, NORTH, START, SQUARE, and NEAR. Variable vocalization
is also evident in the recorded and transcribed narratives.
6. Compound word stress
Duckert (1986: 141) reports a tendency for stress to appear on the second element
of compound words such as maple TREE, band CONCERT, polar BEAR, and battle
FIELD in rural NE speech. We are not sure if this pattern is constrained to NE.
7. Summary
As we have shown, NE presents a complex linguistic profile. There are a number

of both consonantal and vowel patterns that preserve the distinction between NE
English and other varieties present in the U.S. Some of these features are uni-
formly distributed across NE, while others illustrate the maintenance of distinct
dialect subregions. It appears that, as people more frequently move into the area
from all over the country, New Englanders increasingly sound like other AmE
speakers. However, some local features remain. Many New Englanders still “drop
their r’s,” though no longer as consistently or in as many words as they used to.
Others substitute glottal stop for T, and many retain a variety of fairly subtle vowel
differences. Thus, much as found by the scholars who documented the linguistic
patterns of this region in the early 20th century, both the NE dialect and its regional
subdialects operate as relevant markers of NE identity today.
*
This chapter is an extended version of a paper written by Nagy, Roberts and Boberg for
American Language Review (2000). We are very grateful to Charles Boberg for sharing
his large bank of knowledge about American dialects with us. We are also grateful for
the assistance of Joleen Hansen and Denis Jobin who recorded and transcribed the two
New Hampshire speakers.
Selected references
ROM.
Amblo, Rebecca and Julie Roberts

1997 Change and obsolescence in rural Vermont: /aw/, /ay/, and /uw/ in younger
and older speakers. Paper presented at NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing
Variation) Conference. Laval, Université Laval.
Avis, Walter
1961 The New England short o: A recessive phoneme. Language 37: 544–558.
Boberg, Charles
2001 The phonological status of Western New England. American Speech 76: 1–
29.
Duckert, Audrey A.
1986 The speech of rural New England. In: Allen and Linn (eds.), 136–141.
Foulkes, Paul, Gerry Docherty, and Dominic Watt
1999 Tracking the emergence of structured variation. Leeds Working Papers in
Linguistics and Phonetics. Leeds, University of Leeds: 1–25.
Frazer, Timothy C.
1983 Sound change and social structure in a rural community. Language in Society
12: 313–328.
Kurath, Hans
1928 The origin of the dialectal differences in spoken American English. Modern
Philology 25: 385–95.
Labov, William
Laferriere, Martha
1977 Boston short a: Social variation as historical residue. In: Fasold and Shuy
(eds.), 100–107.
1979 Ethnicity in phonological variation in change. Language 55: 603–617.
McCarthy, John
1999 The dialects of Eastern New England. Linguistics 402 course handout. http://
www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~jjmccart/ling402f01/11-Boston%20Vowels.pdf
Miller, Corey
1989 The United States-Canadian border as a linguistic boundary: The English
language in Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Undergraduate
thesis, Linguistics Department. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University.
Milroy, Lesley, James Milroy, Sue Hartley, and David Walshaw
1994 Glottal stops and Tyneside variation: Competing patterns of variation and
change in British English. Language Variation and Change 6: 327–357.
Nagy, Naomi
2001 ‘Live free or die’ as a linguistic principle. American Speech 76: 30–41.
Nagy, Naomi and Julie Roberts
1998 Yankee doodles in dialectography: Updating New England. Paper present-
ed at NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) Conference University of
Georgia.
Nagy, Naomi, Julie Roberts and Charles Boberg
2000 Yakking with the Yankees. American Language Review 5: 40–43.
2002 McGill-VT-NH Dialect Survey. Unpublished research instrument.
Nagy, Naomi and Wendy Ryback-Soucy
2000 Exploring the dialect of the Franco-Americans of Manchester, New Hampshire.
Journal of English Linguistics 28: 249–264.
Ring, Wilson
1997 Time erodes all including traditional Vermont accent. The Caledonian Record:
2/15/1997: 1A, 12A.
Roberts, Julie
1997 /ow/ movement and chain shift: An example from rural Vermont speech. Paper
presented at NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) Conference, Laval,
Canada.
2001 An American variable? A continuing study of glottal stop in Vermont. Paper
presented at NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) Conference, North
Carolina State University, Durham, NC.
Rosenberry, Lois Kimball Mathews
1962 The Expansion of New England. New York: Russell and Russell.
Strassell, S.
1997 Variation in American English flapping. In Claude Paradis, Diane Vincent,
Denis Deshaies and Marty Laforest (eds.), Papers in Sociolinguistics -
NWAVE-26 à l’Université Laval, 125–35. Quebec: Nota bene.
New York, Philadelphia, and other northern cities:
phonology
Matthew J. Gordon
1. Introduction
This chapter describes characteristic features of accents heard in some of the larg-
est cities in the United States. The discussion considers two eastern cities, New
York and Philadelphia, as well as the area around the Great Lakes which includes
Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. In terms of the traditional dialectological
classification, these locations represent a mixture of dialects (Kurath 1949). Phila-
delphia is squarely within the Midland region, while New York City is grouped
as part of the North but is seen as constituting its own subregion. The Great Lakes
area represents the core of the Inland North, a subregion of Northern speech that
stretches from western New England to roughly the Mississippi River.
Compared to other varieties in the U.S. and elsewhere, the dialects discussed
here have been studied quite extensively by linguists. This is particularly true in
the case of New York which has attracted regular dialectological interest since
Babbitt’s 1896 report (e.g., Hubbell 1950; Thomas 1942). Much of the research
on New York speech, as well as on that of Philadelphia and the Inland North, has
focussed on the kinds of traditional features studied by dialect geographers. This
information is valuable, but a description of contemporary speech patterns will
also benefit from a more dynamic perspective, one that considers changing usage
of older features as well as adoption of recent innovations. For this reason, much
of the description here relies on sociolinguistic research, especially the work of
William Labov who has written on New York City (1966), Philadelphia (2001),
and the changes operating in the Inland North (Labov, Ash and Boberg fc.). So-
ciolinguistic research of this type is particularly well suited to the investigation of
the speech of large urban areas because it examines a broad spectrum of the com-
munity of speakers rather than concentrating on any one segment of society. Still,
even the best sociolinguistic studies cannot fully consider the rich social diversity
of the populations of major cities like those discussed here. As a general caveat,
therefore, it should be noted that the features described below characterize the
speech of some, but certainly not all, people of these areas.
New York, Philadelphia, and other northern cities: phonology 283
2. Historical overview
Current dialect patterns often reflect historical trends. Among the forces shaping
the American dialect landscape, particular attention is often paid to early settlement
history. In the present case, settlement history can shine some light on the current
dialect situation, at least on the general patterns if not on the occurrence of particu-
lar linguistic features. Some of the broad outlines of that history are sketched here.
During the colonial period, New York and Philadelphia came to represent eco-
nomic hubs in the “Middle Colonies”. They got their start as English colonies
somewhat later than Massachusetts and Virginia. New York was a Dutch posses-
sion until 1664, and Pennsylvania was founded in 1680. From the earliest days,
emigration to the Middle Colonies attracted a diverse population. This was es-
pecially true in Pennsylvania where the Quaker ideals of founder William Penn
promoted religious and ethnic tolerance. In the colonial period and into the nine-
teenth century the most significant immigration, in addition to the British, was
from Ireland and Germany. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, New York
and Philadelphia (like other American cities) saw increasing immigration from
southern and eastern Europe. Immigrants often settled in ethnically segregated
neighborhoods such as the Irish neighborhood of Kensington in Philadelphia or
New York’s Little Italy. The ethnic character of many of these areas remains evi-
dent today, and studies have demonstrated that the sociolinguistic effect of ethnic
identity endures as well (see Labov 1966, 2001). Even more sociolinguistically
salient is the ethnic diversity contributed by the influx of African Americans from
the South and, especially in New York, of Puerto Ricans and other Caribbeans in
the twentieth century, though a description of the unique features of the accents of
these groups is not attempted in this chapter.
With the exception of Upstate New York, the area of the Inland North was not
heavily settled by Americans until after the establishment of the United States.
Federal ordinances in 1785 and 1787 set into motion a process which eventually
carved the “Northwest Territory” into the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Il-
linois, and Wisconsin. Many of the immigrants to the northern half of this region
came from New England. Settlement of the area received a great boost from the
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 which connected the Hudson River with Lake
Erie. The canal served not only to bring settlers from the East to the Inland North,
but also to bring grain and other agricultural goods from the Inland North to mar-
kets in the East and abroad. In fact, the canal contributed greatly to New York
City’s rise to prominence as the business capital of America. Along the Great
Lakes, cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland grew rapidly in
the nineteenth century, helped in part by foreign immigration as was the case
in Philadelphia and New York. Curiously, the urban centers of the Inland North
display little regional linguistic variation; the same basic accent features are heard
from Buffalo to Milwaukee. By contrast, distinctive dialect features are found in
284 Matthew J. Gordon
New York and Philadelphia as well as in many of the cities of the Midland region
including Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. It is possible that the relative uni-
formity of speech in the Inland North stems from the original settlement, consist-
ing mainly of New Englanders, but it may also be related to the rapid growth of the
cities and their economic interdependence which could have promoted a leveling
of dialect differences through the spread of a regional standard.
From these brief historical notes, we turn to a description of the accents. We con-
sider first New York City before moving on to Philadelphia, then the Inland North.
3. New York City
The speech of New York City holds a special place in American public conscious-
ness. New York together with the South top most Americans’ lists of places with
the most recognizable accents. Unfortunately for speakers of these accents, this
salience comes from stigmatization. For outsiders, New York speech is often asso-
ciated with toughness, lack of education, and “street smarts”. This is the stereotype
conveyed by the popular label “Brooklynese”, which, in keeping with other cultural
stereotypes, situates “true” New York speech outside Manhattan. The label raises
the issue of potential differences across the five boroughs of the city. Some locals
claim to be able to distinguish a Bronx speaker from a Brooklynite or a Staten
Islander. The linguistics literature on New York speech does not recognize any con-
sistent interborough differences though, in truth, the question has not been studied
thoroughly. Of course, New York City does not lack for linguistic variation of other
types. Indeed, with a socially diverse population of over eight million people, it is
clearly a fiction to talk of a New York accent. The discussion of accent features
below includes some comments about sociolinguistic variation, but readers are re-
minded of the earlier caveat about the diversity of accents in a city of this size.
3.1. Lexical incidence

With many of the traditional regional markers of pronunciation, New York City
shows a mix of influences – not a particularly surprising finding given its location
on the border between the Northern and Midland dialect regions. For example,
using data from the Linguistic Atlas projects and therefore representing speakers
born in the late 19th century, Kurath and McDavid (1961) report a roughly even
mixture of /i/ and // in creek for New Yorkers. For root, the Midland (and South-
ern) /u/ was more common than the Northern /
/. On the other hand, on normally
shows // for New Yorkers as it does generally in the North. For the highly vari-
able class of “short o” words with //, New Yorkers tend to have // in hog, frog,
fog, and log, but /ç/ in dog. Among the more geographically restricted items, Ku-
rath and McDavid (1961) note the pronunciation of won’t with /u/ as a feature of
New York City (as well as the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Carolina coast).
They note a tendency for “cultured” speakers to avoid the /u/ variant, and the form
is apparently less common today. Another lexical peculiarity, the use of /√/ in don-
key, continues to be heard from New Yorkers.
3.2. Vowels
New York speech was historically non-rhotic but has become increasingly r-pro-
nouncing over the last half century (see below). The presence or absence of post-
vocalic /r/ typically has profound effects on vowel quality in dialects of English.
In New York City, however, these effects seem to be less significant. For example,
the inglides that are typical of non-rhotic speech (e.g., [nI] near; [skw] square)
may remain in New York speech even among rhotic speakers (e.g., [n] near;
[skw] square) (Wells 1982: 506). In this overview whatever differences of
vowel quality exist between rhotic and non-rhotic speakers are ignored and inter-
ested readers may refer to the specialist literature for further details.
KIT PALM ~ FORCE o ~ ç´

DRESS THOUGHT ç ~ ç´ ~
CURE

TRAP æ ~ æ ~ ~ GOAT o
happY i
LOT ~ GOAL o
lettER
STRUT √ GOOSE
u ~ u˘~ u horsES ~ˆ~
FOOT
PRICE ~ commA
BATH æ ~ ~ CHOICE ç TOMORROW
CLOTH ç ~ ç´ ~
MOUTH a
~ æ
ORANGE
NURSE NEAR MARRY æ
DANCE æ ~ ~ SQUARE MERRY
FLEECE i ~ i˘ START A ~ Å´ MARY e ~ ~
FACE e ~ NORTH o ~ ç´
TRAP, BATH, DANCE

In New York City, and elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region, the historical “short
a” vowel class is split into two phonemes. The complicated distribution of these
phonemes, labeled here lax /æ/ and tense /æ/, is defined by phonological, mor-
phological, and lexical patterns. The lax /æ/ occurs consistently before voiceless
stops, /t/, and /l/ (e.g., cat, lap, back, match, pal). The tense /æ´/ generally occurs
before voiced stops, /d/, voiceless fricatives, and front nasals (e.g., bad, badge,
bath, ham, dance). If, however, the vowel is followed by an unstressed syllable,
the choice of phoneme depends on the morphological status of that syllable. The
tense vowel appears when the syllable is a separate morpheme as in the case of
an inflectional suffix (e.g., badges, dragging). The lax vowel appears when the
unstressed syllable is part of the root morpheme (e.g., clamor, dragon). Function
words such as an, am, can and had are exceptions to the phonological rule as they
occur with lax phoneme. Thus, the auxiliary can and the noun can (as in the metal
container) form a minimal pair for the lax/tense contrast. In the environments of
a following voiced fricative or // (e.g., jazz, bang) the occurrence of /æ/ and /æ/
is variable. Before /v/, for example, the lax phoneme predominates, but avenue, in
which /æ/ is usual, stands as a lexical exception. More details about the pattern-
ing of these phonemes can be found in Labov (1994: 335) and Labov, Yaeger, and
Steiner (1972: 48–52).
Phonetically the tense phoneme is distinguished from the lax by lengthening
and raising. The vowel often appears as an ingliding diphthong with the nucleus
varying in height from [æ] to []. Labov (1966) found the height of this vowel to
vary sociolinguistically. The higher variants (i.e., [] ~ []) occur more com-
monly among speakers from the lower end of the socioeconomic hierarchy and in
less formal speaking styles.
LOT
As in other American dialects, the vowel in these items is most often []. However,
a subset of LOT items features a lengthened and diphthongized variant, []. This
variant may appear before a word final voiced stop, /d/, or /m/ (e.g., cob, cod,
cog, lodge, bomb). It also occurs variably before voiced fricatives (e.g., bother),
// (e.g., wash), and in the words on, John, and doll (Wells 1982: 514).
CLOTH, THOUGHT
One of the more distinctive features of New York speech involves the raising of the
vowel in the THOUGHT and CLOTH classes. Labov (1966) describes this pattern as
varying on a scale from [ç] to [
]. An inglide typically accompanies higher variants,
giving [o] or [
]. Labov (1994) has suggested that this raising may form part of
a chain shift with the backing and raising of the PALM vowel. The sociolinguistic
patterning seen with /ç/ is less consistent than in the case of /æ/ tensing. Labov’s
(1966) data on casual speech style show raising of /ç/ to be more prevalent among
middle and working class New Yorkers than among the lower class, but the pattern
is reversed in more formal contexts. Still, there are similarities between the socio-
linguistic distribution of the THOUGHT/CLOTH variation and that of TRAP/DANCE.
These similarities combined with the fact that phonetically the changes present a
mirror image suggest that they may arise out of a kind of parallelism.
NURSE
One of the stereotypes of New York speech is the use of a front-rising diphthong in
NURSE words. This stereotype is popularly represented in stock phrases like ‘toity
toid’ for thirty third. The phonetic reality of this variant is near []. The variant
may also appear in the CHOICE class, resulting in verse and voice as homophones.
The diphthongal variant in NURSE is highly stigmatized. Labov’s data from the
mid-1960s indicated the form was recessive then. Only 2 of his 51 speakers under
age 20 used the form as compared with those over age 50 of whom 23 out of 30
used the form. CHOICE items may occur with [] (e.g., [tlt] toilet), apparently
as a result of hypercorrection.
FACE
The usual realization of this vowel is [e] though a lax variant, [], has been re-
ported in words with a following /l/ (e.g., sailor).
GOOSE
The usual vowel in this class is either the monophthong [u] or the diphthong
[
u]. Some speakers appear to have a separate phoneme, /u/, in words such as
tune, news, duke (historically a separate class). The phonemic status of this vowel
is marginal. For example, Labov (1966) reports that New Yorkers may contrast
[du] do with [du] dew though they may also have [du] do. Still, dew is always
[du] and never [du].
PRICE, MOUTH
The diphthongs in these items exhibit the tendency toward nucleus-glide differen-
tiation, a pattern common in many varieties of English. The nucleus of the back-
gliding vowel in MOUTH is fronted while that of the front-gliding PRICE is backed.
The sociolinguistic evidence (Labov 1966) suggests that both of these develop-
ments are active changes. The fronted nucleus in MOUTH and the backed nucleus
in PRICE are more common among younger speakers, women, and the working
and lower middle classes.
NORTH, FORCE
The historical distinction between these vowels has been lost in New York speech
as is increasingly the case in other American dialects. Indeed, the Mid-Atlantic
region was one of the areas in which the Linguistic Atlas researchers recorded
this merger, a fact that suggests the merger has characterized New York speech
since at least the late 19th century. The merged vowel is often recorded as [ç´] but
recent acoustic evidence suggests it may be closer to [o] or even higher. Labov
(1994) suggests it forms the second stage in a chain shift spurred by the backing
and raising of START.
START, PALM
The vowel of these items is variously transcribed as [], [:], [], or []. It is
generally treated as phonemically distinct from the LOT class. Thus, even among
non-rhotic speakers cart and cot remain distinct. The START/PALM vowel is often
backed and may be raised as well. Labov (1994) suggests it operates as part of a
chain shift with the raising of CLOTH/THOUGHT and NORTH/FORCE.
TOMORROW, ORANGE
In both of these sets, the usual vowel is the unrounded []. In the case of ORANGE,
this pronunciation distinguishes New York speech from that of other American
dialects in which the NORTH/FORCE vowel is heard.
MARRY, MERRY, MARY

New York speech shows either a two- or three-way contrast among /æ/, //, and
/e/ before intervocalic /r/. MARRY is generally distinct with a low [æ]. MERRY
and MARY may be merged at [] or the latter may remain distinct either as [e] or
something like [].
3.3. Consonants
R
One of the most salient stereotypes of New York City speech is r-lessness. The
pattern resembles that heard in eastern New England as well as in southern Eng-
land. Non-prevocalic /r/ is vocalized, yielding pronunciations such as [h] here
and [kt] cart. Word final /r/ is pronounced when the following word begins with
a vowel (e.g., [h n] here in). Also, non-etymological, “intrusive” /r/ may ap-
pear and is especially common in idea and law.
The non-rhotic status of the New York accent was noted by the Linguistic Atlas
researchers and other early observers. R-lessness was characteristic of New Yorkers
of all social levels through roughly the first half of the twentieth century. At some
point, however, non-rhotic speech became stigmatized, and r-fulness appeared in
the speech of many New Yorkers. By the time of Labov’s study in the mid-1960s,
/r/ had become a strong class marker with r-lessness being more common among
the lower and working classes. Today, /r/ continues to divide New Yorkers along
class lines though the trend toward rhoticity appears to be progressing.
TH
As in many other dialects, the interdental fricatives / / and / / are often realized as
stops, [t] and [d] or affricates [t ] and [d ]. Labov (1966) found this alternation to
vary by class with the non-fricative forms appearing more regularly in lower and
working class speech. Unlike the reported changes with /r/, the variation with / /
and / / appears to be stable.
Alveolars
The alveolar consonants /t/, /d/, /n/, and /l/ may be articulated with the tongue
blade rather than the tip. Wells (1982) indicates that this articulation may, in some
cases, also involve affrication, producing [ts] and [dz]. With /t/, glottalization is
reported to be more common in New York speech than in other American dialects,
appearing, for example, before syllabic /l/ (e.g., bottle [bl]).
NG
In addition to the ubiquitous alternation of [] and [n] in –ing endings, the speech
of some New Yorkers shows [] as a variant of //. This variant is another salient
stereotype of the New York accent and is commonly mocked in the pronunciation
[lçNgAIlnd] Long Island.
WH
The historical distinction between /hw/ and /w/ (e.g., which vs. witch) has been lost
in New York as throughout much of the US. The merger seems to have taken hold
in the Mid-Atlantic region relatively early as this area was reported as merged by
the Linguistic Atlas researchers.
HJU
In words like human and huge, which begin with an /hj/ cluster, the /h/ is com-
monly deleted giving [jumn] and [jud].
L
Vocalization of /l/ is common in New York though it is perhaps not as pervasive
as in other dialects. Like its fellow liquid /r/, it may be vocalized when appearing
in non-prevocalic contexts (e.g., [so] sell, [mok] milk).
4. Philadelphia
The speech of Philadelphia has not attracted the kind of public awareness (outside
the local area) that New York City has. Among linguists, however, Philadelphia
is known for a number of intriguing speech features. Much of the city’s linguistic
notoriety is due to the work of William Labov, who, with the help of his students
at the University of Pennsylvania, has been studying the great diversity of Phila-
delphia speech over the last three decades. Indeed, it is fair to say that Philadelphia
is the most richly documented and thoroughly studied speech community certainly
in the U.S. and probably in the world. The discussion here presents an overview
of several important aspects of the Philadelphia accent; interested readers can find
much more complete accounts in the specialist literature (Labov 2001; Tucker
1944).

According to the traditional dialect geography of Kurath (1949), Philadelphia is locat-
ed squarely in the Midland area, and in many ways it fits well into this neighborhood.
For example, /u/ is commonly the vowel of root. It does, however, show exceptions
to the usual Midland forms in a number of cases. For example, the Linguistic Atlas
records suggest // is the usual vowel in frog, hog, and fog with /ç/ in dog – a pattern
resembling that of the North. Also, Philadelphia has been noted as exceptional in fea-
turing, at least among some speakers, the Northern // in on as opposed to the /ç/ that
is heard in the Midland and the South (Kurath and McDavid 1961). The use of // as
the stressed vowel in donkey, a pronunciation noted for New Yorkers, is also found
in Philadelphia. Finally, regarding the well known pattern of consonant variation be-
tween /s/ and /z/ in grease and greasy, Philadelphia was identified as a transitional
area between the generally Southern /z/ and the generally Northern /s/.
4.2. Vowels
The vowels in Philadelphia speech show a remarkable degree of volatility. Labov’s
extensive research has identified changes affecting over half of the vowel pho-
nemes. In regional terms, Philadelphia shows an interesting mixture of Southern
and Northern patterns.
KIT ~ PALM FORCE o~
DRESS ~ THOUGHT ç ~ ç3 ~ o CURE

~
happY i
LOT GOAL o
lettER
STRUT √ ~ √3 GOOSE u ~ u horsES ~i~
FOOT
~
PRICE a ~ √e commA
BATH æ ~ ~ CHOICE o ~
TOMORROW
CLOTH ç ~ç3´ ~ o MOUTH a
~ æç ~ ç ORANGE
NURSE NEAR i MARRY æ
DANCE æ ~ e ~ SQUARE MERRY ~√
FLEECE i START ~~ç MARY e~
FACE e ~ e ~ i NORTH o~
KIT, DRESS
Labov’s research has indicated a tendency toward lowering of the lax vowels in
KIT and DRESS. This pattern is not yet well established and is labeled by Labov as
an “incipient” change.
TRAP, BATH, DANCE

Philadelphia shows the same split of the historical “short a” class described above
for New York City, though the conditioning of the tense phoneme differs somewhat,
appearing in a more limited set of phonological contexts. In Philadelphia the tense

/æ/ occurs regularly only before /m/, /n/, /f/, / /, and /s/. Thus, one of the ways of
distinguishing the New York pattern from the Philadelphia one is in the context of
a following voiced stop. Items such as cab, sad, bag, and badge have the tense pho-
neme in New York but the lax phoneme in Philadelphia. There are, however, three
lexical exceptions: mad, bad, and glad appear with the tense vowel in Philadelphia.
As in New York, tensing is sensitive to morphology. The tense vowel normally
appears only in closed syllables but does occur in open syllables resulting from in-
flectional suffixes. For example, manner has the lax vowel but manning (e.g., Who
is manning the store?) has the tense phoneme as does man. Also, the tense vowel
does not appear in function words (e.g., an, auxiliary can). Phonetically the tense
class shows the same realizations here as in New York, varying in height to the high
front position and typically diphthongized with an inglide.
STRUT
The STRUT vowel may show raised and backed variants. In some cases the vowel
is in the high, back corner of vowel space near /u/. This is reportedly a recent de-
velopment and is one more common among male speakers.
FOOT
The vowel of FOOT is sometimes fronted though not to the degree seen with the
GOAT and GOOSE classes.
CLOTH, THOUGHT
Another speech feature shared by Philadelphians and New Yorkers is the raising
of /ç/ to [o] or even higher. The raised variants often appear as diphthongs with a
centering glide. Labov’s research suggest that this pattern of raising is essentially
complete in Philadelphia and seems no longer to be an active change.
FLEECE
Early descriptions of Philadelphia speech indicate lowered and/or laxed variants
of FLEECE were common. The recent sociolinguistic evidence indicates a reversal
of this trend such that the vowel is now commonly raised and fronted. This rais-
ing is heard primarily in “checked” contexts; i.e., when the vowel is followed by
a consonant (e.g., eat).
FACE
The Linguistic Atlas researchers recorded lax variants of the FACE vowel near [].
As with FLEECE, recent research suggest this trend is being reversed by raising
and fronting of the vowel often to a position well beyond [e]. This raising occurs
primarily in “checked” contexts (e.g., ate).
GOAT, GOOSE
One of the features that Philadelphia shares with Southern dialects (and one absent
from New York speech) is the fronting of the GOAT and GOOSE vowels. Generally
greater degrees of fronting are heard when the vowels appear in “free” positions
(i.e., without a following consonant) than in “checked” positions (i.e., with a fol-
lowing consonant). Fronting does not occur in the context of following liquids
leading to significant separation of, e.g., the GOAT and GOAL classes. The fronting
of GOAT and GOOSE is well established in Philadelphia, though cross-generational
data show that it remains an active change.
PRICE
The diphthong of PRICE may begin with a nucleus of mid or even higher position.
The raising appears only before voiceless obstruents, and thus resembles the pro-
cess known as “Canadian Raising” (see Boberg, this volume). The sociolinguistic
evidence suggests this raising is a fairly recent addition to Philadelphia speech.
MOUTH
Fronted nuclei in the diphthong of MOUTH are well established in Philadelphia
speech as in New York. More recent research has noted a tendency among Phila-
delphians to raise the vowel, resulting in [ç].
START, NORTH, FORCE

Many Philadelphians use a rather high and back vowel in START, something near
[ç]. The NORTH and FORCE classes are merged and typically appear with a mid
to high back vowel. As noted in the discussion of New York, these tendencies to-
ward backing and raising of START and NORTH/FORCE may constitute a chain shift.
The evidence suggests the movement of START began this shift, and this vowel is
relatively stable today, while generational differences are heard in the shifting of
NORTH/FORCE.
TOMORROW, ORANGE
For Philadelphians, as for New Yorkers, the usual vowel in both these sets is the
unrounded [].
MARRY, MERRY, MARY

The Linguistic Atlas records reported a two-way contrast for these vowels with /æ/
in MARRY and // in MERRY and MARY. More recent evidence indicates that MER-
RY and MARY remain separate in Philadelphia. Further supporting these reports of
a contrast is the observation that MERRY items often appear with something like
[√], which results in a merger (or close approximation) of merry ~ Murray, ferry
~ furry, etc.
4.3. Consonants
R
Philadelphia is situated in the middle of the only traditionally rhotic area of the At-
lantic states. This area runs from Pennsylvania and New Jersey down to Delaware
and Northern Maryland, and remains r-pronouncing today.
STR-
In word-initial clusters involving /str/ (e.g., street), the /s/ may be realized as a
hushing sibilant, approaching [] in some cases.
TH
As in other areas, the interdental fricatives / / and / / are often realized as stops, [t]
and [d] or affricates [t ] and [d ] in Philadelphia speech. This variation appears
to be a stable class-stratified feature with the non-fricative forms appearing more
commonly in working class speech.
NG
Philadelphians display the usual variation between [] and [n] in –ing forms. As
elsewhere, [n] appears more frequently in casual speech and does not appear to be
undergoing change.
L
Vocalization of /l/ is quite pervasive in Philadelphia speech. Phonetically it may
be realized as something like [o] or a velar or labio-velar glide, [] or [w], or the
consonant may be deleted altogether. Among Philadelphians, as in other dialects,
vocalization occurs quite frequently in word-final and pre-consonantal contexts
(e.g., mill, milk). In a more unusual development, vocalization also may occur
intervocalically in Philadelphia. This tendency is more common when /l/ appears
following low vowels bearing primary word stress (e.g., hollow). This variable
also shows some lexical conditioning, appearing, for example, with exceptionally
high frequency in the pronunciation of the name of the city (Ash 1997).
WH
As in New York and elsewhere, the historical distinction between /hw/ and /w/
(e.g., which vs. witch) has been lost in Philadelphia.
5. The Inland North
Many Americans might assume a description of Inland Northern speech to be

unnecessary since in popular consciousness this region is known for its supposed
lack of distinctive accent features. Together with the rest of the Midwest and West
it represents the home of the “General American” accent. This label originally
served to mark an accent lacking the features of the South and the Northeast.
Dialectologists today have largely rejected the grouping of the area from Penn-
sylvania across the Great Lakes and the Midwest and westward to the Pacific as a
single dialect, noting rightly the great diversity in speech habits within the region.
Still, the notion of a General American dialect remains active in folk perceptions
of American speech and represents a norm, a way of speaking that is unmarked
regionally and socially. In fact, Inland Northern speech was actively promoted
as a national standard. It is the variety described by John Kenyon in his popular
textbook American Pronunciation, first published in 1924 (with multiple editions
following). The dialect also became a model for the broadcast media, serving as
the basis for the NBC Handbook of Pronunciation which first appeared in 1943.
This sense that their speech represents a national standard remains strong today
among Northerners despite the introduction there of a number of pronunciation
features that distinguish Inland Northern voices from those heard in the national
media.

The Linguistic Atlas researchers identified a number of pronunciations as char-
acteristic of the Northern dialect region. Many of these retain some currency in
the Inland North today. One of the best known of these is the use of // in on
as opposed to the Midland and Southern /ç/. The unrounded // also appears in
hog, fog, and frog, while dog and log generally have /ç/. In root and roof, many
Northerners use /
/ though /u/ is also heard. The use of // in creek, traditionally
very common in the North, has largely given way to /i/, and the lax vowel usage
is often stigmatized.
5.2. Vowels
The most significant vocalic features of the Inland North are those patterns of
variation associated with the Northern Cities Shift. This phenomenon affects the
KIT, DRESS, TRAP/BATH/DANCE, LOT/PALM, STRUT, and CLOTH/THOUGHT classes.
The Shift is discussed in a separate section below. Considered here are other char-
acteristics of the Northern vowels.
KIT ~ ~ PALM ~ ~ a FORCE o

DRESS ~ ~ ~ THOUGHT ç~Å~ CURE
~ ö
~ o happY i
LOT ~ ~ a GOAL o
~ o lettER
STRUT ~√~ç GOOSE u ~ horsES ~i~

FOOT
~
PRICE a ~ commA
BATH æ ~ æ ~ ~ CHOICE o ~ ç TOMORROW
CLOTH ç~~ MOUTH aç ~
ORANGE o~ç
NURSE NEAR i MARRY
DANCE æ ~ æ ~ ~ SQUARE MERRY
FLEECE i START ~ ~ a MARY
FACE e ~ e NORTH o~ç
FOOT, GOAT, GOAL, GOOSE

As elsewhere in American English, these back vowels may undergo fronting. How-
ever, in the Inland North this fronting is generally less extreme than in other vari-
eties. Acoustic data suggest GOOSE is more advanced than either GOAT or FOOT.
Fronting is not usual in the context of following liquids, e.g., GOAL. In some areas,
GOAT and GOAL appear with long monophthongs as they do in the Upper Midwest
(see Gordon, this volume) and Canada (see Boberg, this volume).
FACE
Parallel with GOAT/GOAL, the mid front vowel of FACE may be produced as a long
monophthong [e].
PRICE, MOUTH
The pattern known as “Canadian Raising” is often heard in the Inland North. This
results in mid nuclei of the diphthongs, near [] and [u], in the context of fol-
lowing voiceless obstruents. Raised forms appear to be more geographically wide-
spread in PRICE than in MOUTH.
NORTH, FORCE
The Linguistic Atlas researchers (Kurath and McDavid 1961) identified the North
as an area that maintained the contrast between /çr/ NORTH and /or/ FORCE. This
historical distinction is now largely gone with a vowel near [o] appearing in both
classes.
MARRY, MERRY, MARY

As in most varieties of American English outside the Atlantic coast, the MARRY,
MERRY, and MARY classes are pronounced with the same vowel, something near
[].
The Northern Cities Shift

The most significant characteristic of Inland North speech today is the set of pro-
nunciations associated with the Northern Cities Shift (NCS). The NCS describes a
series of sound changes affecting six vowel phonemes. These changes are:
– KIT: // is backed and/or lowered to approach [] in extreme cases.

– DRESS: // is backed and/or lowered resulting in forms such as [], [], or [].
– STRUT: // ~ /√/ is backed and may also be rounded resulting in [ç].
– TRAP/BATH/DANCE: /æ/ is fronted and raised to a mid or high position and is
often produced with an inglide; i.e., [] or []. Phonetically these variants
resemble those described above for tense /æ/ in New York and Philadelphia.
– LOT/PALM: // is fronted to near /a/.
– CLOTH/THOUGHT: /ç/ is lowered and/or fronted, often with unrounding, to
something near [].
The changes in the NCS are often represented as in figure 1 where the arrows in-
dicate the main trajectories of the shifting vowels.
√ ç
æ
Figure 1. The Northern Cities Shift
The NCS appears to be a fairly recent addition to the speech of the Inland North.
Linguists first noticed the pattern in the late 1960s though the dialect literature
provides evidence that some of the individual changes had been active for at least
several decades earlier. For example, the Linguistic Atlas researchers noted the
fronting of // as a feature of the Inland North, and studies of college students in
the 1930s reported /æ/ raising and // centralization as characteristics of Upstate
New York (Thomas 1935–37). Regardless of when the NCS began, it seems clear
that it underwent a great expansion, geographically and phonologically, in the
second half of the twentieth century.
The order in which the individual pieces of the NCS appeared is a matter of
some debate, but it seems clear that the changes to /æ/, //, and /ç/ are older than
the others. One scenario holds that the shift started with the fronting and raising of
/æ/, which drew // forward, which in turn drew /ç/ down and forward. The shift-
ing of // and // began later and their centralizing movement may have sparked the
final piece, the backing of // ~/√/. The chronology of these changes is of great the-
oretical interest because they appear to form a chain shift. Chain shifting describes
a series of related changes in which movement of one vowel causes movement in
another. Representations like figure 1 make clear the apparent interactions among
the shifting vowels. The scenario sketched here for the low vowels describes a
“drag chain” where a vowel moves into an empty space vacated by a neighboring
vowel. The alternative is a “push chain” where a vowel shifts into another’s space
causing the latter to shift to avoid crowding. The interaction between DRESS and
STRUT appears to illustrate a push chain.
The changes associated with the NCS operate unconditionally in the sense that the
vowels may be shifted in any phonological context. By way of comparison, we might
recall that in New York and Philadelphia, for example, the TRAP/BATH/DANCE vowel
undergoes raising only in particular environments. In the NCS, by contrast, all in-
stances of this phoneme are potentially subject to raising. Nevertheless, phonological
context does play a role in shaping the NCS variation. For each of the shifting vow-
els, there are some phonological environments that favor the change and others that
disfavor the change. Raising of /æ/, for example, is generally favored by following
nasals or palatals (e.g., man, cash) and disfavored by following /l/ (Labov, Ash, and
Boberg fc.). This does not mean that raised forms do not appear before /l/, only that
raising is less common or less advanced (i.e., [æ] vs. []) in these items. The details
of the phonetic conditioning of the NCS can be found in the specialist literature (e.g.,
Labov, Ash and Boberg fc; Eckert 2000; Gordon 2001). Interestingly, studies of the
NCS have not always found consistent patterns of conditioning across various com-
munities. For example, Labov, Yaeger and Steiner (1972) found a following velar stop
to be a disfavoring context for /æ/ raising in Detroit and Buffalo whereas it seemed to
have the opposite effect in Chicago. More recently, in a study of rural Michiganders
Gordon (2001) identified following /l/ as a leading promoter of /æ/ raising, a finding
that runs counter to the effects reported by studies of urban speakers.
As the name implies, the NCS is associated with urban speakers from the tra-
ditional Northern dialect region. The most advanced forms of the shift are heard
in the cities on and near the Great Lakes including Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland,
Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The national survey conducted by Labov and
his colleagues (see Labov, Ash and Boberg fc.) finds evidence of the NCS (or at
least some pieces of the Shift) in a vast stretch of the northern U.S. from Vermont,
western Massachusetts, and Connecticut, across upstate New York and the Great
Lakes region, and westward into Minnesota, northern Iowa and the Dakotas. In
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois the NCS is generally heard only in the northern coun-
ties; that is, in those areas included in the traditional Northern dialect region. This
pattern is intriguing given that this dialect boundary, which divides the North
from the Midlands, was established on the basis of older dialect forms collected
over half a century ago. One major exception to the usual geographic restriction is
seen in the appearance of NCS pronunciations in the Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor
which takes the changes into the traditional Midland region.
The origins of the NCS may lie in the cities, but the changes are certainly no
longer limited to urban speech. In Michigan, for example, quite advanced forms of
the shift are heard even in small towns and rural areas (see Gordon 2001; Ito 1999).
The changes appear to follow a pattern of hierarchical diffusion, spreading across
large cities, then to smaller cities, and eventually to small towns (Callary 1975).
A number of studies have examined the sociolinguistic distribution of the NCS.

This research has often found significant differences across gender lines with
women’s speech displaying more advanced forms of the shift. Such a finding is
consistent with the common sociolinguistic tendency of women to be in the van-
guard of language change. Sociolinguistic studies have also found that the NCS is
generally characteristic of white speech; for the most part African Americans and
Latinos do not participate in these changes.
Among other sociolinguistic effects, we might also expect to find class-based
differences. The results on this score have been variable. Early research along
these lines from a survey of Detroit suggested the changes are especially prevalent
among the working and lower middle classes, or at least among women of these
classes. Men showed very little class differentiation. A similar interaction of class
and gender was also found in a later study by Eckert (2000) who conducted ethno-
graphic research in a suburban Detroit high school. Eckert found that some of the
changes in the NCS functioned primarily as markers of gender difference while
others appeared to have associations with the class-based distinction of the Jocks
and the Burnouts, the two main rival groups of students. Today the NCS can be
heard in the speech of all social classes and even in the local broadcast media.
As a final sociolinguistic observation, it should be noted that the NCS has ac-
quired very little social awareness in the areas where it has become established.
For the most part, speakers with the NCS do not recognize it as a distinctive fea-
ture of their region, though the NCS pronunciations are readily noticed by listeners
from other areas. The lack of salience of these very distinctive vowel shifts among
the native speakers of the Inland North may be related to the traditional position
of the dialect as a kind of national norm in the form of “General American” (see
above). The belief that their speech is “accentless” remains very common among
Northerners (especially Michiganders) today.
5.3. Consonants
Few distinctive consonantal features have been reported for the Inland North. The
speech of the region has been and remains rhotic. The distinction between /hw/
and /w/ may be heard from some speakers but is clearly recessive. Alternations
between the interdental fricatives, / / and / /, and stops, /t/ and /d/, characterize
the speech of some urban speakers, and the choice of // and /n/ in –ing forms
operates as a stylistic variable throughout the area. In addition to these features,
which are common to many dialects, we note a pattern with a more restricted dis-
tribution: the devoicing of final obstruents in Chicago. This feature is a stereotype
of working-class Chicago speech and is commonly illustrated by referring to the
local football team as [d brs] “the Bears”, a stock pronunciation popularized by
a television skit. The extent to which this devoicing occurs in less self-conscious
usage has not been thoroughly studied.
Selected references
ROM.
Ash, Sharon
1997 The vocalization of intervocalic /l/ in Philadelphia. In: Allen and Linn (eds),
330–43.
Babbitt, E.H.
1896 The English of the lower classes in New York City and vicinity. Dialect Notes 1:
457–64.
Callary, R.E.
1975 Phonological change and the development of an urban dialect in Illinois.
Language in Society 4: 155–70.
Eckert, Penelope
2000 Linguistic Variation and Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gordon, Matthew J.
2001 Small-Town Values and Big-City Vowels: A Study of the Northern Cities Shift in
Michigan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hubbell, Allan F.
1950 The Pronunciation of English in New York City: Consonants and Vowels. New
York: King’s Crown Press, Columbia University.
Ito, Rika
1999 Diffusion of urban sound change in rural Michigan: A case of the Northern
Cities Shift. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University.
Thomas, C.K.
1935–7 Pronunciation in Upstate New York. American Speech 10: 107–12, 208–12,
292–97; 11: 68–77, 142–44, 307–13; 12: 122–27.
1942 Pronunciation in Downstate New York. American Speech 17: 30–41, 149-57.
Tucker, R. Whitney
1944 Notes on the Philadelphia dialect. American Speech 19: 37–42.
Rural Southern white accents
Erik R. Thomas*
1. Introduction
If the “South” and “South Midland” dialect areas, as defined by Kurath (1949) and
Kurath and McDavid (1961), are lumped as “Southern”, rural white Southern ac-
cents can be said to occur over a broad expanse of the United States. They occur
throughout the southeastern part of the United States, excepting southern Flori-
da, at least as far north as southern Maryland, central West Virginia, Kentucky,
southern Missouri, and eastern and southern Oklahoma and perhaps as far west as
western Texas and parts of eastern New Mexico. The exact limits are subject to
disagreement; some researchers include northern West Virginia and the southern
sections of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, while others exclude western Texas.
Southern English has received extensive attention from dialectologists, and a
large number of sources, many of them gleaned from McMillan and Montgomery
(1989), were consulted for this overview. Because of space limitations, few in-text
citations are included and those that are included emphasize sources listed in the
selected references. The full list of sources is given in the comprehensive bibliog-
raphy, available on the CD accompanying this volume.
2. Sociohistorical background
Within the vast territory in which Southern English is found, there is a consid-
erable amount of dialectal diversity, especially in the South Atlantic states. The
origins of this diversity are closely connected with the sociohistorical background
of the region. Most of the Atlantic coastal sections were initially settled in the 17th
and early 18th centuries by English colonists. Two areas, the Delmarva Peninsula
and the Pamlico Sound area of North Carolina, remained relatively isolated from
inland areas until the 20th century and show several dialectal features in common:
rhoticity, failure of BATH and THOUGHT to diphthongize, backing of the nucleus of
PRICE/PRIZE, and fronting of the glide of MOUTH/LOUD, among others. Two other
coastal regions, one comprising the Tidewater and Piedmont sections of Virginia
and adjacent counties in Maryland and North Carolina and the other consisting of
the “Low Country” of the South Carolina and Georgia coastal plain, were settled
mainly by the English and by African slaves and also show dialectal similarities
to each other. These similarities include non-rhoticity and production of higher
Rural Southern white accents 301
nuclei in MOUTH and PRICE than in LOUD and PRIZE. Each has (or had) its own
features, though: for example, Virginia showed mutation of FACE to [E] in some
words (e.g., make and afraid) and home pronounced with the FOOT vowel, while
the Low Country showed ingliding forms of FACE and GOAT.
During the 18th century, various non-English European groups began to set-
tle the South. Numerous groups, including French Huguenots, Welsh, Highland
Scots, Germans, Swiss, and Jews, clustered in limited areas. The major influx,
however, was of Ulster Scots (Scotch-Irish). Large numbers of Ulster Scots mi-
grated from Pennsylvania through the Great Valley of the Shenandoah River in
Virginia or sailed to Charleston, South Carolina, mixing and, by the mid-19th cen-
tury, intermarrying with English settlers who were moving inland and fanning
out throughout the Piedmont and Appalachian regions. This mixture was aided
by changes in religious affiliation because the organizational constraints of the
older Presbyterian (Scottish) and Anglican/Episcopalian (English) denominations
were too rigid to function well on the frontier and new denominations, mainly the
Baptists and Methodists, attracted adherents from both backgrounds. In Piedmont
sections, the Ulster Scots eventually adopted features such as non-rhoticity from
their neighbors, and some adopted the plantation culture. In the southern Appala-
chians, though, the mixed Ulster Scot and English populations, who tended to live
as hardscrabble farmers, maintained rhoticity. Much later, other features, such as
glide weakening of PRICE (not just of PRIZE) developed in the Appalachians.
During most of the 18th century, plantations concentrated on growing tobacco
in Virginia and North Carolina and rice and indigo in the Low Country. Tobacco
growing spread to Kentucky and Tennessee as those states were settled in the late
18th century, but in other areas, such as the Delmarva Peninsula, it was replaced
by wheat culture, which was less reliant on slaves. Although tobacco plantations
depended on slaves, slave holdings tended to be largest in the Low Country. In
parts of the Low Country, whites made up less than 20% of the population. The
invention of the cotton gin in 1793 brought drastic changes, creating a new planta-
tion culture centered on cotton and allowing plantation agriculture (and slavery) to
expand westward through the Gulf States during the early 19th century. The west-
ward spread was aided by the forced removal of Native Americans to Oklahoma
on the infamous “Trail of Tears” in 1838. Plantation areas typically showed certain
dialectal features, particularly intrusive [j] in car [chjA˘], garden, etc. and non-rhot-
icity. Plantations occupied the better farmland, such as the Mississippi valley and
the “Black Belt” of central Alabama, while poor white farmers predominated in
less arable regions, such as the rugged terrain of northern Alabama and the sandy
“Piney Woods” region that stretched from southern Georgia and northern Florida to
southern Mississippi, with a disjunct area in western Louisiana and eastern Texas.
One distinctive area was southern Louisiana, with its French influence and its
sugar cane- and rice-based agriculture, but it is covered in a separate paper in this
volume by Dubois and Horvath.
302 Erik R. Thomas
West of the Mississippi, the plantation culture was largely restricted to the Mis-
sissippi valley and delta and the more fertile portions of eastern and southeastern
Texas. Appalachian farmers, largely from Tennessee, settled the Ozarks. Germans
settled parts of the Missouri and Mississippi valleys near St. Louis, and Kentucky-
ans and Virginians settled the “Little Dixie” region of Missouri north of the Mis-
souri River. Various settlers, mostly from Tennessee and Arkansas, settled northern
and central Texas, with a subsequent influx of Germans in central Texas. In south-
ern Texas, these settlers encountered the already established Spanish-speaking Te-
janos, though Anglo settlement of southern Texas was sparse until an agricultural
boom occurred in the 1920s (Jordan 1984). Much of Oklahoma remained the “In-
dian Territory” until it was opened to white settlement in 1889, after which time
settlers from Texas and Arkansas dominated its southern and eastern sections.
The Civil War (1861-65) put an end to slave-based plantation agriculture in the
South, leading to the tenant and sharecropper systems on farms (in which owners
divided profits from crops with tenants or sharecroppers) and ultimately to the es-
tablishment of mills for processing cotton and tobacco (see, e.g., Woodward 1951;
Cobb 1984). Textile mills appeared in numerous towns, especially in Piedmont
areas from Virginia to Alabama, and many of these towns grew into cities. Cot-
ton growing declined in that same region, shifting in large part to the Mississippi
valley and Texas. The invention of cigarette machines and the introduction of flue-
cured tobacco led to large tobacco mills, primarily in North Carolina and Virginia,
and a southward expansion of tobacco farming. Northern entrepreneurs also made
timber a major industry throughout the South. Coal mining became a major in-
dustry in the Appalachians and mining towns sprang up there. Other industries,
such as steel in Alabama, appeared locally. Expansion of railroads facilitated the
growth. A demographic effect of these new industries was that it helped to inspire
considerable migration of white workers toward mill towns. In addition, Texas
received large numbers of migrants from other Southern states seeking new farm-
land after the Civil War, and not only did cotton expand there but extensive cattle
ranches also covered much of western and southern Texas. It is possible that these
movements played a role in the spread of several sound changes that previously
occurred only locally, including the PIN/PEN merger, glide weakening of PRIZE,
fronting of GOOSE, rounding of the nucleus of START, and, after 1900, lowering of
the nuclei of FACE and GOAT.
Until World War II, the South generally showed net out-migration. This trend
was spurred by persistent, widespread poverty and also by specific events, such
as boll weevil infestation and the Great Depression. Migration from some regions,
especially Appalachia, continued after World War II, but a counter-trend began.
The oil industry in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma; the establishment of numer-
ous military bases; the growth of businesses attracted by cheap labor; and the
appearance of resort and retirement communities all attracted migrants from other
parts of the United States (see, e.g., Cobb 1984). This contact with non-South-
erners may have influenced some sound changes, such as the decline of [j] in
words such as tune and news, the FORCE/NORTH merger, the spread of [o‘] in the
ORANGE class, and the decline of triphthongization (a correlate of the “Southern
drawl”) in MOUTH/LOUD, DRESS, and other classes. However, the growth and in-
migration has been concentrated in urban centers, and rural areas have continued
to struggle economically. In fact, the economic gap between urban and rural areas
is still widening today. Rural areas now show traditionally Southern dialectal fea-
tures to a greater degree than urban areas.
Another event that may have influenced Southern dialectal patterns was the civil
rights movement, particularly desegregation, which was accompanied by turmoil
in the South from the 1950s through the 1970s. The civil rights struggle seems to
have caused both African Americans and Southern whites to stigmatize linguistic
variables associated with the other group. It coincides with the sudden spread
among whites of GOAT fronting, which African Americans avoid, as well as with
the reversal in which non-rhoticity changed from a prestigious to an unprestigious
feature among whites. The latter change was probably also promoted by the influx
of non-Southerners.
3. Phonological systems
The phonological inventory is essentially the same as in other forms of North

American English. Many Southerners distinguish the TRAP and BATH classes,
though this distinction is disappearing. A number of distinctions, most notably
those between NORTH and FORCE, between MARY and MERRY, and between W and
HW (as in witch and which), persisted longer in the South than in most other parts
of North America. The prosody of white Southern English follows patterns similar
to that of white English in other parts of North America, albeit with a few special,
interrelated features collectively called the “Southern drawl.”
Table 1. “Typical” rural white Southern vowels–summary
Older Younger
KIT I~i´>ï I~i´
DRESS E~e´~ e=i´ E~e´
TRAP æ~æ=Eæ= æ
LOT A A
STRUT Œ>√ Œ
FOOT U_~Y U_~Y
304 Erik R. Thomas
Table 1. (continued) “Typical” rural white Southern vowels–summary
Older Younger
BATH æ=E æ
DANCE æ=E e´
CLOTH ço~AÅ AÅ
NURSE ‘>å‘>ŒI ‘>å‘
FLEECE i4i~Ii i4i~Ii
FACE Ei~æ=i Ei~æ=i
PALM A>æ A~Åo
THOUGHT ço~AÅ AÅ
GOAT ç±u~Å±u Œy~Œu>æ=u
GOOSE u4u±~y4u± u4u±~y±u±~u4y±~y±y
PRICE ai~a˘æ~a˘~A˘e ai~a˘æ~a˘
PRIZE a˘E~a˘æ~a˘ a˘E~a˘æ~a˘
CHOICE oi~çoi>o˘E~o˘´ oi
MOUTH, LOUD æç~æÅ~æ=EÅ>aÅ>æA æç~æÅ>aÅ
NEAR i=‘~i´ i=‘
SQUARE æ‘~æ´~Ei‘~Ei´~ e4‘ e4‘
START Å‘~Å˘ Å‘>A‘
NORTH ç‘~ç´~ço‘~ço´~ço o‘
FORCE o‘~o´~ou‘~ou´~ou o‘
CURE u‘~u´~U‘~U´>o‘ u‘>‘
FIRE aæ‘~aæ´~a˘‘~a˘å>Å‘ aæ‘~a˘‘
POWER æç‘~æç´>Å‘ aç‘
happY I~i i
lettER ‘~´ ‘
horsES I~ï I~I_
commA ´ ´
HAND æ~æ=Eæ= e´
PIN/PEN I~i´ I~i´
THINK, LENGTH I>Ei~æ=i I~Ii
Table 1. (continued) “Typical” rural white Southern vowels–summary
Older Younger
GOING ç±u~Å±u ç±u~Å±u
GOAL ç±u~Å±u ç±u~Å±u
POOL u~u U=~u
PULL U U=~u
FEEL i4i I~i´~i4i
FILL I~i´ I~i´~I_
FAIL Ei~æ=i~ei ei~E
FELL E~ei E
MARRY æ e4
MERRY E e4
MARY ei~E e4
MIRROR/NEARER I~ i= i=
TOMORROW A~Å A~Å
ORANGE A~Å A~Å~o

Two prosodic features of rural Southern English are commonly remarked upon:
the “Southern drawl” and the tendency to place stress to the initial syllable of
particular words. The Southern drawl is defined variously, and it has even been
dismissed by some as nothing more than a stereotype. It is probably best described
as prolongation of certain stressed vowels and diphthongs, often accompanied by
breaking of and exaggerated pitch rises in those vocoids. Although the phenom-
enon has not been studied as extensively as it could have been, there seems to be
adequate evidence that it exists. It is widespread in Southern white English. Nev-
ertheless, it seems to be more observable in the speech of Southerners born before
1960 than in the speech of those born afterward, though published evidence for
such a trend is lacking.
The exaggerated pitch peaks that have been noted as a correlate of the Southern
drawl are the main intonational feature noted for white Southern English. These
peaks occur in heavily stressed syllables. In other respects, Southern intonation
patterns seem to be similar to those in other forms of American English, though
little research on them has been carried out.
306 Erik R. Thomas
The other oft-noted aspect of Southern prosody, placement of primary stress on

initial syllables, occurs for some speakers in words such as cement, police, hotel,
pecan, July, December, Detroit, and Monroe for which other varieties of English
do not show primary stress on the initial syllable. This feature has become a ste-
reotype of Southern English, both white and African American. As a result, it is
recessive for most words, but for at least one, insurance, it has become a marker
of Southern identity and is still common. In a number of additional words, such
as theater and peanut, many Southerners show a secondary stress that is absent in
other varieties of English. This tendency is also stereotyped and recessive.
Other features of stress and rhythm, such as the relative degree of stress timing
and syllable timing, have not been investigated in Southern English. Dialect-spe-
cific voice quality features also deserve some attention.
3.2. Lexical distribution

A large number of words show a phonemic incidence that is associated with South-
ern English. Many such words are discussed in Kurath and McDavid (1961) and
the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (Pederson et al. 1986-92, henceforth LAGS).
For some of these words, the pronunciation is widespread but is stereotypically
associated with the South; examples are get pronounced [gIt] and just pronounced
[dZIst]. Other cases are pronunciations that were once widespread but have re-
ceded and are now–in North America at least–largely restricted to the South. Ex-
amples are rather as [®√ð‘], further as [f√ð‘], radish as [®ERIS], kettle as [khIt…],
drain as [d®in], sumac as [Sumæk], and haunt as [hænt]. This group, as a rule,
occurs mostly among older, less-educated speakers. There are also variants whose
primary distribution has long been the South, though many of them once had some
currency elsewhere. The viability of these items varies. Some are highly recessive,
e.g., put as [ph√t], coop and Cooper as [khUp] and [khUp‘/´] respectively, shut as
[SEt], and pasture pronounced to rhyme with master. Others are still used by many
younger speakers, such as grease (verb) and greasy as [g®iz(i)], naked as [nEkId],
can’t rhyming with faint, on pronounced as own, and perhaps Mrs. as [mIz(Iz)],
though these usages are probably receding slowly.
Lexical incidence in certain groups of words has attracted particular atten-
tion from dialectologists. One is a group of words that vary between the LOT and
THOUGHT classes. Southerners who distinguish LOT and THOUGHT consistently
produce on with the THOUGHT or GOAT vowels, not with the LOT vowel. Long and
words rhyming with it formerly grouped with LOT in parts of Virginia and North
Carolina but with THOUGHT elsewhere, though the THOUGHT variant has probably
encroached on the LOT island. For words spelled –og, dog consistently groups with
THOUGHT but other words (fog, hog, log, etc.) vary, generally grouping with LOT
in coastal plain areas and with THOUGHT in inland areas. Among words spelled wa-
want with the THOUGHT vowel is particularly associated with the South. Swamp,
wasp, and, in coastal plain areas, water also typically show THOUGHT (Kurath and
McDavid 1961) but are less stereotyped than want with THOUGHT. Some younger
speakers may be substituting the LOT vowel in these words.
In addition, there are a few function words (was, what, of, anybody, nobody,
somebody, and everybody) that have been shifting in North American English
from LOT to STRUT. In was, what, and of and possibly in -body words, the LOT
pronunciation has survived longer in the South than elsewhere, though it is giv-
ing way now. Similarly, because is shifting from THOUGHT to STRUT, though the
THOUGHT form is still common in the South.
3.3. Vowels
Virtually every vowel class shows distinctive variants in rural white Southern Eng-
lish. A number of processes, such as triphthongization, glide weakening of PRIZE
and PRICE, upgliding forms of THOUGHT and BATH, and the PIN/PEN merger, have
become more or less stereotypical of Southern speech. One assemblage of vowel
shifts, dubbed the Southern Shift, has attracted prominent attention recently; see
especially Labov (1991, 1994) and Labov, Ash and Boberg (fc.). It consists of
several different shifts that are associated with each other. PRIZE, and often PRICE
as well, undergo glide weakening to [a˘E~a˘] or, as in the Pamlico Sound region,
become backed to [A˘e~Å˘e]. The tense/lax front vowel pairs switch places: the
nuclei of FACE and FLEECE become non-peripheral and fall, while KIT and DRESS
become peripheral and rise toward [i] and [e], respectively. The nucleus of GOAT
may fall, and GOAT and GOOSE become fronted. Finally, THOUGHT is either diph-
thongized to something like [ço] or raised toward [o]. It should be noted that the
different components of the Southern Shift have not spread through the South
at the same time. Shifting of THOUGHT may date from the late 18th or early 19th
centuries and glide weakening of PRIZE apparently dates from the late 19th century,
while fronting of GOAT spread mostly after World War II.
The following descriptions discuss the different variants that occur in various
parts of the South, giving their general distributions across time, space, and so-
cial groups. Social distribution is poorly known for many of these forms, though
some information is available in LAGS and various smaller-scale studies. Tradi-
tionally, the glides of upgliding diphthongs have been transcribed with lax vowel
symbols, e.g., [I] and [U]. Acoustic measurements, however, show that upglid-
ing diphthongs normally glide toward the periphery of the vowel envelope; see
Thomas (2001). Hence these glides are usually transcribed here with tense vowel
symbols. Similarly, acoustic measurements indicate that what have traditionally
been called “ingliding” diphthongs actually glide both inward and downward, so
that a form denoted as [e´] is probably better described as [eE=] or [eæ=]. Much of
the information discussed below is taken from Thomas (2001) or from sources
referenced therein.
308 Erik R. Thomas
KIT
Realizations of KIT vary. In the Southern shift, KIT may be tensed and raised to [i],
usually with an inglide, i.e., [i´]. This process is most common in heavily stressed
syllables. Under weak stress, a value of [I] is usual. The tensing/raising is uncom-
mon in some regions, such as Texas. In older Southern speech, centralized forms,
i.e., [], were common in certain words, such as sister, thistle, and ribbon, in
which a schwa was present in the following syllable. See below under PIN/PEN and
THINK for developments before nasals.
DRESS
This vowel shows some variation related to the Southern Shift. Considerable vari-
ation between the widespread form [ε] and the Southern Shift form [e] occurs, the
latter often with an inglide. Under heavy stress, particularly before /d/, as in dead,
middle-aged and older speakers often show a triphthongal form, [e=i´]. For the de-
velopment of this vowel before nasals, see below under PIN/PEN and LENGTH.
TRAP
An unshifted form, [æ], is common, but the Southern drawl results in triphthongal
forms such as [æ=εæ=], especially before /d/ and /n/. Speakers born between the
World Wars may also show some raising of TRAP to [ε]. For other raising, see
below under DANCE/HAND.
Both the triphthongization and the raising are subsiding among young Southern
whites. A few younger speakers from, e.g., Texas, who show the LOT/THOUGHT
merger have TRAP shifted toward [a], but this retraction is not yet as common as in
some non-Southern regions (e.g., California and Canada), though it is increasing
in parts of the Midwest on the margins of the South (e.g., central Ohio).
LOT
This vowel is among the most stable in rural Southern white English, being real-
ized as low back unrounded [A]. Rounded [Å] variants were reported for old-fash-
ioned South Carolina Low Country speech. In some areas, THOUGHT is being
merged into LOT (see below under THOUGHT).
STRUT
The most common realization is the [Œ] that predominates in most North American
English. In former plantation areas, a more backed form, [√], is common among
middle-aged and older speakers, but it appears to be recessive. Fronting to [ε=] is
sometimes reported. Raising to [´] occurs for occasional speakers.
FOOT
This vowel varies on a gradient from central [U_] to fronted [Y]. The full range of
variants occurs within most age groups and social levels. The degree of fronting of
FOOT is usually correlated with the degree of fronting of GOOSE and GOAT.
BATH, DANCE
Most younger Southerners make no distinction between BATH and TRAP. White
Southerners born before World War II, however, often do distinguish the two
classes, though in a way unique to the American South. For such speakers, BATH
shows an upglide. The most common realization is [æ=ε], but variations such as
[æ=e] and [aæ] occur. Some speakers who show these forms also show lowering of
the FACE vowel; they distinguish pairs such as pass and pace by the height of the
glide, which is mid for BATH words and high for FACE words. Many Southerners
produce the same [æ=E] diphthong in the DANCE class (i.e., words in which RP
shows [A˘] before a nasal/obstruent cluster). Upgliding BATH and DANCE forms
are widespread in the South Atlantic states, but are absent in three areas: around
the Chesapeake Bay, around the Pamlico Sound, and in the Low Country of South
Carolina. In the Gulf states, they occur everywhere–except perhaps southern Loui-
siana–but are most common in the Appalachian and Ozark Mountains and in the
Piney Woods belt.
In a number of BATH and DANCE words – today usually only aunt or rather but
in former times many others, such as pasture – some speakers show the vowel of
START (in non-rhotic varieties) or LOT. This tendency most likely originated as an
imitation of fashionable British usage rather than as a trait inherited from the earli-
est settlers. It is most prevalent in eastern Virginia.
CLOTH
This class is always merged with THOUGHT (see below).
NURSE
White Southern speech is increasingly rhotic, and stressed syllabic /r – i.e., NURSE –
is the most likely context for rhoticity in syllable rhymes. The details of /r/ articu-
lation are discussed below under R in the section on consonants. In older white
Southern speech, though, non-rhotic forms of NURSE occurred. From South Caro-
lina to Texas and north to eastern Arkansas and the southern edge of Kentucky, an
upgliding form, [ŒI], once predominated, but very few speakers born after 1930
show it and it is thus nearly obsolete. A few Southerners from the same region,
usually from high social strata, showed a monophthongal [Œ]. The monophthongal
form also occurred in eastern Virginia and adjacent parts of Maryland and North
Carolina, but a weakly rhotic variant was more common there.
For rhotic speakers, a different diphthongization of NURSE can appear in which
the variants [Œ‘~å‘] occur. This widening tends to co-occur with widening of the
FACE and GOAT diphthongs.
FLEECE
Unless it is truncated–as would happen with weak stress or rapid speech–the
FLEECE vowel is slightly diphthongal. In white Southern speech, diphthongal
forms vary from the [ i+i] form that predominates in other parts of North America to
310 Erik R. Thomas
wider [Ii] forms. The latter are most common in areas in which the FACE nucleus is
strongly lowered, especially eastern Tennessee and much of Alabama (Labov, Ash
and Boberg fc.). Variants that are even wider, such as [í], are rare.
FACE
This vowel shows more variation in the South than in any other part of North
America. In the past, a monophthongal form, [e3˘], occurred inconsistently in plan-
tation areas. In the Low Country of South Carolina/Georgia, the monophthong oc-
curred in pre-pausal position and ingliding [e3´] occurred in other contexts. These
forms are now nearly obsolete, though the nucleus of FACE has remained higher in
the Low Country than in other parts of the South. Today, lowering and/or retrac-
tion of the nucleus are widespread in rural white Southern speech. The shift may
be moderate–i.e., [εi – or more extreme – i.e., [æ=i~Œi]. The more extreme forms
are found largely in areas in which PRICE is monophthongal in all contexts, which
include the southern Appalachians, the Ozarks, Texas, the Piney Woods belt, and
parts of the North Carolina coastal plain. The more moderately shifted forms tend
to occur where PRICE remains diphthongal before voiceless consonants.
PALM
In contemporary Southern English, these words are nearly always merged with
LOT or, with the l pronounced (as a spelling pronunciation), with THOUGHT–e.g.,
[phÅç…m]~[phÅom] (the latter with vocalized l). In the past, PALM was commonly
merged with the TRAP or BATH classes, and occasional survivals of this usage,
such as the term slick ca’m ‘unrippled water,’ persist locally. In the South Carolina
Low Country, even pa and ma were once produced with [æ]. Merger of PALM with
START in non-rhotic areas, especially eastern Virginia, also occurred sporadically.
THOUGHT
Upgliding forms of THOUGHT/CLOTH, [ço~Åo~AÅ], are stereotypically associated
with Southern speech in general. The actual picture, of course, is more compli-
cated. There are a few Atlantic coastal areas – the eastern shore of the Chesapeake
Bay, the Pamlico Sound area, and the South Carolina/Georgia Low Country–in
which upgliding forms did not traditionally occur; instead, raised, monophthongal
[ç3] occurred. In the rest of the South, upgliding forms predominate, but there have
always been many speakers who used monophthongal forms exclusively, and
raised monophthongs are common after [w], as in want and water. In older speech,
raised, upgliding forms, [ço], were common, though some speakers showed wider
diphthongization, such as [Åo] or even [Ao]. During the 20th century there was ap-
parently a trend toward lower variants, and today the most common form is [AÅ].
Merger of THOUGHT/CLOTH with LOT has been spreading recently in the South,
especially in two areas: an Appalachian area including West Virginia, western Vir-
ginia, and eastern Kentucky and a western area extending from Texas and Okla-
homa east through Arkansas, middle and western Missouri, and the vicinity of
Memphis, Tennessee. Occasional speakers elsewhere show it as well. The result
is a realization as [A]. A possible stigma against upgliding variants may promote
the merger.
GOAT
GOAT shows several different developments. Analogously with FACE, monoph-
thongal [o3˘] once occurred inconsistently in plantation areas, and the monoph-
thong alternated with ingliding [o3´] in the South Carolina/Georgia Low Country.
As with the corresponding variants of FACE, these forms have nearly disappeared.
Lowering of the nucleus and fronting of both the nucleus and glide of GOAT have
become widespread over the past century. Lowered but unfronted forms, [ç±u~Å±u],
became common in the early 20th century and are still found among many older
speakers. Fronted forms apparently originated in northeastern North Carolina dur-
ing the 19th century and spread slowly at first. This fronting affected both the nu-
cleus and the glide, yielding [Œy]. Fronting only of the nucleus also spread slowly
from Pennsylvania into Maryland, West Virginia, and southern Ohio. Since World
War II, fronting has spread rapidly. Fronting of the nucleus is now found through-
out the South among young whites. In combination with lowering, it yields forms
as extreme as [æ=u], though [Œu] is more common. Fronting of the glide is common
as far west as Tennessee and Alabama but is less frequent west of the Mississippi
River and quite rare in Texas; its northern limits are uncertain. It is possible that
both fronting processes, at least in certain areas, are more prevalent among fe-
males than among males.
In certain contexts the GOAT vowel is not usually fronted; see below under
GOAL and GOING.
GOOSE
When fully stressed, the GOOSE vowel is slightly diphthongal in Southern English.
Some degree of fronting is associated with the nucleus of GOOSE in virtually all
forms of white Southern English. The nucleus may vary from a central to a front
position. Fronting of the glide also occurs and is more common in the eastern half
of the South. Variants include [u4u±~y±u±] (without fronting of the glide) and [u4y±~y4y]
(with fronting of the glide).
PRICE, PRIZE
Monophthongization of PRICE (i.e., /ai/ before voiceless consonants) and, espe-
cially, PRIZE (i.e., other phonetic contexts of /ai/) is stereotypically associated with
the American South. However, glide weakening is a more accurate term because
it encompasses both monophthongal forms and variants with a glide that is only
partly truncated, both of which are perceived as “flattened” by outsiders. Both
forms are common and widespread.
312 Erik R. Thomas
Glide weakening has, since the late 19th century, occurred throughout the South
except for a few Atlantic coastal areas, and even there it has shown signs of en-
croaching recently. Where weakening occurs, it consistently affects contexts be-
fore liquids most strongly and those before voiceless consonants least strongly,
but the relative strength of the effects of following pauses, nasals, and voiced
obstruents is a matter of dispute. Weakening produces forms such as [a˘ε~a˘æ],
leading ultimately to monophthongal [a˘]. Some speakers show forms such as [æ˘]
and [A±˘], but [a˘] is more usual.
Weakening before voiceless consonants (PRICE) is geographically and socially
restricted. It is found mainly in Appalachia (south to northern Alabama), Arkansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, the Piney Woods Belt, and parts of the North Carolina coastal
plain, but some working class speakers elsewhere show it. It has long been as-
sociated with working-class speech, and hence many upper-middle class speak-
ers avoid it. Weakening in any context (PRICE or PRIZE) is apparently declining
around the margins of the South, such as in Maryland and Oklahoma. Speakers
with aspirations of upward white-collar mobility often avoid it, though such avoid-
ance is not as prevalent in rural areas as in urban areas.
Glide weakening was traditionally absent on the eastern shore of the Chesa-
peake Bay, around the Pamlico Sound, and in the Low Country of South Carolina
and Georgia. In the former two areas, backing of the nucleus occurred instead
in all contexts. Forms such as [A˘e] were usual, with [Å˘e] and [åAe] occurring
sporadically. Backing occurred for PRIZE in the Low Country. Such backing also
occurs widely in the South before voiceless consonants (PRICE) where that context
remains diphthongal. Another variation reported from older speech in Tidewater
and Piedmont Virginia and the South Carolina/Georgia Low Country for contexts
before voiceless consonants is [åi], with a higher nucleus. Acoustic analyses indi-
cate that only some speakers from those areas showed [åi].
CHOICE
Although the widespread [oi~çi] forms are common in the South, two mutations
occur in the South but not elsewhere in North America (except in varieties with
Southern roots, such as African American English). The first is breaking, which
results in triphthongs such as [çoi] and [Åoi]. The second is lowering and/or weak-
ening of the glide, resulting in forms such as [o˘ε] and [o˘´]. The latter process
is found most often in former plantation areas. Both processes occur mainly for
speakers born before 1960. However, before /l/, as in boil, glide weakening is
widespread among all age groups and monophthongization to [o] is common. The
alternation in which certain CHOICE words derived from Middle English /ui/, e.g.,
join and poison, show the PRIZE vowel is highly recessive except in hoist/heist.
MOUTH, LOUD
Fronting of the nucleus and lowering of the glide, resulting in [æç~æÅ] and, in
some areas, [æA], are widespread in white Southern English. Not all speakers
show the fronting, and most speakers show [aÅ] under weak stress. In two areas
– the South Carolina/Georgia Low Country and southern Louisiana – fronting was
traditionally absent. Many speakers born before 1960 show breaking, resulting in
triphthongal [æ=εÅ].
Two local variations occurred in traditional dialects, though both are reces-
sive today. In the Tidewater and Piedmont sections of Virginia and adjacent parts
of Maryland and North Carolina, as well as in the South Carolina/Georgia Low
Country, positional variation developed. Before voiced consonants and word-fi-
nally (LOUD), the variants described above occurred. Before voiceless consonants
(MOUTH), both the nucleus and the glide were higher. The glide also tended to
be fronted, with the result of [Œu~Œy]. On the Delmarva Peninsula and around
the Pamlico Sound, fronting of the glide occurred with low nuclei in most con-
texts. The nuclei tended not to be much fronted. Common variants there were
[aP~aø~aε].
NEAR
The common variants are [i=‘] and [i´]. In some areas, [j‘] was once a common
alternant in certain words, e.g., beard. In old-fashioned South Carolina/Georgia
Low Country speech, NEAR and SQUARE were merged to [e´], but contact with other
Southern dialects has reversed this merger.
SQUARE
A wide variety of variants occur in older Southern speech. Lowering of the nu-
cleus, resulting in [æ‘] for rhotic speakers and [æ´] for non-rhotic speakers, was
once widespread, though today it is mainly heard among middle-aged and older
speakers in regions far from urban centers, such as the Pamlico Sound area and
the southern Appalachians. It never occurred in the South Carolina/Georgia Low
Country, however, where [e´] was usual. Breaking was common as well, especial-
ly in non-rhotic areas, where forms such as [εi´] and even [æiæ=] could be heard.
Young white Southerners have abandoned this diversity and uniformly show a
quality of approximately [e4‘].
START
Southern English, both rhotic and non-rhotic, shows a marked tendency toward
rounding of the nucleus of START, resulting in values of [Å‘] or [Å˘]. This pro-
cess is probably a 19th century development. There may be some stigma against
the rounding today, as some young whites seem to be moving toward unrounded
nuclei.
314 Erik R. Thomas
NORTH
NORTH remained distinct from FORCE in most parts of the South until recently.
Usual pronunciations were [ç‘~ço‘] in rhotic speech and [ç´~ço´~ço] in non-
rhotic speech. In certain areas–the Delmarva Peninsula, parts of the Mississippi
and Ohio valleys, and Texas–many speakers merged NORTH with START as [Å‘].
On the Delmarva Peninsula, this merger dates from the 19th century and may have
been a majority variant, but in Texas, it mainly comprises speakers born between
the World Wars and was never a majority variant. Its demographics in the Missis-
sippi and Ohio valleys are unclear. Over the course of the 20th century, the NORTH/
FORCE merger gradually spread throughout the South. Very few Southerners born
after World War II distinguish NORTH and FORCE. The result of this merger is a
value of approximately [o‘].
FORCE
In older Southern speech, FORCE could show variable diphthongization, i.e.,
[o‘~ou‘] in rhotic varieties and [o´~ou´~ou] in non-rhotic ones. Younger white
rural Southerners seldom show upgliding in FORCE, the usual variant being [o‘].
See above on the merger of FORCE and NORTH.
CURE
Merger of the vowels of CURE and FORCE became a stereotype for some older
rural Southern speech, especially in Appalachia. As a result, most Southerners
came to avoid it except for words spelled –oor (e.g., poor, boor, Moore), for which
usage varies. Thus [u‘~U‘] predominates, especially in words such as tour. After
palatals, as in cure and sure, and in non-final syllables, as in tournament and Mis-
souri, merger with the NURSE class is common among young speakers in some
areas, such as Texas and Missouri. Such speakers follow a pattern increasingly
common in other parts of North America. This CURE/NURSE merger tends to show
considerable style shifting; many speakers who show the merger in casual speech
pronounce CURE words with [u‘~U‘] when their attention is drawn to it.
FIRE
For a large number of speakers, FIRE follows the pattern of PRICE/PRIZE, with
glide weakening resulting in [aæ‘~a˘‘] in rhotic varieties and [aæå~a˘å] in non-
rhotic ones. Many speakers, however, show merger of FIRE with START, resulting
in [Å‘~A‘~Å˘~A˘]. This merger is highly stereotyped and, consequently, is most
typical of older, working-class, and less educated speakers. Some speakers show
hypercorrection of glide weakening for FIRE, resulting in [aj‘].
POWER
For most speakers, power follows the same pattern as MOUTH/LOUD. Some
speakers show loss of the glide before /r/, resulting in [æ‘], especially in the
word our. Our is more commonly merged into the START class – in fact, this
variant of our is quite general in North America – but for other words merger
of POWER with START occurs infrequently, mostly among the same groups who
merge FIRE with START.
happY
Although [I] in happY persisted longer in the South than in other parts of North
America, the shift to [i] is now essentially complete and only speakers in a few
isolated communities (such as islands in the Chesapeake Bay) and some older
speakers elsewhere still show [I]. The final vowels of many other words, such as
borrow, soda, okra, and Sarah, were once commonly pronounced with [I~i] in the
rural South, especially among speakers with less education, but this process is now
highly recessive.
lettER
The general distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic varieties and the wholesale shift
to rhoticity in white Southern speech are discussed below under R. Unstressed syl-
lables are the most likely contexts for non-rhoticity, and some varieties that show
consistent rhoticity in other contexts show variable non-rhoticity in unstressed syl-
lables. In older speech, the commA vowel, both historical, as in idea, and derived
from GOAT, as in hollow, is commonly produced as [‘].
horsES
A value of [I], perhaps better described as central [], is usual. However, the exact
quality is highly affected by coarticulation with neighboring segments.
commA
This vowel tends to be lower than the horsES vowel, closer to [´], but, like horsES,
it is strongly affected by context. On the production of some commA words with
[I~i], see above under happY; on production as [‘], see above under lettER.
HAND
Younger white Southerners follow the widespread North American trend of rais-
ing /æ/ before nasals to something like [e´]. This process includes words of the
DANCE class, whose earlier development is discussed above. Older Southerners
often showed triphthongal [æEæ] forms.
PIN/PEN
The merger of the KIT and DRESS vowels before nasals, as in pin and pen, is strong-
ly associated with Southern speech, though it also occurs among some whites in
the southern Midwest and California and among African Americans everywhere.
316 Erik R. Thomas
The resulting merged vowel is usually closer to [I] in quality, though a few speak-
ers have it closer to [ε]. The merger apparently grew from a sporadic feature of
a few speakers to a majority feature during the late 19th century and continued to
spread during the 20th century. Today, however, some Southerners, largely under
the influence of schools, have begun to distinguish PIN and PEN.
THINK, LENGTH
Before [N], as in think and thing, some Southerners diphthongize the KIT vowel
and lower the nucleus to yield [Ei~æ=i]. The same process may apply to LENGTH,
which otherwise is usually pronounced with [I].
GOING
In hiatus positions, as in going, go out, so is…, etc., fronting of the GOAT vowel
does not occur for many speakers who otherwise front. The same may be true for
GOOSE, as in do it. Fronting may also be blocked before nasals, as in grown and
don’t.
GOAL
The back vowels are seldom fronted before /l/, especially by younger speakers.
Thus, GOAL is rarely if ever fronted. Common realizations are [çu~Åu].
POOL, PULL
Although many older white Southerners show fronting of POOL, younger South-
erners almost never do. PULL consistently remains backed. POOL and PULL are
commonly merged by younger speakers throughout the South; the resulting vowel
is [U=~u4].
FEEL, FILL
These two classes are also merged by many younger Southerners, ordinarily to [I]
or to a quality intermediate between [i] and [I].
FAIL, FELL
Merger of these two classes also occurs, though less often than that of the other
two pre-/l/ pairs. The resulting vowel is usually [E].
MARRY, MERRY, MARY

These classes were once kept distinct by most Southerners, with qualities of [æ],
[E], and [ei~e], respectively. Younger Southerners have shown a wholesale trend
toward merging all three into the SQUARE class. Merger of MARY with MERRY has
proceeded faster than merger of MARRY with the other two classes.
MIRROR/NEARER
Published evidence on this opposition is scarce for Southern English. Young white
Southerners, in general, appear to merge them.
TOMORROW, ORANGE
The stressed vowel in these classes was formerly produced with [A~Å], the LOT
or START vowel, throughout the South. It still is for words in which the /r/ is fol-
lowed by a vowel in an open syllable, such as tomorrow and sorry. However, for
words in which the /r/ is followed by a vowel in a closed syllable, such as orange,
foreign, and horrible, there is a trend toward [o], the FORCE/NORTH vowel. This
trend appears stronger in some areas (e.g., Texas and Virginia) than in others (e.g.,
the Carolinas).
3.4. Consonants
R
/r/, when it is articulated in the South, is articulated much as in other North Ameri-
can Englishes. The ordinary form is the “bunched-tongue r,” produced with con-
strictions by the tongue root (in the pharynx), the tongue dorsum (to the velum or
palate), and – in syllable onsets – the lips as well. The currency of the compet-
ing variant, the “retroflex r” (produced with the pharyngeal constriction and with
retroflection of the tongue tip) is difficult to assess but seems far less common.
Production of the bunched-tongue r often results in latent retroflection. One other
variant, the tap [R], may have occurred in some older Southern speech after [θ], as
in three, but the evidence is unclear.
Postvocalic /r/ is the most heavily studied consonantal variable in Southern
English, and it shows rich contextual, geographical, socioeconomic, diachronic,
ethnic, and stylistic conditioning. It also shows continuous gradation from fully
rhotic to fully non-rhotic variants. In terms of phonetic context, non-rhoticity is
most frequent in unstressed syllables; see above on the lettER class. Non-rhotic-
ity may occur variably in this context in areas such as the Pamlico Sound region
and Appalachia that are otherwise rhotic, and, as rhoticity has increased recently,
unstressed syllables are often the last context to become rhotic. The next most
frequent environment for non-rhoticity is in syllable codas, whether word-final-
ly (four, here) or pre-consonantally (hard, fourth). Linking r, as in here is [hi‘
Iz], has historically been absent for a large number of Southerners, though some
speakers showed it, often variably. Intrusive linking r in other hiatus positions, as
in saw-r it, is virtually unknown in the South, in part because intrusive l may occur
in such contexts. Rhoticity tends to be more frequent after front vowels (e.g., here,
there) than after back vowels (four, hard). Stressed, syllabic r, the NURSE class, is
more likely to be rhotic than r in syllable codas; see above under NURSE. Some
older Southerners are also variably non-rhotic in intra-word intervocalic contexts,
318 Erik R. Thomas
as in carry [khæi]. Deletion of r occurs as well for some speakers between [θ] and
a rounded vowel in throw and through and after a consonant in some unstressed
syllables, e.g., the initial syllable of professor.
Deletion of r in certain words before coronal consonants, as in the widespread
forms bust, cuss, and gal for burst, curse, and girl, respectively, and ass and bass
(fish) for earlier arse and barse, as well as dialectal forms such as futher, catridge,
and passel for further, cartridge, and parcel, is not properly considered to be
non-rhoticity, since it arose earlier from assimilation. Nor is the dissimilation that
results in deletion of the first r in words such as surprise, governor, temperature,
veterinarian, and caterpillar properly considered non-rhoticity. Both processes
are common in the South, though forms such as passel are recessive.
Geographically, non-rhoticity is strongly correlated with former plantation ar-
eas. Non-rhoticity formerly predominated in Tidewater and Piedmont Virginia
and adjacent parts of southwestern Maryland and northern North Carolina; in a
band stretching from South Carolina across the Georgia Piedmont through central
Alabama and central Mississippi; throughout the Mississippi River lowlands as far
north as Kentucky, extending to include the western two thirds of Kentucky and
western and north-central Tennessee, and thence west to include Gulf coastal plain
sections of Texas; and in some coastal communities in Georgia and the Gulf states.
Much of North Carolina and parts of central and even western Texas showed
mixed patterns. The principal rhotic sections were the Delmarva Peninsula; the
Pamlico Sound region of North Carolina; the southern Appalachians, extending
to northern Alabama; the Ozarks, Oklahoma, and northern Texas; and the Piney
Woods region of the southern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, north-
ern Florida, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas. None of these areas was mono-
lithic, however, and the Piney Woods region, especially, showed mixture.
The socioeconomic and diachronic aspects of rhoticity in the South are inter-
twined. Various studies, notably McDavid (1948), Levine and Crockett (1966), Har-
ris (1969), and Feagin (1990), have suggested that rhoticity has undergone a shift
in prestige. Before World War II, non-rhoticity was prestigious, appearing most
frequently among higher social levels and spreading (except, perhaps, in NURSE
words). Afterward, rhoticity became prestigious and non-rhoticity became most
common among lower social levels. Females have forged ahead of males in this
change. Today, even in areas that were once strongholds of non-rhoticity, young
white Southerners are rhotic, especially females. Predictably, rhoticity increases
with stylistic formality. It should be noted that the dramatic increase in rhoticity
applies only to white Southerners; African Americans remain largely non-rhotic
except in the NURSE class, and, as discussed previously, social polarization of the
two ethnicities magnified during the civil rights movement may be related to the
divergence in rhoticity.
L
Although American English is often reported to show a “clear” [l] in syllable on-
sets and a “dark,” or velar, […] in syllable codas, articulatory evidence suggests that
American English shows a velar form in syllable onsets, and Southern English fol-
lows this pattern. In syllable codas, vocalization occurs. The term vocalization has
been used loosely. It has been applied to what would be better referred to as dele-
tion, as in [wUf] for wolf. This deletion may occur before labials (except [b]), and
the forms [hEp] for help, [sEf] in -self compounds, [thwev] for twelve, and [houp]
for holp (old preterit of help) are stereotypically Southern. True vocalization of
syllable-coda l is widespread in North American English and seems to be particu-
larly common in the South. The result is a phone with the value of [o] or [w], as
in fill [fIo]. This phone is sometimes described as [µ] but is normally rounded.
The acoustic similarity between […] and [w] has made vocalization of l difficult to
study, and hence details of its distribution are unavailable.
Linking […] is apparently common in hiatus positions, as in sell it [sEo…I/t]. In-
trusive […], as in saw it [sAÅ…I/t], is known to occur irregularly. However, vocaliza-
tion can also occur in hiatus.
Older Southern speech did show a truly “clear” [l] in one context: between
front vowels, as in silly, Billy, and Nelly. Some elderly Southerners still show this
variant.
KJAR, GJAR
During the 19th century, insertion of [j] in such words as car [chjA˘~ chjA‘], garden,
and Carter was widespread in coastal plain and Piedmont sections of the South,
though perhaps less so in the Appalachians. This variation probably began to de-
cline in the late 19th century and has now entirely disappeared.
JU
In words with historical [iu~ju] after coronal stops, as in tune, duke, and news, [j]
has persisted in the South longer than in any other part of the United States (though
it still appears elsewhere as an affectation). Kurath and McDavid (1961), whose
sample consisted almost entirely of speakers born in the 19th century, showed [ju]
and its variants ([iu], [dZu], [tSu]) as nearly universal in the Southern states. Since
World War II, however, a steady movement toward loss of [j] in the South has
occurred. The loss has been slower in common words than in infrequent words.
Findings differ on whether males or females lead in this change.
TH
Rural white southern English shows all of the mutations of /θ/ and /ð/ that African
American speech is better known for, but they generally do not occur as often.
Thus /θ/ may be realized as [t~tθ], usually by lower-status speakers, or, in syllable
codas (e.g., both, birthday), occasionally as [f]. The [f] variant is much rarer in
320 Erik R. Thomas
white speech than in African American speech. Mutations of /ð/ are more common.
Realizations of /ð/ as [d~dð] may be increasing among young white males, though
more study is needed. Assimilation of /ð/ to a preceding consonant, as in in nere
for in there or up pat hill for up that hill, is fairly common. None of these variants
can be described as a strictly Southern phenomenon.
SHR
In words such as shrimp, shrink, and shrub, many white Southerners produce [s®]
instead of [S®]. Early reports of this feature were from the South Atlantic states,
especially Virginia. In the Gulf States, LAGS found it to be widespread but most
heavily concentrated in the Piedmont and Piney Woods regions. Surprisingly,
LAGS found little correlation of [s®] with sex, age, education, or social status.
ZN, VN
Before n, voiced fricatives often undergo assimilation and become voiced stops.
The result is forms such as idn’t, wadn’t, and bidness for isn’t, wasn’t, and busi-
ness, respectively, and sebem and elebem for seven and eleven (with assimilation
of /n/ to the labial place of articulation as well). Theoretically, this process might
also affect /ðn/, as in heathen. The assimilation is most frequent in common words.
It is sometimes reported as being specifically Southern, but in fact is far more
widespread.
TAPS and FLAPS

Like other North Americans, Southerners produce intervocalic coronal stops as a
tap or flap [R]. This process normally occurs when the stop falls after any vowel or
[‘] and before a heterosyllabic vowel or [‘], as in batty [bæR.i], sit out [sIR.æç/t],
Ida [a˘R.´], hardy [hÅ‘R.i], and inner [I)R).‘]. It does not occur before a tautosyllab-
ic vocoid, e.g., attain [´.thEin], go tell [gŒu.thEo], and a tamale [´.th´mA…i], except
for unstressed to and don’t, e.g., go to [gŒu.R´] and I don’t [a˘.Ro)n/t]. It also affects
nt clusters, as in Santa [se)´)R).´] and enter [I)R).‘]. Technically speaking, a tap occurs
after a vowel and a flap after [‘] or a tap + vowel (e.g., in additives, in which the
<dd> is tapped and the <t> flapped). Some Southerners extend tapping/flapping
to one additional context: before unstressed /n/. They produce important as [Im.
pho‘R.In/t] and get in a as [gIR.IR).´] instead of as the more widespread pronuncia-
tions [Im.pho‘/t.n`/t] and [gI/t.n`.´], respectively. This process does not affect all
pre-nasal examples, e.g., button [b√/t.n`]. Outright deletion of the tap/flap is com-
mon in casual speech, e.g. pretty [ph®wI.i], little […I.o].
W
Deletion of w often occurs, mainly for one and was, as in younguns ‘children,’ little’un,
and he ‘uz ‘he was.’ At one time, it apparently occurred in other words, e.g., Edward.
HW, HJ
The sequence wh, as in which, was formerly widely pronounced as [hw] (or [„])
in the South; Kurath and McDavid (1961) found it in all parts of the South except
the Low Country and part of Maryland. Nearly all young Southerners today pro-
duce it as [w], however. LAGS found that better-educated speakers were more
likely to distinguish wh.
Pronunciation of the /hj/ sequence, as in huge and Houston, as /j/ occurs spo-
radically; most published reports of it are from Texas.
Intrusive T
A few words, notably once, twice, across, and cliff, may show an intrusive [t] after
the final fricative, e.g., [w√nst]. This process is not limited to the South but is espe-
cially common in older rural Southern white speech. Intrusive [t] is also reported
in other words, e.g., sermont for sermon.
Other consonantal variables

Three other consonantal variables that have attracted extensive sociolinguistic at-
tention are simplification of final consonant clusters (as in last and raised), un-
stressed final -ing (as in looking and something), and realization of nasal conso-
nants in syllables codas only as vowel nasalization (as in [do)u)] for don’t). As with
other varieties of English, simplification of final consonant clusters is infrequent
before vowels, common before consonants, and intermediate before pauses, as
well as being more frequent in monomorphemic words (last) than in bimorphemic
words (raised). Forms such as [phousIz], [wçsIz], and [dEsIz] as the plurals of
post, wasp, and desk, respectively, which were common in older African Ameri-
can speech, occurred only rarely in older Southern white speech. Forms such as
[phoustIz], [wçspIz], and [dEskIz] were more common in white speech but are now
quite recessive and are currently most prevalent in Appalachia. Unmarked plurals
or plurals such as [phous˘] are still fairly common in white Southern speech, but
they are widespread elsewhere, too.
Unstressed final -ing may occur as [In] at higher rates in white Southern speech
than in other white North American English, but otherwise it shows the same
social and stylistic conditioning (i.e., [In] is more frequent among lower socio-
economic groups, among males, and in less formal styles). Hypercorrection, e.g.,
mounting and chicking for mountain and chicken, was once common in the South,
especially in writing. Realization of nasals in codas as vowel nasality is wide-
spread as a sandhi-form.
Yet another consonantal variation, merger of /w/ and /v/ to [V], once occurred
around the Pamlico Sound and perhaps elsewhere but has now disappeared (Wol-
fram and Thomas 2002).
322 Erik R. Thomas
4. Current issues
The most pervasive issue in studies of rural Southern white accents has been their
relationship to African American vernaculars. This issue includes several more
specific questions. Did African American vernacular speech arise from an earlier
rural Southern white vernacular, or have they always differed? Did African Amer-
ican speech influence Southern white speech, and if so, how? Has rural Southern
white speech been moving away from or toward African American norms in re-
cent decades? What sorts of features have spread across ethnic lines, and which
ones have not? At present, there is no consensus on any of these controversies.
For example, it has been suggested that non-rhoticity spread from slave speech to
white speech in the South, a contention supported by early accounts of white chil-
dren adopting accents from slave children, by the concentration of non-rhoticity in
former plantation areas, and by the consistently higher incidence of non-rhoticity
in African American speech (Feagin 1997). However, others have argued that non-
rhoticity emerged as an imitation of British usage, largely because Southerners
of means often sent their children to England to be educated (e.g., Johnson 1928).
The fact that Southerners with sufficient wealth to send their children to school
tended to be slaveholders might explain why non-rhoticity was concentrated in
plantation areas. A third explanation for non-rhoticity is that the original English
settlers brought it, but rhotic regions in English-settled areas, such as the Pam-
lico Sound region, would seem to militate against that possibility (though settlers
could have brought non-rhoticity in unstressed syllables). At any rate, while it
appears clear that whites borrowed some morphological processes from African
Americans, it is nearly impossible to prove or disprove that phonological borrow-
ing occurred.
Similarly, the contemporary relationship between African American and South-
ern white vernaculars is open to dispute. There is ample evidence that African
Americans in the South are not participating or barely participating in several as-
pects of the “Southern Shift” that typify the speech of Southern whites, such as
GOOSE and GOAT fronting and FACE lowering. Whether this division reflects Afri-
can American reaction against white norms, white reaction against African Ameri-
can norms, or a combination is not entirely clear. Even though the two ethnic
groups have been diverging for those vowel quality features, the possibility that
they may borrow other features from each other, such as pre-/l/ mergers, deserves
some scrutiny.
Other issues have received less attention. The origins of white Southern English
have sparked some inquiry, and some evidence suggests that many defining fea-
tures of Southern speech, such as glide weakening of PRIZE, may not have spread
widely until the late 19th or early 20th centuries (Bailey 1997). Another issue is
what effects the recent population movements of the South, especially the heavy
in-migration of Northerners, are having on Southern speech. It appears that these
movements have made more of an impact on urban centers than on rural areas.
However, it is difficult to say how impervious rural areas are to such changes.
Rural areas may be intensifying Southern dialectal features in reaction to the cit-
ies, or they may eventually succumb to urban influences. The status of individual
features has garnered considerable attention. Two of the most intensively studied
changes are the spread of rhoticity and the disappearance of [j] in words such as
tune. The speed of these changes and the reasons for them have been debated.
Among other issues, the Southern drawl is still poorly defined and it has not been
determined whether the vowel quality changes associated with the Southern Shift
are still spreading or have begun to retreat. The disappearance of certain local
features, such as the ingliding forms of FACE and GOAT in the Low Country, has
attracted some research.
Clearly, the extensive research conducted on rural white Southern speech in
the past has not exhausted the potential research topics on this group of dialects.
Future work can be expected to address the issues noted above and open new ques-
tions. The intricacies of ethnic relations, population movements, shifts in prestige,
and linguistic structure, as well as the historical differences that set the South off
from the rest of the United States, combine to make the South a fertile ground for
linguistic inquiry.
* I wish to thank Walt Wolfram and Kirk Hazen for their comments on earlier drafts of
this paper. I also wish to thank Guy Bailey, who introduced me to a number of the ideas
articulated here, such as the importance of the growth of mill towns, some years ago.
Finally, I would like to thank the speakers who contributed their voices to the speech
samples on the CD.
Selected references
ROM.
Bailey, Guy
1997 When did Southern English begin? In: Schneider (ed.), 255–75.
Cobb, James C.
1984 Industrialization and Southern Society, 1877–1984. Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press.
Dorrill, George T.
1986 White and Black Speech in the South: Evidence from the Linguistic Atlas of the
Middle and South Atlantic States. New York: Peter Lang.
Feagin, Crawford
1997 The African contribution to Southern States English. In: Bernstein, Nunnally
and Sabino (eds.), 123–39.
324 Erik R. Thomas
Harris, Maverick Marvin

1969 The retroflexion of postvocalic /r/ in Austin. American Speech 44: 263–71.
Johnson, H. P.
1928 Who lost the Southern “r?” American Speech 3: 377–83.
Klipple, Florence Carmelita
1945 The speech of Spicewood, Texas. American Speech 20: 187–91.
Labov, William
Levine, Lewis, and Harry J. Crockett, Jr.
1966 Speech variations in a Piedmont community. Sociological Inquiry 36: 204–26.
McDavid, Raven I., Jr.
1948 Postvocalic /-r/ in South Carolina: A social analysis. American Speech 23: 194–
203.
1958 The dialects of American English. In: Francis, 480–543.
Woodward, C. Vann
1951 Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press.
The urban South: phonology
Jan Tillery and Guy Bailey*
1. Introduction
The single most important social fact about the American South since 1880 has
been the urbanization of its population. Much of the current social fabric of the
region, including increased educational levels, the existence of a substantial middle
class, and both the Jim Crow laws that formalized racial segregation after 1890 and
the Civil Rights movement that eliminated those laws after 1964, developed in part
because of the emergence of Southern towns and cities. Urbanization has had pro-
found linguistic consequences as well, initially forging a number of local vernacu-
lars into the regional dialect we know of as Southern American English (SAmE)
and later reshaping and transforming that dialect. A brief overview of urbanization
in the South will illustrate how this process could factor in both the formation and
the transformation of a dialect. A review of some phonological features of the urban
South (and a comparison with the features of rural Southern phonology outlined in
Thomas [this volume]) will illustrate the extent of the transformation.
2. Urbanization in the South
The urbanization of the South has taken place in two phases. Lasting from about
1880 to the beginning of World War II, the first phase saw the emergence of towns
and small cities, with most of the new urban population coming from the sur-
rounding countryside. The second phase, which began during World War II and
continues today, has seen the development of large metropolitan areas, with the
population coming not only from the surrounding countryside, but also from other
areas of the United States. Both phases were rooted in larger economic forces, but
their demographic and linguistic consequences were different.
2.1. Late 19th century urbanization

The immediate impetus for the first phase of urbanization was the rapid and wide-
spread expansion of general stores after the Civil War.
While some general stores had grown up at junctions on Southern railroads in the 1850s,
the clientele and impact of those stores remained small. Slaves could buy nothing, and
small farmers, who spent most of their energy for their household or local market, had
326 Jan Tillery and Guy Bailey
little currency and little need for credit … The situation changed rapidly after emancipation
with the rapid emergence of country stores in the late 1860s and 1870s. National laws
written during the Civil War put most banks in the North and left stores to dispense the vast
majority of credit [something which Southern farmers desperately needed because of the
devastation of the war], with unplanted crops [serving] as collateral (Ayers 1992: 13).
The general store, then, served as the link between Northern bankers and Southern
farmers and over the course of the last quarter of the 19th and early part of the 20th
centuries “increasingly stood at the center of the rural economy” (Ayers 1992: 86).
As a result of their importance to the rural economy, the growth in the number of
stores during the last quarter of the 19th century was stunning: “by the turn of the
century, the South contained 150,653 stores” (Ayers 1992: 81).
General stores not only played an essential role in the post-bellum Southern econ-
omy, but they also formed the nucleus of an emerging urban system in the South.
Because stores also supplied furnishings for an increasingly less self-sufficient farm
population, loose clusterings of houses frequently grew up near them. With the con-
struction of cotton gins, churches, schools, and railroads, these loose clusters often
grew into the villages (settled places with populations under 2,500) that began to
dot the Southern countryside after 1880. Some of these further evolved into towns
(settled places with populations greater than 2,500 – the U. S. Census Bureau’s defi-
nition of an urban area) and thus formed the first phase of urbanization in the South.
The growth in the number of villages and towns was as stunning as the growth in the
number of stores was: “the number of villages doubled between 1870 and 1880 and
then doubled again by 1900 (Ayers 1992: 20). Literally “thousands of villages came
into existence during the last quarter of the 19th century, and (as figure 1 shows),
hundreds more passed over the line into official ‘urban’ status …” (Ayers 1992:55).
250
217
200
Number of Villages Becoming Towns
150
105
100
50 55
11
0
1880- 1890- 1900- 1910-
Decade
Figure 1. Number of villages crossing the crban threshold (reaching populations of 2,500)
between 1880 and 1910 (Source: Ayers 1992)
The urban South: phonology 327
The end result of the rapid growth of villages and towns was a widespread redis-
tribution of the Southern population. At the beginning of the Civil War only 10%
of the Southern population lived in urban areas, and most of them were concen-
trated in only 22 cities and towns (four with populations greater than 25,000 and
18 with populations between 5,000 and 25,000). As late as 1880 urban residents
represented only 12% of the Southern population, but after 1880 the urban and
village population of the South expanded rapidly.
The village and town population of the South grew by more than five million people
between 1880 and 1910. The growth came fastest in the 1880s, slowed in the 1890s, and
then accelerated again in the first decade of the new century. Villages … accounted for
about a quarter of that increase. In 1900, about one of every six Southerners – in some
regions, one of every four – nlived in a village or town (Ayers 1992: 55).
Drawn largely from the surrounding countryside, the urban population of the
South (the population living in communities of at least 2,500) reached 18% in
1900 and stood at 37% in 1940.
Two other factors were important in the first phase of urbanization in the South.
First, even as the number of villages and towns grew as a consequence of the
development of general stores, the emergence of the textile, lumber, tobacco, and
mining industries provided the South with an incipient industrial base and an im-
petus for further urban growth. The incipient industrial base was especially im-
portant in the development of larger towns and cities. As a result, by 1910 the
South included 33 cities with populations greater than 25,000 and 140 towns with
populations greater than 5,000.
Second, the rapid expansion of the rail system paralleled the growth in the num-
ber of villages and towns and provided a mechanism that linked the entire urban
network in the South. The parallel growth of the rail system meant that “from their
very beginning, the villages, towns, and cities of the New South worked as parts of
complicated and interdependent networks” (Ayers 1992: 20). This interconnected
grid of population clusters stood in stark contrast to the self-sufficient, isolated
farms and plantations of the antebellum South.
2.2. Post-1940 urbanization (metropolitanization)

The first phase of urbanization proceeded steadily from 1880 until the advent of
World War II. Mobilization for the war, however, led to a rapid acceleration of
urban growth, to significant changes in the paths of urbanization, and ultimately
to another substantial redistribution of the Southern population. Urbanization oc-
curred at an astonishing pace during this second phase, and because it was fo-
cused primarily on the larger cities of the South, is probably better termed “met-
ropolitanization”. In 1940 just over a third of all Southerners lived in urban areas;
30 years later more than two thirds lived in towns and cities. However, whereas
urbanization during the late 19th century involved the creation of villages and
towns and migration to towns and small cities from the surrounding countryside,
post-1940 urbanization involved migration to large cities and metropolitan areas
and involved inter-regional migration as well as migration from the immediate
area.
Urbanization during this second phase was initially triggered by the expansion
of military installations in the South and the gearing up of industry to meet war
needs. After the war, both the rapid mechanization of Southern agriculture, along
with the consequent reduction in the number of family farms, and also Southern
industrial development led to continued growth of the urban population, again
primarily in large cities. Further, for the first time in the history of the South, the
number of rural residents (as opposed to just the proportion) began to decline.
During the 1970s these trends received new impetus from the “Sunbelt Phe-
nomenon”, which was spurred by rapidly expanding economic development in
the South and the decay of industry in the North. After 1970, however, urban
growth occurred almost exclusively in metropolitan areas. Rural areas, towns, and
even small cities began to stagnate and lose population as Southerners increas-
ingly moved to the largest cities in the region. Again, the rate of the migration to
metropolitan areas is stunning. By 2000, some 78% of the Southern population
lived in 119 metropolitan areas, all but four of which had more than 100,000 resi-
dents, while 43% of the population was concentrated in 19 metropolitan areas with
populations greater than 1,000,000. These figures include Virginia residents, but
not Maryland residents or residents of other states in the Washington, D. C. met-
ropolitan area. Even if this area and other fringe areas of the South (e.g. Miami)
were eliminated, the conclusions outlined above would still hold. The growth of
Southern metropolises after 1970 was fueled not only by migration from the sur-
rounding countryside, but also by migration from the North. The latter reversed
a long-standing pattern, begun with the advent of World War I, that saw massive
numbers of Southerners moving to Northern cities for work. Although the rever-
sal of the South-to-North migration pattern was initially a white phenomenon, by
the 1990s African Americans had begun to return to the South as well. The large-
scale migration of African Americans out of the South continued through the mid-
1970s, but during the 1990s African Americans began to move southward at a rate
that closely paralleled their earlier exodus.
In the space of 120 years, then, what was once an agrarian society comprised
primarily of isolated, self-sufficient farms, with almost nine of ten people liv-
ing in rural areas, became a commercial-industrial society organized around large,
interconnected metropolises, with almost eight of 10 people residing in just 119
metropolitan areas. The transformation of the demographic landscape has had an
enormous impact on Southern culture and language. Like the process of urbaniza-
tion, however, the linguistic transformation of the South has been complex and has
taken place in two distinct stages.
3. Phonology of the urban South
The half-century following 1880 was a period of extraordinary activity for

SAmE phonology. During that time, many of the most distinctive features of the
SAmE vowel system either first appeared or became widespread (e.g., monoph-
thongization of the vowel in the PRIZE and PRICE classes, the merger of the
vowels in the PEN and PIN classes, the vowel rotations known as the Southern
Shift, and probably the Southern Drawl [see Bailey 1997; Feagin 1996; and
Thomas 2001]). These are illustrated below. At the same time, some older hall-
marks of rural SAmE began gradually to disappear (e.g., the long offglide in
words like DANCE [dQInts]) and the “loss” of stressed syllabic and, to a lesser
extent, postvocalic r in words like third [TŒd] and NORTH [nç´T ~ nçT]). In fact,
Bailey (1997) argues that what we now think of as SAmE is largely a product
of developments of this half-century. The kind of data that would indicate deci-
sively whether or not these linguistic developments emerged first in urban areas
and then spread elsewhere does not exist. The correlation of their spread with
the initial period of urbanization, however, suggests that both the dialect contact
that was a consequence of town and city building and also the expanded com-
munication networks among villages, towns, and cities provided the impetus
for the formation of a regional dialect from what was earlier a number of local
vernaculars.
The regional dialect that was formed during the first phase of urbanization has
been substantially transformed during the second phase. As non-Southerners have
moved into the Southern cities in large numbers, many stereotypical features of
SAmE, including some of those that emerged during the first period of urbaniza-
tion, have begun to disappear in Southern metropolitan areas, especially during the
last 30 years. As a consequence, the current metropolitan-rural distinction that has
developed since the 1970s forms a major axis of variation in SAmE (see Thomas
1997), rivaling ethnicity as a correlate of language differences.
3.1. Merger and the evolution of the SAmE phonological system

The last 30 years have seen significant shifts in the phonological inventory and in
the sets of phonological contrasts in urban SAmE, especially in the largest cities
and in the southwest. Historically, SAmE was one of the U.S. varieties that dis-
tinguished the vowels in words like LOT (pronounced with a low back unround-
ed vowel [A]) from those in words like THOUGHT (pronounced with a low back
rounded, often upgliding vowel [ç ~ ço]). Since World War II, and especially
since the 1970s, however, the vowels in these two classes have increasingly be-
come merged in Southern metropolises, with both realized as [A]. The precise
reason for the development of the merger after World War II is not clear, but three
factors have likely played a role:
(1) extensive in-migration from the Midwest, where the THOUGHT/LOT distinc-
tion was often not maintained,
(2) the rapid growth of the Hispanic population, a group that does have the con-
trast, in the Southwest and in Florida, and
(3) the mild stigma that has begun to be attached to upgliding allophones of /ç/
(and more generally to anything resembling the Southern Drawl).
Once the upglide is eliminated, the vowels of the THOUGHT and LOT classes are so
close in phonological space that the difference is difficult to maintain. The merger
of the THOUGHT and LOT classes, of course, eliminates one of the most distinctive
features of traditional SAmE—upgliding [ço] in the THOUGHT class—and aligns
the vowel system of urban SAmE more closely with that of the American West in
some respects.
The inventory of vowels before r and l is also changing rapidly in urban SAmE.
Older rural Southern varieties often had a three-way distinction among the vowels
in words like MARY, MERRY, and MARRY and typically maintained the distinction
between vowels in the NORTH and FORCE classes (as [ç] and [o] respectively).
Beginning after 1880 and accelerating rapidly after World War II, however, the
distinction between the MARY and MERRY class began to disappear; currently both
are typically pronounced with [] as the stressed vowel. Over the last quarter cen-
tury, this merged MARY/MERRY class has begun to merge with the MARRY class as
well. When all three are merged, either [] or [æ] can be the stressed vowel.
The time frame for the merger of the FORCE and NORTH classes parallels that
of the MARY/MERRY merger; in the urban South, both FORCE and NORTH are now
typically pronounced with close [o], though [ç] can also appear in both classes.
The ultimate consequence of these mergers, of course, is a reduction in the set of
vowel contrasts in SAmE. In stressed syllables, the most advanced varieties of
urban SAmE include only two front vowels before tautosyllabic r ([i ~ ] and [ ~
æ]), two back vowels ([o] and [u ~
]), and one low central/back vowel [], along
with a rhotic central vowel of course.
Traditional Southern dialects also maintained distinctions between tense and
lax vowels before tautosyllabic l, but these distinctions have increasingly been
lost over the last half-century too. As a result, vowels in the FEEL and FILL classes
are often merged (usually as [I]), as are vowels in the FAIL and FELL classes (usu-
ally as []). Even more frequent is the merger of vowels in the POOL and PULL
classes (usually as [U]). This merger, like the THOUGHT/LOT merger, eliminates
one of the hallmarks of earlier SAmE—upgliding or monophthongal [Uu ~ u] in
the POOL class. Finally, among some younger Southerners in urban areas, the
stressed vowels in words like hull and Tulsa ([√] in traditional SAmE) are merged
with the vowel that results from the POOL/PULL merger, again usually as [U]. As
a result, in stressed syllables the most advanced urban varieties of SAmE include
three front vowels before l ([I],[], and [æ]), two back vowels ([U] and [o]), and a
low central/back vowel [ ~ ç].
Finally, even as both the merger of the vowels in the THOUGHT and LOT classes
and also the pre-r and pre-l mergers have rapidly expanded in Southern cities, one
of the hallmarks of SAmE that developed during the period between 1880 and
1940, the merger of vowels before nasals in words like PEN and PIN (almost al-
ways as [I]), has begun to recede. Although the PEN/PIN merger became one of the
most distinctive features of SAmE after 1880, is still thriving throughout the rural
South, and is even expanding in some areas contiguous to the South, in the largest
Southern metropolises (areas such as Dallas and Atlanta) it is disappearing. The
end result of all of these developments is widespread change in the set of vowel
contrasts that affect urban SAmE and a substantial realignment of its phonological
system. Table 1 summarizes the vowel mergers that currently affect urban SAmE.
Table 1. Vowel mergers and their status in urban SAmE

Merged classes Phonetic realization Type of merger Environment Time frame Status
PEN/PIN [pn] Conditioned Pre-nasal Post 1880 Contracting

MARY/MERRY [mi] Conditioned Pre-r Front vowel Post 1880 Expanding
MERRY/MARRY [m ~ mæ] Conditioned Pre-r Front vowel Post WWII Expanding
NORTH/FORCE [no ] Conditioned Pre-r Back vowel Post 1880 Expanding
FEEL/FILL [fl] Conditioned Pre-l Front vowel Post WWII Expanding
FAIL/FELL [fl] Conditioned Pre-l Front vowel Post WWII Expanding
POOL/PULL [p
l] Conditioned Pre-l Back vowel Post WWII Expanding
Tulsa/PULL [t
ls] Conditioned Pre-l Back vowel Post 1970 Expanding
THOUGHT/LOT [ t] Unconditioned ——— Post WWII Expanding

The gradual disappearance of the two most prominent features of traditional SAmE
prosody, the Southern Drawl and the shift of primary stress to front syllables, par-
allels the changes in the set of vowel contrasts. The Southern Drawl typically
involves two phonological processes: the extreme lengthening of stressed vowels
and the development of ingliding diphthongs with lax vowels that are lengthened.
Thus in Drawled speech, MOUTH might be pronounced [mæo ], bid might be
pronounced [bd], and bad might be pronounced as [bæd]. The Drawl is quite
recessive in the urban South, confined largely to people born before World War II.
Likewise, the shift of primary stress in words like police, Detroit, and pecan to the
first syllable is quite rare among younger Southerners in urban areas, although ini-
tial syllable stress in insurance, defense, and in some cases umbrella still persists.
Little research exists on other features of SAmE prosody, but one feature of
juncture deserves further comment – the syllabification of medial r and l. In earlier
SAmE, medial r in words such as MARY and MERRY was grouped with the second
syllable. Some time after 1880, the syllabification of medial r began to change
so that r was grouped with the first syllable. This development, which entailed
a change in the phonetic realization of r from [] to [], seems to have been the
triggering event in the merger of the vowels in the MARY and MERRY classes (and
latter the MARRY class) discussed above.
The situation with medial and post-vocalic l presents some interesting similari-
ties and some striking contrasts to r. As indicated above, the set of contrasts be-
fore tautosyllabic l has been reduced in urban SAmE, just as it had earlier before
tautosyllabic r. The syllabification of medial l, however, has not changed. In sets
such as mealy/Millie and Bailey/belly, l usually remains grouped with the second
syllable and the tense/lax contrast remains intact.
3.3. Other vowel features

3.3.1. Glide shortening in diphthongs (monophthongization)
The shortening of the offglides of diphthongs in words of the OIL class and of the
PRIZE and PRICE classes (especially in the former) is one of the most noticeable
features of SAmE. Words like oil are pronounced [ç´lÚ] in older and rural varieties
of SAmE, while words in the PRIZE class typically have [a ~ a´ ~ a] as stressed
vowels. Although the history of glide shortening in the oil class is unclear, the
shortening of offglides in PRIZE/PRICE classes (and in many cases the loss of the
glide altogether) began during the last quarter of the 19th century and expanded
rapidly thereafter. By the middle of the 20th century, glide-shortened and monoph-
thongal variants of the PRIZE/PRICE classes were prevalent throughout most of the
South, especially in voiced environments.
Glide shortening (or monophthongization) has always been constrained both
phonologically and socially, however. A following r or l has always been the pho-
nological environment that favors monophthongs the most, with following na-
sals and other voiced obstruents also quite favorable. Before voiceless obstruents,
monophthongs have always been less common and more restricted both regionally
and socially. Although in voiceless environments [a~ a´~a] occurs throughout
the South to some extent and even among African Americans sometimes, these
realizations are most common in the Southern Appalachians and contiguous areas
and in a broad area of Texas running west of Fort Worth through Lubbock (see
Labov, Ash and Boberg fc.). Likewise, monophthongs in the PRICE class are also
far more common among whites than blacks. In spite of its widespread geographic
and social provenance, however, glide shortening in both the PRIZE and PRICE
classes, like the PEN/PIN merger, is receding in the largest cities of the urban South.
Increasingly, young Southerners in metropolises like Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta
have full diphthongs in all environments, although monophthongs still frequently
appear before l and r. In these same areas, full offglides are becoming the norm in
pre-l environments for vowels in the oil class as well.
3.3.2. Vowel shifts

Like glide shortening, the vowel changes collectively known as the “Southern
Shift” all either emerged during the last quarter of the 19th century or began to
expand rapidly during that time. Although there is some debate about what exactly
comprises the Southern Shift, the following processes have been included as part
of it at one time or another:
(1) the fronting of the vowels in the GOOSE class to [ ~ y] and in the FOOT class
to [P ~ Y],
(2) the fronting of the nucleus in the MOUTH class to [æo ~ o],
(3) the fronting or fronting and lowering of the vowels in the GOAT class to
[y ~ ~ æ],
(4) the lowering and retraction of vowels in the FACE class to [ ~ æ], and
(5) in parts of the South, the lowering and retraction of the vowels in the FLEECE
class to [ > i].
By the middle of the 20th century these developments had become defining charac-
teristics of the SAmE vowel system in most areas of the South. Since World War
II, the fronting of back vowels and of the nucleus of the diphthong in the MOUTH
class has continued in urban SAmE, even surpassing the fronting in non-urban
varieties, and has expanded to include the vowels in the STRUT class sometimes,
which can be realized as []. The lowering and retraction of the front vowels, how-
ever, is receding in the largest metropolitan areas. For many urban Southerners
born after 1970, the vowels in the FACE and FLEECE classes are as high as or
higher than the vowels in the DRESS and KIT classes, and the tense member of the
pair is often further to the front as well.
3.3.3. Consonants
Although it is clearly most different from other American dialects in its vowel sys-
tem, SAmE also includes some distinctive consonant features. Unlike many other
varieties of American English, traditional SAmE preserved h before w in words
like which and white, maintained j after alveolar stops and nasals in words like
Tuesday, due, and news, and had unconstricted r in postvocalic position. However,
over the last 120 years, and particularly since World War II, all of these have be-
gun to disappear in the urban South. In initial clusters, h is now usually lost before
w and sometimes before j, so that which is typically [wt] and Houston sometimes
[jstn]. Likewise, among younger Southern urbanites, j is generally lost after al-
veolars so that do and due are homophones (both are usually realized as [du]).
The situation with r is somewhat more complicated. Although the Southern

mountains and piney woods have always been rhotic, in the plantation areas of the
South, earlier varieties of SAmE had unconstricted r in four environments:
(1) when r followed a vowel (as in fire, four, ford, and far),
(2) when it functioned as a stressed syllabic (as in first and fur),
(3) when it functioned as an unstressed syllabic (as in father), and
(4) occasionally when it occurred in intersyllabic position (as in MARY and MER-
RY).
Present-day urban SAmE, however, generally has constricted r in all of these en-
vironments. The expansion of constricted r began first in intersyllabic and stressed
syllabic environments before World War II. Since that time constricted variants
have become the norm in Southern metropolises not only in intersyllabic and
stressed syllabic environments, but increasingly in postvocalic environments (af-
ter front vowels initially and then after back vowels) and in unstressed syllabic
contexts as well. In fact, over the last quarter century, the expansion of rhotic vari-
ants has been so extensive among white Southerners that non-rhotic forms are now
associated primarily with African Americans.
Three other features of traditional SAmE, however, have been preserved in ur-
ban SAmE to a greater extent. First, as in rural varieties, post-vocalic l is frequent-
ly vocalized; the vocalized l is often transcribed as [F] in linguistic atlas records,
but there is usually some lip rounding with vocalized l. Second, again as in rural
varieties, medial z often undergoes assibilation before n so that isn’t is pronounced
[dn] and wasn’t pronounced [w√dn]. (Note, however, that urban SAmE differs
from rural varieties in that v is rarely assibilated in words like seven.) Finally,
especially in rapid speech, final nasals are still sometimes realized only as vowel
nasality; this accounts for the fact that don’t can be pronounced as [do
]. Other
consonant features of traditional SAmE phonology, such as intrusive t in words
like once and the unusually high rate of consonant cluster simplification, have
largely disappeared from urban SAmE.
4. Some issues for further research
Although recent research sheds considerable light on the urbanization of SAmE,

a number of issues remain unresolved. For instance, the correlation between ur-
banization and widespread phonological change is clear, but the motivations for
innovations and their paths of diffusion are not clear. Bailey, Wikle, Tillery and
Sand (1993) show that innovations may have traveled along a variety of paths of
diffusion (i.e., either up or down the urban hierarchy or “contagiously”). However,
whether different types of innovation correlate with different types of diffusion
remains unclear and is an important topic for future research.
The triggers for linguistic innovation in urban SAmE are less clear than the
paths of diffusion. Recent work on vowel–consonant transitions is promising,
though. For example, Tillery, Bailey, Andres, Miller and Palow (2003) suggest
that vowel-consonant transitions between diphthongs and a following r or l may
have triggered glide shortening in words of the PRIZE/PRICE classes. They marshal
linguistic atlas evidence to show that glide shortening probably occurred first in
words like file and fire, then spread to other voiced environments, and finally dif-
fused to voiceless environments in some areas. The development of monophthongs
in the PRIZE/PRICE classes, in turn, created the phonetic context that allowed for
the lowering and retraction of vowels in the FACE class, one of the major features
of the Southern Shift (Labov, Ash, and Boberg fc.). The emergence of several of
the most distinctive characteristics of SAmE, then, may have been triggered sim-
ply by the transition from vowels to a following r or l. While these are hypotheses
that still must be confirmed, they do point to phonetic contexts as an important
locus for studying the motivation for phonological change in SAmE. Fortunately,
both the formation and the transformation of urban SAmE has occurred recently
enough (within the last 125 years) that its history is well documented. The exis-
tence of such documentation (much of it on tape recordings) provides an unusual
opportunity for studying the diffusion of linguistic innovations and the motiva-
tions for language change.
The transformation of urban SAmE is still a work in progress. Both in-migra-
tion and metropolitanization continue to be major forces in the South. In the Unit-
ed States, net gains in domestic migration between 1995 and 2000 were limited
almost exclusively to the South and the Intermountain West. Domestic migration
in some areas, though, now pales in comparison to migration from other coun-
tries. In Texas, for instance, net domestic migration between 1995 and 2000 was
148,000. Foreign migration during just the two-year span between 2000 and 2002,
however, was more than 360,000. While most other Southern states have not yet
experienced migration from abroad to this extent, the foreign population in states
such as North Carolina and Georgia is growing at a rapid pace and is creating an
ethnic complexity heretofore unknown. How the continuing transformation of the
Southern population and its increasing ethnic complexity will affect SAmE is an
important question for future research.
The concentration of the new Southerners in the largest cities of the region also
creates new opportunities for social fissures in SAmE. The Sunbelt migration af-
ter 1970 and the rapid growth of the population in the largest metropolitan areas
have already created significant new sociolinguistic dimensions. In the American
Southwest, rurality and nativity now have more important consequences for lin-
guistic variation than such factors as social class and gender do, and the emerging
rural/urban split seems to be producing a dichotomy much like the earlier South-
ern/South Midland distinction. This emerging dichotomy provides an important
venue for studying mechanisms of dialect creation.
Although African Americans returning to the South are now a significant part of
the migration to the region, precisely how they will either impact or be impacted
by the SAmE of whites is an open question. The relationship between African
American Vernacular English (AAVE) and various white vernaculars, of course,
has been an on-going controversy for more than 30 years. It is increasingly clear,
however, that both a significant part of the distinctiveness of AAVE and also its
relative uniformity across the United States is a consequence of the African Amer-
ican population’s movement to and concentration in the inner-city areas of large
metropolises. Future research on urban SAmE should examine whether African
Americans maintain these national AAVE norms or whether they adopt local norms
as they return to the South. The impact of African Americans on white speech also
deserves consideration. Before they began leaving the South during World War
I, African Americans had a significant influence on rural SAmE. Whether or not
they influence urban SAmE as they return to the South is an important question
for future research.
Because of its distinctiveness, SAmE has long been the most widely studied
regional variety of American English. While the metropolitanization of SAmE
is eroding some of that distinctiveness, it certainly has not eliminated it. Perhaps
more important, metropolitanization has created new dimensions of language
variation that should make SAmE fertile ground for research for years to come.
* We wish to thank Erik Thomas for his insights into the development of the urban/rural-
dichotomy in the South.
Selected references
ROM.
Ayers, Edward L.
1992 The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Bailey, Guy
1997 When did Southern English begin? In: Schneider (ed.), Vol. 1, 255–275.
Bailey, Guy, Tom Wikle, Jan Tillery and Lori Sand
1991 The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3: 241–264.
1993 Some patterns of linguistic diffusion. Language Variation and Change 5: 359–
390.
1996 The linguistic consequences of catastrophic events: An example from
the Southwest. In: Jennifer Arnold, Renée Blake, Brad Davidson, Scott
Schwenter and Julie Solomon (eds.), Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory,
and Analysis, 435–451. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and
Information.
Feagin, Crawford
1996 Peaks and glides in Southern short -a. In: Guy, Baugh, Feagin and Schiffrin
(eds.), 135–160.
Fridland, Valerie
2000 The Southern Shift in Memphis, Tennessee. Language Variation and Change
11: 267–285.
Labov, William
Thomas, Erik R.
1997 A rural/metropolitan split in the speech of Texas Anglos. Language Variation
and Change 9: 309–332.
Tillery, Jan
1997 The role of social processes in language variation and change. In: Bernstein,
Nunnally and Sabino (eds.), 434–446.
Tillery, Jan, Guy Bailey, Claire Andres, Jeff Miller and Naomi Palow
2003 Monophthongal /ai/ in the American South: Evidence from three linguistic
surveys. Southeastern Conference on Linguistics, Washington DC, 13 April.
The West and Midwest: phonology
Matthew J. Gordon
1. Introduction
This chapter offers a phonological sketch of the varieties of English spoken across
the midwestern and western United States. The area covered can be visualized as
a fairly narrow band that stretches from western Pennsylvania across central sec-
tions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and widens at the Mississippi River to include
Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota and eventually the Great Plains and the western
states as it continues to the Pacific coast. To be sure, this vast territory is by no
means linguistically homogenous; indeed almost all of the speech characteristics
described here occur variably across the regions considered and across speakers
within any given region. Nevertheless, there are traits that can be heard throughout
this broad territory and that serve to distinguish it from neighboring areas. The re-
gion seems also to have some coherence in popular perceptions of American dia-
lects. The speech of this region generally lacks features that are salient markers of
place to the ears of most Americans, a tendency that contributes to the perception
that the region is “accentless”. This sense of the region is encoded in the notion
of a “General American” dialect, a term that was used by observers of American
English such as H.L. Mencken before Kurath’s tripartite division (North, Mid-
lands, South) became received wisdom among dialectologists. General American
was typically distinguished from Southern and Eastern speech and was defined
negatively as a dialect that lacked the regionally distinctive features of the other
two. Some linguists still employ the General American label though they are quick
to add that it does not designate a monolithic accent.
The territory under consideration here includes lands that came into the possession
of the United States over a period of roughly 70 years. The eastern edge of this
region (western Pennsylvania) stood as the western frontier during the colonial
period. This frontier was expanded in the 1780s with the opening of the Northwest
territories which included Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Louisiana Purchase in
1803 extended the U.S. holdings across the plains and into the Rocky Mountains.
An 1846 settlement with Great Britain brought the Oregon Country under sole
control of the U.S., thereby stretching the border to the Pacific. The final stages
The West and Midwest: phonology 339
in this American expansion came after war with Mexico, which led to the cession
of California and the rest of the Southwest to the U.S. in 1848, an acquisition that
was extended southward in 1853 by the Gadsden Purchase of land that became
part of Arizona and New Mexico.
This review of territorial expansion paints the broad strokes of the picture of
American settlement of the region. The sections of the Old Northwest that are of
concern here were settled mainly by two streams of emigrants from the Atlantic
states: one coming west across Pennsylvania and the other coming north from
the Mountain South. These settlers generally established themselves south of the
Great Lakes which contributed to a cultural and linguistic divide with the northern
lands which were settled primarily by New Englanders.
West of the Mississippi River the same general pattern held: northern states like
Minnesota and the Dakotas tended to attract emigrants from western New York
and New England while states like Iowa and Missouri were settled primarily by
Midlanders with many of the new Iowans coming from Pennsylvania and Ohio
and many of the Missourians coming from Kentucky and Tennessee (Hudson
1988). As American settlement moved west, the population became much more
mixed in origin. For example the gold rush that began in 1848 drew people from
across the US to California and helped to establish San Francisco as a cosmo-
politan urban center. Further north in Oregon, migration in the mid-nineteenth
century “drew about equally from the Free States and from the Slave States of the
Border South” (Meinig 1972: 165). An exception to the usual diversity found in
western settlement is seen in the relative homogeneity of the Mormon population
that settled in Utah beginning in 1847.
The preceding account has focussed on settlement by English-speaking emi-
grants from the eastern US. These emigrants were, of course, moving into lands
populated by speakers of other languages. It is probably fair to say that the hun-
dreds of American Indian languages spoken across the West have had little if any
impact on the phonology of the dialects of English spoken by Anglos. On the
other hand, the legacy of Spanish in the Southwest has had a much greater impact
on the English spoken in this area (see Santa Ana and Bayley, this volume). Also
significant has been the linguistic influence of numerous European immigrants.
Many of these immigrants settled in urban areas such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis,
establishing ethnic neighborhoods. There was also a tremendous push to attract
immigrants to farming areas in order to build the agricultural economy. Many Ger-
mans responded to this call and settled throughout the Midwest. Scandinavians
also contributed to the westward flow. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century
an estimated one-fifth of the population of Norway and Sweden emigrated to the
States, many of them settling in Minnesota and other areas of the Upper Midwest.
The central lesson to be taken from this sociohistorical overview is that the story
of English in the American Midwest and West, while fairly short, nevertheless
involves a diverse cast of characters. Given the mix of people from varied origins
that settled the region, we might consider the relative uniformity of speech heard
here – speech represented in the popular notion of the General American dialect
– to be the result of dialect leveling. The process of dialect leveling can be useful
in understanding the phonological characteristics discussed below because it ac-
counts for not only the elimination of highly localized features but also the diffu-
sion of innovations across a large region (e.g., Watt and Milroy 1999).
3. Phonetic realizations
3.1. Vowels
Table 1. Common vowel realizations in the American West and Midwest
KIT FLEECE i ~ i˘ NEAR i

DRESS FACE e > e˘ SQUARE
TRAP æ PALM ~ > Å START
LOT ~ > Å THOUGHT ~ ~ Å > ç NORTH o>ç>Å
STRUT Œ GOAT o
~ !
> o˘ FORCE o>ç
FOOT
~
GOAL o
> o˘ CURE ju > j´
BATH æ GOOSE u
~ u˘ ~ ¨ happY i
CLOTH ~ ~ Å > ç PRICE a > ´ lettER Œ
NURSE ´ CHOICE ç > o horsES ~i>´
DANCE æ MOUTH a
> æ
> ´
commA ´
Comments on vowels:
LOT, CLOTH, PALM, THOUGHT: For many of the speakers in this region, the phone-
mic distinction between // and /ç/ has been lost. The geographic distribution and
status of this merger is discussed in more detail below. The phonetic realization of
the merged vowel varies regionally as well as according to phonological context.
Most commonly the result is an unrounded back vowel near [] or slightly backer
[]. The rounded [Å] appears to be more geographically restricted and is heard
among some speakers in western Pennsylvania and neighboring West Virginia.
The Northern Cities Shift (see Gordon, this volume) occurs to a limited extent
in central Illinois and St. Louis. As a result, THOUGHT and CLOTH items may ap-
pear with a low and often unrounded back vowel, and LOT items may appear with
a fronted vowel near [a]. In some parts of the Upper Midwest (e.g., Minnesota),
the Northern Cities Shift appears to be moving into areas where the merger of //
and /ç/ has already taken hold with the result that both LOT and THOUGHT/CLOTH
items can appear with fronted vowels. PALM items generally pattern with LOT, and
the [l] is frequently realized as an apparent example of spelling pronunciation.
DANCE: Raised allophones, [Q3] or higher, are common for /æ/ before nasal con-
sonants across much of the western US. The phonemic split of tense and lax /æ/
found in Middle Atlantic dialects such as Philadelphia and New York (see Gordon,
this volume and Labov 1994) does not occur in the regions described here, though
a similar phenomenon is heard in Cincinnati as discussed below.
FLEECE, GOOSE: As elsewhere in the US, variation between diphthongal and

monophthongal forms appears to be dependant on phonetic length with the diph-
thongs more common in longer realizations (Thomas 2001). Fronted variants of
GOOSE are discussed below.
FACE, GOAT, GOAL: Monophthongal variants of the mid vowels are common in
the Upper Midwest. Fronted variants of GOAT are quite widespread throughout the
entire region. Both of these features are discussed below.
PRICE, MOUTH: Centralized variants of these diphthongs before voiceless obstru-

ents are heard especially in the northern areas of this region and are apparently an
extension of the pattern known as “Canadian Raising” (see Boberg, this volume).
Fronting in MOUTH is discussed below.
NORTH, FORCE: The historical distinction between /o®/ (e.g., hoarse) and /ç®/ (e.g.,
horse) has been lost throughout most of the region. The resulting vowel is most
commonly [o]. The low back [Å] is restricted to varieties affected by a different
merger of /®/ and /ç®/ (see below).
3.2. Consonants
As is true of other areas in North America, there is relatively little salient variation
in the realization of consonants, or at least very little consonantal variation has at-
tracted the attention of linguists. Features worth noting include:
– NG: The variation between [] and [n] that is heard throughout the English-
speaking world in verbal <-ing> endings is also common here with the alveolar
form associated with relatively informal styles.
– R: Postvocalic /®/ is practically universal across the region though its actual
realization may vary. For example, Hartman (1985) characterizes /®/ as involv-
ing less retroflexion across a wide area of the West. The words wash and Wash-
ington are often produced with an “intrusive” /®/, thus [w®] or [wç®]. This
pronunciation is more common in the traditional Midland dialect areas from
western Pennsylvania across the central sections of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
and into Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska. It appears to be more common among
rural speakers and is often socially stigmatized – a trend that may contribute to
its declining use among younger speakers.
– L: As in other parts of the U.S., /l/ may be vocalized or deleted altogether in a
number of phonological contexts. Realizations such as [hp] ~ [hwp] ~ [hop]
for help or [pw] ~ [po] for pill are more common in the traditional Midland
areas. For example, the Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest records them
in the speech of several Iowans but only a single Minnesotan. They are also
reported to be characteristic of Pittsburgh speech.
– WH: The distinction between /w/ and /„/ as in witch ~ which may still be heard
among some speakers though it is clearly under threat as younger speakers tend
to merge these in favor of the voiced form, /w/.
3.3. Suprasegmental features

No suprasegmental features serve as distinctive markers of this region.
4. Discussion of features showing broad regional currency
This section offers further descriptions of some features that are widespread across
the region under discussion. While none of these features is unique to this region,
their co-occurrence here does serve to distinguish the region from others.
4.1. The low back merger

The phonemic contrast between //, LOT, and /ç/, THOUGHT, has been lost for many
speakers in the area described here. This development is the result of an unconditional
merger (i.e., one that applies across the board to every phonological context) and cre-
ates homophones of pairs such as cot and caught, Don and dawn, and Polly and Paulie.
As noted above, the phonetic value of the merged vowel varies between the poles of the
historical sources, // and /ç/, but is commonly unrounded, low and quite back. Some
sources have treated the merger as a simple shifting of /ç/ into [], but evidence of
misunderstandings between merged and unmerged speakers suggests that the phonetic
result is more intermediate between [ç] and []. Hearers who maintain the contrast
may perceive a merged speaker’s THOUGHT words as members of the LOT class (e.g.,
Dawn heard as Don), but the reverse also happens (e.g., copy heard as coffee).
The low back merger has been well known to dialectologists as a feature of east-
ern New England, where it tends to show a rounded vowel (Kurath and McDavid
1961). It is also well established across Canada (see Boberg, this volume). For the
region covered in this chapter, the early linguistic atlas records show the merger
in western Pennsylvania and extending westward on either side of the Ohio river.
More recent research has shown the merger to be characteristic of the western
states (see, e.g., Metcalf 1972; Hartman 1985; Labov, Ash, and Boberg fc.). In an
early statement about the merger, Labov (1991: 31) suggested it was a “nonurban”
feature, and he noted its absence in Los Angeles and San Francisco. His more re-
cent Telsur project shows the merger to be common in Los Angeles though many
San Franciscans still maintain a contrast (see Labov, Ash, and Boberg fc.).
In fact, the low back merger appears to be a relatively new development in the
West. Johnson (1975) compares Los Angeles natives who were interviewed in
1953 for the Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Coast with speakers from his own study
twenty years later. He found minimal evidence of the merger among the linguistic
atlas speakers while in his sample he observed a steady increase in the adoption
of the merger across the generations. Labov’s Telsur findings generally confirm
this trend and furthermore suggest the merger is spreading geographically into
the Upper Midwest as far as Minnesota and into central states such as Kansas and
Nebraska. In Missouri, the merger is relatively more common in the western part
of the state (e.g., Kansas City) than in the eastern part, though it can be heard in
the speech of some younger speakers in St. Louis. The evidence suggests, there-
fore, that the low back merger is a change in progress and one that is expanding
its geographical range.
4.2. Fronting of /u/, /

/, and /o/
The back vowels /u/, /
/, and /o/ are commonly fronted to a central or nearly front
position in vowel space resulting in variants whose nuclei might be transcribed as
[¨] ~ [y], [
] ~ ["] and [!] ~ [ø]. Like the low back merger, this is a feature that
was identified by earlier dialectological research. The linguistic atlas records show
fronted variants of /u/ and /
/ to be fairly common in the South and South Mid-
land while fronting of /o/ appeared to be more geographically restricted and was
common in northeastern North Carolina and the Delaware River valley including
Philadelphia. Fronting of both /u/ and /o/ was also shown as characteristic on west-
ern Pennsylvania (Kurath and McDavid 1961).
More recent evidence suggests that fronting of these back vowels has become
very widespread geographically (see Thomas, this volume for a description of the
situation in the South). For example, Lusk (1976) found fronting of all three of
the vowels among her Kansas City speakers, and Luthin (1987) reports on simi-
lar developments in the speech of Californians. Thomas (2001) provides acoustic
evidence of fronting of the vowels in several speakers from central and southern
Ohio. The Telsur project has examined the position of /u/ and /o/ on a national
level and uses acoustic measurements to distinguish various degrees of fronting
(Labov 2001: 479; Labov, Ash, and Boberg fc.). For /u/, the most extreme front-
ing outside of the South is recorded in St. Louis though the rest of the Midland
and West also show significant fronting. For /o/, Labov and his colleagues found
extreme fronting in Pittsburgh and across central sections of Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois as well as in various locations in Missouri and Kansas. Less extreme front-
ing was recorded across most of the West including in Denver, Portland, Fresno,
and Tucson. The backest (least fronted) variants of both /u/ and /o/ were generally
dominant only in extreme northern areas including Montana, the Dakotas, and
Minnesota (as well as in the Inland North and New England).
Fronting of these vowels is not normally found in the context of following liq-
uids (i.e., /l/ and /®/). Thomas (2001) plotted separate means for pre-/l/ tokens such
as pool, pull, and pole, and his acoustic portraits show that these means generally
remain along the back wall of vowel space even in the case of speakers with ex-
treme fronting of the vowels in other contexts. In terms of their relative progres-
sion, /u/ fronting seems generally to lead fronting of /
/ and /o/ (Labov 1994: 208;
Thomas 2001: 33).
4.3. Mergers and near mergers before liquids

The liquid consonants /®/ and /l/ are well known for their tendency to influence the
quality of adjacent vowels. A number of phonemic contrasts are neutralized in this
environment. An example of this is the well established pattern in the West and
Midwest whereby the distinctions among /æ/, //, and /e/ are lost before /®/. The
resulting vowel is typically closest to [] so that marry, merry, and Mary are all
pronounced as [m®i].
The phoneme /l/ is also contributing to the reduction or loss of several phone-
mic contrasts across much of the US. Among the most important patterns for the
region discussed here are conditioned mergers of /i/ and //, /u/ and /
/, and /e/
and // in the context of a following /l/. These mergers result in homophones for
pairs such as feel and fill, fool and full, and fail and fell. The phonetic quality of
the merged vowel approximates to the lax member of each pair; i.e., [], [
], []
(Thomas 2001: 50).
Compared to the features described above, awareness of these mergers among
dialectologists has come relatively recently. Labov, Yaeger, and Steiner (1972)
identified mergers of /ul/ ~ /
l/, /il/ ~ /l/ and /el/ ~ /l/ among speakers from Albu-
querque and Salt Lake City. Labov’s more recent investigations through the Telsur
project show these mergers to be widespread across almost all of the US though
they are distributed quite sparsely in many regions. Their geographical patterning
among the Telsur respondents bears some resemblance to that seen with the front-
ing of /o/: they are relatively more common across the Midland and in southern
regions of the West than in the Northwest and Upper Midwest. This similarity in
regional distribution is not surprising given that the pre-L mergers, like the front-
ing of back vowels, are also common in the South (see Thomas, this volume).
The pre-L mergers appear to be a fairly recent development and moreover active
changes in progress, at least in some areas. Thomas’ (2001) acoustic data suggest,
for example, that /ul/ and /
l/ are merged for most younger Ohioans, those born af-
ter 1963, while older speakers maintain a clear separation in vowel space. Similar
generational differences were found among Utahns by Di Paolo and Faber (1990).
This latter study also established that these developments do not necessarily result
in a complete merger of the vowels. Di Paolo and Faber found that even when the
vowels overlap in phonetic space (as shown by acoustic measurements), speakers
may preserve a distinction through phonation differences (e.g., creaky voice). One
of the most intriguing aspects of these types of changes, which Labov (1994) la-
bels ‘near mergers,’ is the finding that speakers may perceive no contrast between
the sounds even when they consistently produce a distinction phonetically.
4.4. “Southern” features

Many features that are characteristic of southern accents are heard throughout
the Midwest and West as well though their occurrence is more scattered than the
items discussed above. In terms of the traditional dialectological divisions, many
of these pronunciations are associated with the South Midlands (or Upper South)
rather than with the South proper. More background and information about the
distribution of these features in the South can be found in Thomas (this volume).
One of the most common of these southern features is the fronting of the nucleus
of /a
/ to something like [æ
] often with a lowering of the glide to [æç]. Despite
its Southern associations, this feature is heard well north of the Ohio river across
roughly the lower halves of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. It can also be heard across
most of Missouri and Kansas and into Iowa and Nebraska. Linguistic atlas records
(Allen 1973-76) document this pronunciation as far north as Minnesota, and the
Telsur project shows that it is also heard throughout the West.
Also widespread in the Midwest and West is the merger of the vowels of KIT
and DRESS before nasal consonants, a feature known as the pin/pen merger. The
geographical distribution of this merger resembles that of /a
/-fronting though the
merger’s occurrence seems to be more spotty. The Telsur data suggest the merger
is scattered across Ohio and Illinois and is more common in Indiana. Telsur also
recorded several speakers in Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska with the merger. In
the West, the pin/pen merger appears less common among Telsur informants, but
it is documented throughout the region including the Pacific Northwest and Cali-
fornia. The fact that the Telsur project concentrated on urban speech may have re-
sulted in its underrepresenting the appearance of this merger. For example, studies
of rural speech in Ohio indicate the merger is much more common than the Telsur
sample suggests. Similarly, none of the Los Angeles informants for Telsur gave
clear evidence of the merger, but Metcalf (1972) reports the merger to be quite
common further inland in Riverside, CA.
The distributions of other southern features in the West and Midwest are less
well documented. These include variants of /ç/ as upgliding diphthongs, that is
[çu] or [ço]. These variants are particularly common in the context of a follow-
ing // as in dog or log. They have been recorded in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and
Missouri and can certainly be heard elsewhere in the Midwest as well. The same
can be said for monophthongal variants of /a/. In the South monophthongized /a/
appears before obstruents (e.g., side, prize), but here such variants are generally
heard only before resonants (e.g., time, tire).
The appearance of “Southern” features in Midwest and West is clearly a result
of the settlement patterns discussed above. Many of the early American settlers
to this region came from states like Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina.
In central states such as Missouri and Illinois, these Southerners, being the first
Americans to homestead there, came to occupy the prime farming lands, while
Northerners, who arrived later, often settled in towns. Thus, the fact that many of
the features discussed in this section are more common among rural speakers is no
doubt a reflection of such early settlement tendencies.
5. Discussion of features with localized distributions
It comes as no surprise that within an area so vast as the one treated in this chapter
there are a number of pronunciation features that distinguish one region or city
from others. The features described in this section illustrate some of the local pho-
nological flavor to be heard in the West and Midwest. This list is not intended to
be exhaustive, and interested readers can learn more about particular locations by
consulting the specialist literature including the linguistic atlas projects.
5.1. Monophthongal mid vowels in the Upper Midwest

For most speakers in the West and Midwest (as in other areas), the vowels of
GOAT and FACE involve an upgliding diphthong; i.e., [o
] and [e]. In the Upper
Midwest, however, these vowels are often produced as monophthongs, sometimes
with lengthening: [o] ~ [o˘] and [e] ~ [e˘]. Data from the Linguistic Atlas of the
Upper Midwest (Allen 1973-76) suggest that monophthongal variants are more
common in GOAT items than in FACE items, and also that they are more common
in coat than in ago or road, which may indicate phonological conditioning.
Regionally, monophthongal mid vowels are more common in the northern tier
of states. Linguistic Atlas records show them to be frequent in Minnesota and the
Dakotas but much rarer in Iowa and Nebraska. The appearance of monophthongs in
this region is sometimes explained as a consequence of the high degree of Scandi-

navian and German immigration to these northern states in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Thomas (2001) argues that these monophthongs are the product of language
contact and notes that other areas where they occur are places where speakers of
other languages have had an influence such as the Pennsylvania “Dutch” region. An
alternative account posits that these monophthongal variants represent historical re-
tentions. Diphthongization of the mid vowels seems to have been a relatively recent
phenomenon, appearing within the last few centuries, and did not affect all dialects
in the U.K. The monophthongs heard in the Upper Midwest may stem from the in-
fluence of Scots-Irish or other British dialects that maintain such forms. The fact that
the monophthongs also appear in Canadian English may lend support to this account
since Scots-Irish speech is known as an important influence in Canada.
5.2. Lowering of lax front vowels in California

In California, the vowels of KIT and DRESS may undergo lowering, and the vowel of
TRAP may undergo both lowering and backing which results in realizations near [],
[æ], and [a] respectively. Impressionistic descriptions of this trend suggest six sounds
like sex, sex like sax, and sax like socks. This lowering appears to be a recent develop-
ment and may be a change in progress. It was not noted in earlier studies of California
English and seems to have come to the attention of linguists only in the mid-1980s.
It is reported to be especially characteristic of the speech of young urban women—a
pattern that is consistent with its interpretation as an active change. The geographical
extent of this lowering is not known, but it has been documented in both Southern
California and the San Francisco Bay area (see Hagiwara 1997; Luthin 1987).
The behavior of the lax front vowels in California bears a striking resemblance
to a pattern heard north of the border and known as the Canadian shift (see Bo-
berg, this volume). Dialect contact is unlikely to be responsible for this similarity.
Rather, the lowering in both varieties seems to stem from a common structural
motivation. Both in California and across Canada, the LOT and THOUGHT vowels
are merged, and, as described above, the resulting vowel is typically low and quite
back. This merger thus provides /æ/ with greater freedom to shift since it can be
lowered and retracted into the low central area of vowel space without encroach-
ing on the territory of the LOT/THOUGHT vowel. When /æ/ shifts, this creates an
opening into which // may be lowered, which in turns creates an opening into
which // may lower. In this sense, the development of the lax vowels appears to
be a chain shift, specifically a drag chain (see Labov 1994).
5.3. /a
/ monophthongization in Pittsburgh
One of the more unusual characteristics of Pittsburgh speech is the monophthon-
gization of /a
/ to [a˘]. Unlike the case of /a/, monophthongization of /a
/ is rare
in American English and has not been reported outside of Western Pennsylvania.
Locally, social awareness of this feature is high, and it is commonly exemplified
by spelling downtown as “dahntahn”. Monophthongization occurs in a variety of
phonological contexts including following nasals (e.g., downtown), liquids (e.g.,
fowl, hour), and obstruents (e.g., house, out, cloudy). It is not found, however,
word finally (e.g., how, now). Monophthongization appears to be especially char-
acteristic of white working class speakers. Its origins are not well documented,
but it seems to have arisen in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries dur-
ing a period of rapid industrial growth for the city. At that time Pittsburgh saw a
great influx of immigrants speaking other dialects as well as other languages, and
monophthongal /a
/ is likely a product of that dialect contact.
5.4. Tensing of /æ/ in Cincinnati

The vowel of TRAP, BATH, and DANCE, known as “short-a”, serves as a distin-
guishing feature of several American dialects. As noted above, the pattern found
throughout most of the West and Midwest involves moderate raising of the vowel
in the context of a following nasal. In Cincinnati, /æ/ is raised in this environment
as well as before fricatives (e.g., have, path) and /d/ (e.g., bad). Phonetically, the
raised variants are described as “tensed” because they typically involve a periph-
eral nucleus with an inglide; i.e., [e´]. Similar forms are heard in the Great Lakes
region as part of the Northern Cities Shift and along the Atlantic Coast including
the cities of Philadelphia and New York (see Gordon, this volume). However, the
Cincinnati pattern is distinct from the others in terms of its conditioning. The tense
forms appear in a wider range of contexts in Cincinnati speech than in the Mid-
Atlantic dialects. Raising before voiced fricatives, for example, is very restricted
in the East. On the other hand, tensing does not occur in all contexts, a fact that
distinguishes Cincinnati speech from that affected by the Northern Cities Shift.
Speakers in the Inland North, for example, will typically have raised forms before
voiceless stops (e.g., cat) and /l/ (e.g., pal) while such items appear with a lax
[æ] in Cincinnati. Actually, the Cincinnati pattern described here is today largely
restricted to older speakers and appears to be undergoing change. Younger Cincin-
natians seem to be moving toward the general Western pattern in which raising of
/æ/ occurs only before nasals.
5.5. Merger of /®/ and /ç®/ in St. Louis

As noted above, across most of the region discussed here the vowel of NORTH (his-
torically /ç®/) merges with that of FORCE (historically /o®/). In the St. Louis area and
perhaps elsewhere, however, an alternative merger occurs in which NORTH merges
with START and so pairs such as for ~ far, lord ~ lard, and born ~ barn become ho-
mophones. The usual phonetic outcome of this merger is a back vowel near [Å] or
[ç]. This feature carries a high degree of social awareness and is stereotypically rep-
resented in the pronunciation of the local highway forty-four as [f®#ifo®]. Research
on this merger is limited, but it is reported to be most common among working class
St. Louisans and is heard with decreasing frequency as one moves up the socioeco-
nomic ladder. The merger appears to be recessive as younger St. Louisans tend to
exhibit the more widespread pattern that merges NORTH with FORCE.
6. Concluding remarks
In popular perception, the speech of the American Midwest and West is largely
uniform and unremarkable. When asked to imitate the speech of a Southerner or
a New Yorker, most Americans can comply even if they manage to offer only a
stock phrase such as “Yall come back now, y’hear?” Asked to imitate the speech
of someone from Kansas City or Denver or Portland, however, they are likely to
reply with blank stares. The speech of these places does not draw comment, in
part, because it is accepted as a kind of national norm. The accents of the West
and Midwest tend to lack features that Americans perceive as regionally distinc-
tive such as r-lessness. The fact that such regionally marked features are also
very often avoided in the broadcast media contributes to this sense that “normal”
speech is found in the West and Midwest. The label “General American” has been
used to capture this notion of an unmarked accent that is heard across the nation
outside of the South and the Atlantic Coast. Thus, the area originally associated
with General American included not only those parts of the Midwest and West
that are considered here but also the Great Lakes region. Nevertheless, with recent
sound changes such as the Northern Cities Shift (see Gordon, this volume), the lat-
ter area, known to dialectologists as the Inland North, has grown more regionally
distinctive and therefore has more difficulty passing for General American.
The description provided in this chapter serves to counter the popular sense of
a monolithic General American accent. The speech of the West and Midwest is
richly variable. We have discussed features that vary from one region to another
as well as features that vary from one group of speakers to another within a given
region. Many of these features involve active sound changes. Changes such as the
low back merger or the fronting of back vowels, which already have a widespread
distribution, appear to still be spreading. At the same time many localized features
such as /æ/ tensing in Cincinnati or the merger of /ç®/ and /®/ in St. Louis are on
the decline. These trends are characteristic of dialect leveling, a process that leads
to the reduction of regional variation. It might appear, then, that the monolithic
General American accent of popular perception will eventually become reality.
However, the wheels of language change will keep turning, and new trends will
emerge that will continue to contribute to the variable linguistic landscape.
Selected references
ROM.
Di Paolo, Marianna and Alice Faber

1990 Phonation differences and the phonetic content of the tense-lax contrast in
Utah English. Language Variation and Change 2: 155–204.
Hagiwara, Robert
1997 Dialect variation and formant frequency: The American English vowels revis-
ited. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102: 655–658.
Hartman, James W.
1985 Guide to pronunciation. In: Cassidy (ed.), xli-lxi.
Hudson, John C.
1988 North American origins of middlewestern frontier populations. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 78: 395–413.
Johnson, Lawrence
1975 Sound change and mobility in Los Angeles. Linguistics 143: 33–48.
Labov, William
Lusk, Melanie M.
1976 Phonological variation in Kansas City: A sociolinguistic analysis of three-
generation families. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of English, University of
Kansas.
Luthin, Herbert
1987 The story of California (ow): The coming-of-age of English in California.
In: Keith Denning, Sharon Inkelas, Faye McNair-Knox, and John Rickford
(eds.), Variation in Language: NWAV-XV at Stanford, 312–324. Stanford, CA:
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University.
Meinig, D.W.
1972 American Wests: Preface to a geographical interpretation. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 62: 159–184.
Metcalf, Allan A.
1972 Directions of change in Southern California English. Journal of English
Linguistics 6: 28–34.
Watt, Dominic, and Lesley Milroy
1999 Patterns of variation and change in three Newcastle vowels: Is this dialect
levelling? In: Foulkes and Docherty (eds), 25–46.
English in Canada: phonology
Charles Boberg
1. Introduction
As recently as 1948, Morton Bloomfield (1948: 59) was justified in remarking that
very little research had been devoted to Canadian English, especially in compari-
son to American or British English. The projected Linguistic Atlas of the United
States and Canada, which produced groundbreaking studies of dialect variation
along the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, was never extended to Canada,
beyond a few scattered informants in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba,
interviewed in connection with studies of American English across the border.
Since the 1950s, however, research on Canadian English has proliferated. It now
comprises a substantial body of material focused on four major themes:
1) the historical origins of Canadian English;
2) alternation among American and British words, pronunciations, and usage in
Canada;
3) the documentation of relic areas and traditional regional enclaves; and
4) Canadian Raising, the articulation of the diphthongs /aU/ and /aI/ with non-low
nuclei when they occur before voiceless consonants, which became a standard
example of the need for ordered rules in generative phonology.
Overviews of the research in these areas can be found in Avis (1973), Bailey
(1982) and Chambers (1979, 1991). The present chapter will focus on the sound of
Canadian English, and in particular on those phonological and phonetic variables
that are most useful for distinguishing Canadian English from other varieties, and
for identifying regional varieties within Canada.
The origins of Canadian English have been studied in light of the history of the
settlement of Canada and will be briefly addressed in 2.1, below. The contribu-
tions of traditional dialectological research to determining the status of Canadian
English in relation to American and British English will be the subject of 2.2. Sec-
tion 3 will discuss three phonological features of Canadian English, while Section
4 will identify some phonetic patterns found in Canada. These sections will deal
exclusively with vowels, as the author is not aware of any consonantal variables
that show unique patterns in Canada. Finally, Section 5 will summarize the role of
the U.S.-Canada border as a linguistic isogloss, and offer some comments on what
the future may hold for Canadian English.
352 Charles Boberg
2. History and status of Canadian English
2.1. Origins: Settlement and influences

Apart from Newfoundland, which is the oldest English-speaking colony in North
America (founded 1583), the earliest substantial European settlement of what is
today Canada was dominated by French rather than English colonists. French col-
onies were well established in eastern Canada by the mid-17th century, a period
when the region was practically empty of English speakers. In the mid-18th century,
however, the outcome of the struggle between France and England for control of
North America was decided in favor of England, and the former French territories
became British possessions by the Treaty of Paris (1763). English-speaking settle-
ment followed, leading to the bilingual status of modern Canada, with two official
languages. By the 19th century, English-speakers outnumbered French, and the
dominance of English in Canada has continued to increase ever since. Today, of
the Canadian population of 30 million people, French speakers account for less
than a quarter, and these are mostly found in the province of Quebec, which is 81%
French-speaking. Outside Quebec – and neighboring parts of New Brunswick and
eastern Ontario, which are bilingual – Canada is generally English-speaking.
The important exception to this is the large cities, where, as in the United States,
the English-speaking population has been augmented by immigrants whose moth-
er tongues come from every corner of the world. The four and a half million peo-
ple of Toronto, for example, are about 59 per cent English-speaking, one per cent
French-speaking, and 40 per cent native speakers of other languages, like Chinese
(8%), Italian (4%), and Portuguese (2%). Vancouver, with close to two million
people, is 61 per cent English-speaking, one per cent French-speaking, and 38 per
cent ‘other’, with Chinese (15%) and Punjabi (5%) accounting for the biggest non-
English groups. Montreal’s 400,000 English-speakers (12% of the population) are
outnumbered not only by speakers of French, the majority language (69%), but
also by speakers of non-official languages, who now account for 19 per cent of the
population. In total, only 59 per cent of Canadians – some 17 million people –are
native speakers of English (Statistics Canada 2001). On the other hand, Canadian
English is generally not divided like American English along racial lines; with a
few local exceptions, all native speakers of English in Canada share a common
variety.
Two inescapable facts have dominated previous discussions of Canadian Eng-
lish. The first is that, in spite of Canada’s being a British colony until 1867 and
enjoying close cultural ties with Britain for many decades thereafter, Canadian
English is fundamentally a North American variety. The second is that, with the
obvious exception of Newfoundland, which was a separate British colony until
1949 and remains to this day linguistically distinct from the rest of Canada, Ca-
nadian English is remarkably homogeneous from one end of the country to the
English in Canada: phonology 353
other. This is particularly true in the broad stretch of territory extending almost
3,000 miles (4,500 km) from Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario, in the east, to Van-
couver and Victoria, British Columbia, in the west, including all the major cities
of central and western Canada. While traditional enclaves remain in a few places,
modern, urban Canada does not exhibit anything approaching the dialect diversity
of the United States, let alone that of Britain. Instead, one type of English, with
minor regional variations, is spoken across most of the country, and central and
western Canadians are generally incapable of guessing each other’s regional ori-
gins on the basis of accent or dialect. These two facts have been explained in terms
of Canada’s settlement history, which comprises three distinct stages.
The first major English-speaking settlement of Canada came not directly from
Britain but from the British colonies in what are today the United States (Avis 1973:
44–47). First to arrive were thousands of migrants from Eastern New England in
the early 1760s, who took up land in Nova Scotia that had been abandoned by
French-speaking Acadians expelled by the British government. Next came thou-
sands of “United Empire Loyalists”, known as “Tories” in the United States: Amer-
ican colonists loyal to the British crown in the American Revolution. The Loyalists
joined the New Englanders in Nova Scotia and became the first large and per-
manent group of English-speaking settlers in three other regions: New Brunswick
(especially the city of Saint John); the “Eastern Townships” of Quebec (south of
the St. Lawrence River); and Ontario (the Kingston and Niagara regions on either
end of Lake Ontario). “Late Loyalist” migration from the U.S. to Canada contin-
ued for several decades after the Revolution, so that by 1812, when Britain and the
U.S. fought their last territorial conflict, Ontario (then called Upper Canada) had a
population of around 100,000 that was predominantly American; people who had
immigrated directly from Britain constituted a small minority of about 5,000 (Avis
1973: 46). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans also played a major
role in settling Western Canada, along with other groups (Avis 1973: 48–49). The
result was that, in almost every region of Canada except Newfoundland, Americans
predominated or were an important element among the earliest settlers and must
have had a significant influence on what later emerged as local speech.
Avis (1954: 14) and Bloomfield (1948: 62) argue that these facts explain the
overwhelmingly North American sound of Canadian English, despite large-scale
subsequent immigration from Britain and elsewhere: American speech patterns
were already in place when the British settlers arrived. The recent arrivals, like
immigrants elsewhere and in other times, found themselves adapting to these pat-
terns rather than imposing new ones from abroad. The exceptions to this develop-
ment are the areas where new settlements were made by relatively homogeneous
groups of immigrants arriving directly from Britain in large numbers and in spe-
cific locations in the 19th century. These survive today as the traditional enclaves
of regional speech referred to above: Newfoundland; Cape Breton (northern Nova
Scotia); and the Ottawa Valley of eastern Ontario.
354 Charles Boberg
A different view of the origins of Canadian English is advanced by Scargill

(1957), who chooses to emphasize the importance of the second major stage in the
settlement of Canada: direct immigration from Britain, which reached a peak in the
mid-19th century. Scargill points out that Bloomfield’s “Loyalist theory” of the ori-
gins of Canadian English is flawed in two crucial respects (1957: 611–612). First,
it ignores the numerical superiority of British over American settlement. British
immigration is measured not in the tens but in the hundreds of thousands. Scargill
finds it improbable that these much greater numbers could all have adapted their
speech perfectly to a rigid model laid down by a comparatively small number of
original American settlers. Second, Scargill warns against using comparisons be-
tween Canadian English and modern standard Southern British English (Received
Pronunciation) as evidence of the American character of Canadian English, since
this was not the variety spoken by the majority of British immigrants to Canada.
He points out that many of the features of Canadian English that the incautious
observer might automatically attribute to American influence could just as well
have their origins in the regional speech of Northern or Western Britain, which
predominated among 19th century British immigrants.
If we grant that Loyalist speech had at least some influence on the future develop-
ment of English in Canada, this settlement history lends to the study of Canadian
English an additional interest to scholars of American English, since Canadian speech
may preserve features of colonial American English that have since been erased by
subsequent linguistic change in the U.S. (Bloomfield 1948: 65–66). In Nova Scotia,
American settlement came mostly from Eastern New England. In New Brunswick and
Ontario, by contrast, it came mostly from Vermont, New York State, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania (Avis 1973: 46). American settlement in western Canada came from a
much wider range of places, including the American Midwest; moreover, some of
these settlers were recent European immigrants to the U.S., so that the extent to which
they carried identifiable regional American dialects into Canada is questionable.
The third stage in the settlement of Canada came largely from non-English-
speaking countries, producing the linguistic diversity in major cities referred to
above. This wave of immigration began in the late 19th century and peaked in
the decades after the Second World War, drawing mostly on southern, central,
and eastern Europe. It continues today, though in recent decades its sources have
shifted increasingly away from Europe to Asia and Latin America. Apart from the
contribution of loan words, this last stage of immigration has had little effect on
Canadian English, except where large, linguistically homogeneous concentrations
of immigrants live in relatively segregated communities where they predominate
numerically. Examples of the latter would be religiously-based communities of
German-speakers in the rural West, like Mennonites in southern Manitoba, and
certain ethnic enclaves in large cities, like Italians and Jews in Montreal and To-
ronto; in these cases, immigrant language substrates may be heard to varying de-
grees in the local varieties of Canadian English.
2.2. Status: British vs. American identity; place in a taxonomy of North

American dialects
The status of Canadian English with respect to American and British English
has been a primary concern of many linguists studying Canadian English, and
of commentators and critics outside academic circles. As Scargill asserted, the
large number of British immigrants in the 19th century, together with the use of
British English for official purposes during the colonial period and to some extent
beyond, had a significant impact on Canadian English, which today shows the ef-
fect of a standard Southern British superstratum having been imposed on a North
American variety. As a result, modern Canadian usage varies between standard
British and American forms on a long list of variables concerning phonemic inci-
dence, morphosyntax, lexicon, and general usage. Spelling has traditionally fol-
lowed British practice in many respects (e.g., colour and centre rather than color
and center), though spelling too shows American influence, which has recently
increased. Very few if any Canadians would write tyre, gaol, or kerb for tire, jail,
or curb, and many now write color and center as well.
Studying the alternation among British and American words, pronunciations,
and usage in Canada has been the main preoccupation of the largest body of re-
search on Canadian English. Beginning in the 1950s (Avis 1954–56), this tradition
employed written surveys to investigate variables such as whether missile sounds
like mile or thistle; whether progress (the noun) has /oU/ or /Å/ in the first syllable;
whether dived or dove is the past tense of dive; and whether people say tap or faucet,
trousers or pants, and in hospital or in the hospital. It culminated in a nationwide
postal survey representing 14,000 participants (secondary school students and their
parents) from every province of Canada, divided by age and sex, and covering
a wide range of variables at every level of grammar, except of course phonetics
(Scargill and Warkentyne 1972). The tradition has recently been renewed, with a
sociolinguistic perspective and some methodological innovations, under the name
of Dialect Topography (Chambers 1994). The general finding of these surveys has
been to confirm what might be predicted from settlement and cultural history and
from the present cultural dominance of the United States: that Canadian English
exhibits a mix of American and British forms, varying slightly from one region
to another, which is gradually shifting towards increasing use of American forms
among younger Canadians. The Americanization of Canadian English at these lev-
els has been a popular topic in both academic and popular circles.
While many early students of English in Canada sought to promote its affinities
with either British or American English, a growing sense of Canadian identity in
the decades after the Second World War produced a third view of the status of Ca-
nadian English, which preferred to emphasize a small but significant set of features
that are uniquely Canadian. This position was espoused by Scargill (1957: 612),
and was the motivation behind the compilation of the Dictionary of Canadianisms
356 Charles Boberg
on Historical Principles (Avis et al. 1967). However, apart from a few items like
the well-worn example of chesterfield for couch (which is strongly recessive and
practically extinct among younger Canadians), these unique Canadianisms draw
too heavily on the obvious categories of words connected with traditional, obso-
lescent occupations and with local flora, fauna, and topographic features, to make
a very convincing case for a unique Canadian lexicon. In the more important do-
main of general vocabulary, Canadian usage inclines overwhelmingly toward the
American variants of pairs like chemist/drugstore, chips/fries, lift/elevator, lorry/
truck, petrol/gas, spanner/wrench, and torch/flashlight.
The questionnaire tradition has tended to overstate the British element in Cana-
dian English, insofar as it concentrates by necessity on phonemic incidence and
the lexicon, where British superstratal influence was strongest, exercised through
schools, dictionaries, the media, and other institutions. The smaller amount of work
done in descriptive phonetics and phonology, together with the component of the
usage surveys that deals with phonological inventory, shows a clear preponderance
of non-Southern British variants. The vocalization of /r/ and the split of Middle
English /a/ (TRAP vs. BATH) have never had any currency in vernacular Canadian
speech, and younger Canadians now flap intervocalic /t/ and delete the glide in
words like news and student pretty much to the same extent and in the same envi-
ronments as most Americans do (De Wolf 1992; Gregg 1957: 25–26). Combined
with the merger of /Å/ and /ç˘ – the vowels of LOT and THOUGHT, or cot and caught
– which is nearly universal in Canada, and of a maximal number of vowels before /r/
(both discussed in Section 3, below), these phonological features cause Canadian
English to sound very similar to the North Midland and Western varieties of Ameri-
can English that underlie the popular conception of “General American” speech.
One exception to this assessment is Canadian Raising, which will be discussed
below in Section 4.1. Another, much less well-known and studied but equally
pervasive and distinctive, is the Canadian Shift, involving most notably a backing
of /Q/ to [a], which will be the concern of Section 4.4. Phonetic variables of this
type are of course beyond a written survey’s powers of observation, but are the
principal focus of the present chapter. It is therefore to the phonology and phonet-
ics of Canadian English that we now turn.
3. Phonological features of Canadian English
3.1. The low-back merger (the LOT and THOUGHT sets)

The most significant defining feature of Canadian English at the phonological lev-
el is the general consistency across the country of the merger between /Å/ and /ç˘/,
the vowels of cot and caught (or LOT and THOUGHT), in the low-back corner of
the vowel space. While this merger is by no means unique to Canada, being shared
with neighboring areas of Eastern New England, Western Pennsylvania, and the
Western United States and thereby causing Labov (1991) to include Canada with
these regions in his “Third Dialect”, it is nevertheless a unifying feature of English
across Canada with important phonetic ramifications, to be discusssed below in
relation to the Canadian Shift. For virtually all native speakers of Canadian Eng-
lish today, the pairs cot and caught, sod and sawed, stock and stalk, Don and dawn,
and collar and caller are homophones.
The dialectological literature on this merger suggests that it is well entrenched
in Canadian English and is at least several generations old. For example, Scargill
and Warkentyne (1972: 64) record an average of 85% of Canadians responding
‘yes’ to a survey question that asked whether cot and caught rhyme. Since this was
a written survey in which spelling may have influenced responses, it seems safe to
speculate that the real rate of merger was very close to 100%. Indeed, a generation
earlier, Gregg (1957: 22) reported an exceptionless merger among Vancouver uni-
versity students. Avis (1973: 64) and the limited data on Canada in Labov (1991:
32) also suggest a consistent merger across Canada, as do more recent data from
Labov, Ash, and Boberg (fc.).
In Newfoundland, the same merger can be observed, but the merged vowel is
produced further forward in the mouth, in low-central position. At a phonetic level,
this means that a Newfoundlander’s production of a word like cod will be very close
to that heard in the “Northern Cities” of the Inland Northern or Great Lakes region
of the United States: something like [kAd]. At the phonological level, of course,
the two dialects differ. In Newfoundland, caught would have the same low-central
vowel as cod, whereas in the American Inland North, caught represents a distinct
phonemic category, with a higher, backer vowel. This is one of many distinctive fea-
tures of Newfoundland English that reflect its origins in southwestern England and
southeastern Ireland. Others include a centralized pronunciation of /Ar/ (see below),
a back pronunciation of /√/, and a spirantized articulation of post-vocalic /t/.
3.2. Mergers before /r/

A conditioned merger of several vowels before intervocalic /r/ also characterizes
Canadian English from coast to coast (with one important exception beyond the
usual case of Newfoundland) and unites it with other North American varieties, in
this case all of those dialects that were not affected by the vocalization of /r/. In
Canada, /eI/, /E/ and /Q/ are all merged before intervocalic /r/ at approximately [E],
a lower-mid to upper-mid front quality, so that Mary, merry and marry all sound
like a slightly lengthened version of merry. This was first noted by Gregg (1957:
82) in Vancouver, though he suggests it was a change in progress when he col-
lected his data. Apart from some variability in Newfoundland, the important ex-
ception to this pattern is Montreal, where /Q/ remains distinct from the other two
vowels before /r/: carry does not rhyme with berry, but berry rhymes with dairy.
358 Charles Boberg
In addition to this merger of front vowels, most Canadians have lost the distinc-
tion between several pairs of mid and back vowels before /r/. Like most standard
varieties of English, Canadian English does not distinguish /ç˘/ and /oU/ in this
environment (for and four, horse and hoarse), and as in the Midwestern and West-
ern U.S., /√/ and /´/ (hurry and her) are also not distinct, both having the sound of
[´], or simply of a syllabic [®]. A noteworthy feature of Canadian English, which
might be expected from the general merger of /Å/ and /ç˘/, is that the merger of
these vowels before /r/ is virtually complete, and does not exclude the residue
of unmerged forms that is found in phonologically similar American dialects. In
Canada, even the common words borrow, sorry, and tomorrow usually have the
vowels of bore, sore, and more, whereas in most American speech they retain a
low, unrounded articulation similar to that of the /Ar/ class, even where less com-
mon words like forest, historical, and orange have merged with four, store, and
oar. The Canadian pronunciation of sorry with a lower-mid-back vowel is particu-
larly striking to many American ears.
3.3. The Canadian pattern for foreign (a) words

The phonological adaptation or nativization of loan words can be a source of varia-
tion in any language. In English, one of the most remarkable examples of this
variation concerns the nativization of foreign words containing the letter <a>, usu-
ally representing a low-central vowel quality in the source language, e.g. falafel,
karate, llama, macho, nirvana, pasta, plaza, souvlaki, taco, etc. Such words are
usually nativized with either /Q/ (TRAP) or /A˘/ (PALM) as their stressed vowel, but
each major national variety of English has developed its own pattern of assign-
ment. British English tends to use /Q/, except where spelling and other factors con-
spire to suggest that the syllable should be treated as open, in which case /A˘/ must
occur, given the restriction on /Q/ in stressed open syllables. Thus pasta has /Q/,
while llama has /A˘/. American English, by contrast, prefers to use /A˘/: both pasta
and llama have /A˘/ (which is not distinct from /Å/ [LOT] in most American dia-
lects). The traditional Canadian pattern, however, is to use /Q/ in almost all foreign
(a) words, even when both British and American English agree on /A˘/. The only
regular exception to this is in final stressed open syllables (bra, eclat, faux pas,
foie gras, spa, etc.), where /Q/ cannot appear. While many younger Canadians are
beginning to follow the American pattern in some instances (relatively few young
people still use /Q/ in macho or taco), most Canadians retain /Q/ in both pasta and
llama, and even in older loan words like drama, garage, and Slavic, where it may
sound odd to speakers of other varieties (Boberg 2000).
4. Phonetic features of Canadian English
A general view of the phonetic quality of Canadian English vowels can be ob-
tained from Table 1, which gives an approximate phonetic transcription of each of
the keywords used to represent Wells’ lexical sets. These transcriptions are neces-
sarily approximate, because small degrees of regional, social, and inter-speaker
variation do of course exist, even in the largely homogeneous context described
above. With this limitation, they can be taken to represent the general character
of the vowels of Standard Canadian English. A more detailed view of the most
distinctive aspects of Canadian pronunciation is given below.
Table 1. Phonetic transcription of typical Canadian pronunciations of the keywords in
Wells’ lexical sets.
KIT I PALM Å˘ STAR A® > å®

DRESS E THOUGHT Å START √® > å®
TRAP Q~a GOAT PU NORTH ç®
LOT Å GOOSE ü FORCE ç®
STRUT √ PRIZE AI CURE j´® > jU® > jP®
FOOT U PRICE √I ~ ŒI ~ åI happY i
BATH Q~a CHOICE çI lettER ´®
CLOTH Å COW aU ~ AU horsES ´
NURSE ´® MOUTH √U ~ ŒU commA å
FLEECE Ii NEAR I®
FACE eI SQUARE E®
4.1. Canadian Raising (the PRICE and MOUTH sets)

Canadian Raising, the pronunciation of the diphthongs /aI/ (PRICE) and /aU/
(MOUTH) with non-low nuclei when they occur before voiceless consonants, was
first systematically analyzed by Joos (1942), who noticed that raising interacts
with flapping to produce apparently phonemic oppositions between raised and
unraised vowels in pairs like writer vs. rider, at least in some varieties of Cana-
dian English. Chambers (1973) showed how these patterns could be accounted
for in a generative framework by means of variable rule ordering. Canadian
Raising is by no means unique to Canada, even within North America. Raised
nuclei in one or both diphthongs have been documented in eastern Virginia
(Kurath and McDavid 1961), Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts (Labov 1972a),
Philadelphia (Labov 1994), and the Inland North. Moreover, not all Canadians
exhibit Canadian Raising: urban varieties in particular display considerable so-
cial variation in this regard, with some speakers raising less than others, or not
at all. However, if it does not uniquely or consistently characterize all speakers
of Canadian English, Canadian Raising nevertheless continues to be a reliable
360 Charles Boberg
and distinctive identifier of Canadian speech in most of the country and is the
basis of the most popular American stereotype of Canadian speech, if only as it
applies to /aU/.
Even among those Canadians who show consistent Canadian Raising, its pho-
netic implementation is not uniform across Canada. Most Canadians have two
principal allophones of /aI/ (raised to lower-mid position before voiceless con-
sonants and low-central or low-back elsewhere) and three of /aU/ (raised before
voiceless consonants, fronted to [aU] or [QU] before nasals, and low-central else-
where). One of the few phonetic variables that divides Canadians regionally is
the articulation of the raised allophone of /aU/. In Ontario, it tends to have a mid-
central or even mid-front articulation, sometimes approaching [EU], while in the
West and Maritimes a more retracted sound is heard, closer to [√U]. Among some
speakers on the Prairies and in Nova Scotia, the retraction is strong enough to
cause some tokens of raised /aU/ to merge with /oU/, so that couch and coach
sound the same, and about sounds like a boat (though never like a boot, as in the
American stereotype of Canadian Raising).
4.2. Raising of /r/ (the START set)

Canadian pronunciation of words in the START set commonly involves a non-low
nucleus, especially as a result of nuclear shortening before voiceless consonants.
As with Canadian Raising, the relative advancement of the raised nucleus is a re-
gional indicator. A striking feature of Atlantic Canadian speech (the Maritimes and
Newfoundland) is a nucleus that approaches the front region of the vowel space,
accompanied by strong rhoticity, ranging from [Œ®] to [å®]. Western Canadian
speech has a much more retracted articulation with a longer non-rhotic portion,
approaching a mid-back quality, [P®] (though there is no tendency toward a merger
with NORTH/FORCE). Articulation of START in Ontario is in a position midway be-
tween the Atlantic and Western values.
4.3. Raising of /æ/ before nasals and //

Unlike in many American English dialects, /Q/ remains a low-front vowel in
most environments in Canadian English. Raising along the front periphery of
the vowel space is restricted to two environments – before nasal and voiced
velar consonants – and varies regionally even in these. Ontario and Maritime
Canadian English commonly show some raising before nasals, though not as
extreme as in many American varieties. Much less raising is heard on the Prai-
ries, and some ethnic groups in Montreal show no pre-nasal raising at all. On
the other hand, some Prairie speech exhibits raising of /Q/ before voiced velars
(/g/ and /N/), with an up-glide rather than an in-glide, so that bag sounds close
to vague.
4.4. The Canadian shift (the KIT, DRESS, and TRAP sets)
Labov (1991) proposed a three-dialect model of North American English based
on two key phonological variables and their consequent phonetic developments.
In this model, Canadian English was classified with several other dialects that
appeared to show relative phonetic stability, compared to the complex patterns of
chain-shifting that characterized the Northern and Southern dialects. A few years
later, Clarke, Elms, and Youssef (1995) published a report on what they called
the Canadian Shift, asserting that, far from being phonetically stable, Canadian
English was involved in its own set of phonetic shifts, primarily affecting /I/, /E/,
and /Q/, the KIT, DRESS, and TRAP sets. The young Ontario speakers they studied
showed a retraction of /Q/ to [a] (filling the low-central space made available by
the low-back, LOT-THOUGHT merger), a lowering of /E/ toward /Q/, and a lowering
of /I/ toward /E/. The most salient aspect of this chain shift, especially in the larger
North American context, is the retraction of /Q/. The resulting quality is similar to
that heard in the TRAP and BATH sets in Northern British English, in contrast with
the fully fronted and often raised quality of /Q/ in much of the United States, and
in particular in the American varieties spoken in the Inland Northern region along
the border with central Canada. In fact, the Canadian Shift and the Northern Cit-
ies Shift (Labov 1991, 1994) involve directly opposite developments of the low
vowels, so that the TRAP class in much Canadian speech has virtually the same
vowel quality as the LOT class in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. The produc-
tions [hat] and [kap] would designate items of headwear in Ontario, but would be
the opposite of cold and an informal term for a police officer across the border in
southeastern Michigan or Western New York.
4.5. The fronting of /u/ (the GOOSE set)

Another change in progress in Canadian English, part of a continental trend affect-
ing many North American varieties, is the fronting of /u˘/, whereby the nucleus of
/u˘/ moves forward to high-central or even high-front position, directly behind /i˘/.
There is a wide allophonic dispersion in the GOOSE set, extending over most of the
high region of the vowel space. Most advanced are tokens of /u˘/ in free position
after coronals (do, too); behind these are tokens in syllables closed with coronals
(boots, food, soon), then tokens before non-coronals (goof, soup); remaining in
back position are tokens of /u˘/ before /l/ (cool, pool, tool). Unlike in some British
speech, Canadian English does not show any fronting or unrounding of the glide
of /u˘/, and most Canadians show no parallel centralization of /oU/, which gener-
ally remains in back position, except in Cape Breton and Newfoundland.
362 Charles Boberg
5. Summary and conclusions
5.1. The phonetic and phonological status of the U.S.-Canada border

Avis (1954–56) and Chambers (1994), among others, have shown how the inter-
national boundary between Ontario and the U.S. is a sharp linguistic isogloss for
a wide range of variables at different levels of grammar, even though Avis (1954:
13) suggests that, from a broader perspective, the differences between Ontario
speech and adjacent parts of the United States are minimal. However, these studies
have generally dealt with non-phonetic data. The question of the linguistic signifi-
cance of the U.S.-Canada border at the level of phonetics and phonology – and
especially at the level of the vowel sounds that make up our primary impression of
the regional character of someone’s speech – has only now begun to be systemati-
cally investigated (Labov, Ash, and Boberg, fc.; Boberg 2000).
In general, phonological and phonetic data indicate a border effect that diminish-
es in importance from east to west. In the east, the completely different phonologi-
cal systems of Eastern New England and Maritime Canada are directly opposed
across the international border. Though both regions share a low-back merger and
a conservative treatment of /u˘/ and /oU/, eastern Canada was not affected by the
Southern British innovations – vocalization of /r/ and the split of Middle English
/a – that shaped modern Eastern New England speech. This fact helps in the dating
of these changes in New England, since Nova Scotia was settled by New England-
ers: it seems likely that the changes became general after the emigration of New
Englanders to Canada in the mid-18th century.
In the middle of the continent, the border between Canadian speech in Ontario
and Inland Northern speech on the other side of the Great Lakes is remarkably
sharp. It separates two different phonological systems, along with the phonetic de-
velopments that follow from them. On the Canadian side, a low-back merger has
produced a backing of /Q/ in the Canadian Shift; on the American side, a low-back
distinction has been preserved by a raising of /Q/ and a centralization of /Å/ in the
Northern Cities Shift. Boberg (2000) showed that there was no sign of phonetic or
phonological interference across the Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan, and
Windsor, Ontario, despite the prediction of current models of geolinguistic diffu-
sion that Windsor would be linguistically assimilated to its much larger American
neighbor, not to speak of the importance of American settlement in the origins of
Ontario English.
In western North America, however, the international boundary no longer repre-
sents a coherent bundle of isoglosses, with the exception that it marks the southern
extent of Canadian raising (especially of /aU/) and of more extreme versions of the
Canadian shift. Western North America, to a large extent, shares a common phono-
logical system and very similar phonetics. The blurring of linguistic boundaries in
the West, a well-established fact in American dialectology, is not merely a feature
of American English, but of the continent as a whole, reflecting relatively sparse

and recent settlement from a mixture of sources. People living in Saskatchewan
and North Dakota, Alberta and Montana, or British Columbia and Washington can
certainly hear a difference between their own speech and that of their neighbors
across the border, but this difference would seem very small indeed to someone
from outside the region.
Notwithstanding the varying border effects discussed above, it must be admit-
ted that certain changes in North American English seem to be diffusing rapidly
over most of the continent, including Canada. One of these, discussed above, is the
fronting of /u˘/. Others include the loss of /j/ in /ju˘/ after coronals (news, student,
tube, etc.), the merger of /hw/ and /w/ (whether vs. weather, etc.), and the spread
of be like as a verb of quotation (I was like, what’s up with that?). Moreover, the
mass media, which are essentially common to all of North America, spread lexi-
cal innovations rapidly across the border, thereby further leveling the differences
between Canadian and American English. It remains to be seen which differences
will ultimately survive this erosion, and which new differences will arise to take
the place of obsolete ones as people on each side of the border strive to sustain
linguistic symbols of their sense of community.
5.2. Canada within the dialect taxonomy of North American English

Some dialectologists, on the basis of lexical evidence, or selected phonological
evidence, have classified Canada as an extension of the Inland North region of the
United States, which is intuitively satisfying in a geographic sense. However, at a
deeper, structural level, Canada differs from the Inland North in a crucial respect
– the low-back merger – and this difference has produced an enormous phonetic di-
vergence between Inland Northern and Canadian speech. Phonologically, Canada
has more in common with the North Midland and Western regions of the Unit-
ed States than with the Inland North, probably because the genesis of Canadian
English involved the same dialect-leveling among heterogeneous migrants and
pioneers that made the low-back merger a general feature of the Western United
States. This particularly applies to Ontario and western Canada, which together
represent by far the largest portion of the Canadian English-speaking population.
The speech of these regions can certainly be included with that of the American
North Midland and West under one general type of English, at least at a broad
level of analysis. As for eastern Canada, while the Ottawa Valley, Montreal, the
Eastern Townships, the Maritimes, and Cape Breton may all once have exhibited
rich linguistic diversity, all of these regions (and even, to an extent, Newfound-
land, especially since its confederation with Canada in 1949) now exhibit a rapidly
advancing convergence with Standard Canadian English, at least among younger,
middle-class speakers. They, too, can probably now be included under the same
category as Ontario and the West.
364 Charles Boberg
It may be foolish to speculate on the future of Canadian English, given the

uncertain outcome of the interplay of forces of global and local prestige that is
always present in the evolution of languages, but the obvious importance of the in-
creasing integration of the two English-speaking nations of North America cannot
be overlooked. In an age of instant transmission of language across political bor-
ders, of frequent international travel and migration, and of ever-closer economic
and cultural integration, Canadian English cannot help but come under greater
assimilatory pressure than it has ever experienced in its history. Whether this pres-
sure will overcome the obstacles to assimilation in the more resistant levels of
grammar, particularly phonetics and phonology, remains to be seen. At present,
there is no indication that Canadian English is about to disappear at these levels;
on the contrary, it seems likely that, at a time when so many other differences have
fallen prey to continental cultural convergence, the sound of Canadian English
will be closely bound up with Canadians’ sense of their national identity for many
generations to come.
Selected references
ROM.
Avis, Walter S.
1954–56 Speech differences along the Ontario-United States border. Journal of the
Canadian Linguistic Association 1: 13–18, 1: 14–19 and 2: 41–59.
1973 The English language in Canada. In: Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends
in Linguistics 10: Linguistics in North America, 40–74. The Hague: Mouton.
Bailey, Richard W.
1982 The English language in Canada. In: Bailey and Görlach (eds.), 137–176.
Bloomfield, Morton
1948 Canadian English and its relation to eighteenth century American speech.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 47: 59–67.
Boberg, Charles
2000 Geolinguistic diffusion and the U.S.-Canada border. Language Variation and
Change 12: 1–24.
Chambers, J.K.
1973 Canadian raising. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 18: 113–135.
1979 Canadian English. In: J.K. Chambers (ed.), The Languages of Canada, 168–
204. Montreal: Didier.
1991 Canada. In: Cheshire (ed.), 89–107.
1994 An introduction to dialect topography. English World-Wide 15: 35–53.
Clarke, Sandra, Ford Elms and Amani Youssef
1995 The third dialect of English: Some Canadian evidence. Language Variation
Gregg, Robert J.
1957 Notes on the pronunciation of Canadian English as spoken in Vancouver, B.C.
Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association 3: 20–26.
Joos, Martin
1942 A phonological dilemma in Canadian English. Language 18: 141–144.
Labov, William
Scargill, Matthew H.
1957 Sources of Canadian English. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56:
610–614.
Scargill, Matthew H. and Henry J. Warkentyne
1972 The Survey of Canadian English: A report. English Quarterly 5: 47–104.
Statistics Canada [Statistical Agency of the Government of Canada].
2001 www.statcan.ca.
Newfoundland English: phonology
Sandra Clarke*
1. Introduction
The vernacular speech of the North Atlantic island of Newfoundland has always
been highly distinct from that of most of mainland North America. It does how-
ever share a number of structural characteristics with varieties spoken in the neigh-
bouring Canadian Maritime provinces, as well as in other early-settled areas of the
New World, including the Caribbean. The reasons for this distinctiveness can be
traced to several sources – notably, the settlement history of the area, coupled with
its relative geographical isolation at the eastern periphery of North America.
Along with its continental portion, Labrador, Newfoundland did not become
a province of Canada until 1949; prior to that, as “Britain’s oldest colony”, the
island constituted an independent British dominion. Newfoundland’s association
with Britain dates back to the 16th century. The island was officially claimed by the
British crown in 1583, to ensure that British interests dominated in the European
exploitation of the region’s rich fisheries resources. Though it did not see its major
influx of immigrants until the first decades of the 19th century, Newfoundland was
one of the earliest British-settled areas of the New World, with continuous settle-
ment from the beginning of the 17th century.
The European founder population of Newfoundland and coastal Labrador
– henceforth referred to simply as Newfoundland – was quite distinct from that of
much of mainland English-speaking Canada, the early population base of which
consisted largely of British loyalists who migrated northward after the American
War of Independence. Until the 20th century, settlers to Newfoundland were drawn
almost exclusively from two principal, and highly circumscribed, geographical
sources. These were the southwest (SW) counties of England, where the Dorset
city of Poole served as the chief port of embarkation; and the southeast (SE) coun-
ties of Ireland, where the port of Waterford played a similar role. The extremely
localized nature of its immigrant population sets Newfoundland apart from much
of mainland North America.
The peripheral geographical location of the area has also proven a defining fac-
tor in the history and development of Newfoundland English (NfldE). Hand in
hand with this go socioeconomic factors: the vagaries of the region’s resource-
based economy, in which the fishery has played a central role, resulted in lack of
substantial in-migration after the mid-19th century. Throughout Newfoundland’s
history, many of the island’s residents have been scattered in small rural coastal
Newfoundland English: phonology 367
“outport” fishing communities, most of which were highly endocentric in that they
displayed dense local networks, yet loose connections outside the local area. The
overall population of the region has remained small: the province currently has a
total of just over half a million residents, almost a third of whom reside in or near
the capital city, St. John’s. The population also remains remarkably homogeneous:
over 90% of present-day residents were born within Newfoundland. From a lin-
guistic perspective, these geographical, socioeconomic and demographic factors
have had a conservative effect. Until fairly recently, NfldE was little influenced
by the varieties spoken in mainland North America; rather, its dominant charac-
teristic was retention of features which characterized its source varieties in SW
England and SE Ireland (see Clarke fc.). Though many of these features are reces-
sive today, they are still sufficiently strong to maintain the general distinctiveness
of the Newfoundland accent.
Since World War II and union with Canada, Newfoundland’s links with North
America have expanded in all spheres: economic, social and cultural. NfldE has
increasingly come under the influence of mainland North American models. While
many present-day Newfoundlanders profess pride in their distinct ethnic and cul-
tural identity, others – particularly younger and more educated residents of the
province – view this heritage in anything but a positive light. Their negative feel-
ings towards NfldE are compounded by the attitudes of mainland Canadians, who
on the whole tend to disparage the province’s distinctive dialects as symbolic of
Newfoundland’s “backwardness” and lack of economic prosperity. In spite of the
economic opportunities offered by recent discoveries of offshore oil and gas, the al-
most total collapse of the cod fishery has resulted in increasing outmigration to the
Canadian mainland, and the Newfoundland population is currently on the decline.
At present, there is a considerable range of dialect diversity within Newfound-
land, which correlates with both social and regional factors, as well as speech
register. At one extremity are upwardly mobile younger urban speakers, whose
increasingly exocentric orientation is reflected in the fact that their accent is com-
ing more and more to approximate standard mainland Canadian English (CanE).
At the other are older, working-class and primarily rural speakers, whose more
conservative phonological systems continue to display many traces of the regional
British and Irish varieties brought to the province several centuries ago. Because
of settlement patterns within Newfoundland, linguistic distinctions between the
two principal founder groups – the SW English and the SE Irish – continue to be
much in evidence. The Irish population is concentrated in the southeast corner of
the island, in the southern part of the Avalon peninsula; the city of St. John’s, situ-
ated towards the northern extremity of the Irish-settled Avalon, displays a number
of characteristic southern Irish features, even in its more standard subvarieties.
Outside the Avalon, settlement was overwhelmingly from SW England, with two
notable exceptions – the southwest corner of the island, a mixed area of French,
Scottish and Irish settlement; and the mainland portion of the province, Labra-
368 Sandra Clarke
dor, with its aboriginal substratum. Though both traditional “English” and “Irish”
dialects of the province share certain conservative features (e.g. monophthongal
pronunciations of the vowels of FACE and GOAT), they also maintain a number of
inherited distinctions, including the articulation of /h/ and postvocalic /l/. Among
younger rural speakers throughout the province, however, competition from more
standard supralocal varieties is resulting in increasing loss of local variants, par-
ticularly in formal speech styles. A number of features that were the norm in rural
fishing communities two or three generations ago are now highly recessive.
Though space does not permit full referencing for individual features, the fol-
lowing descriptions of the phonology of NfldE draw on a wide range of sourc-
es, among them Seary, Story and Kirwin (1968); Noseworthy (1971); Paddock
(1981); Colbourne (1982); Story, Kirwin and Widdowson ([1982] 1990); Clarke
(1991, fc.); Lanari (1994); and Halpert and Widdowson (1996). A number of ob-
servations also derive from transcriptions of recordings of conservative speakers
held by the Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA).
2. Vowels
While the phonological inventory of standard NfldE displays the same number of
phonemes as do standard North American varieties, their phonetic realization is by
no means identical, particularly with respect to vowels. The NfldE low vowel as-
sociated with the LOT/CLOTH/THOUGHT classes is typically articulated in the low
central area of vowel space, that is, as considerably more fronted than the usual
mainland Canadian realizations of [] or []. The low-mid /æ/ vowel, as in TRAP,
is also usually more fronted in NfldE than in the Canadian norm; the same fronted
/æ/ may occur in the START set. The phenomenon of “Canadian Raising - that is,
the use of a mid rather than low vowel onset in the diphthongs /a/ and /a/ before
a tautosyllabic voiceless obstruent – is often not in evidence among speakers of
NfldE; this is particularly true for the MOUTH set. Rather, many Newfoundlanders
use a somewhat raised mid-open vowel, in the range of [//√], in all items of the
PRICE/PRIZE and MOUTH/LOUD classes - that is, irrespective of following linguis-
tic environment. Many speakers, as well, display a reduced system of vowel con-
trasts before /r/ in their casual styles, the result of a tendency towards merger of the
NEAR/SQUARE sets, as well as of the NORTH/FORCE/CURE sets. Table 1 provides a
summary of principal variants.
2.1. Lax vowels

KIT
This vowel is typically realized in all varieties of NfldE as standard lax []. More
traditional or conservative vernacular speakers from all areas of the province dis-
Table 1. Principal vowel variants in NfldE
KIT I>i~E
DRESS E > I > E4 ~ Q3
TRAP Q1 > Q
LOT a2 ~ a > A1
STRUT √ ~ ç_
FOOT U > U1
BATH Q1(˘) > Q > e4I
CLOTH a2(˘) ~ a > A1 > Å
NURSE ´’ ~ Œ’ ~ ç_® ~ √®
FLEECE i > e˘/ei > Í
FACE ei > e˘/E˘ > e(j)´/E(j)´
PALM Q(˘) ~ A1
THOUGHT a2(˘) ~ a > A1 > Å
GOAT oU > o(˘) > o(w)´ > PU
GOOSE u > u_ > Pw´
PRICE √I ~ Í ~ åI ~ ç_I
CHOICE çI > √I ~ åI ~ aI
MOUTH a2U ~ åU ~ √U ~ EU ~ Eu_
NEAR i® ~ i´® ~ I® > e®/E®
SQUARE e® ~ E® > I®
START Q2® > å1®
NORTH ç® ~ o® > å® ~ a®
FORCE o® ~ ç®
CURE u® ~ o® ~ ç®
happY i
lettER ´’ ~ Œ’ > ç_® ~ √®
horsES I~ˆ~´
commA ´
play a variable tendency towards tensing of the KIT vowel, though this is most notice-
able on the Irish-settled Avalon peninsula. In areas of the province settled by the SW
English, [] tensing appears to be phonologically conditioned among conservative ru-
370 Sandra Clarke
ral speakers, occurring particularly before an alveopalatal fricative (e.g. fish) and, less
frequently, an alveolar nasal, e.g. in, wind. Even among younger urban speakers, []
tensing frequently occurs in two morphemes: the -ing of words like walking or going,
often pronounced [in]; and the possessive his, which often sounds identical to he’s,
and which may represent a reanalysis by analogy with the possessive marker ‘s.
In SW English-settled areas of the province, a more prevalent tendency among con-
servative speakers is the variable lowering of the KIT vowel to the range of []. This
tendency is phonologically conditioned, occurring in other than a following oral stop
environment (most frequently before /l/, as in children, as well as anterior fricatives,
e.g. different, with, and occasionally before /n/, as in since). Because for such speakers
the DRESS vowel is variably raised to the [] range (see below), phonetic realizations of
the KIT and DRESS sets may overlap to a considerable degree – though such tendencies
as [] tensing do not generally affect items of the standard English DRESS set.
DRESS
For most speakers, the DRESS vowel is realized as standard lax low-mid []. On the
Irish Avalon, conservative rural speakers display variable and conditioned raising
of this vowel to [] in the environment of a following stop or affricate, e.g. pension,
get, connected. As noted above, the same phenomenon may be observed among
conservative speakers in rural English-settled areas of the province, where raising
to [] occurs before a following non-velar stop or affricate, as in head, hedge, en-
gine, bench. Before /l/ or a voiceless velar, however (e.g. yellow, wreck, breakfast),
lowering to an [æ]-like articulation may occur in English-settled areas. In addition,
[] before a voiced velar may be tensed and diphthongized in a stressed syllable,
as in keg pronounced [khei] (e.g. Noseworthy 1971).
A similar lowered and somewhat retracted pronunciation of [] for words in the
DRESS set is beginning to make inroads, in a broad set of phonetic environments, in
the speech of upwardly mobile younger urban Newfoundlanders. This reflects the in-
fluence of the innovative CanE tendency described as the “Canadian Shift” by Clarke,
Elms and Youssef (1995), in which lax front vowels are lowered and retracted.
TRAP/BATH
The TRAP/BATH sets are pronounced identically in NfldE, though their /æ/ vowel
may be lengthened before a voiceless fricative, as in BATH. For most residents of
Newfoundland and Labrador, /æ/ is more raised and fronted than in StCanE. In cer-
tain lexical items (e.g. catch) the vowel may be raised to []. In some English-settled
areas of the province, /æ/ tends to be raised and tensed to an [e]-like realization be-
fore velars, as in bag, and more frequently, before alveolars and alveopalatals, par-
ticularly /n/, as in DANCE. This latter trend appears on the increase among younger
residents of these areas, among them the young female speaker on the audio sample.
At the same time, a recent innovation - apparent among upwardly mobile younger
urban females, particularly in St. John’s – is a lowering and retraction of the /æ/
vowel in the direction of [a], reflecting the influence of the Canadian Shift.
LOT/CLOTH/THOUGHT
For most Newfoundlanders, the vowels of the LOT/CLOTH/THOUGHT sets have
fully merged, and are realized as unrounded [a], [a$], or occasionally [a%], well for-
ward of the cardinal 5 position which characterizes StCanE. For some (particularly
older) speakers, the vowel of CLOTH/THOUGHT is distinguished from the LOT vow-
el via length; a very small minority retain a qualitative contrast, with a retracted
unrounded [] or rounded [] for the CLOTH/THOUGHT sets. While some younger
upwardly mobile speakers are tending to adopt more retracted CanE-like variants,
the majority of the province’s residents maintain a more traditional central to front
low unrounded vowel for all three subsets.
STRUT
This vowel is typically realized as unrounded [√], as in most North American vari-
eties. However, its point of articulation is often more back than central. For many
residents of the Irish Avalon, the vowel is usually accompanied by lip-rounding,
and is best represented as [ç_].
FOOT
The FOOT vowel is generally articulated as high back rounded lax [
]. Occasion-
ally, among conservative speakers on the Irish Avalon, the vowel is somewhat
raised and tensed (cf. the similar tendency for the KIT vowel). As elsewhere in
North America, more centralized variants also occur; but these are particularly
evident among younger urban speakers, and in certain lexical items, e.g. good.
2.2. Tense vowels

FLEECE
This vowel is typically realized in standard North American fashion, as tense and,
when long, as slightly upglided. The conservative nature of traditional NfldE –
whether of SW English or of Irish ancestry – is in evidence, however, in the form
of a highly recessive FACE-like pronunciation in such -ea- words as sea, heave
and beat. In standard varieties, such words (which in Middle English contained
//) underwent merger with the FLEECE set several centuries ago; in conservative
NfldE, however, they maintained their historical mid vowel. Likewise, in highly
conservative speech of the Irish Avalon, the FACE vowel has occasionally been
noted in at least some FLEECE words deriving from Middle English /e/, e.g. see-
ing, sleepy.
372 Sandra Clarke
In a handful of English-settled rural areas of the province, both -ee- and -ea-
words display variable centralization in conservative speech, so that tea may be
articulated as [th].
FACE
In StNfldE, the usual realization is standard North American upglided [ei] or [e].
Vernacular NfldE varieties, however, display a range of variants, including a low-
ered onset ([], [$]). Older speakers – particularly on the Irish Avalon, but by no
means only in this area – often exhibit the historically earlier non-upglided pro-
nunciations, whether monophthongal [e, ] or, in closed syllables, inglided [e(j),
(j)]. Such realizations occur both for words which in Middle and Early Modern
English contained a long monophthong (e.g. made) as well as those that contained
an upglided diphthong (e.g. maid); however, these two subsets continued to be dis-
tinguished by some conservative speakers in rural English-settled Newfoundland
until fairly recently.
PALM
In vernacular NfldE varieties, most native lexical items incorporating the PALM
vowel belong to the TRAP/BATH set; that is, they are articulated with [æ()]. More
educated speakers, however, tend to use the lower more retracted vowel of LOT/
CLOTH/THOUGHT. They may even – as in the case of the speakers on the audio
samples – utilize a more retracted [%]-like sound in PALM words than they do in
LOT etc.
GOAT
The usual realization in StNfldE is the standard North American upglided [o
] vari-
ant. As in the case of the FACE set, conservative older (and primarily rural) speak-
ers throughout Newfoundland and Labrador often use non-upglided pronunciations.
These may be monophthongal [o(), o()], or inglided [o(w)] in checked syllables
such as boat. For such speakers, non-upglided articulations appear to occur in the
full range of GOAT words, that is, irrespective of whether their historical source was
monophthongal (e.g. no) or upglided, e.g. know. A recent, though still minor, innova-
tion is the adoption of “mainland-like” centralized [
] or [!
] variants. This trend
is being led by younger upwardly mobile urban speakers, particularly women.
GOOSE
In St NfldE this vowel is typically realized as high back rounded. Three different
types of speakers, however, tend to use centralized variants; in two of these cases,
centralization is an inherited or at least long-standing feature. The first involves
certain English-settled areas of the province, which have preserved the tendency
towards centralization of /u/ that characterized parts of West Country England. In
some of these areas, centralized rounded [u] appears to be on the increase (at least,
apart from a pre-/l/ context), and is the usual variant today among younger females,
including those on the audio samples. The second case is found on the Irish Avalon;
here, though /u/ centralization occasionally occurs among older traditional speak-
ers, it is by far most apparent before /l/. In Irish-settled communities, words like
school may be pronounced with an ingliding diphthong the first element of which is
centralized and lowered to the area of [!], so that school may sound like [sk!wl].
Finally, as for /o/, a minor tendency towards centralization of /u/ is evident in the
speech of the chief urban centre of the province, St. John’s. That this represents a
recent innovation in the direction of perceived North American trends is suggested
by its almost exclusive association with upwardly mobile younger females.
2.3. Diphthongs
PRICE, PRIZE
The diphthongs associated with these two lexical sets display a range of possible
realizations in NfldE. Some speakers – among them urban residents of the Irish
Avalon – tend to distinguish PRICE and PRIZE words via a non-low [] or [√] onset in
PRICE, but a low [] or [a] onset in PRIZE. That is, such speakers display the pattern
commonly referred to as Canadian Raising. More typical among traditional speakers
from all areas of the province, however, is the use of a low-mid to mid onset ([, , √)
in all environments, not simply before voiceless obstruents as in PRICE. This pattern
is in all likelihood inherited from both SW English and SE Irish source dialects.
For conservative speakers, particularly but by no means only on the Irish Avalon,
the raised onset may also be retracted and rounded to an [ç_]-like sound. Though
this is most evident in post-labial position (e.g. might, twice), it is by no means
restricted to this environment. Before sonorants (e.g. time, fire, child), glide-weak-
ened pronunciations are not uncommon (as also for the MOUTH/LOUD sets).
CHOICE
Speakers of St NfldE distinguish the CHOICE set from the PRICE/PRIZE sets as do
standard speakers elsewhere in North America, via the use of a rounded mid back
[ç] or [o] onset in CHOICE words. More conservative (i.e. older, rural, working-
class) NfldE speakers, however, exhibit a marked tendency to unround the nucleus
of CHOICE, and to pronounce it as [√, , ], and even fully lowered [] or [a]. This
leads to considerable overlapping of variants which characterize both the PRICE
and CHOICE sets. In at least the casual style of some conservative speakers, total
merger may occur; others appear to keep the two sets distinct via a greater degree
of retraction and rounding for the PRICE set.
MOUTH, LOUD
Contrary to usage in the PRICE/PRIZE sets, the English of the capital, St. John’s,
does not traditionally display Canadian Raising in words containing /a
/. Rather,
374 Sandra Clarke
both the MOUTH and LOUD sets are usually articulated with similar low vowel
nuclei, in the range of [a$] or [a]. Conservative and rural speakers throughout the
province, however, often exhibit (inherited) low-mid to mid onsets ([, , , √])
in all positions. Such speakers also variably front the nucleus of /a
/ to a vowel
approaching [] or, less frequently, [æ]. This fronting tendency – along with vari-
able centralization of the glide, to an [u]-like articulation – appears to be on the
increase off the Irish Avalon; for example, it is a salient feature of the speech of
younger middle-class women from English-settled areas, among them those on
the audio samples. This inherited tendency may be enhanced by the /a
/ fronting
tendency that is today obvious in innovative mainland Canadian speech, and that
is also making inroads into the speech of some younger St. John’s residents.
2.4. Vowels before /r/

NEAR, SQUARE
For many NfldE speakers, the vowels of these two sets are merged, with the merged
vowel ranging from high or semi-high [i]/[] on the Irish Avalon, to a high-mid to mid
vowel approximating cardinal vowels 2 or 3 elsewhere in the province. More educated
speakers, however (including those on the audio samples), distinguish the two sets in
the standard manner, though often the distinction appears more learned than inherited.
START
The low vowel in words like START – like the low vowels in non-pre-/r/ position
(e.g. TRAP, LOT) – typically displays a considerably more fronted articulation in
NfldE than that found in mainland Canadian varieties. For many speakers, rep-
resenting the full social spectrum, the realization is [æ$]. Some urban, younger
and more educated Newfoundland residents, however, utilize a lower or more
retracted vowel, in the region of [a], [a$] or [%].
NORTH, FORCE
These two sets are merged for most speakers of NfldE, with usual pronunciations
of [o] or [ç®]. Older working-class (especially rural) speakers, however, display a
variable tendency towards lowering, fronting and unrounding of the pre-/r/ vowel
in words such as morning, corner, and cork, resulting in such highly stigmatized
pronunciations as [] or [a]. For such speakers, then, the range of articulation of
the NORTH set may overlap with that of the START set in casual speech; the FORCE
set, however, may remain distinct, in that it does not exhibit full lowering and
unrounding (see, e.g., Colbourne 1982).
CURE
Many speakers of NfldE display, in casual styles at least, a merger of CURE items
with those belonging to the NORTH/FORCE set: all (e.g. tour, tore) are articulated
with [o] or [ç®]. More educated speakers may make the distinction in the standard
manner, but – as in the case of /ir/ and /er – the /ur/-/or/ opposition tends to be a
learned rather than a naturally acquired phenomenon in NfldE.
NURSE
Most speakers of NfldE realize stressed syllablic /r/ as in nurse or fur in the stan-
dard North American fashion, as [] or []. Among more traditional speakers
in Irish-settled areas, this vowel has a distinct quality which may derive from a
greater degree of retroflexion than the norm, along with variable rounding and
retraction, resulting in [ç_®] or [√®].
MARRY, MERRY, MARY

While the MERRY/MARY sets are merged for virtually all Newfoundlanders, many
preserve the MARRY ([æ]) vs. MERRY/MARY ([e] or []) distinction. Younger,
particularly urban, Newfoundlanders, however, are losing this contrast, since many
are innovating in the general North American direction of raising of [æ] in MARRY
words, e.g. guarantee. Some conservative and older speakers display a retracted
[] or [√®]-like realization in the MERRY set (e.g. berry, very, bury); retraction to a
[/√]-like vowel may occur in the MARRY set, though much more rarely. However,
centralization and retraction are increasingly recessive in NfldE.
2.5. Unstressed vowels

happY
As elsewhere in Canada, speakers of NfldE use a tense high [i] rather than lax []
in words containing a final unstressed high front vowel. Among conservative rural
speakers in English-settled areas of the province, tense [i] was also a possible articu-
lation of the word-final unstressed vowel in such lexical items as follow and potato.
Today, however, this feature is highly recessive. Tense [i] is also found in traditional
vernacular speech as an unstressed variant of the lexical items my and by, which in
stressed position are realized in the standard fashion, as the diphthong [a].
lettER
The unstressed syllabic /r/ of the lettER set has the same set of phonetic realiza-
tions as the stressed syllabic /r/ of the NURSE set. These include extra retroflexion,
retraction and variable rounding in Irish-settled areas.
horsES/commA
In NfldE, the unstressed vowel of horsES is generally higher and more fronted than
the unstressed syllable-final vowel of commA: as elsewhere in North America, the
former is articulated in the range of [] or [&], while realizations of the latter are
more []-like. As in many other varieties, this opposition distinguishes ‘im (= him)
376 Sandra Clarke
and ‘em (= them) in sequences like Give ‘im a book and Give ‘em a book. Howev-
er, in many phonetic environments the two vowels may be pronounced identically,
as in the unstressed syllables of pig it and bigot.
2.6. Vowels: Lexical distribution

Several patterns of lexical distribution affecting the FOOT, STRUT and GOOSE sets dif-
ferentiate NfldE, particularly its conservative and rural varieties, from StCanE, though
these patterns are not unknown on the Canadian mainland. Firstly, the lexical inci-
dence of the FOOT and STRUT classes in NfldE does not coincide with their lexical
distribution in contemporary StE. A number of words nowadays articulated with [
]
belong in the STRUT set for conservative speakers of NfldE; these include put, took and
look. Likewise, many speakers, primarily in English-settled areas of the province, dis-
play the use of the LOT rather than the STRUT vowel in un- sequences, e.g. understand,
undo, untie. Finally, a small number of lexical items which are generally articulated
with the high back tense vowel of GOOSE in contemporary standard varieties are often
found with the high back lax vowel of FOOT in NfldE, particularly among older speak-
ers. These tend to be restricted to environments involving a following nasal or a labio-
dental fricative, notably room, broom, groom, spoon, roof, hoof (yet not moon or proof).
Laxing also occurs sporadically in other environments, e.g. before /l/ in foolish.
3. Consonants
TH
Throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, both / / and / / regularly occur in casual
speech as the alveolar stops [t] and [d], or the affricates [t ] and [d ]; in unstressed
function words such as the, a stop realization for / / is not uncommon even among
middle-class urban speakers. In rural communities of the Irish-settled Avalon, dental
and postdental variants, both stop and fricative, occur variably among traditional
speakers, who may thereby maintain the phonemic contrast with alveolar /t/ and /d/.
In rural areas of the province settled by the SW English, / / and / / in non-word-ini-
tial position are occasionally articulated as [f] and [v] e.g. in bath, Matthew, breathe,
father. A highly stigmatized [s] articulation for non-initial / / has also been noted
in one such area; its voiced counterpart [z] does not occur, however. In two lexical
items – a’r (= either, meaning any), na’r (= neither, meaning none) – medial / / is
deleted by traditional speakers (as occasionally in other such items, e.g. whether).
H
Vernacular varieties of NfldE of SW English origin are characterized by an /h/ pat-
terning very different from the lexically-inherited pattern of standard English. In
these varieties, /h/ is not a segmental phoneme but rather, displays a conditioned
phonotactic distribution: [h] may be inserted before any syllable-initial vowel, the
likelihood of insertion increasing when this vowel occurs in a stressed syllable,
and when it is preceded by another vocalic segment. Thus each of the phonetic
sequences [dæt'h] and [dæ#'] may represent either that hair or that air. H-in-
sertion in the latter type of sequence is highly stigmatized, however; possibly as
a consequence, some speakers in English-settled areas exhibit a simple tendency
towards syllable-onset h-deletion in all environments.
On the Irish Avalon, and in all standard varieties of NfldE, /h/ patterning is lexi-
cally determined, just as in standard English. The sole exception, in Irish-settled
areas, is the pronunciation of the name of the letter h as haitch.
R
Rhoticity is the norm in NfldE. That said, a largely English-settled area in Concep-
tion Bay – located on the Avalon peninsula west of the capital, St. Johns – displays
variable postvocalic /r/ deletion in syllable codas, e.g. there, far, four. This feature is
locally stigmatized, yet continues to characterize the speech of some younger resi-
dents of the area, notably working-class males. It also occurs, though much less fre-
quently, in rural communities within the greater St. John’s metropolitan area. South
of the capital, on the exclusively Irish-settled Avalon, traditional speakers in several
rural communities likewise display a tendency towards r-deletion in syllable coda
position. These are communities that in earlier times may have been characterized
by a (highly marked) uvular pronunciation of r (cf. Hickey 2002: 296–297).
Elsewhere on the island and in Labrador, a number of traditional speakers from
a range of communities display a variable tendency to postvocalic r-deletion in
unstressed syllables (not only in lettER-words, but also in such cases as unstressed
there’s). For a small set of lexical items, an r-less pronunciation is common, as
in the first syllable of partridgeberry (reanalysed by some as patchyberry). Con-
versely, some English-settled areas of the province display the now recessive fea-
ture of hyperrhoticity in the form of r-insertion in unstressed syllables following
[] (as in tuna, fellow, tomorrow); r-insertion remains fairly common, however, in
the stressed syllable of Chicago (and less so in wash).
L
In most urban NfldE, as well as in areas of the province settled by the southwest
English, postvocalic /l/ is articulated as a “dark” or velar contoid, as is the norm
elsewhere in North America. In some areas of English-settled Newfoundland, this
dark /l/ is variably vocalized, or deleted. Deletion seems most frequent after low
vowels (e.g. fall) and in consonant clusters (e.g. myself); occasionally, in clusters,
/l/ is deleted outside of syllable-coda position, e.g. in the word only. In other en-
vironments (e.g. coal, fell), vocalization to a mid to high back rounded [o], [
], or
unrounded [(] occurs variably. While deletion and vocalization appear primarily
a rural phenomenon in Newfoundland, they are also observable among young-
378 Sandra Clarke
er residents of the capital, St. John’s. The traditional speech of St. John’s and
the Irish Avalon, however, is characterized by a “clear” or palatal articulation of
postvocalic /l/, as are conservative varieties spoken on the southwest coast of the
island, an area characterized by French, Scots and Irish settlement. Today, in all
these areas, palatal variants are most associated with older speakers.
T
Posttonic intervocalic or pre-sonorant /t/ (as in Betty and water) is typically real-
ized in NfldE as a flap, as in other North American varieties. In more careful styles,
and particularly among older middle class speakers, it may be realized as a voice-
less aspirated stop. On the Irish Avalon, the traditional variant (now associated
more with older speakers, as well as female speech) is the alveolar slit fricative [t)];
occasionally the realization is [h], as in Saturday. The slit fricative occurs most
frequently, however, in word-final pre-pausal position, e.g. hit, bet.
As elsewhere in Canada, a glottal stop variant occurs before syllabic /n/ (e.g. cot-
ton); in NfldE, however, a glottal realization is found variably before syllabic /l/, as in
bottle (and much more rarely, syllabic /r/, as in gutter). Glottalization of /t/ may also
occur in syllable onset position between sonorants (e.g. partridge, mortal, country),
and in coda position in other than a pre-vocoid environment, e.g. bootless, football.
WH
In NfldE, there is an absence of contrast in pairs such as which and witch, both
being pronounced with [w]. Voiceless [*] is extremely rare; its occasional use
appears to be in imitation of mainland North American models.
JU, HU
After coronal stops (e.g. tune, new), the usual variant is glideless [u], though glided
[ju] also occurs, particularly in formal styles. In NfldE, /t/ and /d/ before historical
/ju/ are often affricated in vernacular speech: thus Tuesday is often heard as [tuzdi],
due as [du] and stupid as [stup&d]. In hu- sequences (e.g. human), most Newfound-
landers likewise display glide reduction, i.e. absence of voiceless aspirated [hj]; even
well-educated speakers may exhibit no contrast in such pairs as Hugh and you.
S, SH, CH
In some parts of Newfoundland other than the Irish Avalon (especially the south-
western and western areas of the island), the alveolar fricative [s] is occasionally
pronounced as alveopalatal [] in word-initial consonant clusters (as in stutter
and slap). An unusual, and recessive, feature on parts of the southwest coast is
the (variable) pronunciation of the voiceless alveopalatal fricative /t/ as the cor-
responding alveopalatal fricative [], in word-initial position only; this results in
such realizations as shicken for chicken.
Consonant sequences: Deletion and insertion

Vernacular NfldE exhibits extensive consonant cluster reduction. As in many other
varieties, /t/ and /d/ deletion is frequent in syllable-coda position following a homor-
ganic obstruent, nasal or liquid, e.g. just, breakfast, went, ground, wild. For some old-
fashioned or “deep” vernacular speakers, this reduction applies not only in pre-conso-
nant or pre-pause position, but also before vowels, suggesting absence of final stops
in such clusters in underlying lexical entries, particularly when these are not subject
to the effects of a following morpheme boundary. Single consonants in syllable-coda
position are also subject to deletion in a number of (unstressed) words, notably with,
of, give. (In a handful, however, /t/ may be added, as in cliff pronounced [klft] and
skiff, [skft].) In syllable onsets following an obstruent, liquids may undergo deletion,
particularly when the syllable is unstressed: thus from may be pronounced [fm], and
/l/ may be absent in the first syllable of the place-name Placentia.
Certain consonant sequences, on the contrary, tend to promote vowel epenthesis
in conservative NfldE. These include non-homorganic syllable-coda clusters con-
sisting of /l/ + non-coronal, as in elm pronounced ellum and kelk (a regional English
word meaning ‘stone’) pronounced [khlk] (‘a stone anchor’). The syllable-final
clusters -sp, -st, -sk may display epenthetic [] insertion before the noun plural
marker in the speech of conservative rural Newfoundlanders, so that desk may be
pronounced [dEsk´z] (with alternative realizations, through deletion/assimilation,
of [dEs(˘)´z] and even unmarked [dEs˘]). More rarely, epenthesis is found after /r/,
as in the conservative Irish Avalon disyllabic pronunciation of barm (‘yeast’).
Consonant devoicing
In Irish-settled areas of Newfoundland, non-word-initial fricatives may be de-
voiced, as in live, choose, and pleasure. While the same tendency occurs in con-
servative speech throughout the province in some plural lexical items, including
reflexives (e.g. ourselfs, theirselfs, wifes, lifes), these cases probably result from
analogy with the singular rather than from an inherited phonological tendency, at
least elsewhere than the Irish Avalon. Recessive devoicing is also found occasion-
ally in fricative + oral stop sequences, as in roused pronounced with syllable-coda
[st] and shoved with [ft]. Throughout the province, likewise, conservative speak-
ers may exhibit variable post-sonorant /d/ devoicing (cf. Hickey 2002: 301) after
/n/ and /l/, as in hold [(h)o˘lt] (got holt to ‘em) and killed [khIlt].
Sibilant assimilation
Traditional speakers in English-settled areas of the province display assimilation
of /z/ to /d/ before syllabic /n/. Just as in the southwest of England, however, this
assimilation is restricted to contracted negatives of the verb be, i.e. (it) isn’t >
[(t)Idn`], (it) wasn’t >[(t)w√dn`]. A similar phenomenon occurs for the lexical items
seven and eleven, which are variably pronounced with the sequence [bm].
380 Sandra Clarke
Recessive consonant features

Varieties of NfldE with ancestry in southwest England display several consonant fea-
tures which are today highly recessive. These include syllable-initial fricative voic-
ing (e.g. fan pronounced van, said pronounced zaid); syllable initial glide insertion,
e.g. (h)ear pronounced like year, other pronounced yuther; and variable deletion of
syllable-initial /w/ (e.g. wood pronounced [Ud]), yet its insertion before certain back
vowels, e.g. coil pronounced [kwçIl]. Somewhat more frequent in such varieties is
(inherited) metathesis in s+stop as well as CrV sequences, e.g. wasp pronounced
waps, children pronounced chil(d)ern. In a few southern Labrador communities, syl-
lable-initial /v/ (e.g. vegetable) is pronounced by older speakers as a bilabial [w].
4. Prosodic features
Little research has been conducted into the prosodic aspects of NfldE. A popular
observation, however, is that Newfoundlanders “talk fast”, and many traditional and
vernacular speakers exhibit a tendency towards allegro speech. This results in a
high rate of application of such phonological processes as segment deletion and
assimilation. For example, there is considerable elision of unstressed vowels: items
like electric, expect, according, away are regularly articulated without initial vowel.
Likewise, the (unstressed) vowel of it is often deleted before auxiliary and copula
verbs, resulting in such old-fashioned realizations as ‘twill for it will, ‘twas for it was,
and ‘tis rather than it’s. Apheresis is also common in initial unstressed syllables; thus
before is often pronounced as ‘fore, and instead, as ‘stead. In conservative NfldE,
particularly in generations past, the vowel of the definite article the (in which th- was
typically pronounced as a stop) was often elided before a vowel, resulting in such
sequences as d’en’ for the end. In addition, there is a rhythmic tendency towards
open syllables, as in the pronunciation of at all as a # tall, with aspirated [t].
Intonation patterns associated with conservative and vernacular NfldE have yet
to be described in any detail (yet see Paddock 1981). Distinctive “Irish” vs. “Eng-
lish” patterns appear to exist, both of which differ from those encountered in much
of mainland Canada. As to stress, traditional speakers in Irish-settled areas of the
province display a now recessive tendency towards Irish-like non-initial syllable
stress in words like inteRESTed, separATE, and appreciATE.
One distinctive feature of NfldE – a feature shared with varieties spoken in
Canada’s Maritime provinces, and to a much smaller degree parts of New Eng-
land – is the use of the ingressively articulated discourse particles yeah, mm and
no. Ingressives are more typical of women’s than men’s speech, and appear to be
somewhat less frequent among younger generations. In contemporary NfldE, they
are found among speakers of all social levels.
5. Current issues
Though NfldE is relatively well described by comparison to CanE, much linguis-

tic work remains to be done. Among the research needed is the investigation of
vowel changes in contemporary varieties, and the degree to which these are in-
fluenced by ongoing change on the Canadian mainland. Further, the remarkably
conservative nature of certain varieties of NfldE has much to offer from a socio-
historical perspective, in terms of insights into the structure of earlier vernacular
regional varieties spoken in southwest Britain and southeastern Ireland – varieties
that also played a major role in the early British colonization of America and the
Caribbean.
*
I would very much like to thank my colleagues Robert Hollett and Philip Hiscock for the
invaluable assistance that our joint work on the transcription of vernacular Newfoundland
English has provided me, along with the Memorial University Folklore and Language
Archive for allowing us access to its tape collection. I also extend sincere thanks to
Harold Paddock for his many insights into Newfoundland English over the years. Both
this chapter and the chapter on Newfoundland morphology and syntax would not have
been possible without the data collected by a number of graduate and advanced under-
graduate students in Linguistics at Memorial University. While I am enormously grateful
to them all, I would like to thank in particular Catherine Lanari for allowing me access
to her taped corpus of spoken Burin-area English.
Selected references
ROM.
Clarke, Sandra
1991 Phonological variation and recent language change in St. John’s English. In:
Cheshire (ed.), 108–122.
fc. The legacy of British and Irish English in Newfoundland. In: Hickey (ed.).
Clarke, Sandra, Ford Elms and Amani Youssef
1995 The third dialect of English: Some Canadian evidence. Language Variation
Colbourne, B. Wade
1982 A sociolinguistic study of Long Island, Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland. M.A.
thesis, Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Halpert, Herbert and J.D.A. Widdowson
1996 Folktales of Newfoundland, Volumes I and II. (Publications of the American
Folklore Society.) St. John’s, Newfoundland: Breakwater.
Hickey, Raymond
2002 The Atlantic edge: The relationship between Irish English and Newfoundland
English. English World-Wide 23: 283–316.
382 Sandra Clarke
Lanari, Catherine E. Penney

1994 A sociolinguistic study of the Burin region of Newfoundland. M.A. thesis,
Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Noseworthy, Ronald G.
1971 A dialect survey of Grand Bank, Newfoundland. M.A. thesis, Department of
Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Paddock, Harold
1981 A Dialect Survey of Carbonear, Newfoundland. (Publication of the American
Dialect Society 68.) University, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Seary, E.R., G.M. Story and W.J. Kirwin
1968 The Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland: An Ethnolinguistic Study. (Bulletin
No. 219.) Ottawa: National Museum.
Story, G.M., W.J. Kirwin and J.D.A. Widdowson
[1982] Dictionary of Newfoundland English. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
1990 (Online version at www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary)
African American Vernacular English: phonology
Walter F. Edwards
1. Introduction
The variety of English known as AAVE (African-American Vernacular English)

is spoken throughout the United States and in some parts of Canada (including
Nova Scotia) primarily by African Americans. The variety is spoken most consis-
tently by working-class African Americans, particularly in urban areas. The vast
majority of middle class African Americans are bi-dialectal in AAVE and Stan-
dard American English (StAmE) and use AAVE in appropriate social contexts
through a mechanism scholars have characterized as style-shifting (see Baugh
1983: 58). AAVE co-exists with the colloquial StAmE typically spoken by mid-
dle class African Americans and middle class whites; and with white vernacular
American English typically spoken by working class whites, with both StAmE
and white vernacular American English enjoying significantly more social pres-
tige than AAVE. For this reason AAVE exhibits linguistic influences from both
StAmE and white vernacular American English. Thus, in addition to the broad
AAVE vernacular, the so-called basilect, we find StAmE and white vernacular
American English-influenced varieties called the mesolect and the acrolect with
the latter construct being very close to StAmE (Stewart 1968) and the former an
intermediate variety. This chapter will describe the phonological characteristics of
the broad AAVE vernacular in the United States, excluding the varieties of the Ca-
ribbean and the Gullah variety spoken in the coastal Carolina area (both of which,
some argue, should also be included under the umbrella of AAVE).
Historically, AAVE has been thought to have derived from some combination
of native African languages and historic dialects of English. Two competing theo-
retical positions on the provenance of AAVE currently hold sway in the literature.
The African substratum position, sometimes called the creolist position (Rickford
and Rickford 2000; Rickford 1999), proposes that AAVE is the descendant of the
creole language synthesis smelted on southern plantations in ante-bellum Amer-
ica. From this perspective, when African slaves were brought to early America,
directly or via the Caribbean, they arrived speaking a variety of African languages,
probably including an English-based pidgin that was current on coastal West Af-
rica during the slave-trading era. Slaves, it is assumed, had little or no exposure
to the English of their owners; thus, they fashioned the original creole by combin-
ing the grammatical and phonological resources of their African languages with
the English pidgin structures, which themselves were strongly influenced under-
384 Walter F. Edwards
lyingly by African linguistic habits. It is this early AAVE that has evolved to the
present AAVE.
A second view, the English-origins position, held by Poplack (2000) and others, ar-
gues that when these languages came into contact, the slaves learned more or less the
English varieties spoken by their white owners. Under this theory, the differences we
now see between mainstream white AmE and AAVE are due to preserved features
of preexisting nonstandard English variants. These theories have stimulated vigorous
debate in recent years, regarding both the origins and the current structure of AAVE.
However, the details of these arguments will not be discussed in depth here. What
is generally agreed upon is that AAVE in the United States originated in the slave
plantations of the antebellum South and shares a number of phonological and gram-
matical features with Southern dialects of American English. Whether the southern
English absorbed these features from Early AAVE or vice versa is the subject of con-
tinuing research and debate. One notes, however, that southern vernacular English is
most authentically spoken in areas where large plantations once flourished and which,
subsequently, experienced some racial integration soon after the Civil War, when
poor whites and ex-slaves became neighboring sharecroppers (Bailey 2001).
In the early parts of the 20th century, a “Great Migration” of African Americans
and whites toward northern cities created new African American communities in
many urban centers and brought AAVE to these cities. The isolation of AAVE on
the basis of racial segregation, which continues up to today in many urban envi-
ronments, divided working class inner-city African Americans from StAmE and
white vernacular American English speaking whites in the big northern cities. It
is this isolation that led to the preservation of AAVE and partially explains its ap-
parent homogeneity, which would not otherwise be expected given the geographic
distances between AAVE enclaves in northern cities such as Chicago, Cleveland
and Philadelphia. Scholars such as Huang (2000) have suggested that the post-
1960s desegregation is leading AAVE to become more similar to StAmE, while
others (e.g., Labov 1994) see the two varieties becoming more distinct.
2. Phonemic systems of AAVE
African-American Vernacular English differs from other English dialects in gram-

mar and morphology (see Wolfram, other volume) as well as in phonology. To
some extent, phonological characteristics are intertwined with morphological ones,
so we shall characterize AAVE through a “bottom-up” description, beginning with
a phonemic inventory and individual phonotactic features and ending with a brief
discussion of how these phonological characteristics influence the surface morphol-
ogy of AAVE. We will refer to phonological characteristics in terms of a typologi-
cal comparison with StAmE. This in no way implies that AAVE is a less legitimate,
logical, or systematic language variety. Therefore, terms such as “consonant cluster
African American Vernacular English: phonology 385
simplification” or “deletion” of certain phonemes should be thought of as relative

to the American idealized language type, rather than the simplification or deletion
of sounds that should exist. The sound system of AAVE in many cases does not
require the same sounds in the same contexts that StAmE does.
The basic phonemic span of AAVE is much the same as in other varieties in
English. Table 1 charts the vowels of AAVE according to their place of articula-
tion. Table 2 shows the consonants of AAVE listed according to their articulatory
features. (Voiced consonants are in italic type.)
Table 1. Vowels of AAVE
front central back

close i & u

o
close mid e a
o
ç
open mid
a
æ
open a
Table 2. Consonants of AAVE

labial/labiodental dental/alveolar palatal velar/glottal
stops pb td k
fricatives fv sz h
affricates t d
nasals m n
liquids l r
semivowels w j
3. Phonetic realizations
Many of the vowel and consonant phonemes in tables 1 and 2 have AAVE allo-
phones that are different from StAmE and are either unique to AAVE or are shared
by other non-standard American dialects. The Northern Cities Chain Shift is a
phenomenon affecting the speech of white speakers in the northern United States.
Its essential features are the tensing and raising of [æ] to [], the backing of [] to
[], the lowering of [ç] to [a], and the fronting of [a] to [æ]. According to Labov
(1994), AAVE speakers are not participating in this shift.
The vowel system of AAVE differs from other American English varieties in
several ways, although it does share some of its features with Southern white va-
rieties. In table 3 we display and comment on some of the more frequently noted
AAVE variations from StAmE.
Table 3. Phonetic realization of selected AAVE vowels
AAVE vowel AAVE pattern AAVE example Comment
//, // Merged before nasals [pn] ‘pen’, ‘pin’ Widespread in the South.
The tensing and raising of this
lower high, lax vowel is consistent
Raised and diphthongized with the Southern Shift (Labov
to [i] in some words, [kidz], [sins], 1994). Interestingly, however,
//
including kids, since, did [did] [] is lowered to [æ], contra the
Southern Shift, in specific words
including thing [ æ].
The tensing and raising of this
Raised and diphthongized
lower high, lax vowel is consistent
// to [i] in some words [win], [hid] with the Southern Shift (Labov
including when, head
1994).
According to Labov (1994), this is
not associated with the Northern
Raising and fronting of
Cities Chain Shift. Edwards and
this sound towards [],
Diergard (2001) measured F1 and
/æ/ especially before words [En], [b] F2 acoustic values for the vowel
with following nasals such
in Ann as high and front as 458.5
as Ann and bang
and 2991.5 respectively for some
AAVE speakers.
Laxing and lower-
ing of this vowel to []
This habit does not seem general
when it is followed by a
[e] [sm],[sn] enough to be an expression of the
nasal consonant or a
Southern Shift.
heterosyllabic vowel, as in
same or saying
The glide reduction and
monophthongization of
this diphthong occurs This habit is extending to words in
especially before nasals, [ma:n], [ha], which [a] is followed a voiceless
[a]
pauses and voiced ob- [sla:d] obstruent. Thus [wa:t] white.
struents. Words affected
include mine, hi, slide.
Table 4 summarizes the realization of the AAVE vowels, based on Wells’ system
of lexical sets.
Table 4. Vowel pronunciations in AAVE based on Well’s lexical set

StAmE equivalents taken from www.ic.arizona.edu/~anth383.lexicalsets.html
AAVE AAVE StAmE

PALM /pæm/ /æ/ //
TRAP /tæp/+/tæ/ /æ/ /æ/
BATH /bæ /+/bæt/ /æ/ /æ/
MOUTH /mæ /+/mæt/ /æ/ /a
/
SQUARE /skwæ/+/skæ/ /æ/ /r/, /ær/
LOT /lt/, /l/ // //
CLOTH /kl /+,/klt/ // /ç/
START /stt/ // /ar/
PRICE /prs/ // /a/
NEAR /ni-/, /nr/ /-/, /r/ /r/
NURSE /n-s/, /nrs/ /-/, /r/ /0/
KIT /kit/ , /kit/ /i/,+/i/ //
DRESS /drs/ // //
FLEECE /fls/ // /i/
FACE /fes/, /feis/ /e/ /e/
STRUT /stt/, /st/ // //
FOOT /f
t/, /f
/ /
/ /
/
CURE /k
/ /
/ /
r/
NORTH /nç´T/, /nç´f/ /ç´/ /ç˘/
FORCE /fç´s/ /ç´/ /or/
THOUGHT / çUt/, / çU// /çU/ /ç/
GOAT /ot/, /o/ /o/ /o/
GOOSE /us/ /u/ /u/
CHOICE /tos/ /o/ /çI/
The entries on Table 5 give examples of some distinctive AAVE consonantal al-
lophones.
Table 5. Phonetic realization of consonants of AAVE

Do AAVE and Southern
AAVE consonants
Example Variant pronunciation white vernacular dialect AAVE realizations
and clusters
share feature?
Sounds sometimes re-
alized as glottal stops; not [nç/]
/t/,/d/in syllable not, bad /d/ is frequently de- No bad [bæt] [bæ]
codas voiced to /t/ or deleted bid [bt], [b]
in this environment good [
t], [
]
isn’t,
business, Sounds are fronted and Yes isn’t [dnt]
/z/, /v/ seven, stopped before nasals business [bdns]
eleven seven [sebn]
Word initially and
word finally, these
fricatives are frequently thing [t]
realized as stops, i.e. those [doz]
[t] and [d] respectively. with [wt]
thing, Yes. Most frequent in tenth [tnt]
/ /,/ / Word-internally and
those AAVE bath [bæf]
word finally, the voice-
less interdental fricative faith [fe1f]
is sometimes realized mother
as [f] and the voiced [mv], [mvr]
segment realized as [v]
Frequently vocalized
or deleted in post-vo-
calic, pre-consonantal
and word final envi-
ronments. The deletion
or vocalization most floor [flo], [flo]
floor, often takes place after Yes. Most frequent in bird [b-d], [brd]
/r/ bird non-central vowels AAVE record [rekd],
in unstressed posi- [rk-d], [rkrd]
tions; and least often Carol [kl]
after central vowels in
stressed positions. The
sound is often deleted
between vowels also.
Frequently vocalized or
deleted in post-vocalic,
pre-consonantal and
word final positions.
When the sound is not
realized as [l] it is more help [hp]
frequently vocalized bell [bw]
than deleted. The sound Yes. Most frequent in roll [ro]
/l/ help
is most frequently AAVE school [skuw]
deleted before the mid feel [fil], [fiw]
front vowels [e] and football [f
bçw]
[e].Vocalization of [l]
as [w] most frequently
occurs after back vowels.
Deletion seldom occurs
before high front vowels.
Table 5. (continued) Phonetic realization of consonants of AAVE
Do AAVE and Southern

AAVE consonants
Example Variant pronunciation white vernacular dialect AAVE realizations
and clusters
share feature?
yet Following [u] this sound No computer [kmput]

/j/
is sometimes deleted beautiful [butfl]
This sound and other
nasals may be deleted
when syllable final,
with the nasality trans-
ferred to the preceding
man vowel. This process of No man [mæ2n]
/n/
deleting single conso- bang [bæ2]
nants in syllable coda
positions also affects
other sounds in spe-
cific lexical items.
The second consonant
in a cluster is frequently
deleted when the two
consonants share the
same voicing feature.
The deletion most
frequently takes place
when the cluster ends a
monomorphemic word.
/t/, /d/ and other The deletion occurs Yes. Most frequent in and [æn]
consonants in cold, left left [lf]
most frequently when AAVE
word final clusters the monomorphemic desk [ds]
word is followed by a
word that begins with
an obstruent consonant,
and occurs least often
when a cluster ends a
bimorphemic word and
is followed by a word
that begins with a vowel.
ask, In specific words the ask [æks]
/s/+ stop Yes
grasp cluster metathesizes. grasp [ræps]
/k/, /t/ in str street In some words the [t] No street [skrit]
clusters is backed to [k].
4. Stress, pitch, intonation and phonotactic patterns
In informal speech, AAVE speakers often move the stress to the first syllable of a
word which in StAmE carries stress on some other syllable. This usually occurs
in, but is not restricted to, bisyllabic words, the first syllable of which is open, as
in police ['po3lis], Detroit ['di3trot], and Tennessee ['t 3n 3si]. In very informal
speech, AAVE speakers use fore- stressing frequently. Thus, words like define,
produce, revise and detain are often fore- stressed in the vernacular (Baugh 1983:
63). Intonational stress in sentences often carries meaning. For example, if [bn]
is not stressed, it does not signify remote past as it does in sentences where it is
stressed.
Studies to determine if the unique intonation contours occurring in AAVE are
associated with specific sentence types have found that yes-no questions some-
times omit the final rise, often using a level or falling contour at the end of the
question (Green 2002; Tarone 1972, 1973).
According to Tarone (1972, 1973), AAVE speakers frequently employ a wide
pitch range, often using the falsetto register to signal various modalities, including
anger, humor, or skepticism. However, this area is poorly studied, and has not been
formally linked to pitch and tone patterns of West African languages (Green 2002).
Word-final clusters such as sk and nd are frequently produced as s and n. Thus,
mask may be pronounced [mæs] and land may be pronounced [læn]. Two competing
theories for the origin of this phenomenon exist. The first approach claims this occurs
because of a robust deletion rule of consonant clusters. The Africanist approach claims
the “missing” consonant to be nonexistent because West African languages do not
have word-final clusters, and in certain environments (such as before a word-initial
vowel) the final consonant is added to the following lexical item. Again, the details of
these theories will not be debated here. It should be noted that this phenomenon occurs
for many different clusters, including ld, sp, kd, ft, and so on (Green 2002).
5. Phonology and grammar
Some of the phonological processes described above have consequences for the
grammar of AAVE. The tendency of AAVE speakers to drop the final [t] or [d]
in tautosyllabic two-member clusters with the same voicing specification leads to
the loss on the surface of grammatical information. Thus the surface realization of
[wk] “walk” for underlying [wkt] leaves the past morpheme unexpressed seg-
mentally. However, that information is retrieved from the context by any addressee
familiar with the AAVE dialect. Similarly, the word tries might be uttered as [tra]
or [tra:] for [traz] by an AAVE speaker who naturally drops the final [z], even
though that [z] carries the grammatical information that the subject of the sentence
is singular. This grammatical fact is signaled elsewhere in the sentence or discourse
and is automatically retrieved by an interlocutor who is familiar with AAVE. Thus,
sentences such as “I see how he try to get a job” or “He try to get a trade” (third
person), “Plus these kids, these orphanage kid ...” (plural), and “Every day ... I see
my cousin, or go to my uncle or somebody house” (possessive), would be considered
anomalous to a non-AAVE speaking listener although they are perfectly grammati-
cal within AAVE.
6. Discussion
As we see in tables 1-5, AAVE shares a basic sound system with most varieties
of English. However, the rules for the combining of these sounds differ in notable
ways. In fact, phonological markers of AAVE are noticeable features to the ears of
those who speak other English varieties.
Historically, vowel systems of English have been known to systematically shift,
with a whole chain of vowels moving uniformly in one direction or other in vowel
space. Recent research by William Labov and his associates has shown that there
are two major ongoing chain shifts affecting the vowels in American speech: the
Southern Shift and the Northern Cities Chain Shift (Labov 1994). However this
same research has proposed that African Americans are not participating in these
chain shifts. This proposal is supported by several studies. For example, recent
research conducted in Detroit by the author of this entry revealed that most AAVE
speakers in the sample had vowel pronunciations quite different from what would
be expected if they were participating in the Northern Cities Chain Shift. For
instance, he observed [did] for [dd], [t] for [t], [kidz] for [kds], [win]
for [wn] and [nks] for [nks]. These patterns indicate that the lax front vowels
of the AAVE speakers in the sample were raised and tense, contrary to NCCS pat-
terns that involve the lowering of [] and [].
Another interesting characteristic of the AAVE phonology is the nasalization
of vowels in words such as [man] (for man). Nasal vowels in these environments
are reminiscent of the fact that vowel nasality is phonemic in a number of African
languages.
7. Conclusion
The sound system of AAVE is similar to other English varieties in the United States.
However, many of the phonemes of AAVE obey different phonetic rules than other
American English systems. These differences are systematic and are part of the lin-
guistic continuum that exists for each individual AAVE speaker, making many of
these rules “optional” depending on sociolinguistic context. This entry summarized
the basic phonological system of the variety and some of the better known phonetic
principles that distinguish the AAVE variety from other dialects. Much work re-
mains to be done on AAVE phonology, including work on prosody and intonation.
Selected references
ROM.
Bailey, Guy
2001 The relationship between African American and white vernaculars in the
American South: A sociocultural history and some phonological evidence. In:
Lanehart (ed.), 53–92.
Edwards, Walter and Nicola Diergardt
2001 Detroit AAVE and the Northern Cities Chain Shift. Paper delivered at NWAVE
conference at Michigan State University, 2001.
Green, Lisa
2002 African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Huang, Xiaozhao
2000 A Study of African-American Vernacular English in America’s “Middletown”:
Evidence of linguistic convergence. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen
Press.
Rickford, John and Russell Rickford
2000 Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. New York: Wiley.
Stewart, William
1968 Continuity and change in American negro dialects. The Florida FL Reporter
6; reprinted in: Walt Wolfram and N. Clarke (eds.), Black-White Speech
Relationships, 51–73. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Tarone, Elaine
1972 Aspects of intonation in vernacular white and black English speech. Ph.D. dis-
sertation, University of Washington.
1973 Aspects of intonation in Black English. American Speech 48: 29–36.
Gullah: phonology*
Tracey L. Weldon
1. Introduction
Also known as Geechee or Sea Island Creole, Gullah is spoken primarily along the
coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Early descriptions of Gullah were linguisti-
cally unfounded accounts that attributed the distinctive features of the variety to
laziness or physical limitations on the part of its speakers. However, dialectolo-
gists later debunked these myths by showing the systematic nature of the variety
and arguing that Gullah was an English dialect whose distinctive features were
retentions from earlier varieties of British English. Johnson (1930: 17), for ex-
ample, noted that “[a]s the analysis proceeds it will become more and more appar-
ent that practically every detail of the Gullah grammar and phonology is directly
descended from the midland and southern English dialects”. This theory was later
challenged by Lorenzo Dow Turner’s (1949) description of Africanisms in Gullah,
which inspired some scholars to argue that the Gullah system, rather than descend-
ing from English dialects, was primarily an African variety (see, e.g., Van Sertima
1976).
A more widely accepted view, however, is that Gullah emerged through a pro-
cess of language contact between African and English varieties spoken during the
Atlantic slave-trading era. During this time, African slaves, speaking a variety of
mutually non-intelligible languages, would have found an urgent need to com-
municate with one another and those that enslaved them. In response to this need,
they are believed to have formed contact varieties which drew upon the English
vocabulary of the British slave traders and plantation owners, while retaining pho-
nological and grammatical features from their own West African languages.
There has been some debate over whether the process of creolization that even-
tually led to Gullah took place on the American plantations themselves, or whether
the slaves arrived on these plantations already speaking a creole. Some have ar-
gued that Gullah, like other Atlantic creoles, may be traced back to a West African
Pidgin English (WAfPE), which was transported by slaves to the North American
plantations, where it was passed on to succeeding generations of slaves, eventually
creolizing into Gullah (see, e.g., Stewart 1968). Another theory is that a putative
Barbadian Creole spoken during the 17th century was the source of Gullah as
well as Jamaican Creole and Sranan (e.g., Cassidy 1980). This theory was based
on the observation that South Carolina, like Jamaica and Surinam, was initially
colonized by Barbadian settlers. Yet another theory traces the period of creoliza-
394 Tracey L. Weldon
tion back to 16th-century Africa, where a Guinea Coast Creole English (GCCE),
presumed to have been spoken along the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa, is
believed to have been the source of Gullah, as well as all of the Caribbean English
Creoles (see, e.g., Hancock 1980).
An examination of the sociodemographic information available led Mufwene
(1993) to argue that Gullah emerged in the Carolina colony between 1720 and
1750, i.e. 50 to 80 years after its initial settlement in 1670. This period in the
Carolina region was marked by the growth of the rice plantation industry, insti-
tutionalized segregation, and an African majority – conditions that would have
been conducive to the formation of a creole. Given this time frame, it is believed
that three linguistic components – creole, English, and African – would have been
most prominent in Gullah’s development (see Hancock 1980). The extent to which
already existing creoles influenced Gullah’s development remains controversial.
However, it may be assumed that some creole influence was present in its forma-
tion, introduced either by slaves brought over from the Caribbean or directly from
Africa. The English that influenced Gullah’s development was most likely spoken
by Europeans as well as Africans who were present in the Charles Town colony
during the early years of settlement (i.e., between 1670 and 1720) (see Mufwene
1993). And given the fact that the Charles Town colony was settled by Barbadian
planters, who came primarily from the southwestern region of England, the most
influential English dialects appear to have been those deriving from Southwest
England (see, e.g., Niles 1980).
Theories regarding the African element in Gullah are somewhat more con-
troversial. Several theories have derived from analyses of the data presented in
Turner (1949). Some scholars have pointed to a significant amount of influence
from the Kwa language family, spoken along parts of Southern Nigeria and the
African Gold Coast (e.g., Cassidy 1980; Alleyne 1980). Others have pointed to
the linguistic prominence of Kru and Mande languages, spoken along the coast of
Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (e.g., Hair 1965; Hancock 1980). Accord-
ing to Creel (1988: 29-30), most of the Africans brought into the South Carolina
region came from trading stations in four areas of the Guinea Coast – Congo-
Angola, Gambia, the Windward Coast (Sierra Leone and Liberia), and the Gold
Coast (Republic of Ghana). It is likely, therefore, that at least four primary African
language families contributed to Gullah’s development, namely Bantu from the
Congo-Angola region, Kru and Mande from Gambia and the Windward Coast,
and Kwa from the Gold Coast.
Perhaps the most extensive research done to date on the phonology of Gullah is
that presented in Turner ([1945] 1971), ([1949] 2002). The discussion below will,
therefore, depend heavily on Turner’s analyses, supplemented by the data that
were elicited for the current project.
Gullah: phonology 395
2. Sound system
2.1. Vowels
Table 1 summarizes some of the phonetic realizations of Gullah vowels. In each
case, the first symbol or set of symbols represents the pronunciations provided by
the speaker recorded for this project—an elderly African-American female basket
maker from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (see accompanying CD). Additional
symbols summarize observations made by Turner (1971, 2002) with regard to these
sounds. Since some changes are likely to have taken place in the Gullah sound sys-
tem since Turner’s fieldwork was conducted, any apparent differences in Turner’s
observations and those made with regard to the current data set are noted in the text.
It should also be noted that none of these sounds have been acoustically measured.
Table 1. Gullah vowels
KIT I¢ ~ I GOOSE u
DRESS E4 ~ E PRICE åI ~ åI
TRAP Q44 ~ a CHOICE çI ~ åI ~ åI
LOT A~Å MOUTH çU ~ åU
STRUT √ NEAR I ~ I´
FOOT U SQUARE E´
BATH Q44 ~ a START a
CLOTH o NORTH ç4
NURSE A~√ FORCE o
FLEECE i CURE jo
FACE e happY i~Æ
PALM Q44 ~ a lettER Œ ~ ´#
THOUGHT ç~Å horsES I
GOAT o commA ´ ~ ´#
GOAL o ~ oE
KIT
The speaker recorded for this project produces a fairly lowered variety of [I] which
approaches the positioning of [E]. According to Turner, a more retracted, central
vowel, which he describes by the symbol [I], is also occasionally heard when there
is an adjacent k, g, l, or r (1971: 125).
DRESS
As with [I], the current speaker’s [E] is also quite lowered, approaching the po-
sitioning of [Q]. Turner (1971) describes a more cardinal pronunciation, but ob-
serves that a more open variety occasionally occurs before nasals (especially in
Charleston, SC) and in all positions for one speaker from Harris Neck, Georgia
(125).
TRAP
For the current speaker, [Q] is lowered to a position approaching [a]. According
to Turner, [a] is practically cardinal in Gullah and is used instead of [Q] or [A],
which Turner describes as the General American (GA) pronunciation, henceforth
referred to by the label Standard American English (StAmE). Given the current
speaker’s pronunciation, however, it appears that [Q] has since been added to the
Gullah phonology, but in a more lowered position than that typically found in
StAmE phonologies.
LOT
While the current speaker’s vowel appears to be a low, back, unrounded [A], Turn-
er reports a more rounded [Å] for words such as pot, body, dog, and wash. He does,
however, observe that there are varying degrees of lip-rounding for this sound
(1971: 125–126; 2002: 18).
STRUT
Consistent with Turner’s observations, the vowel in STRUT for the current speaker
appears to be [√]. Turner describes the tongue position for this vowel in Gullah as be-
ing “slightly lower than for Cardinal [ç] and somewhat more advanced” (1971: 126).
FOOT
Also consistent with Turner’s observations, the current speaker’s vowel in FOOT
is [U]. Turner describes the tongue position for this vowel in Gullah as “slightly
higher than half-closed and … considerably advanced from the position required
for [u]” (1971: 126).
BATH
As noted above for TRAP, the vowel in BATH for the current speaker appears to be
a lowered [Q]. The vowel [a] is included in the table as well, however, in recogni-
tion of Turner’s observations (see TRAP discussion above).
CLOTH
The speaker recorded for this project produces a very rounded [o] for this word. It
is not entirely clear whether this represents a common pronunciation of this word
in Gullah, or whether the speaker is mistaking this word for clothe or even clothes.
As will be discussed in the section on consonants, the final fricative in this word
is produced as [s] rather than [T]. This might be an indication that this word was
mistaken for clothes or it might represent a phonological process in Gullah by
which voiceless interdental fricatives are replaced by voiceless alveolar fricatives.
The latter theory is supported by the fact that the same replacements are made in
BATH and, variably, in NORTH. Turner describes [o] in Gullah as “slightly above
cardinal” and “never diphthongized”. He also observes fully rounded lips for this
sound in Gullah (1971: 126).
NURSE
The vowel produced by the current speaker for NURSE is the low back unrounded
vowel [A]. Turner reports use of [√] in similar words such as bird and earth (2002:
20). Therefore, [√] might represent an alternative pronunciation here.
FLEECE
As in StAmE, the vowel produced by the current speaker for this sound is [i].
Turner describes this sound in Gullah as “practically cardinal” (2002: 15).
FACE
The vowel in this word appears to be the pure vowel [e]. Turner describes this
sound in Gullah as “slightly above cardinal” and “never diphthongized” (2002:
16; 1971: 125).
PALM
The speaker produces a lowered [Q] for this word. Turner, however, reports use of
[a], noting that several of his speakers used a variety of [a] that was slightly above
cardinal before and after plosives (1971: 125).
THOUGHT
For this word, the speaker produced the [ç] vowel. Turner describes words such
as brought and daughter as having the lower vowel [Å], noting that “[ç] is seldom
heard in Gullah” (2002: 18). However, the sound produced by the current speaker
seems higher than [Å], suggesting that [ç] has perhaps since been added to the
Gullah phonology.
GOAT
For this word, the vowel produced by the current speaker is the pure vowel [o].
See the discussion under CLOTH for Turner’s observations regarding this sound
in Gullah.
GOAL
Here the speaker appears to vary between the monophthong [o] and the diphthong
[oE]. Turner observed very few diphthongs in Gullah at the time that he conducted
his research. However, modern-day Gullah appears to exhibit quite a few diph-
thongs, as some of the examples to follow will show.
GOOSE
Consistent with Turner’s observations, the vowel produced by the current speaker
for this word is [u]. Turner describes this vowel as “practically cardinal”, but notes
that “an advanced variety occurs after alveolar consonants” (1971: 125–126).
PRICE
Another diphthong observed in Gullah is [åI], which is produced by the current
speaker in the word PRICE. According to Turner, the nucleus of this diphthong is
normally [Å]. However, he observes that it is advanced and raised to [å] when it
is followed by a voiceless consonant (as in PRICE) and often when it is preceded
by what Turner calls a “fricative r” (2002: 21). Turner uses the term “fricative r”
to refer to a “voiced post-alveolar fricative consonant” (2002: 28). It is not clear,
however, that this is the sound preceding the diphthong in PRICE. With regard to
the second member of this diphthong, Turner alternates between the symbols [I]
and the more retracted, central vowel [Æ] (1971: 125–126; 2002: 21).
CHOICE
For CHOICE, the current speaker uses the diphthong [çI]. However, Turner ob-
serves use of the diphthongs [åI] and [åÆ] as options for similar words (1971:
125–126; 2002: 21). Turner cites words such as boil, join, and boy, which he de-
scribes as having the surface diphthong [aI], with the nucleus advancing from an
underlying [Å]. It appears, however, that this group of words undergoes a nucleus
shift to [å] in pre-voiceless environments, comparable to that observed in words
such as die, mine, and side.
MOUTH
For the current speaker, the diphthong in MOUTH appears to be [çU]. Turner, how-
ever, cites the diphthong as [ÅU], again with the nucleus advanced and raised to [å]
in pre-voiceless environments (1971: 125–126; 2002: 21). One might also note in
the reading passage on the accompanying CD, that the speaker monophthongizes
the vowel in around, transcribed as [´®çn]. So it appears that the production of this
diphthong is variable.
NEAR
The speaker produces both the monophthong [I] and the diphthong [I´] for NEAR.
SQUARE
The diphthong [E´] is used by the current speaker for SQUARE.
START
The speaker produces the low, front vowel [a] (with no apparent r-coloring) for
START.
NORTH
For NORTH, the vowel [ç] is used by the current speaker, with r-coloring.
FORCE
For FORCE, the vowel [o] is used by the current speaker with no apparent r-color-
ing.
CURE
For CURE, the speaker produces [jo].
happY
The word happY ends in [i] for the current speaker. However, Turner observes “a
shorter variety of the central vowel [Æ]” occurring in the final open syllable of
certain words in Gullah (1971: 125).
lettER
For the current speaker, the word lettER appears to end in the vowel [Œ], with no
r-coloring. Turner claims, however, that [Œ] never occurs in his data. Instead, he ob-
serves two varieties of [´] – “a short one with a tongue position somewhat higher
than half-open” and “a fairly long one with a more retracted tongue position and
approximately half-open but more advanced and higher than that required for [√]”
(1971: 126). According to Turner, the latter variety, [´#], occurs in final syllables, in
words such as daughter and Martha. Turner’s analysis is somewhat confusing here,
however, since he claims that the longer variety [´#] is “used in the newer type of
speech to replace [√] by persons who try to distinguish stress” while the shorter vari-
ety [´(] “is always used in unstressed positions” (1971: 126). Presumably, the second
syllable in words such as Martha and daughter is unstressed, but gets transcribed by
Turner as [´#] rather than [´(] because of the word-final positioning of the vowel.
horsES
For the current speaker, the second vowel in horsES appears to be [I].
commA
The second vowel in commA appears to be somewhat less open than that produced
in lettER for the current speaker. It is, therefore, transcribed here as [´]. See the
discussion for lettER above, however, for Turner’s observations regarding [´] in
Gullah.
In addition to the observations made above, one might note a few additional dis-
tinctive vowel patterns observed by Turner (1971: 124–125). Keep in mind, how-
ever, that these observations may not apply to all, or even any, current Gullah pro-
nunciations, since several decades have passed since Turner conducted his field-
work. According to Turner, the vowel [i] is found in words such as hair, James,
raisin (first syllable), give, and itch. The vowel [I] is found in weave, deaf, and
such. The vowel [e] is found in words such as air, clear, and egg. The vowel [o]
is reported for the word oven (first syllable) and [U] for the words coop, hoop, and
room. Turner also observes the vowel [E] in words such as make and shut. Finally,
there is a process of pre-stress syllable deletion that affects words such as about,
which might be pronounced as ‘bout, and away, which might be pronounced as
‘way (see Klein and Harris 2000).
2.2. Consonants
A number of phonological processes affecting consonants may also be noted for
Gullah.
STOPS
In contrast to StAmE pronunciations, it has been observed that the voiceless stops
[p], [t], and [k] in Gullah are generally unaspirated at the beginning of stressed
syllables (Turner 1971, 2002; Mack 1984). According to Turner, these sounds are
also occasionally produced as ejectives in this position. Turner notes that [p] is
sometimes followed by slight aspiration “[b]efore long vowels in very emphatic
speech” (1971: 127). He emphasizes, however, that variation among the aspirated,
nonaspirated, and ejective variants of these three sounds is not phonemically dis-
tinctive in Gullah.
According to Turner (1971, 2002) the palatal stop [c] is used in Gullah where
StAmE has [tS] in words such as chew and March. He notes that this stop is occa-
sionally aspirated in emphatic speech. He also observes use of the palatal stop [Ô]
in words such as Jack and pleasure, where StAmE has [dZ] and [Z], respectively.
And he notes that [Ô] is occasionally found where the sounds [z] or [S] would be
heard in StAmE.
Similar to speakers of many other varieties of English, Gullah speakers exhibit

use of consonant cluster reduction, by which the word-final stop in a consonant
cluster gets deleted. As an alternative strategy, consonant clusters are also occa-
sionally separated by vowels in Gullah (Turner 1971: 130).
Finally, there are some additional alternations made by the current speaker for
the stops [p] and [k] (see accompanying CD). In the reading list, the speaker pro-
nounces the word palm as [sQ4m] and only after being questioned provides the
alternative pronunciation of [pQ4m]. And in the reading passage, the speaker pro-
duces the word cloak variably as [klot] and [klok]. These pronunciations may
represent some idiosyncratic tendencies on the part of this particular speaker or
more productive processes in Gullah.
Nasals
Based on the narratives in the final chapter of Turner (1949), Klein and Harris (2000)
discuss a process of nasal velarization in Gullah by which alveolar nasals [n] be-
come velar [N] following the diphthong [ÅU]. When this process occurs word-finally,
as in down or around, Klein and Harris (2000: 4) call it assimilation “in the sense
that the etymological alveolar nasal assimilates in velarity to the adjacent labio-velar
off-glide of the diphthong”. They observe, however, that a process of “dissimilatory
blocking” of the velarization process takes place when another velar is found in the
word. Thus, words such as gown or ground do not undergo the nasal velarization
process. According to Klein and Harris, both processes are categorical in Turner’s
narrative data, although some variation is found elsewhere in Turner’s text. Klein
and Harris also note variable nasal velarization word-medially in words such as
pounding. This process, however, appears to vary regionally. Klein and Harris give
no indication of whether this process occurs in modern-day Gullah.
One other process involving nasals appears in the reading passage on the accom-
panying CD. Here one finds the absence of the nasal in the second syllable of the
word attempt, which is pronounced [tEp] by the current speaker. Again, given the
limited data, it is not clear, at this stage, whether or not this represents a productive
process in Gullah or something unique to the given speaker or given word.
Fricatives
Several processes have been noted with regard to fricatives in Gullah. According
to Turner, the voiceless bilabial fricative [∏] is found in words such as fall and
staff, where StAmE has [f]. And the voiced bilabial fricative appears in words
such as river, very, we, and while where StAmE has either [v] or [w] (1971: 129;
2002: 241). Turner observes a process by which the alveolar fricative [s] is used
instead of StAmE [S] in words such as shrimp and shrink (1971: 129; 2002: 245–
246). And he also observes word-initial intrusive [h] in words such as umbrella,
artichoke, and empty (1971: 129).
Based on the current speaker’s pronunciations, it appears that there is also a pro-
cess by which word-initial [h] is deleted. Note in the reading list that the speaker
pronounces happy as [api]. This speaker also variably pronounces he as [hi] and
[i] in the reading passage. This latter pronunciation may be phonetically motivated
(either by the same process affecting happy or by some more general fast-speech
phenomenon) or morphologically motivated, given the fact that Gullah speakers
often employ a gender-neutral pronoun [i] in place of he, she, or it (see, e.g., Nich-
ols 1976).
Finally, it is observed by Turner that the interdental fricatives [D] and [T] are re-
placed by [d] and [t], respectively, in Gullah, in words such as this, brother, month,
and think (1971: 128; 2002: 245). This process of fricative stopping is clearly still
in effect in modern-day Gullah, as exhibited by the current speaker’s pronuncia-
tions of words like mouth, north, thought, the, than, then, etc. For this speaker,
however, an alternative substitution for [T] appears to be the alveolar fricative [s].
This substitution is found in the speaker’s pronunciations of the words bath, cloth,
and, variably, north.
Approximants
With regard to approximants, it appears that the [j] sound was produced in words
such as duty and Tuesday in Gullah at the time that Turner conducted his research,
although Turner transcribes such words with the symbols [Iu] (1971: 125). Thom-
as (this volume) reports that this pronunciation has been declining in the South
since World War II, perhaps due in part to increased contact between Southerners
and non-Southerners. It is possible, therefore, that this change has also affected
Gullah pronunciations.
According to Turner, [l] is generally clear before vowels and consonants, as
well as word-finally in Gullah. He also reports that [l] is used either instead of or
interchangeably with [r] in words such as Brewer, proud, fritter, Mary, bureau,
and war, especially in intervocalic positions. And he reports occasional use of [n]
instead of [l] on Edisto Island, in words such as lull (1971: 126–129).
According to Turner, [r] never occurs finally or before consonants in his data,
only before vowels. While modern-day Gullah appears to show some [r]-fullness,
there is clearly still a preference for post-vocalic [r]-lessness in contemporary va-
rieties. The speaker recorded for this project, in fact, provides numerous examples
of [r]-lessness in words like near, square, start, north, letter, etc.
2.3. Intonation
While not much has been done on intonation patterns in Gullah, some observa-
tions have been made. Turner (2002) offers several observations, many of which
have been explored more recently in Bryan (2001). According to Turner, declara-
tive sentences in Gullah often end in either a high, mid, or rising tone, as opposed
to the falling tone typically found in StAmE varieties (2002: 249–250). According
to Bryan, all three patterns appear to persist in modern-day Gullah. However, she
observes that the rising tone pattern “seems to be the least affected by language
contact” (2001: 3). Turner also observes many alternating tones throughout the
course of a statement. For example, he notes use of level tones—mid, high, or
low, use of low and mid or low and high tones, use of tones that fall from high to
mid, and use of tones that rise from low or mid to high or from low to mid (2002:
250–252). Similarly Bryan observes that Gullah has many phrases that alternate
high and low tones throughout the statement. She says this is particularly true of
imperatives and pleas of desperation (2001: 4).
Finally, Turner observes that Gullah speakers tend to use a level tone “at the
end of a question, whether or not yes or no is required for an answer” (2002: 253).
This pattern, of course, contrasts with that found in StAmE, where a rising tone
is used for yes/no questions and a falling tone is used otherwise. Bryan finds that,
among the intonational patterns observed by Turner, this particular pattern has
undergone the most change. She observes,
Younger speakers of Gullah (roughly from age 2–50) seem to almost always use a
rising intonation for yes/no questions. When older Gullah speakers use the level tone for
interrogatives, they sometimes preface the question with yes or no. For example, an elder
would ask ... ‘Yes, are you going to the farm tomorrow?’ (2001: 5–6).
Bryan hypothesizes that this type of construction, by which yes or no prefaces the
interrogative, was introduced by speakers who did not assimilate to the StAmE
pattern, in order to clarify the intended yes/no interpretation (2001: 6).
3. Conclusion
To the extent that the Gullah sound system has changed over the years, one fac-
tor that is likely to have contributed to these changes is the growth of the tourism
industry. Following the end of the plantation era, the distinctiveness of Gullah was
preserved for many years by the isolation of the Sea Islands. However, since the
early 1900s, the building of bridges and subsequent growth of the tourism industry
has resulted in a significant increase in mobility to and from the islands. In addi-
tion, negative stereotypes and misconceptions about the variety have discouraged
some locals from speaking the variety in public for fear that they will be ridiculed
by outsiders.
Some believe that such factors have contributed to the merging of Gullah with
mainland dialects. And many fear that this merging will eventually result in Gullah
becoming extinct. However, Gullah still serves an important function among its
speakers as a marker of culture, history, and identity. And even younger speakers,
who are encouraged to speak dialects other than Gullah, seem to maintain some
level of fluency in Gullah for purposes of in-group communication. This function
alone may be enough to preserve the dialect for many years to come.
Speaker information (for lexical set and reading passage):

Name: Dorothy B.
Age: 60s (?)
Community: Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
National Ancestry: American
Year Interviewed: 2003
Gullah lexical set
KIT I¢ GOOSE u
DRESS E4 PRICE åI
TRAP Q4 CHOICE çI
LOT A MOUTH çU
STRUT √ NEAR I ~ I´
FOOT U SQUARE E´
BATH Q4 START a
CLOTH o NORTH ç’
NURSE A FORCE o
FLEECE i CURE jo
FACE e HAPPY i
PALM Q4 LETTER Œ
THOUGHT ç HORSES I
GOAT o COMMA ´
GOAL o ~ oE
Gullah reading passage

THE NORTH WIND AND THE SUN WERE DISPUTING
d´ nç´t wn` an d´ s√n w´® dIspjuRIN
WHICH WAS THE STRONGER, WHEN A TRAVELER CAME

wI4tS w√z d´ st®çNgŒ wE4n ´ t®Qv´l‘ kem
ALONG WRAPPED IN A WARM CLOAK. THEY AGREED
´lçN ®Qpt In ´ wçm klot de ´g®id
THAT THE ONE WHO FIRST SUCCEEDED IN MAKING THE

dQt d´ w√n hu fŒs s´ksiR´d In me4kiN d´
TRAVELER TAKE HIS CLOAK OFF SHOULD BE

t®Qv´l‘ te4k Iz klok çf SUd bi
CONSIDERED STRONGER THAN THE OTHER. THEN THE

kńsIR‘d st®çNgŒ dan d´ √D´ dE4n d´
NORTH WIND BLEW AS HARD AS HE COULD, BUT THE

nç´t wn` blu az hQ4d Qz hi kUd b´t d´
MORE HE BLEW THE MORE CLOSELY DID THE

mo i blu d´ mo´ klosli dId d´
TRAVELER FOLD HIS CLOAK AROUND HIM; AND AT

t®Qv´lŒ foldId hIz klok ´®çn hIm Qn Qt
LAST THE NORTH WIND GAVE UP THE ATTEMPT. THEN

lQs d´ nç´t wn` gev √p d´ tEp dEn
THE SUN SHINED OUT WARMLY, AND IMMEDIATELY

d´ s√n SåIn çUt wçmli an miRiItli
THE TRAVELER TOOK OFF HIS CLOAK. AND SO THE

d´ t®Q4v´l´ tUk çf h√z klok an so d´
NORTH WIND WAS OBLIGED TO CONFESS THAT THE

nç´t wn` (w√z) (´)blåIdZ tu kńfEs Dat D´
SUN WAS THE STRONGER OF THE TWO.

s√n w√z d´ st®çNgŒ ´v D´ tu
*
I would like to acknowledge Dorothy Brown and Margaret Bryant for their assistance
in collecting the audio samples for this project, Eric Holt and Cherlon Ussery for their
assistance with the transcriptions, and Michael Montgomery for his assistance in locat-
ing relevant written sources. I accept full responsibility for any errors.
Selected references
ROM.
Bryan, Kisha C.
2001 An intonational analysis of the Gullah dialect. Unpublished manuscript.
Cassidy, Frederick
1980 The place of Gullah. American Speech 55: 3–16.
Creel, Margaret M.
1988 A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community-Culture Among the
Gullahs. New York: New York University Press.
Hair, Paul E. H.
1965 Sierra Leone items in the Gullah dialect of American English. Sierra Leone
Language Review 4: 79–84.
Hancock, Ian
1980 Gullah and Barbadian: Origins and relationships. American Speech 55: 17–
35.
Johnson, Guy
1930 Folk Culture on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
Klein, Thomas B. and Meta Y. Harris
2000 Sound structure in Gullah: Evidence from the narratives in Turner’s
Africanisms. Unpublished manuscript.
Mack, Linda
1984 A comparative analysis of linguistic stress patterns in Gullah (Sea Island
Creole) and English speakers. M.A. thesis, University of Florida.
Mufwene, Salikoko
1993 Gullah’s development: Myths and sociohistorical facts. Revised version of a
paper presented at the Language in Society II Conference. Auburn University.
April, 1993.
Nichols, Patricia
1976 Linguistic change in Gullah: Sex, age, and mobility. Ph.D. dissertation,
Stanford University.
Niles, Norma
1980 Provincial English dialects and Barbadian English. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Michigan.
Stewart, William
1968 Continuity and change in American Negro dialects. The Florida FL Reporter
6, 1: 3–4, 14–16, 18.
Turner, Lorenzo D.
1949 Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Republished in 2002 by University of South Carolina Press.
1971 Notes on the sounds and vocabulary of Gullah. In: Williamson and Burke
(eds.), 121–135.
Van Sertima, Ivan

1976 My Gullah brother and I: Exploration into a community’s language and myth
through its oral tradition. In: Deborah S. Harrison and Tom Trabasso (eds.),
Black English: A Seminar, 123–146. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cajun Vernacular English: phonology∗
Sylvie Dubois and Barbara M. Horvath
1. The Cajun speech community: an overview
Cajuns live all along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Mississippi but are primar-
ily concentrated in the small rural towns of southern Louisiana. Lafayette is the
metropolitan center of Cajun country. Cajuns are the descendants of Acadians
from Nova Scotia, Canada, who fled to French Louisiana around 1765 when the
British took control of their lands. In Louisiana they joined many other French
dialect-speaking populations as well as other people who had a language other
than French as their first language (Dubois 2003). Even after the Louisiana Pur-
chase, when English became the de facto official language, the Cajuns living in
rural communities continued to speak only French. The majority of the Cajuns
were poor and had little education. They lived – as many continue to live today
– in small towns in close-knit extended families. Whereas some of the people of
French ancestry were held in high esteem in Louisiana, the same cannot be said for
the Cajuns. They were often ridiculed and made the butt of jokes.
Although the state government mandated English as the sole language of edu-
cation in 1929, English was not extensively used within the Cajun communities
and in the family setting. Moreover, English was not well learned because many
attended school irregularly or left school early. For quite a while English may
have been the language of the classroom, but Cajun French was the language
of the playground. It is this generation, people who are 60 years or older today,
who are the original speakers of the dialect we have labelled Cajun Vernacular
English (CajVE). Although language contact and language interference are clearly
implicated in the origins of CajVE, we want to argue against the idea that CajVE
is a variant of migrant English or foreigner English. We believe that the variable
structure of CajVE is not Southern English and that these CajVE features are part
of the vernacular of Cajuns. As Rubretch (1971) has mentioned for the nasaliza-
tion process in CajVE, the phonological principles as well as the set of linguistic
features we describe in CajVE represent a native development of English speech
rather than a borrowing. CajVE is spoken fluently by Cajuns in their everyday
lives within the community and often as the primary intergenerational language
(Dubois and Horvath 2001).
World War II marks an important juncture for Cajuns; the military service
introduced many of the men to American ways, particularly to American ways of
speaking. Some of the men who were old enough to join the army were already
408 Sylvie Dubois and Barbara M. Horvath
bilingual or semi-bilingual because of a concerted effort on the part of the Louisi-

ana state government to enforce the speaking of English. After WWII, the social
changes that swept across the landscape came to have a profound effect on the
Cajun way of life. The children of the original CajVE speakers, who had grown
up speaking French within their families, began to learn English better than their
parents, attended school more regularly and for longer, and became financially
more secure because of the discovery of oil in the region and the introduction
of large-scale agriculture, which brought economic opportunities not previously
available. Many of this generation of speakers stopped using French with their
own children, hoping to avoid the negative stereotypes associated with being
Cajun in Louisiana. Cajuns increasingly adopted American cultural ways; even
Cajun music, an important part of Cajun life, was rejected in favor of country and
western music.
What stopped this cultural change from completely taking over is popularly
called the Cajun Renaissance. Like many other ethnic groups, it is often the third
generation in the language change/replacement process who feels the loss of cul-
ture the most. The old have not lost it, the middle-aged have consciously rejected
it, and it is the young who suffer a sense of loss. Today, things Cajun have risen to
an unprecedented status among Cajuns as well as outsiders. Cajun music, Cajun
food, children’s books about Cajun life, serious Cajun literature – all backed up
by state government support for its formerly French-speaking citizens - are to be
found everywhere. Tourists come from near and far to participate in Cajun festivi-
ties. Bilingualism, however, has suffered such a loss that it is only the ideologues
who would suggest the possible survival of French as the primary language of ev-
eryday communication by Cajuns. The dilemma for Cajuns is that they no longer
have the linguistic distinctiveness they once had; those who want to mark their
Cajun identity linguistically have only English as a vehicle. The young, especially
young men, have begun to use some aspects of the CajVE of their grandfathers,
the variety of English that had been widely rejected by the middle-aged at the
same time that they were rejecting French.
Not all people who identify as Cajuns speak CajVE and using the term “Cajun
English” risks that interpretation. The term “ethnolect” is useful to identify a
subtype of a vernacular such as CajVE, particularly because that term seems to
describe a large number of locally based community dialects of English, wide-
spread in the United States and elsewhere, which develop when a speech commu-
nity collectively changes its language of everyday communication from French,
Spanish, a Native American language, etc. to the politically dominant language,
English in the case of the United States. Perhaps the key characteristic of an eth-
nolect is that “ethnicity” and the ethnic language are not given up concurrently so
if ethnicity is to be marked linguistically, it can only be marked in the dominant
language; this marking of ethnicity can become a source of language change in
that language.
Cajun Vernacular English: phonology 409
2. Linguistic description of Cajun Vernacular English
CajVE has changed dramatically over three generations against a complex and
changing social and linguistic background. Although some of the sociolinguistic
variables that are characteristic of CajVE are also well-known variables in South-
ern American English (Rubrecht 1971; Scott 1992; Cox 1992; Eble 1993; Walton
1994; Cheramie 1999), we have argued that the origins of these sociolinguistic
variables lie within the Cajun community and cannot be attributed solely to inter-
ference from French or to the spread of these features from the surrounding Eng-
lish dialects. CajVE represents an innovation from within the Cajun community so
that some of the Cajun variants which began in the accented speech of the oldest
of the speakers in our sample have either been passed on to the next generation
of speakers or have been recycled as markers of social identity by the youngest
speakers.
Further background information on the Cajun community is available in Du-
bois (1997b) and Dubois and Melancon (1997). Sociolinguistic descriptions of a
number of phonological and morphological variables can be found in Dubois and
Horvath (1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2003). A description of the entire
sample and data collection procedures are given in Dubois, Gautreaux, Melançon
and Veler (1995) and Dubois (1997a).
2.1. Core features of CajVE pronunciation

Two fundamental phonological principles are at the heart of CajVE. The first one
is the deletion of final consonants. CajVE speakers do not pronounce final conso-
nants and they also drop final consonant clusters [nd, st, lm]. Not only does this
occur in bimorphemic words but there appears to be a very high rate of deletion
in monomorphemes, in VC contexts as well as CC contexts. We have noted the
deletion of final [t] late, rent, [d] hand, food, wide, [ ] both, [r] together, [l] school,
and both final [r] and [k] in New York (the absence of the whole cluster). We also
notice the variable absence of the final consonant [z] in Larose (town), final [5]
twelve, [s] house, fence, [n] nine, [m] mom, [f] life and even the absence of [] in
fish. This phonological rule has an important morphosyntactical consequence: fi-
nal consonants which happen to be morphological markers, e.g., final consonants
representing -ed or -s (as reduced copula, possessive, plural or third sing person),
will be deleted at the ends of words.
The second phonological principle is the reduction or absence of glides in the
four long stressed vowels [i], [e], [o] and [u] in CajVE. The high front vowel [i]
in such words as me, street, and read, the mid front vowel [e], as in way, make
and take, the mid back vowel [o], in words such as know, both, and over, and the
high back vowel [u], as in food, school, and two, are realized as monophthongs [i:,
e:, o:, u:] respectively. Mid vowels [o, e] are monophthongized more frequently
than high vowels [i, u]. The diphthongs [ai], [a

] and [çi] in words such as fire,
now, and oil also loose their glide and become monophthongs [a:], [] and [ç:].
This vocalic feature is very striking because Southerners produce considerable
lengthening and gliding.
2.2. CajVE vowels

Table 1 below summarizes the CajVE vocalic system. The phonetic inventory of
CajVE is similar to Southern English (see Thomas, this volume). However, CajVE
speakers do not prolong stressed vowels and diphthongs.
Table 1. Representative vocalic forms of CajVE
KIT I, i CURE
, u
DRESS E, Q FIRE ai, A
TRAP Q POWER au, A
LOT A, a happY I, i
STRUT lettER ,
FOOT
horsES I,
BATH Q commA
DANCE Q, æ HAND Q, Q)
CLOTH a PIN/PEN I,
NURSE , THINK, LENGTH i,
FLEECE i GOING çi, ç
FACE e GOAL o
PALM A POOL u
THOUGHT a PULL
GOAT o FEEL i
GOOSE u FILL I
PRICE ai, A FAIL ei, e
PRIZE ai, A FELL E
CHOICE çi, ç˘ MARRY E, Q
MOUTH, LOUD au, a MERRY E
NEAR i MARY E
SQUARE E, Q MIRROR/NEARER i, I
START A, a TOMORROW a, A
NORTH ç®, ç´ ORANGE ç®,
FORCE ç®, ç´
Glide absence in FLEECE, FACE, GOAT, GOOSE is typical of CajVE. Their nuclei do
not fall or become fronted as in Southern English. The nuclei of KIT may rise but
CajVE speakers lower the DRESS vowel in words such as Texas, bed, red, better,
well and egg to [æ]. Consequently the words bed and bad sound the same, although
the word bed, pronounced [bQ] has a shorter length than the word bad pronounced
[bæ]. Although CajVE shows the PIN/PEN and THOUGHT/LOT mergers, upgliding
forms of THOUGHT, BATH and DANCE occur irregularly. By contrast, monophthon-
gization of PRICE, PRIZE, CHOICE, FIRE, MOUTH, and POWER is prevalent. The non-
rhotic aspect of CajVE can also be observed in NURSE, SQUARE, NORTH, FORCE
(the last two are merged), CURE, and lettER. Like Southern English, the happY and
horsES vowels are pronounced [], and commA as []. Like the old white Southern-
ers, CajVE speakers do not merge POOL/PULL, FEEL/FILL, FAIL/FELL. However, the
vowels in MARRY/MERRY/MARY are usually identical, but those in TOMORROW/OR-
ANGE may be distinct.
CajVE provides an interesting case of shared phonetics with the dialects in
its geographical region while maintaining a distinctive coherence as a separate
dialect. The distinctiveness of CajVE is initially revealed quantitatively. Where
comparisons can be made, the patterns of variability are not the same in terms of
linguistic conditioning in each generation of speakers. Moreover, the actual rate
of use of the features often far exceeds the results reported for Southern English
varieties. When the scope of the variability is widened to include more data, i.e.,
the widespread deletion of all final consonants and the glide absence, it becomes
clear that CajVE is qualitatively distinctive as well from Southern English, and
especially American English.
2.3. The non-aspiration of [p’, t’, k] and [h’] dropping

CajVE speakers do not aspirate [p, t, k] in word-initial position preceding a stressed
vowel or [r, l, w, j] ( plant, table, and car). By not aspirating [p] in the word pat,
it has the effect of sounding bat for American English speakers. The word hair
pronounced without [h] is mistaken for air.
2.4. The replacement of interdental fricatives [ , ] by stops [t, d]

Interdental fricatives are highly marked sounds: they are rare in the languages of
the world and learned late by children. The substitutions for interdental fricatives
most frequently reported in the literature are the dental stops [t, d]. They are well
known as variables throughout most of the United States, and maybe wherever
English is spoken. As Rubrecht (1971:152) mentions, the paradigm “dis, dat, dese,
dose” is well-known in Louisiana to describe how Cajuns talk. There is no lack of
speculation about the sources of the substitutions but one fact is fairly clear, all of
them are stigmatized.
2.5. Heavy nasalization

Despite its variable occurrence in English in general, vowel nasalization is also
strongly associated with the Southern American English dialect. What seems to
elicit negative comment from speakers of Southern English about CajVE is not so
much the nasalization of the vowel but when the nasalization process spreads to
adjacent sounds. “Heavy nasalization” in CajVE is likely to appear in monosyllab-
ic words and can be characterized by a heavier than normal degree of nasalization,
that is the nasalization spreads to the consonant before the vowel (e.g. where the
[b] in a word like Alabama is nasalized). More front closed vowels are nasalized
than back vowels.
2.6. The trilled -r and deletion of -l

CajVE is a non-rhotic variety. The sound /r/ is absent in stressed syllables (let-
ter) and in syllable coda in word-final (four) and pre-consonantal (hard) positions.
CajVE speakers use flap [62] in word-initial consonant clusters [tr, dr, fr], as in
three and tree. They also delete [l] in intervocalic and preconsonantal positions in
words such as celery, jewelry and help.
3. What is the social meaning of sounding Cajun?
The view from inside the Cajun community changes from one generation to the
next. In order to explain why Cajun men and women have changed their ways of
speaking over the three generations, we have to understand what kind of speech
community we are dealing with: it is a subordinated cultural enclave which for
several generations has been forced to change in the direction of the dominant
culture. Massive language changes have taken place alongside massive social
changes and the language change is an almost direct reflection of the sociohistory
of this community. Language has played a central role in the relations between
the Cajun enclave and the numerically and politically dominant English-speaking
population in southwest Louisiana.
3.1. The older generation

For hundreds of years, Cajuns were monolingual French speakers who lived in
rural settlements where they were either the dominant group or the only group.
It was some of our oldest speakers (the majority born before 1930) who first ex-
perienced the pressure to change their language at least to the extent of learning
English. These first users of English were judged most harshly on their French and
their English abilities. Men and women alike learned English as a second language
but most would have had little use for it. All of them use a high rate of all of the
CajVE features and there is no gender differentiation. The way they spoke English
was unremarkable until the outside world began to impinge on the consciousness
of the close-knit communities of southern Louisiana. Their variety of CajVE has
little directly to do with the usual understanding of language change in progress
except for two crucial facts: they, along with the generation earlier than theirs,
begin the process of the creation of CajVE, and their ways of speaking provide the
source for future change. The actual linguistic forms they use are relevant to what
happens in the succeeding generations.
3.2. The middle-aged generation

The industrialization process and the consequent process of language shift was in
full swing with the middle-aged speakers in our sample (aged 40-59, the majority
were born just before or during WWII). They were educated in English and re-
acted most vigorously to the denigration of both Cajun French and the Cajun way
of speaking English. It is this generation that begins to use English extensively in
the home in raising their children. When they were young, even the speakers who
were raised bilingually started to speak English at home with their siblings. They
were aware quite early of the stigma attached to both French and CajVE. Not
only did they begin to sound like any other English speaker from south Louisi-
ana, they also abandoned French. The dropping of many of the CajVE features is
the attempt to attenuate the stigma of being Cajun for themselves and especially
for their children. There are many pressures on this group of men and women to
change in the direction of the dominant group. We find no gender distinction be-
tween middle-aged men and women but a rather uniform pattern of the adoption
of an external norm for speaking English.
3.3. The younger generation

The late 1960s mark the beginning of the so-called Cajun Renaissance; in 1968
a series of laws were passed which were meant to encourage the use of French.
The state was declared officially bilingual, French instruction in high schools was
mandatory, there was to be television in French, and the state was to foster inter-
national relations with other francophone nations. By the 1990s Cajun culture had
acquired a definite cachet. However, French was no longer considered necessary
either for economic reasons or for symbolizing Cajunness (Dubois and Melançon
1997: 86).
Our youngest generation (born at the beginning of the 1970s) are most influ-
enced by the Cajun Renaissance, are proud to be Cajuns and are able to profit most
from the increasing status accorded to Cajun ancestry as well as the important eco-
nomic benefits from the rapidly expanding tourist industry. However, if identity
is to be signaled by language, then it is left to English to accomplish that because

the majority of the young generation interact most of the time with outsiders as
well as with their friends and immediate family members only in English. They
use French only with some of their older extended family members. The public
display of Cajun culture to outsiders – part of the tourist industry - reinforces the
use of English as a carrier of Cajun identity. The Cajun Renaissance changed the
meaning of sounding Cajun. In a rather sharp turnaround, things Cajun became
interesting to insiders and outsiders alike, especially the food and music, and tour-
ists wanted to visit, participate in Cajun life, and bring home souvenirs. Now it is
good to sound Cajun.
There is an important gender differentiation in the usage of several CajVE fea-
tures in the younger generation. Young men return to the CajVE forms used by
their grandparents’ generation, while young women generally use the standard
variants introduced by the middle-aged speakers. We have called this change led
by young men in the direction of the former stigmatized and stereotyped CajVE
variants “recycling”.
The gendered pattern can be attributed to the fact that the Cajun Renaissance
largely affects the sphere of traditional male activities such as boating, fishing and
hunting, and the display of Cajun culture associated with tourism (e.g. few women
participate in the traditional “courir du Mardi Gras” or take tourists on trips up the
bayou). Music is traditionally an essential part of the Cajun male culture, although
it is now in the hands of only the young men. Traditional Cajun music is coming
back in favor, replacing the country-western style that the middle-aged generation
preferred. Even Cajun cuisine is publicly displayed as part of the male domain.
A higher percentage of Cajun men than women are involved in Cajun advocacy
organizations or report listening to Cajun radio programs.
The symbols of traditional Cajun identity that are left to women are those as-
sociated with the family domain, including the raising of children and the pursuit
of homecrafts. The shift from French to English which largely took place within
the middle-aged generation means that young women no longer have any respon-
sibility for passing on French to the children; their roles as Cajun torchbearers
have been taken over by young men. Young women have not moved to recycle
the CajVE features because they have fewer reasons than young men to associate
themselves linguistically to the current understanding of a Cajun identity which is
largely masculine.
4. Conclusion
The birth of CajVE occurred less than a hundred years ago; in that time it devel-
oped into a quite distinctive vernacular, came very close to dying and was reborn.
In fact, without its rebirth in recent times, we may well have failed to notice the
birth at all. We would have said it was just the way people who learn English as
a second language speak. Like so many varieties of accented English, it is not
expected to be passed on to subsequent generations. The story of the fate of the
languages of the Cajun people mirrors their history and the comings and goings of
both Cajun French and Cajun English are intimately connected to the social and
economic buffeting of the Cajun community since the 1920s. Capturing CajVE in
speech and writing is part of the rebirth process.
∗
This research project is supported by NSF (BCS-0091823).
Selected references
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(Educational Resources Information Center. Microfiche collection. Clement
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Dubois, Sylvie
1997a Field method in Cajun communities in Louisiana. In: Albert Valdman (ed.),
French et Creole in Louisiana, 47-70. New York/London: Plenum.
1997b Attitudes envers l’enseignement et l’apprentissage du français cadien en
Louisiane. Revue des sciences de l’éducation 23, 3: 699–715.
2003 Letter-writing in French Louisiana: Interpreting variable spelling conventions,
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Dubois, Sylvie, William Gautreaux, Megan Melançon and Tracy Veler
1995 The quality of French spoken in Louisiana. SECOL Review 19: 16–39.
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2001 Do Cajuns speak Southern English? Morphosyntactic evidence. Working
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American Speech 77: 264–287.
2003 Verbal morphology in Cajun Vernacular English: A comparison with other

varieties of Southern English. Journal of English Linguistics 31: 1–26.
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munity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 1: 63–93.
Eble, Connie
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Dissertation, Tulane University.
Chicano English: phonology
Otto Santa Ana and Robert Bayley
1. Introduction
Chicano English displays a remarkable range of language contact phenomena.

Speakers of this ethnic dialect enact their social practices with Chicano English,
in conjunction with Chicano Spanish and in some cases other varieties of Spanish
and English as well. In dynamic urban multicultural and binational settings, these
social practices include surprisingly complex identities and roles (Mendoza-Den-
ton 1997; Fought 2003). Sadly, the general public’s awareness of Chicano English
(ChcE) commonly involves stigma, a situation that has not changed in the last
forty years. Many U.S. public school educators, in particular, falsely attribute to
ChcE a general inadequacy for educational and wider social purposes (Valdés
1998; Valencia 2002). The hostility that ChcE arouses is consistent with the gen-
eral public’s disapproval of other U.S. ethnic dialects, such as African American
Vernacular English (AAVE), whose communities seem to resist the national hege-
mony of English monolingualism and Standard English.
A commonplace often bandied about is that ChcE is merely “Spanish-accented
English”. Both lay people and linguists have this reaction, and the statement ex-
presses some truth, as we will illustrate. However, in the context of some institu-
tional settings, an insidious misunderstanding follows. The misconception is that
ChcE is not a dialect, but simply the mispronounced English of Spanish speakers
who are learning English as a second language. From this mistaken point of view
it follows that if adults speak so-called Spanish-accented English, they are fossil-
ized second language learners, while children demonstrate incomplete learning
of English. This misconception has serious social consequences in U.S. schools,
where an inordinate number of Chicano students do not advance scholastically.
Since these schools are charged with teaching children standard English, educa-
tors often falsely conclude that Chicano student failure is a result of their inability
to master the standard language.
Many teachers witness evidence each day in the classroom that sustains this
falsehood. English-monolingual public school teachers come into contact with
Mexican immigrant students, including new immigrant students who are learning
English. Several articulatory mismatches strike native English-speaking teachers
as discordant. But these classrooms are not linguistically homogeneous. At least
three dimensions mark this diversity. Newly arrived immigrants and those who
have been in public schools for several years mingle with U.S.-born Chicano stu-
418 Otto Santa Ana and Robert Bayley
dents. Second, some of the U.S.-born students are monolingual while others are
bilingual. Third, some Chicano students speak the English dialects of their Euro-
American teachers, while others speak a native English dialect that both Chicano
and Spanish-speaking immigrant children acquire in their home communities.
This final variety is ChcE, which appears to maintain certain phonological features
that are characteristic of Spanish native-speaker, English-as-a-second-language
learner interlanguage, or in the current terminology of U.S. public schools, Eng-
lish language learner (ELL) speech. Speakers of ChcE express social solidarity in
their native community dialect by way of these features.
Teachers and other observers, however, tend to conflate the heterogeneity. Upon
hearing ChcE, some teachers presume it is learner speech. Accordingly, they are
likely to believe that U.S.-born Chicanos also speak an incompletely-native, Span-
ish-accented English. These children’s educational plight, they believe, can only
be alleviated when they stop speaking Spanish, which is thought to interfere with
their English, and learn English “well”. This notion expands to the absurd to in-
clude children who speak no Spanish. How a language that children cannot speak
can interfere with a language that they do speak is left unexplained. In this chapter,
we attempt to dispel some of the common misconceptions surrounding ChcE by
providing a description of ChcE phonology and its relationship to Spanish on the
one hand and Euro-American varieties on the other.
2. Vowels
When compared to English phonology, the Spanish vowel system does not distin-
guish between tense and lax peripheral vowels, nor does it employ distinctive sets of
so-called long and short vowels, or a set of r-colored allophones of the long vowels.
Finally, it does not have a set of diphthongs, in addition to a set of off-gliding vowels.
Consequently, when an ELL initially reworks the five-monophthong Spanish vowel
system, certain phonemic approximations and mergers tend to occur. For example,
Santa Ana (1991: 154–160) spectrographically measured the naturally occurring
speech of a seventeen-year old ELL male. His still developing English (his preferred
language) was impressionistically marked with phonemic mergers, and the absence
of off-glides, particularly in the high vowels, /i/ and /u/. The instrumental study pro-
vided evidence of two mergers, /i/ ~ // and // ~ /æ/. The spectrographic analysis fur-
ther indicated that he did not employ the English stressed vowel reduction system.
In striking contrast to this ELL, native speakers of ChcE share the catalog of
vowel phonemes, as well as most of the associated surface phonological features,
of their local U.S. English dialect (García 1984; Penfield and Ornstein-Galicia
1985; Galindo 1987; Santa Ana 1991; Veatch 1991; Mendoza-Denton 1997; Fought
1997, 2003; Thomas 2001). For example, Los Angeles ChcE shares with most other
Euro-American dialects four historical or on-going vowel mergers, including the
Chicano English: phonology 419
so-called ‘short o’ merger, which may be stated in terms of J.C. Wells (1982) lex-
eme sets (Veatch 1991: 184). In other AmE dialects, as in ChcE, the LOT class of
lexemes merges with the THOUGHT, CLOTH and PALM lexeme sets. While the PALM
or ‘broad a’ merged some time ago, Labov (1991) and others see the LOT or ‘short o’
and THOUGHT or ‘long open o’ to be a merger that is currently advancing. Second,
ChcE also does not distinguish the BATH and TRAP lexeme sets. Third, Chicanos
pronounce the familiar merry, Mary, and marry identically, that is, they share the
merger of intervocalic non-high front vowels. Lastly, unlike some Southern U.S.
English dialects, ChcE seems to have merged the NORTH and FORCE lexeme sets.
The similarity of the ChcE inventory of vowel phonemes led Veatch to suggest that
the ChcE system of stressed vowels may be the local Euro-American English sys-
tem (1991: 188).
Nevertheless, ChcE elicits a quick and often negative judgment from local ma-
trix dialect speakers. So the question remains what linguistic norms are flouted
when Chicanos speak their home dialects. In an attempt to synthesize the work of
our (above mentioned) colleagues, we suggest four characteristic differences:
I. ChcE is more monophthongal, especially in monosyllabic words, than other

AmE dialects.
II. ChcE is articulated with greater vowel space overlap of front vowels than
other AmE dialects.
III. ChcE may have a different system of vowel reduction than other AmE dia-
lects.
IV. ChcE has several linguistic variables (that is to say, variably-occurring ethnic
dialect features, discourse markers and prosody contours) that signal Chicano
community identities.
ChcE speakers use (IV), the ChcE-specific linguistic variables, in conjunction

with other more widely-shared variables, such as (u-fronting) and negative con-
cord, in complex ways to express their multifaceted identities, as shown by Fought
(2003, chapters 5 and 6), who begins to tease out the simultaneous use of numbers
of variables to express complex identities.
The ChcE-specific variables are local community variables, including Greater
Los Angeles (E), (/t merger), and Texas (-ing), California () and the Th-Pro dis-
course marker (Galindo 1987; García 1984; Mendoza-Denton 1997; Penfield and
Ornstein 1985, chapter 3). We have yet to definitively locate a pan-ChcE linguis-
tic variable, which in part is a consequence of the relative lack of sociolinguistic
research on this dialect. Alternatively, it might be due to the separate beginnings
of ChcE in different regions of the Midwest and Southwest (but cf. Bayley 1994
and Santa Ana 1996). However, the four characteristic phonological differences
mentioned above characterize both bi- and monolingual ChcE speakers (Santa
Ana 1991; Fought 2003).
Regarding (IV), we think that these ChcE identity markers are reflexes of Span-
ish-speaking ELL transfer features that were refashioned when local Chicano
communities in distinct locales established themselves. For now, this hypothesis
remains untested because no study has addressed the 20th century formation of
ChcE dialects. Nor has anyone documented the creation of a new ChcE dialect.
The new immigrant Mexican communities throughout the U.S. South and in north-
eastern cities, however, offer key sites to investigate on-going social processes
that are possibly creating linguistic variables in new ChcE speech. For example,
Spanish-speaking immigrants have only recently begun to work in agribusiness in
large numbers in the U.S. South. At times they do not come from traditional sites
of Mexican migration, bringing new Spanish dialects to the U.S. In addition to the
interesting English that will develop, since their U.S. settings are new, Mexican
Spanish may not hold sway over other Spanish dialects, as is the case in the Chi-
cano urban centers established in the 20th century. These significant demographic
changes portend significant sociolinguistic changes. Furthermore, the politics of
immigration have changed (Finks 2003). All of these factors offer opportunities
for innovative explorations of language contact.
2.1. Monophthongs and diphthongs

ChcE tends to be monophthongal, particularly its high vowels, /i, u/ (Santa Ana 1991:
155). This contrasts with the typically diphthongal other AmE dialects. Santa Ana,
whose work involved impressionistic transcription as well as spectrographic mea-
surements of naturally occurring speech gathered in sociolinguistic interviews, noted
more off-glides in ChcE mid vowel pronunciation. He sampled the speech of four
U.S.-born Los Angeles residents who represented different generations of speakers,
as well as a narrative of the previously-mentioned young male immigrant ELL.
Later studies have corroborated many of Santa Ana’s findings. Fought (1997,
2003), for example, found that high vowels, /e,
/, were articulated with fewer and
shorter off-glides. According to Fought, Chicanos articulated /a/ with no loss of
glide, but seemed to employ a higher tongue-height (lower F1) nucleus. Fought
also found that /a
/ is most often pronounced with the Euro-American off-glide,
but older speakers articulated a glide-less [a], as in counselor. The monophthongal
quality of ChcE vowels is most distinguished in exclamations, such as Ah!, Oh!, or
in emphasized final syllables of vowel-final words, such as the underscored syllables
in “I do, too, live in East L.A.!” ChcE speakers often pronounce sustained duration
syllables with minimal off-gliding, no matter how long the segment is prolonged.
2.2. Vowel distribution

The typical native Spanish-speaking ELL has difficulty distinguishing the so-
called tense and lax vowel subsystems. In contrast, ChcE speakers resolve all such
interlanguage mergers. They sustain the /i/ and // distinction. Still, some ChcE
speakers pronounce the high vowel variably as from [] to [i], especially in the
suffix, -ing (Fought 2003: 65).
Santa Ana’s (1991) spectrographic study found the typical tense/lax front vowel
distribution, in terms of F1/F2 parameters, among four native English-speaking
Chicanos. Their front tense vowels had a dense narrow distribution in vowel space,
while the corresponding distribution of their front lax /, / vowels created a more
diffuse, less peripheral cloud in vowel space.
The ChcE /æ/ patterns with low vowels, rather than front vowels, as is the case
for other U.S. English dialects. Thus, /æ/ has greater F1 range than F2 (front/back).
The distribution of this vowel creates a narrow cloud that is elongated along the
height parameter. For this reason, ChcE appears to be participating in the General
California English æ-raising process (Fought 2003, but cf. Veatch 1991). In addi-
tion, the ChcE articulation of the AmE low back vowel, /7/, as in mom or caught,
is often a Spanish [a], as in talk, daughter and law (Fought 2003).
A spectrographic study of four native speakers indicates that the nucleus of the
high back vowel, /u/, is either fronted or fronting (Santa Ana 1991). The distribu-
tion cloud of /u/ extends across the upper top of the vowel space, from the back to
an intermediate front of the /i/ cloud. There is little overlap with the front vowel
distribution clouds; the /u/ distribution is higher than the mid-front vowel cloud.
While Santa Ana (1991) finds much less /
/ fronting than u-fronting in the
speech of the Los Angeles Chicano men he instrumentally plotted, Fought (2003)
states that ChcE /
/ is realized at times as a high rounded [], while at other times
it is an unrounded fronted [i], as in look or looking.
2.3. Vowel centralization

Whereas unstressed vowels in most dialects of American English typically central-
ize to a schwa-mean, as in White Chicago English (Veatch 1991, chapter 7), only
some of ChcE unstressed vowels centralize (Santa Ana 1991). Their high vowels,
/i/ and /u/, do not reduce, while mid vowels reduce less frequently than AmE mid
vowels. As well, ChcE low vowels centralize (Santa Ana 1991). On the basis of
five speakers, Santa Ana found no language-internal or social category explana-
tion for their different centralization targets, and consequently sought a dialect
contact explanation. He hypothesized that the extent to which ChcE-speakers ac-
commodated to the general U.S. schwa-mean centralization pattern corresponded
to the amount of social contact and personal identification that an individual had
with Euro-American dialect speakers (177).
In contrast, Veatch (1991: 200) instrumentally measured the ChcE vowel cen-
tralization of a single individual. His measurements indicated that non-stress ar-
ticulation lowers ChcE /e, , æ/ and /7/, that it backs /o,
/, and finally, that it has
no effect on /i/. Veatch characterized ChcE vowel centralization as a single pro-
cess, namely all centralizing vowels shift to an [&] vowel quality. In this process,
ChcE is similar to Alabama English in having an [1] centralization target (Veatch
1991, chapter 8). From the current authors’ present perspective, the issue of vowel
centralization in ChcE has not been resolved.
2.4. Linguistic variables

Mendoza-Denton (1997), building on the (-ing) studies of Galindo (1987), di-
vided -ing into two variables: () and Th-Pro. She conducted an ethnography in a
northern California high school, focusing on Chicana social groups. Among other
young women’s groups, Mendoza-Denton worked closely with two rival gangs.
To become a gang member in this school, a girl must either identify as a sureña
or a norteña. These oppositional identities were expressed across the full range of
social symbols, from clothing and makeup to facial expression and posture. One
key feature of sureña identity is linguistic distancing from English, which sure-
ñas accomplish by eschewing English in favor of Spanish. Norteñas, on the other
hand, mark their identity via Spanish/English codeswitching and use of English.
While these groups of young women pull away from each other via overt linguis-
tic choices, at a more fundamental level they share identity features that express
antagonism toward Euro-American society.
Variable raising and lowering of () is present of the speech of both norteñas
and sureñas (Mendoza-Denton 1999). Chances are greatest that the vowel will
be lower before a nasal. An engma (which here corresponds to the U.S. standard
nasal in -ing) is less ethnically marked than an alveolar nasal (which corresponds
to the substrate nasal consonant). The raising process occurs most prominently
among gang members and gang-affiliated groups, and these young women raised
() most frequently with -thing words. Sureñas and norteñas both used increased
frequencies of raised [i] and especially [in] forms of (), to signal greater so-
cial distance from both Chicanas who identify with Euro-Americans, and from
Euro-Americans. Chicana gang members also employ a meaningful lowering of
//. Hence they exploit iota, (), a front lax vowel with no Spanish correspondence,
to express identity and ideology. Among Chicanos and Chicanas, in contrast, the
closely-related tense vowel /i/ never lowers to [i] (Fought 2003: 65).
In northern California, -thing words such as something, nothing, and phrases
such as and everything, may be characterized as Th-Pro, a gang discourse marker
(Mendoza-Denton 1999). This is not thing, the pronoun, which is used to refer to
noun antecedents. Rather Th-Pro serves to construct mutual understanding and re-
inforce solidarity between gang interlocutors. Consider the underscored discourse
marker in: “I was walking around the other day and José stopped to talk to me and
everything.” Mendoza-Denton gives three reasons (1997: 139–141) why “and
everything” is well suited to signal in-group referencing: 1) as an example of a
clause-terminal discourse marker, it is stigmatized by middle-class speakers; 2)

the underspecified semantics of thing allows it to be used widely across any num-
ber of inferences associated with in-group understandings; 3) the three phonemes
in (-ing) are each subject to ELL transfer stigma, /θ/, //, and //, hence providing
a full range of expression of in-group/out-group social positioning.
Mendoza-Denton has brought us full circle. We can imagine how an ELL ren-
dering something as [santn] would trigger a White chauvinist’s derisive remark,
to the speaker’s embarrassment. She has shown us that a mark of embarrassment
has been subverted to become a marker of ethnic identification. Although (-ing)
is currently an indicator (since it is not consciously recognized by these in-group
speakers), it is associated with the stereotypical speech of ELLs. This overlap
suggests that the classic empirical linguistic trinity of variables (indicator, marker,
and stigmatized form) should be reconsidered. Mendoza-Denton has documented
the rich heterogeneity of Chicanos, focusing on women’s lives and language, and
the tensions and conflicts within these communities. To further illustrate the com-
plexity of identity matters in dialect contact settings, Fought (2003: 66) observed
in West Los Angeles that Euro-Americans who live among Chicanos also use the
raised [i] and [in] forms of (-ing).
A major sound change in progress in California, /u/-fronting, has also been
investigated in ChcE (Fought 1997, 2003). Fought also initiated studies of less
well-known processes, (æ-backing) and (æ-raising). Not only did she account
for system-internal factors, with sensitive ethnographic work across social class-
es, gender, age and employment groups of Chicanos in West Los Angeles, but
she was able to characterize the social value articulated by (u-fronting) among
these Chicanos and their Euro-American neighbors. At the risk of oversimplifi-
cation, Fought ascertained that Chicanos associate this linguistic variable with
Euro-American identity and hegemony. Accordingly, middle-class female ChcE
speakers without gang affiliation fronted their /u/ to the greatest extent. Converse-
ly, working-class or low-income earning Chicanos who are affiliates or members
of gangs articulated /u/ in the most backed, least fronted vowel space. Other ChcE
speakers having other mixes of these social factors have intermediate patterns of
/u/-fronting. No single social category could account for indexical coding for as-
similationist identity among the speakers who participated in Fought’s study.
Furthermore, Fought demonstrated that Chicanos, as a linguistic minority com-
munity, do not necessarily have the same relationship that speakers of AAVE have
with the matrix Euro-American local dialect. In 2001 William Labov stated, “no
matter how frequently they are exposed to the local [Euro-American] vernacular,
the new patterns of regional sound change do not surface in … Black, Hispanic,
or Native American … speech” (cited in Fought 2003: 112). His statement was
overly general, since Los Angeles Chicanos participated in u-fronting, as Veatch
(1991) and Santa Ana (1991) noted in their separate instrumental studies. More-
over, Fought provided both a detailed description of the participation of the Chica-
no community in, and social meanings associated with, this Californian change in
progress. Second, Fought made a crucial observation concerning language internal
matters of sound change. Fronting of /u/ is not advancing in the expected “curvi-
linear pattern”, namely where the most innovative, “most advanced vowel systems
are found among younger speakers: young adults and youth in late adolescence”,
and that occupational groups with highest and lowest social status disfavor the
changes in progress (Fought 2003: 125). Indeed, ChcE participation in (u-front-
ing) cuts across socioeconomic groups: “the group with the highest /u/-fronting in-
cludes women from both middle-class backgrounds, and very low socioeconomic
backgrounds” (Fought 2003: 125).
3. Consonants
ChcE has the same consonant phoneme inventory, and all the allophonic variants,
of General Californian English (GCE). ChcE allo-consonantal variants occur in ad-
dition to GCE consonantal allophones, and these ChcE variants occur with greater
or lesser frequency among different ChcE speakers (Fought 2003, section 3.3).
The ChcE alveolar stops often have an apico-dental point of articulation (which
is the corresponding place of articulation in Spanish). Additionally, like some
other English vernaculars, but not GCE, ChcE variably articulates its interdental
fricatives as apico-dental stops. In her study of Los Angeles ChcE, Fought indi-
cates that Euro-American participants did not use apico-dental stops, while even
“very ‘standard’ sounding ChcE speakers who used few or none of the ChcE syn-
tactic features” were heard to use apico-dental stops (2003: 68). Still, regarding
the use and frequency of this substrate-based feature, Santa Ana’s impressions
corroborate Fought’s claim that some Los Angeles ChcE speakers used the apico-
dental stops “almost categorically” (2003: 68). It is often impossible to predict
which ChcE speaker is bilingual and which is an English-speaking monolingual.
This phonetic patterning again belies the commonplace view that ChcE pronuncia-
tion is merely a matter of Spanish-language transfer of ELLs.
Fought noted that for both GCE and ChcE, one variant of syllable-final voice-
less stops is a glottalized form, which she describes as a tensing and closing of
the vocal cords as the stop is closed orally. This is often called an unreleased stop.
Fought remarks that the consonant pronunciation is often associated in ChcE with
a preceding creaky voice vowel. A more pronounced version of this process that
Fought observes is the complete substitution of the voiceless stop with a glottal
stop. Finally, there is a rare ejective version in which the glottalized stop is pro-
nounced with a sharp burst of aspiration.
The most studied consonantal process in ChcE is (-t, d), or final alveolar stop
deletion (Santa Ana 1991, 1992, 1996; Bayley 1994, 1997; Fought 1997). By /-t, d/
deletion we mean the loss of final alveolar stops in the process of consonant clus-
ter simplification, e.g. last week [læs wik]. There are other related simplification
processes. One is assimilation of a consonant of the cluster, as in l-vocalization,
e.g. old [od]. Another is the deletion of one of the consonants. There is also nasal-
ization in English, in -nC clusters, e.g. want, [wat], or in the context of a following
unstressed vowel, a nasal flap. Then there is vowel epenthesis to create a syllable
boundary between adjacent consonants to preserve the segments and eliminate the
cluster. Finally, a process that is related to epenthesis is reassignment of the final
consonant to a following vowel-initial syllable. Santa Ana (1991) stated that these
ChcE forms also occur in other English dialects. However, Chicanos may reduce
clusters to a greater extent than many other dialects.
A related process that calls for study is the deletion of single consonants in
final or syllable-final position. We concur with Fought’s impression that it oc-
curs “more frequently than in any other English dialect”, particularly among older
speakers (Fought 2003: 69).
Santa Ana (1991, 1996) reviewed multivariate analyses of the patterns of the
workhorse linguistic variable (-t, d) for several U.S. dialects (Standard American,
several African American English studies, a vernacular Euro-American dialect,
and Puerto Rican English) to determine the similarity of ChcE to other U.S. Eng-
lish dialects. He found the basic structure is shared across these dialects, but ChcE
reanalysis has created a distinctive variable that reveals its Mexican Spanish sub-
strate influence.
As a process operating in real time on the speech stream, many phonologists
consider (-t, d) to be strictly a surface process, not a more foundational pro-
cess (such as a Level-1 Process in models of Lexical Phonology). Santa Ana
(1996) claimed otherwise, stating that the full range of conditioning effects on
ChcE (-t, d) can be ordered in terms of the basic level concept of syllabifica-
tion. He offered four generalizations. First, in ChcE, syllable stress is not a factor
in deletion, which is a feature expected in stress-timed languages like English.
Second, for both preceding environment and following environment, there is a
correlation of the conditioning segment sonority to the frequency of deletion of
the alveolar stop. An increase of the sonority of the preceding segment is cor-
related with increasing deletion. Conversely, a decrease of the sonority level of
the following segment is correlated with an increase in deletion. Third, ChcE
(-t, d) is correlated to [± coronal] place of articulation of the adjacent segment.
Finally, regarding morphological categories, ChcE speakers attend to the regular
past tense and past participle morphology of English, and tend to simplify alveolar
stop clusters that carry this inflectional morphology at a very low rate. Santa Ana
(1996) schematized ChcE (-t, d) as follows:
/-t, d/ → < ∅ > / < [sonorityα coronalγ] >

morph
β
The alveolar stop variably deletes as conditioned by three rank-ordered constraints:

the major constraint, or α, the sonority of the environment; β, the grammatical cat-
egory of the word containing the /-t, d/ segment; and γ, the coronal value of the
environment. The conditioning constraints are placed in angle brackets to indicate
their variable values. A feature of the analysis not displayed in this schema is the
contrary directions of the effect that sonority has on the /-t, d/, namely that increas-
ing sonority of the preceding coda increases deletion while decreasing sonority of
the following onset increases deletion. Fought (2003: 72) suggests the surprising
absence of the syllable-stress factor in ChcE (-t, d) may be due to the syllable
timed quality of the dialect, to which we turn.
4. Prosody
For some ChcE researchers and many lay people, prosody is the most salient fea-
ture of ChcE. For empirical linguists, it remains the most elusive. Some ChcE
speakers readily employ strongly Spanish-like patterns at one moment, and ut-
terly Germanic patterns at other times, while others exhibit a far more limited
range at either end of the continuum. This aspect of phonology continues to bother
ChcE researchers, and may need to wait for even greater ease-of-use advances in
acoustic research technology. We want to reiterate that prosody is as mercurial in
everyday speech, as it is prone to reification by the public.
Fought (2003) observes that the ChcE prosody system remains poorly under-
stood. All we have are a few accumulated observations about word-stress patterns,
intonation and syllabification. She centers her own review (2003: 70–80) on Santa
Ana’s comment that ChcE “has a syllable timed quality to it” (1991: 139). Both
Fought and Santa Ana are quick to note that ChcE exhibits the features of English
stress timing (namely, lengthening and peripheralization of stressed vowels), but
a syllable-timed quality remains at the root of the ChcE dialect. Fought concludes
that ChcE is “intermediate in some ways” to other strongly stress-timed English
dialects and the syllable-timed Spanish language. We turn to our list of selected
ChcE prosodic features.
4.1. Word stress

Word stress differences in ChcE are idiosyncratic to the individual. These most
often appear in compound words, such as Thanksgíving Day (unstressed day),
mòrning síckness, typewríter, shów up, but also in polysyllabic words, as in réal-
ized, ássociate, téchnique. Some time ago, Penfield (1984) suggested that ChcE
compounds are stressed on the second word, rather than the first as they would be
in most other English dialects. Of course, this does not capture the facts of the vast
majority of ChcE word compounds that exhibit typical English stress patterns.
In phrasal stresses (across a breath group or some other set of words), Fought
notes that main stress may occur at unexpected places. She offers (2003: 71) two
sentences (main stress boldfaced) from a U.S.-born 16-year-old Chicano: Some girls
don’t think what they’re gonna go through. It’s all right for her to talk to her home-
boys, but it ain’t all right for me to talk to my homegirls? Fought states that this
pattern would be only “marginally acceptable” to many speakers of other English
dialects. She goes on to say it has many parallels to ELL stress patterning – again a
substrate-influenced pattern. Fought points to potentially useful directions in ChcE
prosody research, namely testing system-level hypotheses, and moving away from
lists of word-stress anomalies, to characterizations of larger units of prosody.
4.2. Intonation
Five major patterns occur variably in ChcE (Penfield 1984). First, there is the
ChcE rising glide, which “can occur at almost any point in a contour” (Penfield
and Ornstein 1985: 48), as in rules and choking in the following sentences:
(1)
(2)
The glide is accompanied by a lengthening of the affected syllables. Penfield and

Ornstein indicate the distinctiveness of ChcE is that unstressed portions of multi-
syllabic words, e.g. -ing, are maintained at the higher pitch level (1985: 49). The
equivalent pattern in AmE would be:
(3)
Penfield (1984) states that the rising glide is associated with emphasis on the spe-
cific word, and not the contrastive stress that would be the case in AmE. Penfield
and Ornstein (1985) offer (4) as an example of the same word appearing twice in
a sentence, once with the rising glide (marking emphasis), and the more general
step-down pitch contour, which does not have this added meaning:
(4)
A second aspect of this ChcE pattern is that, if the glide occurs on the last stressed
syllable of the utterance, the pitch of glide can be maintained, whether or not the
intent is emphatic or not. Neutral declarative utterances do not necessarily end
with a falling step contour, as is the typical AmE pattern:
(5)
Example (5) is a contrastive use of the glide, spoken by a Chicana who narrated
her conversation with her physician where she makes a “countercomment” (1984)
stating that she did not want to be sedated when she delivered the baby. Penfield
indicates that a syllable-final rising glide in AmE dialects tends to express doubt,
surprise or questions. In ChcE, it does not necessarily convey such notions.
In a related final contour distinction, ChcE non-emphatic declarative utterances
can end on middle pitch, rather than falling to low pitch in a step. This is the pat-
tern that might briefly confuse speakers of other English dialects, who expect a
more pronounced falling contour to signal the end of an utterance:
(6)
(7)
The third ChcE pattern concerns initial pitch position. A ChcE utterance can begin
on a high pitch, which is mistakenly interpreted by speakers of other dialects as fo-
cus. This high pitch does not necessarily mark focus. In some cases, it apparently
marks solidarity. At other times, its meaning is harder to pin down:
(8) Other dialects: Query: Did they buy the house? #

Response: Yes. # They bought the house. #
(9) ChcE:
(10) ChcE:
This ChcE initial high pitch does not function to signal emphasis. Penfield and
Ornstein suggest that it is this prosodic contour that gives AmE speakers the “folk
conception that Chicanos are highly emotional or excited, since the use of a high
pitch at pre-contour level—especially if it spanned over more than a word—would
certainly convey such a meaning in Standard English” (1985: 50).
Four, ChcE has a distinctive gliding-final contour, that is, at the end of utter-
ances/sentences. Compare the USEng step-like fall that marks its sentence-final
contour. This ChcE terminal contour most often signals emphasis or affect. In
contrast to the ChcE gliding contour, the Euro-American tune typically expresses
emphasis with abrupt block-like steps of pitch:
(11) ChcE
(12) Other dialects:
This is the stereotypic pattern that Euro-American actors use when playing Mexi-
can bandits or peasants in Hollywood Westerns. It is also the intonation of the
Warner Bros. cartoon character, Speedy Gonzales. This is not a subtle caricature of
a Mexican, no matter what its original intent. The mouse is outfitted with Mexican
sombrero, and Mexican peasant clothing dating from no later than the 1920s, in
contrast to the cartoon’s origin in the 1950s. It offers a White American’s derisive
depiction of Spanish-accented English. It should be noted that ChcE speakers who
use the rise/fall gliding final contour will also use the local matrix Euro-American
English step-like final contour.
Five, rather than using the AmE yes/no question contour, which again is a block-
like step that ends on a low pitch, ChcE speakers variably employ another gliding
contour that does not end in a final low pitch:
(13) Other dialects:
(14) ChcE
Fought (2003: 75–76) continues that these terminal contours are distinct from the
so-called U.S. American cross-dialect “uptalk” contour that is used in non-emphat-
ic declaratives, in spite of the fact that both the ChcE contour and the uptalk contour
do not end in a falling pitch. Santa Ana can confirm that in his current contact with
Los Angeles ChcE speakers he can distinguish both declarative contours.
Intonational contours, arguably the most changeable and ephemeral elements
of speech, are very readily reified. At this point it is useful to recall that these
speech utterance patterns are rendered vexingly complex by individual language
histories, speech event features such as topic, setting, and, among many other so-
cial factors, interlocutor. Add to this the complexity inherent in cultural features
such as habituated verbal practice and, in contrast, mapping patterns of responses
to novel interactional situations. Moreover, it is important to consider the open
flexibility that individuals have in the moment of their speaking turn. In studies of
naturally occurring prosody, we must add the issue of the observer’s paradox, and
the impossibility to replicate speech events—however closely one reproduces the
setting. The traditional scientific response to such research circumstances, namely
large-scale projects designed to wash out variation, are entirely inappropriate in
these circumstances. This makes the goal of characterizing ChcE intonation in its
dynamic contact setting a first-order methodological challenge.
Fought (2002: 72–76) provides a fascinating angle on some ChcE intonation pat-
terns, drawing on Joseph Matluck’s (1952) description of the Spanish language cir-
cumflex pattern of the Mexican altiplano (the high plateau formed between the eastern
and western Sierra Madre mountain chains). To find the origin of the circumflex pat-
tern, Matluck points to another substrate language: “The distinctive musical line in the
unfolding of the phonetic group is probably the most striking trace that the Nahuatl
language has left in the Spanish of the Valley [of Mexico City] and the plateau: a kind
of song with its curious final cadence, very similar to the melodic movement of Nahuatl
itself”. Fought continues to translate Matluck: “From the antepenultimate syllable to
the penult there is a rise of about three semitones, and from there to the final a fall of six
semitones more or less. Both the penult and the final syllables are lengthened” (Fought
2002: 74). Matluck also describes a working-class feature that can be found in ChcE,
namely lengthening of stressed vowels at the start and the end of a phrase:
Accented syllables in vernacular speech in the Valley tend to be much longer than those of
the educated class and in Castilian generally; on the other hand, unaccented syllables are
shortened. The overall impression is of syllabic lengthening at the beginning and especially
at the end of the sentence, and of shortening in the middle. For example: Don’t be bad >
Doont be baaad; I have to do it soon > III have to do it sooon (quoted in Fought 2002:
75).
Fought states that not only is this pattern readily observed in the English ELLs,
it is also heard in the speech of ChcE native speakers. Once again, the substrate
Mexican Spanish influence has not disappeared in ChcE, it has been transformed
into another feature of in-group solidarity.
4.3. Syllabification
Two processes, both in need of more clarifying research, further contribute to the
Spanish accent of ChcE, namely syllabic differences that involve changes of con-
versational tempo (Fought 2003). English has ambisyllabic consonants, namely an
intervocalic consonant in which a syllable boundary can be placed. Spanish does
not have ambisyllables. The result of ambisyllabification is that English sounds as
if it has more closed syllables than a comparable stretch of Spanish speech does.
Now for all languages, most of the dictionary entry consonants are pronounced in
slow, enunciated speech. At more rapid tempos, consonant clusters are reduced,
thus creating more open syllables. However, in English, more ambisyllables, such
as flaps, are created as well. In ChcE, as the tempo increases, fewer ambisyl-
lables are created because more single consonants, and even whole word-internal
syllables are lost (Fought 2003). This follows the syllabification patterns of the
ChcE substrate, altiplano Mexican Spanish. Mexican Spanish tends toward greater
synocope (preserving final syllables while losing medials), in contrast to Carib-
bean Spanish dialects which tend toward greater apocope (loss of final syllables).
Additionally, more ChcE syllable onsets are placed before intervocalic consonants
rather than within them (Fought 2003). These processes contribute to the rela-
tively larger open syllable count in ChcE. More empirical research will have to be
undertaken to describe these processes with greater precision.
While most of the features that we have presented in this chapter can be associated
with the Mexican Spanish substrate, one feature of ChcE has its origins among
Euro-American California English speakers. This is creaky voice, or laryngealiza-
tion, a common phonation effect. In other dialects creaky voice is a paralinguistic
marker that signals bored resignation. However, in her recent study, Fought offers
tantalizing evidence that ChcE creaky voice, particular among Chicanas, must
have other meanings as well (2003: 78).
Finally, Fought mentions the use of palato-alveolar or alveolar clicks in ChcE.
Clicks in AmE are egressive airstream stops used as suprasegmentals to signal
scolding, disapproval, and other kinds of censure. Fought provides provocative evi-
dence that this paralinguistic marker is far more frequent and signals a wider variety
of meanings in ChcE than it does in most other AmE dialects (2003: 79–80).
5. Conclusion
ChcE is a native variety of English that has been influenced by the Mexican Span-
ish substrate. Throughout this chapter we have indicated that the distinguishing
features of ChcE are associated with the substrate, or the ELL interlanguage of
Mexican Spanish-speaking immigrants. We believe its features originated as
second language learning features that Euro-Americans made salient in the Eng-
lish/Spanish contact setting. The Chicano community somehow reworked some
of these markers of stigma into the most distinctive elements of ChcE phonology,
creating a set of linguistic variables and discourse markers (most of which still
have yet to be documented) that affirm ethnic solidarity.
Further empirical dialect contact research in these communities can develop
both linguistic and sociolinguistic understandings of dynamic language and dia-
lect contact settings. Well-crafted research has the potential to develop a richer
understanding of the complex interaction of the full complement of prosodic,
syntactic, and phonological variables that express nuanced Chicana and Chicano
identities. In the sociological sphere, it can render precise the human processes by
which ethnic communities reformulate linguistic features of out-group markers of
stigma into in-group solidarity features.
Chicano communities show no sign of giving up these largely unconscious
markers of identity, family, and neighborhood — even when Chicano youth shift
from Spanish to English. This reveals a lasting sense of belonging to their commu-
nity and culture, and a keen awareness of their circumstances in U.S. society. As
Fought and Mendoza-Denton bring to light, Chicanos and Chicanas use the ChcE
linguistic variables in their daily life to express a counterhegemonic stance toward
a nation that still does not fully embrace all of its citizens.
Selected references
ROM.
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Change 6: 303–326.
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Bernstein, Nunnally and Sabino (eds.), 197–209.
Finks, Leon
2003 Work and Community in the Nuevo New South: The Maya of Morganton.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Fought, Carmen
1997 The English and Spanish of young adult Chicanos. Ph.D. dissertation,
Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.
2002 Ethnicity. In: Chambers, Trudgill, and Schilling-Estes (eds.), 444–472.
2003 Chicano English in Context. Houndmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Galindo, D. Leticia
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Austin, Texas. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of
Texas, Austin.
García, Maryellen
1984 Parameters of the East Los Angeles speech community. In: Jacob Ornstein-
Galicia (ed.), Form and Function in Chicano English, 85–98. Rowley, MA:
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Labov, William
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Matluck, Joseph
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Bahamian English: phonology
Becky Childs and Walt Wolfram
1. Introduction
The Commonwealth of The Bahamas (henceforth The Bahamas) represents a

unique geographic, demographic, and linguistic situation among the islands of the
Caribbean and North Atlantic. The Bahamas consist of more than 700 islands and
over 5,000 square miles of land mass, ranging from Grand Bahama to the north,
located 60 miles off of the Florida coast, to Inagua to the south, located approxi-
mately 50 miles from Cuba and Haiti. The 30 inhabited islands contain almost
300,000 permanent residents, two-thirds of whom now live in the urban area of
Nassau. The map in Figure 1 outlines The Bahamas in relation to the United States,
Cuba, and Haiti.
Figure 1. Map of the islands of the Bahamas
Although The Bahamas are often associated with the Caribbean Islands, in many re-
spects they are more closely linked to North America than to the islands bounded by
436 Becky Childs and Walt Wolfram
the Greater and Lesser Antilles. Furthermore, they have an important sociohistorical
and sociolinguistic affinity with the US. Many of the Afro-Bahamians, who comprise
85 percent of the population, came from the Gullah-speaking areas of South Carolina
and Georgia and many of the original Anglo-Bahamian settlers were British loyalists
from North America who came to The Bahamas from the US after the Revolutionary
War. Furthermore, there is regular off-island travel to the US by many Bahamians.
There are a number of linguistic and sociolinguistic issues relating to this archi-
pelago. One question concerns the significance of different founder English varieties
that range from British and American English dialects to Gullah and other creoles
in the African diaspora. Few Caribbean varieties have such a full range of potential
English input dialects. Another matter is the past and present relationship between
Afro-Bahamian and Anglo-Bahamian varieties. Although the black population has
outnumbered the white population for several centuries, they have been socially and
politically subordinate for the vast majority of that time. At the same time, there are
a number of long-term mono-ethnic enclaves of Anglo-Bahamians in some of the
outlying cays (pronounced as “keys”), raising issues about ethnolinguistic boundar-
ies and accommodation. The demographic, sociohistorical, and sociolinguistic cir-
cumstances of the islands thus raise important questions about language norms and
language ideology along with matters of linguistic description.
In this account, we describe the phonological traits of Bahamian English, in-
cluding the relationship between enclave Anglo-Bahamian speech communities in
outlying regions and the dominant population of Afro-Bahamians. Although some
of these issues are just beginning to be addressed, current research suggests that
bilateral ethnolinguistic convergence and divergence are exhibited in both salient
and subtle ways. To situate the linguistic description of some of the diagnostic
features of Bahamian phonology, we first offer a brief historical overview of The
Bahamas, followed by a description of some of the major vocalic, consonantal,
and prosodic traits typical of black and white Bahamian speech.
The Bahamas have experienced several different waves of migration that affected
their demographic and social ecology. The first known inhabitants of The Baha-
mas were the Lucayan Indians who migrated to The Bahamas from South America
as early as 600 CE and inhabited the islands until the Spanish invasion at the end
of the fifteenth century. The Spanish conquest brought about the destruction of the
indigenous population through disease and enslavement, although the Spaniards
left after a brief occupation. Their lasting imprint was the name Bahamas, derived
from the Spanish words baja and mar, meaning ‘shallow sea’.
In 1648 the first English settlers to The Bahamas came from Bermuda and es-
tablished a colony on the island of Eleuthera. The so-called Eleutheran Adven-
turers were looking for religious freedom and hoping to establish a republican
Bahamian English: phonology 437
government in The Bahamas. However, the settlers realized that limited natural
resources of the island placed them in danger of starvation. Many of the settlers
left the island and returned to Bermuda though the settlement remained intact.
During this time, the first colony, New Providence Island, was established on the
site that is now the home of the Bahamian capital city of Nassau. This settlement,
established also by Bermudians, grew much more quickly than the earlier settle-
ment of Eleuthera and by 1671 boasted a population of 913 people (Dodge 1995).
Though a proprietary government was adopted in 1670, it was unsuccessful and
The Bahamas became a haven for pirates in the early 1700s. The geography of
the islands was well situated for pirating hapless ships navigating the treacherous
waters surrounding the islands. In 1718, the British sent Captain Woods Rogers to
The Bahamas to drive the pirates from the islands and regain control for the Brit-
ish, and it was then turned into an official colony.
After the American Revolutionary War in the 1780s, many British loyalists fled
the newly formed United States for both the major islands and the out islands of
The Bahamas. Two-thirds of the loyalists came to The Bahamas via boats leaving
from New York, the other third from boats leaving from St. Augustine, Florida,
although they represented loyalists from throughout the US. One contingent, for
example, came from the Carolinas, moving first to Florida and then departing after
a brief stay there (Wolfram and Sellers 1998). Most wealthy loyalists returned
to England within ten years, but those too poor to return stayed and relied on the
resources of the land and the sea to maintain a subsistence living. Many loyalists
also brought slaves with them from the US in hopes of setting up a plantation colo-
ny similar to that found in the American South, but the hope for cotton plantations
died quickly as settlers realized that the thin Bahamian soil would not support the
crop. Approximately 5,000 to 8,000 loyalists in all came to The Bahamas in the
years following the American Revolutionary War, making them a significant early
group in the establishment of The Bahamas (Dodge 1995).
With the passing of the Abolition of Slavery Act in Great Britain in 1833, the
composition of the islands changed quickly. The population was growing rap-
idly and many Bahamians were again turning to the resources of the land and
sea for their living. Various industries, for example, shipbuilding, sponging, fruit
orchards, and sisal, have risen but none endured. Notwithstanding short-term eco-
nomic surges, it was not until the 1950s that The Bahamas established long-term
economic stability through the tourist industry. At the same time, politics was
becoming an important part of Bahamian life, and by 1973 the Commonwealth of
the Bahamas became independent and joined the Commonwealth of Nations even
though it still retained Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state. Over the last three
decades, Afro-Bahamians have gained control of civic life throughout the islands
while Anglo-Bahamians have functioned on the periphery of mainstream modern
Bahamian culture, living mostly on the outlying cays. Today The Bahamas are one
of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. Residents of the major islands
now earn a living performing more contemporary jobs common to most large
cities along with the service industry related to tourism, while residents of the out-
islands have maintained more traditional jobs like fishing and boat building. The
unique history, the demographics, and the past and present social dynamics of the
islands have helped create and maintain distinct varieties of English.
3. The phonology of Bahamian English
In this section, we describe some of the phonological features of Bahamian Eng-

lish. Although most Bahamians share some characteristic features, a number of
structures are sensitive to ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic factors. In ad-
dition, there is a basilectal-acrolectal continuum with respect to creole features
that applies primarily to the Afro-Bahamian population; however, this dimension
tends to be more relevant to the grammatical description of Bahamian English
than to phonology. Our description is presented in terms of the major categories of
vowels, consonants, and prosodic elements.
3.1. Vowels
Many of the distinctive characteristics of the Caribbean Islands relate to the vowel
system. In this respect, The Bahamas are no different. The constellation of vowel
features unifies The Bahamas with Caribbean varieties of English but it also sets
these islands apart in some significant respects, particularly in their affinity with
some traits of Southern US English. In the following sections we consider some of
these vowel characteristics, including the primary vowel system and diphthongs.
In table 1 we provide a summary of the vowels of Bahamian English in terms
of the key words set forth in Wells (1982). Separate profiles are provided for Afro-
Bahamian and Anglo-Bahamian speakers given the ethnolinguistic distinctions
described in the preceding description.
Table 1. Vowel sounds in Bahamian English
Key Anglo- Afro- Key Anglo- Afro- Key Anglo- Afro-

word Baha- Baha- word Baha- Baha- word Baha- Baha-
mian mian mian mian mian mian
KIT FLEECE i8 ~ I8i i NEAR e ~ i e ~ i
DRESS FACE ei i SQUARE e e
TRAP a~Q a~Q PALM START
LOT A A THOUGHT ç ç NORTH ç´ ç´
STRUT GOAT !u !u FORCE o o
FOOT

GOAL !u ou CURE u u
Table 1. (continued) Vowel sounds in Bahamian English
Key Anglo- Afro- Key Anglo- Afro- Key Anglo- Afro-

word Baha- Baha- word Baha- Baha- word Baha- Baha-
mian mian mian mian mian mian
BATH a~æ a~æ GOOSE happY
CLOTH ç ç PRICE i ai~i lettER
NURSE ~ ~i PRIZE 1 ~ ai a˘ horsES
CHOICE oi çi commA
MOUTH aO~a aç~ç
3.1.1. Front vowels

Wells (1982) notes that the Bahamian /æ/ of TRAP occupies a more central position
of [a] rather than a front position, but his description needs to be qualified in order
to take into account generational and ethnic differences. In acoustic measurements
of Bahamian vowels by Thomas (2001) and Childs, Reaser and Wolfram (2003),
the production of the vowel in TRAP by both black and white speakers is shown
to remain low and somewhat retracted. However, among older Anglo-Bahamian
speakers, the vowel is raised before d in words like sad or plaid, occupying a posi-
tion closer to []; this production is different from Afro-Bahamian speakers. The
production of the vowel of TRAP by younger speakers in the white communities
shows the vowel realized as [a] in all other environments. The lowered and backed
trap production by the Afro-Bahamian speakers and the younger generation of
Anglo-Bahamian residents is typical of many Caribbean varieties of English. The
cross-generational analysis of different groups of Bahamians by Childs, Reaser
and Wolfram (2003) indicates that Anglo-Bahamians are moving somewhat to-
ward Afro-Bahamian norms.
Both Afro-Bahamians and Anglo-Bahamians produce the vowel of FACE as [ei]
(Wells 1982; Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003). This phonetic production is typi-
cal of varieties of North American English in general and AAVE (Thomas 2001)
but different from white Southern speech in the US and most Southern British
English varieties, which have a lowered and centralized nucleus for /e/.
Thomas (2001: 106) reports that there is a merger of the vowels of NEAR and
SQUARE in Bahamian English, making items like fear and fair or ear and air ho-
mophonous. In this respect, Bahamian English resembles the low country dialect
of South Carolina, although a number of English dialects exist that exhibit this
merger.
3.1.2. Central vowels

One of the diagnostic variants in The Bahamas is the mid-central vowel //. Both
Afro-Bahamians and Anglo-Bahamians have a backed variant for the vowel of
strut that is somewhat rounded and produced close to the cardinal position of
[ç] (Wells 1982; Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003). This variant has been well
documented in Caribbean creole varieties such as Jamaican English (Wells 1982),
but it is quite scattered in the United States, though it is found in the Low Country
of South Carolina and Georgia (Thomas 2001). This production is, however, not
found at all in British Cockney, the British dialect most often compared to Anglo-
Bahamian English. The origin of this variant is difficult to determine given its rar-
ity in some of the more obvious founder dialects of English in The Bahamas.
3.1.3. Back vowels

The back vowels of GOOSE and COAT indicate a distinct ethnic difference in their
phonetic production. Anglo-Bahamians have fronted productions of GOOSE and
COAT while they remain backed for Afro-Bahamians. The fronting of back vowels
is a widespread feature of white Southern American English varieties, although
it is an expanding trait of other North American varieties as well (Thomas 2001).
Even though /u/ in Anglo-Bahamian speech is not as fronted as the variant in
Southern American English [y], it may front to [ø]. The source of back vowel
fronting in Bahamian white speech may be the result of contact with earlier or
present-day Southern American English, but it may also be the result of an in-
dependent phonetic development, following the principles of vowel shifting set
forth in Labov (1994). The lack of fronting for back vowels in Afro-Bahamian
speech replicates the ethnic distribution found in Southern speech in the US. For
example, Gullah and general Southern AAVE do not exhibit back-vowel fronting
(Thomas 2001), but white Southern speech does; this parallels the ethnolinguistic
dichotomy in The Bahamas.
The fronted /o/ of GOAT found among Anglo-Bahamians does not have a low-
ered nucleus like that typically found in Southern American varieties. The /o/ is,
instead, realized as [!u]. For Afro-Bahamian speech /o/ remains back and up-
gliding, similar to African American English [ou]. This production is more like
American English and less like varieties of Caribbean English, which are known
for producing /o/ as a monophthong (Wells 1982). This ethnic differentiation no
doubt reflects the differing founder effects, the sociohistorical development of The
Bahamas, and the persistent maintenance of ethnolinguistic boundaries.
Wells (1982) and Childs, Reaser and Wolfram (2003) report that the vowel of
LOT is backed in both Anglo-Bahamian and Afro-Bahamian English; furthermore,
the vowels of LOT and THOUGHT are not merged as is found in some varieties that
have backed vowel in LOT (Thomas 2001). This pattern is quite different from the
pattern throughout the rest of the Caribbean, which may exhibit a merger of LOT
and TRAP. The pattern found in The Bahamas is much more similar to the pattern
found in Southern white US speech, AAVE, and the Pamlico Sound area. Again,
the presence of this variant in both black and white Bahamian speech provides
important information about dialect accommodation in The Bahamas.
3.1.4. Diphthongs
The diphthong of words like PRICE and PRIZE shows quite a bit of variability eth-
nically and generationally in the Bahamas. Older Anglo-Bahamian speakers show
a backed nucleus much like that of the Pamlico Sound area of coastal North Caro-
lina, as well as a number of dialect areas in Southern England and in the Southern
Hemisphere; they also have a fairly strong offglide. Younger speakers tend to
show a less backed nucleus and a weakened glide preceding voiced consonants,
not unlike that found in Southern American English varieties. Childs, Reaser and
Wolfram (2003) show that Afro-Bahamians exhibit a pattern comparable to that
found in African American English in the US, with a fully glided offglide for price
(preceding voiceless consonants) and a drastically reduced glide for prize (preced-
ing voiced consonants). There is also less of a tendency to back the nucleus of /ai/
among Afro-Bahamian speakers.
Some observers have mistakenly associated the diphthong of MOUTH in The
Bahamas with Canadian raising. In Canadian raising the nucleus of the /au/ diph-
thong of MOUTH is raised before voiceless consonants so that out is realized as
[t]; however, this type of raising is not found in Anglo-Bahamian or Afro-Ba-
hamian speech. Instead, in Anglo-Bahamian speech /au/ is front-glided and pro-
duced as [a], while in Afro-Bahamian speech the diphthong is produced with a
backing glide. Although the production of /au/ by the Afro-Bahamian population
is fairly standard, the production of /au/ with a front glide by the Anglo-Bahamian
population is a noteworthy departure from standard productions in The Bahamas
and the US, though it is fairly typical of some coastal varieties on the Pamlico
Sound area of North Carolina and the Chesapeake (Thomas 2001).
3.2. Consonants
In this section, we consider some of the diagnostic characteristics of consonants;
traits are discussed in terms of different processes affecting natural classes of
sounds and phonotactics.
3.2.1. Interdental fricatives

The stopping of voiced and voiceless interdental fricatives is one of the most ste-
reotypical variables in English phonology, characterized by well-known icons
such as dis, dat, and dem for this, that, and them. Studies of interdental fricatives
in Bahamian varieties (Shilling 1978, 1980; Holm 1980; Wells 1982) show both
similarities and differences with respect to the realization of the phonemes / / and
/ /. Afro-Bahamians show a clear preference for stopping for both voiced and
voiceless interdentals in all positions, as in tank for thank, toot for tooth, dat for
that, and smood for smooth. Stopping of interdentals is, of course, the Caribbean
creole model and the norm for the US creole Gullah. In syllable-coda position,
there is little labialization of / / as [f] and / / as [v], respectively, (e.g. [tuf] for
‘tooth’ or [briv] for ‘breathe’) as found in African American Vernacular English
(AAVE). In most respects, then, Afro-Bahamians are more likely to follow the
creole norm of stopping than the North American AAVE model, in which stop-
ping is favored in syllable-onset position and mostly restricted to [d] for / /. How-
ever, the levels of stopping in Afro-Bahamian speech do not appear to be as high
as they are in other Afro-Caribbean varieties. Anglo-Bahamian speech is much
more inclined to follow the widespread English norm, with some stopping for the
voiced interdental / / and infrequent stopping of the voiceless phoneme / /.
The stopping of voiceless interdentals serves as an important ethnolinguistic
divide between Afro-Bahamian and Anglo-Bahamian speech, and quantitative
studies of interdental fricatives in The Bahamas have revealed the significance of
this disparity. At the same time, these studies have indicated some unpredictable
results. Although it is not surprising to see a preference for the stopped variants
among Afro-Bahamians, studies of outlying black and white speech communities
in Abaco show that Anglo-Bahamians are more likely than their black cohorts to
delete or assimilate initial stops. That is, white speakers are more likely to pro-
duce ‘at’s all for that’s all or an’nen for and then, although it is not a particularly
frequent phonetic production for either group.
3.2.2. w/v alternation

The alternation of /w/ and /v/ is a highly marked feature of Bahamian speech.
While this feature is found in both black and white speech, it is especially promi-
nent among Anglo-Bahamians. The historical background for this type of alterna-
tion, which can be found in scattered varieties of English throughout the world,
suggests that v, or more phonetically specific, a labiodental approximant [5], may
replace [w], creating items such as vatch for watch or vaste for waste. A w or labi-
al approximant may also replace v, yielding wiolence for violence or wase for vase.
Childs, Reaser and Wolfram (2003) find that w→v tends to be much more frequent
than the converse, and that Anglo-Bahamian communities tend to have more alter-
nation in both directions than Afro-Bahamians. Wells (1982: 58) suggests that the
pattern for this alternation among the white Bahamians is “the phonemic merger
of standard /v/ and /w/ into a single phoneme with the allophones [w] and [v] in
complementary distribution. The [w] allophone occurs in initial position … but
the [v] allophone elsewhere.” Although this pattern may be found in some white
Bahamian communities, it does not appear to be representative of the majority of
communities. Research on Abaco Island (Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003) in
The Bahamas and with Bahamian transplants (the so-called Conchs) in the Florida
Keys of the US (Huss and Werner 1940) indicates that the [v] allophone can and
does occur more frequently in initial position, though it also occurs elsewhere.
Most descriptions of Bahamian English (Shilling 1978, 1980; Holm 1980; Childs,
Reaser and Wolfram 2003) agree that it is a relatively salient trait associated with
Bahamian speech vis-à-vis English-based Caribbean creoles and North American
and British English varieties of English.
There is some dispute as to the origin of this feature in Bahamian English. Holm
(1980) suggests that the founder source for this phonological process appears to
be African language contact, noting that Gullah and West African languages do
not maintain a /w/-/v/ phonological contrast. For example, Gullah speakers use
the approximant for both v and w. If this were the source of the alternation in
Bahamian English, the use of this feature by the white population would have
been the result of accommodation to the broader black Bahamian majority. An
alternative explanation for this feature is the founder dialects of Anglo-Bahamians.
Although w/v alternation is not a widespread feature of most contemporary British
and American English varieties, it was fairly common in some earlier varieties of
British English, including Cockney (Trudgill et al. 2003). Wolfram and Thomas
(2002: 127) note that w/v alternation was also a characteristic of earlier Mid-At-
lantic coastal speech in the US, so that it is possible that some loyalists from the
Carolinas may have exhibited this trait.
One of the strongest arguments for a primary Anglo source for w/v alternation
comes from the fact that this trait is more prominent in Anglo-Bahamian commu-
nities than in cohort Afro-Bahamian communities. Both earlier (Huss and Werner
1940) and more recent (Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003) studies of Bahamian
speech observe that w/v alternation is more widespread in Anglo-Bahamian than
in Afro-Bahamian English. The African- and British-based explanations are not,
however, mutually exclusive and it is quite possible that Gullah influence, transfer
effects from West African languages, and English founder dialects converged in
the development and maintenance of this trait as a distinctive feature of Bahamian
English.
3.2.3. Syllable-onset h deletion

The deletion of syllable-initial h in harm as ‘arm or hope as ‘ope is also a promi-
nent feature of Bahamian speech showing regional, social, and ethnic variation
in Bahamian English. Most studies (Wells 1982; Holm 1980; Childs, Reaser and
Wolfram 2003) agree that it tends to be more prominent in the speech of Anglo-
Bahamians than it is in Afro-Bahamian speech, and that it correlates with social
status differences and regional location as well. However, the social and ethnic
differences tend to be a matter of relative frequency rather than the categorical
presence or absence of so-called h-dropping. Childs, Reaser and Wolfram’s (2003)
study of syllable onset h deletion on Abaco Island indicates that although both
black and white Bahamian communities exhibit h deletion, members of the en-
clave Anglo-Bahamian communities drop h more frequently than their Afro-Ba-
hamian cohorts, regardless of age. There are also linguistically based effects on
the relative frequency of h deletion based on phonetic context: h deletion is most
favored at the beginning of an utterance. It is also more favored when it follows a
consonant rather than a vowel; that is, speakers are more likely to say bees’ ‘ive for
bees’ hive than bee ‘ive for bee hive. The favoring effect in terms of the canonical
shape of sequences is natural in terms of a universal preference for the preserva-
tion of CV sequences as opposed to VV sequences.
As with w/v alternation, British Cockney has sometimes been cited as a source
of h deletion in Anglo-Bahamian English, although it is a relatively widespread
and phonetically natural process that is found in many varieties of English (Trudg-
ill 1999). The initial impetus for h dropping may have come from a British English
founder effect but its maintenance certainly is reinforced by its apparent natural-
ness as a phonetic process.
3.2.4. h insertion
The insertion of syllable-onset h in items such as heggs for eggs or hitch for itch
is also found in Bahamian English. As with the loss of syllable-initial h, it is more
characteristic of Anglo-Bahamian than Afro-Bahamian speech (Shilling 1980;
Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003). In fact, an empirically based comparison of
isolated Afro-Bahamian and Anglo-Bahamian communities in Abaco (Childs,
Reaser and Wolfram 2003) indicates that h insertion is rarely found among speak-
ers in the black community though it is relatively common in the cohort white
community. The insertion of h is sensitive to ethnic and status distinctions, but it
is fairly widely distributed among white Bahamians in different locales, including
a transplant community that settled in Florida Keys (Huss and Werner 1940). It is
also sensitive to phonetic environment so that it is more likely to occur in intervo-
calic sequences such my heldest ‘my eldest’ than when it follows a consonant as
duck hegg’ ‘duck egg’, thus facilitating the retention of a natural CVC canonical
sequence. It can be quite salient socially in some phonetic environments, such as
utterance-initial position in a sentence like Heggs are good for ‘Eggs are good’.
The phonological status of h insertion is elusive. At first glance, the occurrence
of h insertion may seem like a type of hypercorrection related to the fact that
variable h dropping as discussed above is a fairly prominent trait of Bahamian
English. A number of cases of h insertion occur on items that have no historic h in
English, for example, hitch for itch or even hup for up. This suggests that it may
have arisen as a compensatory production by speakers unsure of the phonological

status of initial h in words. However, it should be noted that hypercorrection tends
to be related to social situations where speakers feel obliged to use more acrolectal
forms, or situations calling for more “careful” speech (Labov 1966). Bahamians
who insert h appear to do so in relatively casual conversations where there is
no apparent obligation to speak “properly”. Although some lexical items may be
more prone to h insertion than others (e.g. hage for age, honion for onion), we
have found no consistent pattern defined strictly on a lexical basis. Instead, h in-
sertion simply seems to be a phonetic option for word-initial vowels that co-exists
with syllable-onset h dropping. In most cases, h dropping is much more frequent
than h insertion but they clearly co-exist as traits of Bahamian English, showing
both socially constrained and individually based variation. The existence of both
h dropping and h insertion can result in some potential confusion of lexical items
such as hear and ear or heel and eel, but in most cases there is little perceptual
misinterpretation in actual conversation.
3.2.5. Consonant cluster reduction

The reduction of stop-final syllable-coda consonant clusters such as west to wes’,
find to fin’, and act to ac’ is a well-known process affecting a wide variety of
English dialects. Whereas all dialects of English reduce clusters preconsonantly,
as in west side to wes’ side or cold cuts to col’ cuts, in prevocalic position conso-
nant cluster reduction (CCR) is quite sensitive to ethnic and language background.
Wolfram, Childs and Torbert (2000) maintain, for example, that extensive pre-
vocalic reduction can usually be traced to language contact situations involving
transfer from a source language not having syllable-coda clusters. It is also a well-
known feature of creolized varieties of English, including creole languages of the
Caribbean (Holm 1988/89; Patrick 1996) and North America (e.g. Gullah), as
well as ethnic varieties exhibiting such substrate influence. Both Holm (1980) and
Schilling (1978, 1980) note extensive consonant cluster reduction as a character-
istic of both black and white Bahamian English varieties.
The quantitative analysis of two outlying Bahamian communities in the Aba-
co region of The Bahamas, one exclusively Afro-Bahamian and one exclusively
Anglo-Bahamian, suggests that there is an ethnolinguistic divide in the relative
incidence of consonant cluster reduction. Afro-Bahamian communities tend to ap-
ply cluster reduction at much higher frequency levels than their Anglo-Bahamian
cohorts. At the same time, Anglo residents in The Bahamas have higher levels of
CCR than Anglo speakers in the US or in England. For example, Anglo-Bahamian
speakers tend to reduce clusters more than vernacular-speaking white speakers in
the Northern or Southern US, although their levels of reduction are not equal to
those of their Afro-Bahamian cohorts (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1998). This
pattern suggests that there has been some quantitatively based accommodation to
the vernacular phonological norms of Black Bahamian speech by Anglo residents

of The Bahamas.
As with other dialects of English where consonant cluster reduction applies, it
can affect both monomorphemic (e.g. guest to gues’; mist to mis’) and bimorphe-
mic clusters (guessed to gues’ and missed to mis’), with CCR favored in mono-
morphemic clusters. For basilectal Afro-Bahamian speech, however, this pattern is
confounded by the incidence of grammatically based unmarked tense (see Reaser
and Torbert in this volume; Hackert 2004). That is, the lack of inflectional -ed suf-
fixation may result from a grammatical difference in verb morphology as well as
the phonological process of cluster reduction. The confluence of the grammatical
process and the phonological process may thus have the effect of raising the over-
all incidence of past tense unmarking. It also makes it impossible to determine if a
particular case of a past tense verb form (e.g. missed as miss’; guessed as guess’)
results from the phonological or the grammatical process. This type of additive ef-
fect does not apply to Anglo-Bahamian speakers, who do not have grammatically
based past tense unmarking and tend to have quite low levels of prevocalic CCR
for bimorphemic clusters.
3.2.6. Postvocalic r
The pronunciation of postvocalic /r/ in door, mother, and bird is quite variable, al-
though most speakers exhibit r-lessness to some degree (Wells 1982). The speech
of both black and white speakers tends to be non-rhotic, aligning with many dia-
lects of England and with American English in the earlier Plantation South. The
use of postvocalic /r/ in The Bahamas shows a pattern similar to that found for
African American Vernacular English (Fasold and Wolfram 1970). Vocalization
occurs in a word-final position when followed by a consonant (e.g. four cats)
or vowel (e.g. four apples), with a following consonant favoring postvocalic r
loss over a following vowel. Stressed nuclear r in bird or sir is more likely to be
rhotic, with some ethnic division; black Bahamians are more likely to vocalize
stressed nuclear r than their white counterparts. Finally, there is some intra-word
intervocalic r loss as in ma’y for marry or Ca’ol for Carol. These cases of inter-
vocalic, intra-word absence are not consistent and appear to be lexically based.
Hackert (2004) notes that even though most Bahamian varieties are non-rhotic,
some speakers now perceive r-full pronunciations as standard because of the influ-
ence of the American media. It may well be that this influence will eventually lead
to a more rhotic variety, if this trend has not started already among some younger
speakers.
Afro-Bahamians also vocalize postvocalic l in items such as steal and well, as
do AAVE speakers, but Anglo-Bahamians tend to use an alveolar or “light” l re-
gardless of phonetic environment, setting them apart from varieties such as Ameri-
can English.
3.2.7. Sibilants
In syllable-coda and intervocalic position, voiced sibilants may be devoiced in
Anglo-Bahamian English. Thus, items like buzz and booze may be produced with
a final [s] and easy and lazy may be produced with a voiceless sibilants, as ea[s]y
la[s]y, respectively, and measure and treasure may be produced as mea[]ure and
tread[]ure, respectively. Although many varieties of English have partial devoic-
ing of obstruents in syllable-coda position, the final sibilant in Bahamian English
may be fully voiceless. Furthermore, this devoicing even may apply to segments
that are followed by a voiced segment, as in hu[s]band for husband and bu[s]iness
for business. Although this pattern is quite prominent for Anglo speakers, it is not
as extensive among Afro-Bahamians.
Older speakers in more remote areas of the islands may sometimes use [sr]
for [ r] clusters, so that three and through may be pronounced as [sri] and [sru],
respectively. However, this production is somewhat idiosyncratic; some speakers
use it predominantly while others do not use it at all.

There have been few comprehensive studies of prosody in the Caribbean and North
American islands and no detailed research on these features in Bahamian English.
Wells (1982) describes the general prosodic characteristics of speech as sounding
more syllable-timed than stress-timed. This applies to both Afro-Bahamian and
Anglo-Bahamian speech, but it is also important to qualify this observation. Wells
notes that the syllable–timing characteristics of Caribbean varieties, and more par-
ticularly, Bahamian English, are not like those of African second language learn-
ers and that syllable timing is not an absolute phenomenon. Bahamian English
falls within a continuum of syllable timing in that it is more syllable-timed than
British or American English varieties but not as consistent as varieties of English
directly transferring syllable timing from a language with strict syllable timing,
such as a native speaker of Spanish speaking heavily accented English.
One of the most recognizable features of Bahamian English is the relative lack
of reduction of vowels in unstressed syllables as in most varieties of American
English. This trait contributes to the perception of Bahamian English as being
stress-timed rather than syllable- timed. Afro-Bahamian speech appears to be
somewhat more syllable-timed than Anglo-Bahamian speech, though they share
this trait to some extent.
There are also a couple of noteworthy characteristics of Bahamian English relat-
ing to sentence intonation. High rising terminal contours characterize Bahamian
English affirmative sentences. In this regard, they appear to align with varieties as
disparate as Australian and New Zealand English, as well as younger speakers in
some areas of the US, but this intonation pattern seems to be a longstanding char-
acteristic of Bahamian English, as it is with Caribbean English elsewhere (Wells

1982: 580).
The intonational contours of Bahamian English tend to show a wider pitch
range than varieties such as American English and British English, although it is
difficult to measure these differences precisely. In addition, there also are some
stress differences in the assignment of primary stress. For example, in some cases
primary stress may occur on non-initial syllables rather than the first syllable, as
in Cherokée for Cherokee or moráy for moray. Bahamian English still awaits ex-
tensive, detailed study of prosodic features, though it is clearly an essential part of
the phonetic configuration of white and black Bahamian varieties.
3.4. Conclusion
This description of Bahamian English illustrates the multi-faceted explanations
necessary to understand the phonological structure of English in the Caribbean
diaspora. Founder influences, language contact, ethnolinguistic accommodation,
and independent innovation all seem to have played a role in the construction of
Bahamian English. For example, we have seen that both British and American
English varieties had some part in its formative development; furthermore, a con-
sideration of both white and black founder effects must be considered in attribut-
ing sources of influence. In addition, we have seen that there is selective alignment
with other varieties of English in the Caribbean diaspora. In understanding the
development of Bahamian English, we need to consider both internal and external
language contact situations, as we see manifestations of bilateral accommodation
in the speech of Afro-Bahamians and Anglo-Bahamians along with influences
from language varieties beyond The Bahamas. Some of this accommodation is
salient but other types of accommodation can be quite subtle and must be ferreted
out by examining quantitative details. The end product of differential influences
and development in The Bahamas has resulted in the configuration of a unique
constellation of structures that both unites and separates Bahamian English variet-
ies from other varieties of English in the region and beyond.
Finally, we must recognize the significance of language variation under the
rubric of “Bahamian English”. Expanding research in different regions of The
Bahamas that extend from the urban area of Nassau (Shilling 1978, 1980; Holm
1983; Hackert 2004) to the out islands of Abaco (Holm 1980; Childs, Reaser and
Wolfram 2003; Reaser 2002) suggests that there is a range of variation based on
ethnicity, status, geography, and language contact. All of these parameters must be
factored into an authentic description of Bahamian English that is consistent with
the past and present sociohistorical development of this sprawling archipelago.
Selected references
ROM.
Childs, Becky, Jeffrey Reaser, and Walt Wolfram
2003 Defining ethnic varieties in The Bahamas: Phonological accommodation in
black and white enclave communities. In: Aceto and Williams (eds.), 19-59.
Dodge, Steve
1995 Abaco: A History of an Out Island and its Cays. Decatur, IL: White Sound
Press.
Fasold, Ralph W. and Walt Wolfram
1970 Some linguistic features of Negro Dialect. In: Fasold and Shuy (eds.), 41-86.
Holm, John
1980 African features in white Bahamian speech. English World-Wide 1: 45-65.
1983 On the relationship of Gullah and Bahamian. American Speech 59: 303-318.
Huss, Veronica and Evelyn Werner
1940 The Conchs of Riviera, Florida. Southern Folklore Quarterly 4: 141-51.
Patrick, Peter L.
1996 The urbanization of Creole phonology: Variation and change in Jamaican. In:
Guy, Rickford, Feagin and Schiffrin (eds.), 329-355.
Reaser, Jeffrey
2002 Copula absence in Bahamian English: Evidence from ethnically contrastive
enclaves in The Bahamas. In: Proceedings of the 14th Biennial Conference of
the Society for Caribbean Linguistics.
Shilling, Alison
1978 Some non-standard features of Bahamian dialect syntax. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Hawaii.
1980 Bahamian English: A non-continuum? In: Day (ed.), 133-146.
Trudgill, Peter, Daniel Schreier, Daniel Long, and Jeff Williams
2003 On the reversibility of mergers: /w/, /v/ and evidence from lesser-known
Englishes. Folia Linguistica Historica 24: 23-45.
Wolfram, Walt, and Jason Sellers
1998 The North Carolina connection in Cherokee Sound. North Carolina Literary
Review 7: 86-87.
Wolfram, Walt, Becky Childs, and Benjamin Torbert
2000 Tracing English dialect history through consonant cluster reduction:
Comparative evidence from isolated dialects. Southern Journal of Linguistics
24: 17-40.
Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English: phonology
Hubert Devonish and Otelemate G. Harry
1. Introduction
1.1. The language situation

The popular perception within Jamaica of the Jamaican language situation is that
it consists of two varieties. One is Jamaican Creole (JamC) popularly labelled
‘Patwa’ and the other Jamaican English (JamE). According to this view, the edu-
cated minority able to function in both varieties use the former in private, informal
and predominantly oral interaction and the latter mainly in public, formal and
written discourse. Viewed as a language situation with two varieties used in the
complementary manner described, the Jamaican speech community is diglossic
(Ferguson 1959), with JamC being the L variety and JamE the H.
For most speakers in Jamaica, formal education and writing are the main sources
of knowledge of the idealised JamE variety labelled ‘English’. On one hand, speakers,
in their attempts to approximate the idealised norm of English, will, to varying degrees
dependent in part on the extent of their formal education, fall short of their intended
goal. On the other, speakers, in their approximations of JamC or Patwa, however, of-
ten fall short to varying degrees, mainly as a result of the intrusion of features which
are associated with English. These linguistic features serve to distinguish between the
Creole of educated bilinguals, on one hand, and uneducated near monolinguals on the
other. As might be expected, the JamC speech of the former group tends to involve a
greater degree of English interference than does the JamC of the latter.
1.2. History of the language varieties

Historically, JamC phonology represents the output of speakers of West African
languages modifying the phonological shape of words coming into their speech
from varieties of 17th century British English (Cassidy and Le Page [1967] 1980:
xxxvii–lxiv). Items of English origin make up the vast majority of the lexicon of
JamC. Whatever the historical origins of JamC, however, its phonological system
is now the native phonological system of the vast majority of language users in Ja-
maica. Shared lexical cognates, coupled with the historical dominance of English,
produces a linguistic ideology which considers JamC to be a form, albeit deviant,
of English. JamE in contemporary Jamaica bears the main characteristics of stan-
dard varieties of English such as Standard British English, standard varieties used
Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English: phonology 451
in the USA, Canada, etc. It, however, has features, particularly in its phonology,
which mark it as peculiarly Jamaican. For us, JamE is the idealised form of Eng-
lish usage targeted by the educated population of Jamaica.
We propose that nearly all speakers of JamE, as the H language in the Jamaican
diglossic situation, are native speakers of the L language, JamC. For them, JamE is a
second language acquired mainly through formal education and writing, and is used
for purposes of public and formal communication. JamC and JamE are, however,
idealised forms of speech. Most actually occurring speech shows varying levels of
interaction between each of these idealised systems. This interaction is systematic
and rule governed. Against this background, speakers consider that the phonologi-
cal relationship between the two varieties consists of correction rules applied to the
phonological forms of JamC lexical items to produce their JamE equivalents.
Against this background, what we shall attempt here is to describe the phonology
of the linguistic abstraction that is JamC and of the other that is JamE. We shall, in
addition, attempt to provide evidence for the existence of JamC to JamE conversion
rules and identify and describe how these operate. By way of evidence from the in-
termediate varieties, we shall seek to prove that JamC to JamE conversion rules lie
at the core of the relationship between the phonologies of the two idealised language
varieties. These rules operate, we shall demonstrate, within a context of the need to
achieve a balance. This involves on one side the drive for the systematic convergence
between the varieties to facilitate speakers shifting between them. On the other side
is the need to maintain the separation between the two language varieties since, by
remaining distinct, the varieties could carry out complementary social functions. We
shall refer to this process as differential convergence.
1.3. Theoretical framework

One of the characteristics of diglossia is the existence of linguistic convergence.
In situations involving the functional separation of language varieties, speakers
tend to modify their linguistic systems such that there is a level of one-to-one cor-
respondence between elements of the coexisting systems (Gumperz and Wilson
1971: 154–166). Where some aspect of the linguistic system of one language va-
riety is more complex than the other, there are consequences for trying to achieve
this one-to-one correspondence.
Complexity may be defined in two ways. One system may make a greater num-
ber of distinctions than does another. Here, one consequence of convergence is
that often the equivalent of a single form in a simple system may be two or more
forms in a more complex system, one such form being common to both systems.
Thus, in comparing the phonology of cognate lexical items of two language vari-
eties, a form in the less complex system may be equivalent either to two or more
cognate forms in a more complex one. The form in the more complex system will
invariably predict its cognate in the less complex one, but not vice versa.
452 Hubert Devonish and Otelemate G. Harry
We make the following prediction about the relationship between phonological

systems in the conditions of linguistic convergence which exist between JamC and
JamE. If the simpler system, Variety A, has feature X and the more complex one,
Variety B, has both the features X and Y, the initial hypothesis for speakers famil-
iar with Variety A is that X in Variety A is equivalent to Y in Variety B. They thus
convert all Xs to Ys in their effort to use Variety B. Later, with more exposure to B,
speakers of A will learn that sometimes X in their native variety is equivalent to X
in the target variety and only sometimes to Y. For speakers to know the difference
requires lexical specification of individual items.
We make a second prediction about the relationship between the varieties in
such conditions. Linguistic categories or variables often exist in pairs, e.g. the
realisation of segments equivalent to JamE / / versus the realisation of segments
equivalent to JamE / /, or the realisation of segments equivalent to JamC /ia/ ver-
sus those equivalent to JamC /ua/. Let us take the case of pairs of related linguistic
variables, Variables 1 and 2, which, in Variety A have reflexes T and X respective-
ly, and in Variety B, U and Y. We predict that in actual everyday usage of Variety
A, only one of the two Variety A reflexes, e.g. T, will be consistently used. The
other, X, will be used varying with Y, the variant associated with Variety B. Along
similar lines, in the case of Variety B, only one of the two Variety B reflexes, this
time Y, will be used consistently. The other, U, will vary with T, the form associ-
ated with Variety A. This is demonstrated in the table below.
(1) Idealised usage Actual speech
Variable 1 Variable 2 Variable 1 Variable 2
Variety A T X T X~Y
Variety B U Y T~U Y
The relationship between JamC and JamE presented in (1) represents a classic
example of differential convergence.
2. The vowel system
2.1. Jamaican Creole
2.1.1. The main vowels

JamC has twelve phonemic oral vowels. These are divided into five simple and
seven complex vowels, as in (2) below:
(2) Simple Complex

i u ii uu
e o
a ia, ai aa ua, au
The relationship between the simple vowels and their longer equivalents is primar-
ily one of length rather than that of height or tenseness (Cassidy and Le Page 1980:
xlv). Following Cassidy and Le Page, we represent phonetically long vowels by a
double vowel, e.g. /ii/, /aa/ and /uu/ rather than the // symbol. The aim here is to
avoid obscuring the connection between these double-vowel nuclei and the other
complex syllabic nuclei consisting of sequences of non-identical vowels.
Only two features, [back] and [high], are necessary to describe the vowel set.
An analysis of the complex vowel set presented above shows that only the ex-
treme vowels in the simple set, the high and the low, i.e. /i/, /a/ and /u/, combine
to produce complex vowel phonemes. The combinations, as can be seen, are quite
limited. The low vowel phoneme, /a/, neutral for the feature [back], combines
either with itself in second position, or with a high counterpart, either the front
vowel, /i/ or the back one, /u/. The high vowels either combine with themselves to
produce long vowels, /ii/ and /uu/ respectively, or with the low vowel to produce
the diphthongs /ia/ and /ua/. The system does not allow, within the same syllable
nucleus, for the combination of vowels with different values for the feature, back,
i.e. */ui/ or */iu/. Such sequences get realised by the first vowel functioning as a
consonant, i.e. a semi-vowel.
The complex vowels, /ia/, /ua/ and /au/, are represented by Cassidy and Le Page
(1980: xxxix) as /ie/, /uo/ and /ou/ respectively. However, they describe /ie/ as a
diphthong covering the range between [i] and [i], /uo/, the range between [uo]
and [ua], /ou/, the range between [!u] and [u], and /ai/ the range between [i]
and []. They also report that the simple vowel, /a/, covers the range between [a],
[] and []. We agree with their phonetic observations, but use these observations
to arrive at quite different conclusions about the underlying phonemic representa-
tion of JamC diphthongs. Given that [a] and/or [] are the common denominators
in all of the four diphthongs and that both of these are allophones of the simple
vowel, /a/, we conclude that it is this same /a/ which appears underlyingly as the
low vowel in all diphthongs.
(3) Phonetic realisations of JamC vowel phonemes

Test words Gloss/Lexical sets
/i/ [] ~ [i] [ft] ~ [fit] FIT
[api] happY
/e/ [ ] [ds] ~ [ds] DRESS
/a/ [a] ~ [] [tap] ~ [tp] TRAP
[lat] LOT
/o/ [!] ~ [o] [kh!p] ~ [khop] CUP
[lta] lettER
[kama] commA
[nors] NURSE
/u/ [
] ~ [u] [f
t] ~ [fut] FOOT
/ii/ [i] [phis] PIECE
/aa/ [a] [bat] BATH
[khlat] CLOTH
[pham] PALM
[brad] BROAD
(THOUGHT)
[nat] NORTH
[that] ~ [stat] START
/uu/ [u] [lus] LOOSE
/ia/ [i] ~ [ie] ~ [ia] [fis] etc. FACE
[nir] etc. NEAR
[kwir] ~ [skwir] etc. SQUARE
/ua/ [uo] ~ [ua] [uot] GOAT
[fuos] FORCE
/ai/ [ai] [phrais] PRICE
[tais] CHOICE
/au/ [a
] ~ [!
] [ma
t] etc. MOUTH
In our analysis, the phoneme /a/, when it shares a syllable nucleus with the high
front vowel phoneme, /i/, is realised phonetically as the mid-front vowel, []. This
gives rise to the phonetic realisation, [i], for the diphthong which we represent as
/ia/. Along similar lines, /a/, when it shares a syllabic nucleus with the high back
vowel /u/ is phonetically realised as the back vowel [o] in diphthongs /ua/ and /au/
producing the phonetic realisations [uo] and [ou].
2.1.2. Nasal vowels

As is normal in many language varieties, vowels in JamC are nasalized in the en-
vironment of nasal consonants. The examples below demonstrate this.
(4) a. /faam/ [fam] ‘farm’

b. /muun/ [mun] ‘moon’
c. /wan/ [wan] ‘one, the indefinite article’
d. /som/ [som] ‘some’
e. /im/ [m] ‘he, she, him, her’
f. /dem/ [dm] ‘they, them, their’
There is a phonological rule which applies to monosyllabic grammatical mor-

phemes ending in a nasal consonant. This vowel may be deleted leaving only the
nasalisation on the vowel to signal its underlying presence. Note that, in the case
of /wan/, which has both a lexical meaning ‘one’, and that of the indefinite article,
it is only the latter, as shown in (5) a. below, which allows for the optional deletion
of the final nasal.
(5) a. /wan/ [wa] ~ [wan] ‘the indefinite article’
b. /som/ [so] ~ [som] ‘some’
c. /im/ [] ~ [1m] ‘he, she, him, her’
d. /dem/ [d] ~ [dm] ‘they, them, their’
Distinct from nasal allophones of the vowel phonemes, there is a nasal vowel
phoneme. This vowel is /aa/ with the phonetic realisation of [a]. It appears in
a small number of quite regularly used words. In the examples below, we see a
case of a contrast in identical environments, involving the first pair, and, in the
second pair, a contrast in analogous environments. These contrasts establish the
phonemic status of /aa/ in relation the phonetically closest vowel phoneme, /aa/,
independent of suprasegmental features, which remain constant in each member
of the pairs below.
(6) a. /waan/ [wan] ‘warn’ b. /kaan/ [kan] ‘corn’
/waa/ [wa] ‘want’ /kjaa/ [kja] ‘can’t’
JamC syllables with /aa/ as their nucleus tend to have an equivalent syllable in
JamE cognates consisting of the vowel /aa/ or /çç/ and a post-vocalic /nt/ cluster.
Even though /nt/ exists in the vast majority of JamC items with English /nt/ cog-
nates, e.g. /plaant/ ‘plant’, /aant/ ‘haunt’, etc., a small group of items such as /waa/
‘want’ and /kjaa/ ‘can’t’ appear in JamC minus the word final /nt/ cluster of the
English cognate. It is this fact which creates the lexical contrast.
2.1.3. Underspecified vowels

In words with an initial non-prominent syllable possessing a vowel in the environ-
ment /s/ _ Nasal Consonant, the vowel may predictably be either /i/ or /u/ depend-
ing on the phonological effects of the environment. In these words, the vowel is
specified for the feature [high]. It is not, however, specified for the feature [back].
The reason is that the [back] feature, giving rise to /u/, in contrast to /i/, is predict-
able from the phonological environment. The [back] feature assigned to the vowel
comes from the immediate environment. It may be assigned from the immediately
following nasal when this is bilabial, i.e. /m/. The underspecified vowel derives its
[back] feature here through the transfer of labiality, since back vowels in JamC are
labial, i.e. produced with lip rounding. Otherwise, the back feature may be derived
from the vowel of the immediately following syllable when such a vowel itself has
the feature [back]. These items are all lexically specified as having an initial /sV/
sequence where V stands for the underspecified vowel, i.e. specified for [high] but
not for [back] as demonstrated by the examples in the first two columns below.
(7) Underlying rep. With back feature Vowel devoicing (optional)
/sV»maal/ [su»mal] [su9»mal] ‘small’
/sV»mel/ [su»ml] ~ [si»ml] [su9»ml] ~ [si»ml] ‘smell’
/sV»mit/ [si»mit] [si9»mit] ‘Smith’
/sV»niak/ [si»nik] [si9»nik] ‘snake’
/sV»nuar/ [su»nuor] [su9»nuor] ‘snore’
Cassidy and Le Page (1980: lxii) note that the initial syllables in examples such as
those above may be produced as a syllabic [s`]. Meade (1995: 33) refers to Akers
(1981) as making a similar observation. We would argue that this is a case of the
underspecified vowel in the /sV/ sequence becoming optionally devoiced under
the influence of the preceding voiceless fricative, producing phonetically [s] and
a voiceless vowel, i.e. [si:] or [su9]. These forms are phonetically indistinguish-
able from the syllabic form, [s`] proposed by Cassidy and Le Page. [si:] and [su9]
are merely optional forms of [s`] when the following consonant is a sonorant, as
represented in the third column of the table. Where the following consonant is
a voiceless stop, as in /sVp/, /sVt/ and /sVk/, [si:] and [su9] are the only possible
manifestations of the underspecified vowel in an entirely voiceless environment.
In such sequences, the underspecified vowel is obligatorily devoiced.
2.1.4. Vowel variation

There is variation between /au/ and /ua/ in the following items in JamC.
(8) a. /bual/ ~ /baul/ ‘bowl (noun)’
b. /ual/ ~ /aul/ ‘old’
c. /kual/ ~ /kaul/ ‘cold’
This variation, however, seems restricted to these and perhaps one or two other
lexical items. For some speakers, in particular educated bilinguals, the choice of
the variant employing /au/ in these items is intended to signal an extreme or in-
tensive meaning, i.e. /aul/ ‘extremely old’, /kaul/ ‘extremely cold’. This may be
a result of the fact that the /au/ version is an unusual reflex for JamE /oo/. This
deviation from the expected is interpreted to signal, at least for the bilinguals, a
deeper and more extreme meaning than the regular JamC /ua/ reflex would signal.
In the case of the attributives meaning ‘old’ and ‘cold’, the /au/ alternant is only
possible when the item is used as a predicator. When performing an adjective type
function within a noun phrase, the /au/ alternant is not possible in JamC. This is
demonstrated in the following examples.
(9) a. /di man ual ~ aul/ ‘the man is old’

b. /di plias kual ~ kaul/ ‘the place is cold’
c. /dis ual ~ *aul man a kil mi/ ‘this old man is killing me’
d. /dis kual ~ *kaul plies a kil mi/ ‘this cold place is killing me’
The awareness of the possibilities of alternation between /ua/ ~ /au/ is high within
the speech community, perhaps because of its lexical role. This is exploited for
poetic effect by Bennett (1966: 126), in which she writes the JamC item for ‘roll’,
which is normally /rual/, as ‘rowl’, intending a pronunciation /raul/, since it is
used to rhyme in the poem with /faul/ ‘fowl’. In addition, there was the Dance
Hall piece by Mr Vegas, ‘Heads High’, in which all the entire rhyme scheme was
based on the conversion of /ua/ into /au/, e.g. /nua/ ‘no’ to /nau/, /shua/ ‘show’ to
/shau/, etc. In JamC speech, the form /oo/ very often varies with /ua/. The former
is the equivalent vowel in JamE. The equivalent JamE front vowel, /ee/, however,
is not frequent as an intrusion into speech which, otherwise, is consistently JamC
in its features.
2.1.5. Vowel assimilation across syllable boundary

Sequences of /i/ across morpheme boundary produced in rapid speech usually
participate in syllable amalgamation. When the two /i/ phonemes, as a result of
syllable amalgamation across word boundary, appear in the same syllable, a long
vowel, [i] is produced, phonetically identical to the [i] realisation of the vowel
phoneme, /ii/. This supports our proposal to treat long vowels as being phonologi-
cally a sequence of two identical vowels. Examples are presented in (10) below.
(10) a. /si + it/ → [sit]

see it ‘See it’
b. /im + a + luk + fi + it/ → [im a luk fit]
he/she is look for it ‘He/She is looking for it’
We have posited that the most complex syllable nucleus involves a VV sequence,
i.e. either a long vowel or a diphthong. This is demonstrated by syllable amal-
gamation across morpheme boundaries involving V and VV sequences as in the
example below. There, we see an underlying sequence of V+VV, i.e. /u + aa/,
becoming C+VV, /w + aa/, with the C being the semi-vowel, /w/, carrying the
feature [back] previously associated with the underlying /u/ vowel. A VVV syl-
lable is avoided by the device or converting the vowel /u/ to the corresponding
semi-vowel, /w/, i.e. making it function as a feature superimposed on a preceding
consonant rather than a vowel.
(11) /u + aan/ → [wan]
go on ‘Go on’
The rule which triggers syllable amalgamation across a amorpheme boundary also
applies to sequences of /u + i/. This demonstrates another aspect of our basic vowel
analysis. We already noted that the sequence */ui/ is not possible within the same
syllable nucleus. In the example below, when /u + i/ merge to produce a single syl-
lable, adjustments there need to be made. In order to eliminate the tautosyllabic */ui/
sequence, the [back] feature borne by /u/ is shifted into a consonantal position in the
onset, producing the semi-vowel /w/. This shift of the [back] feature to a consonant
slot leaves the complex syllable nucleus with an unfilled vowel slot. This is filled by
a spread of the values of the [back] and [high] features from the remaining vowel in
the nucleus, producing a tautosyllabic [w + i] sequence as in the examples below.
(12) a. /ju + neva + du + it/ → [ju neva dWi˘t]
you not do it ‘You had not done it’
b. /a + wa + du + im/ → [a wa dWi˘m]
is what do him ‘What is the matter with him?’
This establishes what we have already proposed, that vowels with the features
[high] and [back] cannot co-occur in the same syllable nucleus. Thus, the amal-
gamated syllable has been modified to accommodate the principle that high vow-
els occurring in the same syllable have to agree for the feature [back]. In our
discussion of JamC syllable structure, we shall see that vocalic sequences [ui] and
[iu] only occur provided the initial vowel in the sequence occupies a C-slot, i.e.
functions as a semi-vowel.
Some syllables with the double vowel, /ii/, are the product of lexical specifica-
tion with the vowel /ii/, e.g. an item like /tiit/ ‘teeth’, while others are derived from
syllable amalgamation across word boundary, e.g. /siit/ < /si it/ ‘see it’ and /dwiit/
from /du it/ ‘do’. Irrespective of their derivation, however, these double vowel
sequences are treated within the phonological system of JamC as identical. This
is demonstrated by the rhyme below. The nucleus /ii/ produced by lexical specifi-
cation in /tiit/ participates in a rhyme with two syllables, /siit/ and /dwiit/, whose
vowel /ii/ is the product of syllable amalgamation.
(13) Skin ju tiit ‘Show your teeth [smile]’
An mek mi siit ‘And make me see it’
Mek mi nuo fram ju baan se
ju neva dwiit ‘Let me know from the time you were
born you have never done it.’
(Mr Vegas, ‘Heads High’)
2.1.6. Distribution of vowels

There is a difference in the distribution of vowels across prominent as opposed to
non-prominent syllables. In prominent syllables, any vowel can appear in word-
final position. By contrast, in non-prominent open syllables, /ii/, /ia/, /uu/, /ua/
and /aa/ are blocked from occurring word finally. This reduces the range of vowel
contrasts in such syllables to the three simple vowels, /i/, /a/ and /u/, and to the
diphthongs /ai/ and /au/.
This distribution is well illustrated by the reduplicated items shown below. When
the vowel in the non-final syllable is made up of complex nuclei, /ii/ or /uu/, the one
in the final syllable will take the form of /i/ and /u/. Where the non-final syllable has
either /ai/ or /au/ as its nucleus, these are maintained in the final syllable.
(14) a. /fii-fi/ ‘toy whistle’
b. /duu-du/ ‘faeces’
c. /pai-pai/ ‘pistol’
d. /pau-pau/ ‘nickname derived from the first syllable of “Powell”’
Where the complex vowel is /ia/ or /ua/, the reduced version is /e/ and /o/. With the
simple version of the syllable appearing in second position in these reduplicated
items, there is need to express on a single vowel segment both the feature High
and the absence of High. This is done by way of the phonetically mid-vowels, /e/
and /o/, respectively. These are results which would be predicted from the analysis
of the JamC phonological system, as seen in the examples below.
(15) a. /sua-so/ ‘alone, by itself’
b. /tua-to/ ‘a kind of small cake’
c. /dua-do/ ‘dough, bread, dumpling’
2.2. Jamaican English
2.2.1. The main vowels

Below, we present our proposals for the vowel system of JamE.
(16) Simple Complex
i u ii uu
e o ee oo
ç çç
a aa
çi
ai au
We propose here that JamE has 15 vowels. These are made up of six simple vow-
els. The three features necessary to describe these involve
(i) high, covering /i/ and /u/,
(ii) back, covering /u/, /o/ and /ç/, and
(iii) low, covering /a/ and /ç/.
Redundantly, every vowel with the feature [back] also has the feature [labial].
There are nine complex vowels in JamE, six of these being double vowels. Each
simple vowel has a complex counterpart in the form of a long or double version of
itself, i.e. /ii/, /ee/, /aa/, /çç/, /oo/ and /uu/. This introduces length or doubling as a
feature which is characteristic of JamE complex nuclei. The remaining three com-
plex vowels are diphthongs, rising from a low or lower-mid vowel to a high vowel.
The first vowel element is always one of the two Low vowels, either /a/ or /ç/.
Wells (1973: 25) proposes that JamE has 16 vowels. His sixteenth vowel, /çç/, is
treated by us as an allophone of /o/ when this vowel occurs before a tautosyllabic /r/.
(17) Phonetic realisations of JamE vowel phonemes
Test words
/i/ [] [ft] FIT
[hapi] happY
/e/ [] [dZ®Es] DRESS
/a/ [a] ~ [å] [tS®ap] TRAP
/ç/ [ç] [lçt] LOT
/o/ [P] ~ [o] ~ [´˘] [kHPp] ~ [kHop] CUP
[lEto] ~ [lEt´˘®] lettER
[kHçmo] commA
[n´˘rs] NURSE
/u/ [U] ~ [u] [fUt] ~ [fut] FOOT
/ii/ [i˘] [pHi˘s] PIECE
/aa/ [a˘] [ba˘T] BATH
[pHa˘m] PALM
[sta˘®t] START
/çç/ [ç˘] [b®ç˘d], [klç˘T] BROAD, CLOTH
[nç˘®T] NORTH
[brç˘d] BROAD
[Tç˘t] THOUGHT
/oo/ [o˘] [o˘t] GOAT
[fo˘®s] FORCE
/uu/ [u˘] [lu˘s] LOOSE
/ee/ [e˘] [fe˘s] etc. FACE
[ne˘®] etc. NEAR
[skwe˘®] etc. SQUARE
/ai/ [ai] [pH®ais] PRICE
/çi/ [çi] [tSçis] CHOICE
/au/ [aU] ~ [PU] [maUt] ~ [mPUT] MOUTH
The length feature implicit in our vowel inventory does not match the approach
of Meade (2001: 42) to JamE vowels. He suggests that the main phonetic fea-
ture distinguishing between short vowels and long monophthongs was tenseness,
with the short ones being lax and the long ones tense. This position, on the face
of it, seems justified by the fact that, in JamE, much more so than in JamC, the
non-low long vowels differ from their short equivalents not just in length but
in height and tenseness. The long non-low vowels are always higher and tenser
than their short equivalents. Whatever the merits of Meade’s approach for JamE,
there is contradicting evidence. This involves the relationship between the third
pair of vowels, /a/ and /aa/, in which no height or tense differences are involved.
Length is the sole distinguishing feature here. Thus, if one is seeking to find
a feature which distinguishes all short vowels in JamE from all long monoph-
thongs, then tenseness versus laxness would not do the job but length would. It
is on these grounds that we single out length as the primary distinction between
these pairs, with relative height and tenseness being secondary, predictable fea-
tures of the distinction in the case of the non-low vowels. This approach is much
more economical than that of Meade (2001: 42) which proposes that tenseness
is the primary feature for the non-low pairs of vowels, and length the primary
one for the low pair.
2.2.2. Nasal vowels

Vowels are phonetically nasalized in the environment of nasal consonants, for ex-
ample,
(18) a. /fan/ [fa‚n] ‘fan’
b. /ne˘m/ [ne‚˘] ‘name’
c. /kçin/ [kç‚In] ‘coin’.
JamE does not allow the variable deletion of a nasal consonant, leaving nasali-
sation of the preceding vowel as the only evidence of its presence underlyingly.
Thus, JamE [so‚m] ‘some’, unlike its JamC cognate, can never be realised as *[so‚]
‘some’. In addition, the attested role of phonemic vowel nasalization JamC is ab-
sent in JamE. In JamC, there are items lexically specified to have a nasalized
vowel with no following nasal consonant. In JamE, no such items exist. Below are
the JamE cognates of the JamC items with lexically specified nasalized vowels.
As can be seen, they both occur in JamE with an /nt/ sequence in the coda.
(19) a. /wççnt/ [wç‚˘nt] ‘want’
b. /kja‚ant/ ~ /ka‚ant/ [kja‚˘nt] ~ [ka‚˘nt] ‘can’t’
2.2.3. Underspecified vowels

There are no underspecified vowels in the JamE of the type already noted for
JamC. The result is that JamC words with such vowels have JamE cognates in
which they are absent. This is demonstrated by the following examples.
(20) Jamaican Creole Jamaican English

/sV»maal/ [su maal] ~ [sumaal] /smççl/ [smç˘l] ‘small’
/sV»mel/ [su»mEl] ~ /si»mEl/ /smel/ [smEl] ‘smell’
/sV»mit/ [si»mit] /smiP/ [smIT] ‘Smith’
/sV»niak/ [si»niek] /sneek/ [sne˘k] ‘snake’
/sV»nuar/ [si»nuor] /snoor/ [sno˘r] ‘snore’
/sV»kuul/ [su»ku˘l] /skuul/ [sku˘l] ‘school’
Assuming as we do a derivation based on the JamC lexical form, there would also
be the cases like JamC /tap/ ‘stop’, /tik/ ‘stick’, which would first have an initial
/sV/ syllable produced as part of the process of conversion to English. Only then
could the deletion of the underspecified V take place.
Our suggestion that at least some speakers do function from a JamC lexical
input, applying conversion rules to these inputs, is supported by the example be-
low involving two phonologically variant JamE forms for the word ‘cement’ and
‘suppose’. The vowels /i/ and /u/ in the JamC items /siment/ and /supuoz/ have
a distribution which is typical of the JamC underspecified V. There is evidence
that at least some speakers apply, in the case of these items, the regular deletion
of underspecified Vs to the first vowel in the JamC item. This can be seen in the
second variant of each of these words presented below.
/sVment/ ~ {/siment/?} /sment/ ~ /siment/ ‘cement’
/sVpuaz/ ~ {/supuaz/?} /spooz/ ~ /supooz/ ‘suppose’
Some speakers are aware of English norms in relation to the words ‘cement’ and
‘suppose’, in particular how the words are spelt in that language. This awareness is
likely to cause them to treat the vowel of the first syllable in the presumed JamC
inputs, /sVment/ and /sVpuaz/, as lexical exceptions. The JamC underspecified
vowel, phonetically [i] or [u], should not be deleted to produce /sC/ consonant
clusters in JamE. For speakers who do not have this as a lexically marked excep-
tion to their JamC to JamE conversion rule, the less socially acceptable JamE
options, /sment/ and /spooz/, are produced. Speakers who do not apply the un-
derspecified V deletion rule in these cases are likely in their JamC lexicon to have
fully specified vowels for these items. This possibility is suggested by the question-
marked JamC representations in the examples above.
2.2.4. Vowel variation

In JamE, the item /bool/ ‘bowl’, but not /oold/ ‘old’ and /koold/ ‘cold’ have the
variant /au/ pronunciation we have already seen for the cognates in JamC. The
JamE variant form is /baul/. Irvine (2004) refers to a much revised school text in
which ‘bowl’ is listed as having the same vowel as ‘cow’, ‘towel’, ‘out’, ‘couch’
and ‘round’. She suggests that this pronunciation has been or is in the process of
being normalized by this particular text. As Irvine notes, speakers who pronounced
the noun ‘bowl’ as /baul/ distinguish it from the verb ‘bowl’ by pronouncing the
latter /bool/.
The forms [uo] and [iE] are not part of the idealised phonological system of
JamE. They nevertheless occur as variants respectively of the /oo/ and /ee/ vari-
ables. The idealised JamE variants are [o˘] and [e˘] respectively. The diphthongal
variants are clearly the result of diachronic and/or synchronic convergence with
JamC. In this matching pair of back and front long vowel variables, the conver-
gence with JamC is not exercised evenly. Irvine (2004) examines the formal JamE
speech of a group of persons who, as a result of deliberate selection based on their
speech to represent Jamaica in a promotional role, can be considered to represent
models of idealised JamE speech. She finds that, for the back variable, there is
11% use of the [uo] variant, by comparison to 89% [o˘]. However, the [i] variant
for the front variable appears 24% of the time as compared with 76% for [e]. The
JamC associated phone, [uo], is much less used and arguably a much more stigma-
tised JamC interference feature than is [iE]. By contrast, the frequency of the latter
suggests that it is fairly well entrenched as a variant JamE vowel form.
Significantly, the acceptability of the phone [iE] in JamE is concentrated in the
environment before /r/, e.g. /beer/ > [biE®] ~ [be˘®] ‘beer, bear’, rather than else-
where, e.g. /plee/ which would tend to have only [ple˘] as its phonetic realisation
(A. Irvine, p.c.). The differential convergence at work here may be focussed in and
confined to a specific phonological environment.
2.2.5. Vowel assimilation across syllables

This feature, as described for JamC, is absent from JamE. Sequences such as
/duu it/ ‘Do it’, /sii it/ ‘See it’, /oo ç˘n/, ‘Go on’, etc. tend not to become mono-
syllabic in JamE. They retain their bisyllabic identity.
2.3. From Jamaican Creole to Jamaican English: The vowel system

The only difference between the vowel inventories of the two language varieties
involves the vowel /ç/ which exists in JamE but not in JamC. There is, therefore,
for most vowels, a one-to-one relationship between JamC and JamE variants in
cognate lexical items. However, there are three JamC vowels for which there are
two possible JamE reflexes. These all involve the JamE vowel /ç/, once as a simple
vowel and twice as part of the complex vowels, /çç/ and /çi/. Below are presented
the vowel variants or reflexes across the two language varieties.

/i/ = /i/
/e/ = /e/
/a/ = /a/, /ç/
/o/ = /o/
/u/ = /u/
/ii/ = /ii/
/ia/ = /ee/
/aa/ = /aa/, /çç/
/ua/ = /oo/
/uu/ = /uu/
/ai/ = /ai/, /çi/
/au/ = /au/
We argue that JamE phonological outputs are based on JamC lexical specifications
modified by established conversion rules. These rules, we propose, are based on
stereotypical notions of the difference between the phonetic outputs of lexical
entries in JamC versus the phonetic outputs of their cognates in JamE. The level
of success achieved by speakers operating these rules firstly depends on whether
the correspondences between JamC and JamE are one-to-one or one-to-many. In
the cases of JamC /ia/ > JamE /ee/ and JamC /ua/ > /oo/, we are dealing with
one-to-one correspondences. The application of the conversion rule is, therefore,
straightforward. The problem is less a linguistic one than a psychological one.
With what consistency are speakers actually able to apply these conversion rules?
Bilingual speakers will look for ways to keep the language varieties apart while
minimising the effort they put into doing so, giving rise to what we have called
differential convergence between the varieties. We have already seen the evidence
which suggests that speakers, in their use of JamE, employ more consistently the
JamE variant, [oo], in the /ua/ ~ /oo/ variable than they do the JamE variant, [iE]
in the /ia/ > /ee/ one. Here, speakers economise on their efforts to keep JamC and
JamE apart, by avoiding JamC features more consistently in the former variable
than in the latter. As we have already seen, also, this economy of effort may be
most active in the environment immediately preceding /r/.
Where two possible JamE reflexes exist for one JamC vowel, matters are more
complex. Usually, one JamE reflex is identical phonetically to that in JamC. The
other one, however, represents a phonetic form which does not exist in JamC. For
any item, the JamE cognate might have a phonetic output identical to its JamC
equivalent. On the other hand, the JamE cognate may take the phonetic form that
does not exist in JamC. It is the second possibility which is most likely to attract
the attention of a speaker relatively unfamiliar with JamE. This produces naïve
conversions. Thus, in the variables involving JamE /a/ and /ç/ respectively, a naïve
conversion would change all the JamC occurrences of /a/, /aa/ and /ai/ to JamE /ç/,
/çç/ and /çi/. This approach presumes a one-to-one correspondence with JamC /a/
> JamE /ç/ and retains a feature characteristic of JamC:
(i) the vowels of ‘tap’ and ‘top’ not distinguished, here realised as /tçp/,
(ii) the vowels of ‘mass’ and ‘moss’ not distinguished, both realised as /mççs/,
and
(iii) the vowels of ‘tile’ and ‘toil’ not distinguished, both realised as /tçil/.
This is typically discussed in the literature as hypercorrection and is one of the
shibboleths of the speech community. It marks the speaker off as uneducated and
unaware that the JamC > JamE conversion involves, based on lexical specification,
either the form /a/, approximating phonetically to its JamC equivalent, or the form
/ç/. For many speakers, the lexical marking is done using as a reference the way
the words are spelt in English orthography.
3. The consonant system
3.1.1. The consonants

There are 21 phonemic consonants in JamC. These include the semi-vowels, /w/
[w] and /j/ [j], which are the phonetic vowels [i] and [u] functioning as consonants
due to distributional constraints.
The palatal stops /kj/ [c], /j/ [Ô] and /ny/ [¯] proposed by Cassidy and Le Page
(1980) are not included in our inventory because we consider these phonetic pala-
tals to be sequences of stops and the semi-vowels (cf. Devonish and Seiler 1991).
(23) m n ˜
p t k tS
b d dZ
f s S
v z
r l
w j (h)
One feature little remarked on in the discussion of JamC consonant phonology

over the years is the phonetics of the stop phonemes, /b/, /d/ and //. When these
occur in the onset of a prominent syllable, they are phonetically realised as in-
gressive stops, [∫], [Î] and [µ]. In other environments, notably in the coda or in
the onset of a non-prominent syllable, the egressive [b], [d] and [] allophones
are employed. The distribution of these stops parallels that of the aspirated and
unaspirated allophones of the voiceless stops, /p/, /t/ and /k/, with the aspirated
allophones, [pH], [tH] and [kH] occurring in the onset of prominent syllables, and
the unaspirated ones, [p], [t] and [k], elsewhere.
Wells (1973: 12) suggests that /h/ occurs contrastively in the Western varieties
of JamC, notably those of Manchester, St. Elizabeth and Westmoreland. This is
supported by the intuitions of JamC speakers from the entire range of western
parishes. For such speakers, /h/ would serve to distinguish between the following
pairs.
(24) a. /an/ ‘and’ /han/ ‘hand’
b. /iar/ ‘air’ /hiar/ ‘hair’
Such contrasts do not exist in the Eastern varieties of JamC, inclusive of that of
Kingston. It is not, however, that the phone [h] does not exist in these varieties.
Rather, it is employed for a different phonological function. Thus, the items above
would, in the eastern varieties, be realised variably as [an] ~ [han] ‘and, hand’ and
[iE®] ~ [hiE®] ‘air, hair’. In items without a lexically specified onset consonant, [h]
may variably appear as a marker of emphasis, as an ‘[h]emphatic’ /h/. The phone
[h], in the eastern varieties is simply marks off emphatic onsetless word initial
syllables from their non-emphatic counterparts.
The consonant phoneme /N/ has an unusual distribution in being the only one
which is restricted to occurring in the coda.
3.1.2. Palatal and labial-velar consonants

The vowels /i/ and /u/ become the corresponding semi-vowels, /j/ and /w/, when
they occupy a consonant position in the syllabic structure of lexical items. They
occupy a position immediately preceding the vowel. Their presence in the onset,
when preceded by velar and labial stops respectively, can produce phonetically
palatal and labial-velar consonants whose role in the phonology of JamC has been
the subject of some disagreement.
Cassidy and Le Page (1980: xxxix) treat [c] and [Ô] as palatal consonant pho-
nemes. By contrast, Devonish and Seiler (1991) treat them as consonant plus semi-
vowel sequences, i.e. as combinations of /k/ or // and /j/. We opt for the latter
analysis. Were they underlyingly palatal stops, one would expect that they would
also occur in the coda, as do all the other oral stop consonants. The consonant and
semi-vowel is consistent with what we have noted about the structure of the onset,
i.e. that the semi-vowel must immediately precede the vowel. Below are minimal
pairs or near minimal pairs demonstrating the contrast between /kj/ and /j/ on one
hand, and /k/ and // on the other.
(25) /kjuu/ ‘a quarter quart (of rum)’ /kuul/ ‘cool’
/kjap/ ‘cap’ /kap/ ‘cop’
/kjaaf/ ‘calf’ /kaaf/ ‘cough’

/jan / ‘gang’ /an/ ‘gong’
/jaad/ ‘guard’ /aad/ ‘God’
Like the phonetic palatals, the labialized velars, [pW] and [bW], do not occur in
syllable-final position and seem best dealt with as onset clusters consisting of stop
consonant, /p/ or /b/, followed by the semi-vowel, /w/. The distribution is more
restricted than the phonetic palatal stops, with [pW] and [bW] only normally oc-
curring before the diphthong /ai/. Below are some minimal pairs illustrating the
contrast between /pw/ and /bw/ on one hand, and /p/ and /b/ on the other.
(26) /bwai/ ‘boy’ /bai/ ‘buy’
/pwail/ ‘spoil’ /pail/ ‘pile’
/pwaint/ ‘point’ /paint/ ‘pint’
3.1.3. Variation
Wells (1973: 11) does point to the historical basis for the variation between /b/ and /v/.
It does seem that /v/ is a relatively recent entrant into the phoneme inventory of JamC,
imported with modern loan words from JamE. The result is that some older JamC
forms with /b/ have a reflex in JamE with /v/. These forms allow for /v/ ~ /b/ variation
in modern JamC. However, more recent loans with a JamE /v/ reflex only allow for
/v/ in JamC. Forms with /b/ in JamE do not vary in JamC, always retaining /b/.
(27) /beks/ ~ /veks/ ‘vexed’
/neba/ ~ /neva/ ‘never’
/vuot/ ‘vote’
/van/ ‘van’
/buat/ ‘boat’
3.1.4. Syllabic consonants

In JamC, consonants normally occur only at the margins of the syllable, i.e. in the
onset or in the coda. However, there are two consonants which appear as syllabic
nuclei. They are both required to be preceded by an oral consonant. Syllabic con-
sonants produce an alternative syllable structure as presented below.
(28) (C) C [Syllabic Nasal/Lateral] (C)
In relation to the syllabic nasals, the phonemic distinction between the nasal stops
/m/, /n/ and /N/ in the onset and the coda is not maintained when nasals occur in the
nucleus. There is simply a single syllabic nasal, /N`/. This appears as the bilabial or
the alveolar, depending on the place of articulation of the immediately preceding
consonant. There seems to be a rule blocking the occurrence of a velar consonant

before a syllabic nasal as can be seen by example c. below.
(29) Syllabic nasals

a. /sompm`/ ‘something’
b. /miitn`/ ‘meeting’
c. */tuokn/ BUT /tuoken/ ‘token’
There seems to be an element of complementarity with the syllabic consonants.
The other syllabic consonant, /l/, is restricted to occurring preceded by a velar con-
sonant. Syllabic /l/ appears phonetically as a velarised or dark phone, [¬`]. This has
an impact on the selection of oral stops which may precede it. Oral alveolar and
velar stops in syllable-initial position are normally contrastive. However, before a
syllabic lateral, only velar consonants are allowed as in the examples below.
(30) a. /niil/ [ni‚˘l] ‘needle’
b. /bakl/ [bokl] ‘bottle’
c. /boNl/ [bo‚Nl] ‘bundle’
3.1.5. Constraints on the onset: /j/ and /w/

The composition of the onset may be constrained by the nature of the vowel(s)
occupying the nucleus. We saw previously in the section on JamC vowels that vo-
calic sequences /ui/ and /iu/ do not occur. Put another way, however, phonetic [iu]
and [ui] sequences are only possible provided the initial vowel in the sequence
occupies a C-slot, i.e. functions as the semi-vowels /w/ and /j/ respectively. These
produce the phoneme sequences /wi/ and /ju/. This is demonstrated in the follow-
ing examples.
(31) a. /kjuu/ [kju˘] ‘a quarter quart (of rum)’
b. /mjuuzik/ [mju˘zik] ‘music’
c. /pjaa-pjaa/ [pja˘pja˘] ‘weak’
d. /kwiel/ [kwiEl] ‘to cause to wilt’
e. /swimz/ [swimz] ‘shrimp’
There is an uneasy relationship between /j/ and /w/ on one hand and their vocalic
equivalents, /i/ and /u/, on the other. The occurrence of semi-vowels in the onset
is subject to a constraint which follows from their relationship with vocalic seg-
ments. Underlyingly, syllable onsets tend not to consist of a semi-vowel as the
sole consonant, followed immediately by the vowel which is its vocalic equivalent.
This blocks underlying sequences such as */ji/ and */wu/. Where [ji] and [wu]
sequences do occur phonetically, it is in variation with a form without the initial
semi-vowel, e.g. [unu] ~ [wunu] ‘you (plural)’, [jimba] ~ [imba] ‘a yam variety’
(Cassidy and Le Page 1980: 225, 457).
In JamC, the onset may have a maximum of two consonants. In such combina-
tions, the first item is always an obstruent and the second an approximant. Combi-
nations with /w/ as the second consonant are /pw, bw, tw, dw, kw, w, sw/. Those
involving /j/ include /pj, bj, tj, dj, kj, j, fj, vj, sj, mj, nj/. Of these, /tj/, /dj/ and /sj/
do not have transparent realisations at the surface level. The matching phonetic
forms, *[tj], *[dj] and *[sj] are blocked, in spite of a contrary suggestion by Wells
(1973: 21). They may be blocked because the underlying phoneme sequences /tj/
/dj/ and /sj/ have their surface phonetic manifestations merged by speakers with
those of the affricate and fricative consonant phonemes, /tS/, /dZ/ and /S/. Both sets
of sequences become realised phonetically as [tS], [dZ] and [S] respectively. The
fact is, however, that the consonants /tS/, /dZ/ and /S/ also occur in the coda, e.g.
/matS/ ‘match’, /dZodZ/ ‘judge’, /kjaS/ ‘cash’. This establishes that [tS], [dZ] and
[S] can and do represent the consonant phonemes /tS/, /dZ/ and /S/ rather than just
underlying /tj/, /dj/ and /sj/. We suggest nevertheless that in the onset, speakers do
treat [tS], [dZ] and [S] as representing a merger at the phonetic level between [tS],
[dZ] and [S], on one hand, and /tj/, /dj/ and /sj/ on the other.
The only consonants occurring in the JamC onset which are blocked from oc-
curring before /j/ are /l/, /r/, /z/, /S/, /tS/ and /dZ/. Given the position of /l/ and /r/
in the sonority hierarchy, we may regard them as sonorant consonants which, like
/j/ and /w/, only occur in second position in the onset. An onset */zj/ cluster fails
to occur because it cannot be phonetically reinterpreted. The expected form, */Z/,
does not exist as a phoneme in JamC. The blocking of */Sj/, */tSj/ and */dZj/ are,
we would suggest, the result of the unacceptability of the alternative /sjj/, /tjj/ and
/djj/ underlying representation. These would require a */jj/ sequence. The analysis
is presented below.
(32) /sj/ → [S] ← /S/
*/zj/ → *[Z]
*/Sj/ = */sjj/
*/tS/ = */tjj/
*/dZ/ = */djj/
/tj/ → [tS] ← /tS/
/dj/ → [dZ] ← /dZ/
The apparent occurrence of /dj/ on the surface as in /djam/ ‘damn’ really involves
a disyllabic sequence /dijam/, with prominence on the second syllable.
3.1.6. Constraints on the onset: /r/ and /l/

The other approximants possible in second position in the onset are /r/ and /l/.
When the obstruent consonant occupying initial position in such combinations is
a stop, it may be either a voiced or a voiceless consonant. However, when it is a
fricative, it must be [-voice] and [+anterior], i.e. it must be either /f/ or /s/. The al-
lowed onset clusters involving initial stops are /pr/, /br/, /pl/, /bl/, /tSr/, /dZr/, /kr/,
/r/, /kl/, /l/. Those involving initial fricative consonants are /fr/, /fl/ and /sl/.
(33) a. /pria/ [prie] ‘pray’
b. /briak/ [briek] ‘brake’
c. /plia/ [plie] ‘play’
d. /klaat/ [klaat] ‘cloth’
Absent from the combinations listed above, though theoretically possible based on
the cluster formation constraints mentioned, are /tr/, /dr/, /tl/, /dl/ and /sr/. This ab-
sence can be explained by a constraint which blocks onset clusters of consonants
specified underlyingly for the features [anterior] and [coronal]. If, however, this
constraint is interpreted to apply at the phonetic level instead, the way is open for
the clusters involving initial phonetically alveopalatal affricates followed by [®],
i.e. [tS®] and [dZ®], to be regarded by speakers as the surface output of underlying
/tr/ and /dr/ clusters. This would produce a merger between the phonetic outputs
of underlying /tr/ and /tSr/, and /dr/ and /dZr/. Members of each pair would be
realised phonetically as [tS®] and [dZ®] respectively.
We have already seen a fusing of /tj/ and /tS/ realised as [tS], and of /dj/ and /dZ/,
realised as [dZ]. Where the phonetic realisations [tS®] and [dZ®] are interpreted as
involving the phonetic realisation of an underlyingly /tjr/ and /djr/, this would vio-
late the constraint on there being no more than two consonants in the onset. This
explains the fact, observed by Wells (1973: 10) that “/tr, dr/ are not altogether
consistently contrastive with /tS/ and /dZ/”. This he illustrates with some examples,
e.g. the variation between [truu] ~ [tuu] ‘true’, the latter homophonous with
[tuu] ‘chew’, and /draa/ ~ /daa/ ‘draw’, the latter homophonous with [daa]
‘jaw’. In each of the preceding pairs, the first form is based on an underlying /tr/
and /dr/ whereas the second is based on an adaptation of unacceptable underlying
/tjr/ and /djr/ clusters.
3.1.7. Constraints on the coda: The distribution of /r/

In discussing the phonology of English-related language varieties, the issue of
rhoticity is inevitably discussed. Post-vocalic syllable final /r/ occurs in items lexi-
cally specified to bear it. There is a constraint operating here, however. The im-
mediately preceding segment in the nucleus in such cases has to be either /ia/, /ua/,
/aa/ or /o/. (This distribution indicates that the preceding vowel segment must be
/a/, whether this is linked to a V-slot as in the first three examples or to /o/, a vowel
which we analyse elsewhere as consisting of a combination of the features associ-
ated with an /ia/ sequence, occupying, however, a single V slot.)
(34) a. /faar/ [fa] ‘far’

b. /piar/ [pi] ‘pear’
c. /fuar/ [fuo] ‘four’
d. /bor-bor/ [bobo] ‘bur’
The phoneme /r/ is blocked from occurring after nuclei consisting of /a/, /ii/, /uu/,
/ai/ and /au/. What these all lack, as opposed to /ia/, /ua/ and /o/ is the presence of
an immediately preceding /a/, whether realised on the surface, as in the first three
cases above, or underlyingly as in the last. JamC does not allow post-vocalic /r/ in
the environment of a succeeding tautosyllabic consonant.
3.1.8. Constraints on the coda: The distribution of nasals

Nasal consonants may not appear in the coda when the nucleus consists of the
diphthong /au/. The sequences so blocked are presented below.
(35) */aum/
*/aun/
*/au/
It should be noted that this constraint is restricted to /au/ and does not apply to
nuclei consisting of any of the other diphthongs, long vowels or short vowels in
the language. The constraining effect which /au/ has on nasals in the coda has as its
closest approximation the constraint already discussed involving /r/ in the coda. In
the latter, however, the constraint operates with any vowel which does not have /a/
as the second element in the nucleus, either at the surface level or underlyingly. In
the former case, by contrast, the constraint is restricted to a single diphthong, /au/.
Of the three blocked combinations, it is /aun/ which assumes great sociolinguistic
significance in the Jamaica language situation. This is because it is the one combi-
nation amongst those blocked by this constraint which occurs in JamE. All cognates
which in JamE may appear with an /aun/ sequence are realised in JamC with /o/.
Given the consistent pattern by which the more conservative varieties adapt
JamE /aun/ patterns to /o/ patterns, we may hypothesise that // is a velarised
/n/, i.e. an /n/ with the velar feature of the vowel /u/ added to it. The source of the
constraint on /aun/ in tautosyllabic sequences is, however, in a wider constraint
which blocks /au/ from preceding any nasal, i.e. /m/, /n/ or //.
3.1.9. Constraints on the coda: Consonant clusters

Like in onset clusters, a maximum of two consonants is allowed to occur in the
coda. The coda clusters are much more robust than the onset clusters. Four types
of bi-consonantal clusters are allowed in the coda.
Type 1: Nasal + voiceless stop cluster

Voiceless stops are allowed to precede nasals. Contrast between nasals is neutral-
ized in this position. Only nasals having the same general place of articulation as
the following stops are allowed to occur in this environment. Examples of Nasal +
Stop clusters are given below.
(36) a. /tamp/ ‘stamp’
b. /sent/ ‘cent’
c. /tik/ ‘bedbug’
d. /pint/ ‘pinch’
Type 2: Nasal + alveolar fricative
In this type, the alveolar fricatives follow the nasals. Unlike in type 1, in type 2,
contrast between nasals is maintained in pre-alveolar fricative position. Examples
are presented below.
(37) a. /lims/ ‘glimpse’
b. /mins/ ‘mince’
c. /spaanz/ ‘to span’
d. /aamz/ ‘alms-house’
Type 3: Voiceless stop + voiceless alveolar fricative
In type 3, where voiceless stops occur as the first consonant in the cluster, the fol-
lowing alveolar fricative must be voiceless. This is a case of voicing harmony, as
the data illustrates.
(38) a. /mats/ ‘maths’
b. /saps/ ‘nerd’
c. /aaks/ ‘ask’
Type 4: Alveolar lateral + obstruents
The fourth type of coda cluster involves a lateral preceding obstruents, as shown
below.
(39) a. /elp/ ‘help’
b. /saalt/ ‘salt’
c. /twelv/ ‘twelve’
3.1.10. The syllable structure: The vowel in the nucleus

It is against the phonotactic constraints already discussed that we are able to sum-
marise the range of possible syllable structures in JamC. This may be summarised
as follows:
(40) (C)(C) V (V)(C)(C)
Some of the syllable types that can be derived from the structure above are exem-
plified in (41) below.
(41) a. /a/ [a] V ‘locational preposition’
b. /iat/ [iet] VVC ‘eight’
c. /ruas/ [ruos] CVVC ‘roast’
d. /pat/ [pat] CVC ‘pot’
e. /blua/ [bluo] CCVV ‘blow’
f. /plaant/ [plant] CCVVCC ‘plant’

There are 24 consonants in the phonemic inventory of JamE, inclusive of the semi-
vowels /w/ and /j/. The inventory below, adopted from Wells (1973: 26), shows
the consonant phonemes of JamE.
(42) Consonant phonemes of JamE
p t k t
b d d
m n
f s
v z
r l
w j h
There are three consonant phonemes which exist in JamE but not in JamC. These are
/ /, / / and //. In JamE, by contrast with many varieties of JamC, /h/ is phonemic, ap-
pearing in this role in the same lexical items as it would in Standard British English.
3.2.2. Palatals and labial velars

The distribution of palatals and labial velars in JamE is clearly influenced by the
JamC-to-JamE conversion processes which many speakers carry out. One prob-
lem converting JamC lexical inputs into an acceptable JamE realisation is the fact
that JamC /a/ may be realised as JamE /a/ or /ç/, depending on the lexical item.
There is no way, taking the JamC phonological form, /pat/, of knowing whether
the JamE form should be /pat/ ‘pat’ or /pçt/ ‘pot’. However, when JamC /a/ is part
of a syllable with a palatal or labial velar stop onset, these invariably predict the
correct JamE output.
Let us first take the palatals. In JamE, /kj/ and /j/, phonetically palatal stops, [c]
and [;], have a distribution in which they vary with each other before /a/ and /aa/
but not in other environments. Thus, the item ‘cap’ has two realisations in JamE,
/kap/ and /kjap/, whereas the items ‘coo’ /kuu/ and ‘queue’, /kjuu/ show a /k/ ver-
sus /kj/ phonemic contrast. The JamE /kap/ ~ /kjap/ ‘cap’ variation reflects the fact
that /kj/ is part of the lexical specification of cognate items in JamC, serving to
distinguish it from /kap/ ‘cop’. With the JamE pronunciation of ‘cop’ being /kçp/,
the use of /kj/ in /kjap/ has no distinctive functional value. It, however, represents
a carry-over from JamC which, we argue, provides the lexical input that lies at the
base of JamE phonetic output.
In the examples below, the item with /kj/ or /j/ in the JamC item has /kj/ or
/j/ as variant forms in JamE, followed by /a/. The items which have /k/ or // in
the JamC item, require an invariant /k/ or // in the JamE cognate and /ç/ as the
following vowel. The weight of the phonemic distinction, transferred from the
consonant in JamC to the vowel in JamE, is still expressed redundantly in the form
of a residual /kj/ variant in JamE.
/kjap/ /kap/ ~ /kjap/ ‘cap’
/kap/ /kçp/ ‘cop’
/kjaaf/ /kaaf/ ~ /kjaaf/ ‘calf’
/kaaf/ /kççf/ ‘cough’
/ja/ /a/ ~ /ja/ ‘gang’
/a/ /ç/ ‘gong’
/jaad/ /aard/ ~ /jaard/ ‘guard’
/aad/ /ççd/ ‘God’
A very similar kind of situation applies with the labial velars, where again the
presence of a semi-vowel linked feature predicts whether JamC /a/ is realised as
JamE /a/ or /ç/. The difference is that there are environments in which palatals
occur categorically, i.e. before vowels other than /a/ and /aa/. By contrast, labial
velars only occur variably in JamE, before the diphthong /çi/. Its JamC reflex, /ai/,
is the only environment in which they may occur in JamC. In JamE, it represents
a redundant feature, the labialisation of /b/ in the environment of an /ai/ which has
/çi/ as its JamE reflex. This represents independent support for the notion that the
conversion process is from a JamC underlying input to JamE and not the other
way around. Otherwise, we would have no way of understanding how a variable
occurrence of /w/ in JamE can be converted into a categorical appearance of this
form in the JamC cognates.

/bwai/ /bçi/ ~ /bwçi/ ‘boy’
/bai/ /bai/ ‘buy’
/pwail/ /spçil/ ~ /spwçil/ ‘spoil’
/pail/ /pail/ ‘pile’
3.2.3. Variation
The pattern of differential use of variants across pairs of linguistically related vari-
ables exists in the area of consonants also. The voiceless dental fricative variant
of the variable / / ~ /d/, and the voiced dental fricative variant of the variable / /
~ /d/, each idealised JamE fricative variant does not occur in JamE with the same
frequency. As Irvine’s (2004) table 2 intimates, model speakers of JamE produce
a mere 48% of the JamE fricative variant, / /, and 52% of the JamC linked stop
variant, /d/. The JamC linked variant is therefore very present in JamE and in fact
occurs more frequently than the English variant. This is quite different with the
parallel variable, / / ~ /t/. Here, it is the JamE linked variant, [ ], which is in the
ascendant, occurring in 88% of the occurrences of this variable.
3.2.4. Constraints on the onset: /j/ and /w/

The ambiguity in JamC in assigning [t] and [d] to either /tj/ and /dj/ or /t/ and
/d/ manifests itself in the process of conversion into JamE. For some JamE speak-
ers but not others, phonetic [tj] and [dj] clusters occur. For some of these speakers,
these phonetic forms are the only ones allowed in certain environments. They also
occur for such speakers in [tjuu] ‘chew’ and [djunjo] ‘junior’. Such speakers, in
these environments, have [tj] and [dj] allophones for the phonemes, /t/ and /d/.
A second group would employ [tj] and [dj] respectively in items such as [tjuuzde]
‘Tuesday’ and [djuu] ‘dew’ whilst using the phones [t] and [d] for [tuu] ‘chew’
and [dunjo] ‘junior’. Here, the [tj] and [dj] represent syllable initial phoneme se-
quences, /tj/ and /dj/ which contrast with [t] and [d] as phonetic manifestations
of /tj/ and /dj/. Finally, there are speakers for whom [tj] and [dj] are not employed
and for whom, in both sets of items, the only forms possible are [t] and [d]. The
JamE system of such speakers is like that of JamC.
In the case of /w/ in the onset, /pw/ and /bw/ vary with /p/ and /b/ in ‘oi’ and ‘oy’
words, e.g. /spwçil/ ~ /spçil/ ‘spoil’, /bwçi/ ~ /bçi/ ‘boy’. Even though the /pw/
and /bw/ clusters represent a carry-over from a JamC representation, the feature
which is taken to diagnose use of JamE rather than JamC is /çi/. In this context, the
JamC type /w/ occurs as a relatively unnoticed and redundant variant feature.
3.2.5. Constraints on the coda: The distribution of /r/

JamE is generally rhotic. This can be seen in the examples below.
(45) a. /heer/ [he] ~ [h] ‘hair’
b. /boord/ [bod] ~ [bod] ‘board/bored’
c. /sçrt/ [sçt] ~ [sçt] ‘sort’
There is a degree of variability in the realisation of postvocalic /r/, usually in the
environment of a following tautosyllabic consonant. As has been pointed out by Ali-
son Irvine (p. c.), however, this inconsistency only occurs in relation to /r/ preceding
another consonant in the coda, i.e. in relation to items b. and c. above but not a.
3.2.6. Constraints on the coda: The distribution of nasals

Idealised JamE has /aun/ [aun] as the phoneme sequence in the pronunciation of
words such as ‘brown’, ‘down’ and ‘town’. The JamC variant, [onN], is a high-
ly stigmatised but frequently occurring variant in JamE. The stigma associated
with [onN] is determined by the lexical item within which it appears. Thus, ide-
alised JamE /dauntaun/ [dountoun] ‘downtown’ is very frequently produced as
[do<taun], i.e. with the [oN] variant on ‘down’ but not on ‘town’.
(46) a. /daun/ [doun] ~ [doN] ‘down’
b. /taun/ [toun] ~ [toN] ‘town’
3.2.7. Constraints on the coda: Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters follow a pattern in the coda characteristic of standard varieties
of English around the world. Because more complex clusters are allowed in JamE
than in JamC, some users of JamE are prone, beginning with a JamC lexical entry,
to overgeneralise the conversion process as in the example below. This occurs
with the creation of an /nd/ consonant cluster in the attempted JamE item below,
based on the assumption that all rather then only some JamC /n/ codas had to be
converted to JamE as /nd/.
lain ‘line’ → laind (the product of overgeneralising) ‘line’
3.2.8. The syllable structure

The syllable structure for JamE is similar to that of other varieties of English. The
structure is presented below.
(48) (C(C) (C)) V (V) ((C) (C) (C))
3.3. From Jamaican Creole to Jamaican English: The consonantal system

JamC has 21 consonants as compared with 24 for JamE. The difference in the con-
sonant inventory of the two language varieties involves three JamE fricatives, / /,
/ / and //, which do not exist in JamC. Thus, the one-to-one relationship between
JamC and JamE consonants breaks down on three occasions. These are presented
below.
/t/ = / /, /t/
/d/ = / /, /d/
/d/ = /d/, //
These produce the following equivalences.
/tak/ ‘tank’, ‘thank’ vs. / ak/ ‘thank’
/tak/ ‘tank’
/den/ ‘den’, ‘then’ vs. / en/ ‘then’
/den/ ‘den’
/meda/ ‘measure’ vs. /meo/ ‘measure’
/ed/ ‘edge’ vs. /ed/ ‘edge’
In our discussion of variation, we already looked at the / / ~ /t/ and / / ~ /d/ vari-
ables. In relation to the /d/ ~ // variation, Irvine, both with reference to her work
as well as other material, concludes that [omeko] ‘Jamaica’ and [norol] ‘gen-
eral’, to be increasingly a feature of some formal speech. This might be perceived
to be an overgeneralisation, i.e. JamC /d/ → JamE // conversion even in words
like ‘Jamaica’ and ‘general’ which, in JamC and most varieties of English, have
/d/. The form [] is often selected when the spelling of the word precludes a /dj/
interpretation possible in [soldjo] ‘soldier’, for example.
4. The prosodic system

Prosody is used to distinguish between two groups of words, both of which take
prominence on the first syllable. In type I, the highest pitch occurs on the first syl-
lable. In type II, the highest pitch is on the second syllable, with the first bearing
falling pitch over its duration. The ability to bear type II prosody is lexically speci-
fied. Below is presented a pair of lexically contrastive items.
(51) Type I Only Type I & II

mada ‘mother’ mada ‘spiritualist’
faada ‘father’ faada ‘priest’
Even where no minimal pairs exist, bisyllabic items with prominence on the first
syllable have to be lexically specified for the ability to take type II prosody. Below
is a sample.
ieti ‘eighty’ biebi ‘baby’
foni ‘funny’ moni ‘money’
daata ‘daughter’ waata ’water’
pwaizn ‘poison’ laisn ‘licence’

The patterns discussed for JamC are maintained for JamE bisyllabic items with
prominence on the first syllable.
/mo o/ ~ /mç o/ ‘mother’ /mo o/ ~ /mç o/ ‘spiritualist’
/faa o/ ‘father’ /faa o/ ‘priest’
/eeti/ ‘eighty’ /beebi/ ‘baby’
foni/ ‘funny’ /moni/ ‘money’
dççto/ ‘daughter’ /wççto/ ‘water’
pçizn/ ~ /pwçizn/ ‘poison’ /laisns/ ‘licence’
4.3. From Jamaican Creole to Jamaican English: Prosody

If we presume that the major model for JamE is written English supported by
written normative works such as dictionaries, we can make some reasonable ex-
trapolations about the process by which JamC input becomes JamE output at the
prosodic level. Cues from the English writing system, coupled with reference to
dictionaries, gives an indication of the location of word stress. In the JamC cases
and their JamE equivalents, type I only and type I & II items both bear prominence
or word stress on the first syllable. They are, however, over-differentiated in rela-
tion to such a model by having two lexically specified prosodic classes amongst
such words. Where JamC is over-differentiated in relation to the written English
model but does not clash with that model, JamC features are simply transferred to
JamE, unnoticed.
5. Interdependent but autonomous: Theorising phonological interaction

in the Jamaica continuum/diglossic situation
There is no way in which the assumption of underlying English phonology for

JamC, by way of simplification and deletion rules, could account for the interme-
diate and even variant JamE forms. The frequent areas of overgeneralisation in
every aspect of the segmental phonological system discussed here suggests that
JamE, for many speakers, is based on a JamC lexical input. A proposal for dele-
tion rules, working from either JamE or from 17th century British English, would
not produce the overgeneralisations discussed. Rules of elaboration, involving the
lexical marking of some items to receive this elaboration, are a crucial part of the
link between the phonological systems of JamC and JamE. It is the absence of
lexical marking that produces the initial overgeneralisations.
Simultaneously, in the area of the prosodic system, we have seen what happens
in the process of conversion from complex to simple. Since written English largely
provided the model for the development of JamE, the fact that Standard British
English and other metropolitan varieties of English were simple in this area had
no impact on the conversion process. In fact, the greater complexity of JamE, rela-
tive to its external models, has gone unnoticed by speakers of JamE themselves.
This fact underlines the largely written character of the model on which JamE has
been built. It also supports the notion that much of the special lexical marking for
conversion from JamC to JamE comes from cues given by the spellings of words
in conventional English orthography.
The jury is out on whether a complex aspect of the phonology of a natively used
variety can be suppressed in the acquisition of a non-native variety which is less
complex. We would theorise that this would not occur unless strong social stigma
were associated with this more complex set of features. Since, in the Jamaica situ-
ation, all the users of the potentially less complex system are also native users of
the more complex one, the likelihood is that the greater complexity would go un-
noticed, which is what we suggest happens with the complex JamC prosodic sys-
tem in JamE. In addition, the distinction has some functional load. Thus, failure to
carry it over into JamE would leave a communicative gap which would be noticed
by speakers since they regard JamC and JamE as varieties of the same language.
The fact that, in pairs of related phonological variables, one variant would have
a high frequency of occurrence in the variety to which it does not ideally belong,
and that another would not, suggests that we are dealing with two language vari-
eties which interact with each other, sharing on a variable basis some features of
the other, but reserving other features for its own exclusive use. We have a pair of
phonological systems that converge with each other but that are, in a systematic
manner, nevertheless kept apart by their users.
Selected references
ROM.
Akers, Glen A.
1981 Phonological Variation in the Jamaican Continuum. Ann Arbor, MI:
Karoma.
Bennett, Louise
1966 Jamaica Labrish. Kingston: Sangster Bookstores.
Cassidy, Frederic G. and Robert B. Le Page
[1967] 1980 Dictionary of Jamaican Creole. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Devonish, Hubert and Walter Seiler
1991 A Reanalysis of the Phonological System of Jamaican Creole. Society for
Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Papers 24.
Ferguson, Charles
1959 Diglossia. In: Pier Giglioli (ed.), Language in Social Context, 232–251.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Gumperz, John J. and Robert Wilson
1971 Convergence and creolization. In: Hymes (ed.), 151–167.
Irvine, Alison
2004 A good command of the English language: Phonological variation in the
Jamaican acrolect. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 19: 41–76.
Meade, Rocky R.
1995 An analysis of Jamaican /s/-stop cluster reduction within Optimality Theory.
UWILING: Working Papers in Linguistics: 1, 30–42.
1996 On the phonology and orthography of Jamaican Creole. Journal of Pidgin and
Creole Languages 11: 335–341.
2001 Acquisition of Jamaican Phonology. The Netherlands: Holland Institute of
Linguistics.
Wells, John C.
1973 Jamaican Pronunciation in London. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Eastern Caribbean English-derived
language varieties: phonology
Michael Aceto
1. Introduction
As a geographical region, the Eastern Caribbean has been left virtually untapped
as a source of fieldwork data in creole studies and English dialectology. Of course,
there are individual pieces of research derived from some islands of the Eastern
Caribbean, and at least two geographical exceptions to these generalizations are
Barbados, Guyana, and perhaps Trinidad. Barbados has been central to previous
discussions and debates in trying to determine its possible role in the diffusion of
shared features heard throughout the Anglophone Caribbean as well as in answer-
ing questions related to the concept of “decreolization” as to whether Barbados
once contained significant communities of speakers of a “deeper” Creole than
typically seems to be spoken today (Cassidy 1980; Hancock 1980; Rickford 1992;
Van Herk 2003). Trinidad has received significant attention from Winer (1993).
These cases aside, the Eastern Caribbean is still largely absent from contempo-
rary research and fieldwork in creolistics. For example, Neumann-Holzschuh and
Schneider (2000), one of the most recent additions to the excellent Creole Lan-
guage Library series published by Benjamins, contains few references to the An-
glophone Eastern Caribbean. For reasons discussed in Aceto (2002a) and Aceto
and Williams (2003), the “action” in creole studies is not centered in the Eastern
Caribbean, except perhaps as represented by Guyana in South America. Research-
ers have largely ignored the approximately one dozen other Anglophone islands
in the Eastern Caribbean chain.
Aceto (2002a) designates specific islands of the Eastern Caribbean (among
other areas of the Americas as well) as sites for future research by compiling the
relatively few bibliographic references that have been published on Anglophone
Caribbean varieties other than Jamaican and Guyanese and by indicating which
specific islands or areas have received little or no attention from linguists. Some
of the goals that prompted Aceto (2002a) have been rectified to some degree by
Aceto and Williams (2003). Nonetheless, even after the publication of Aceto and
Williams (2003), most of the Eastern Caribbean is still wide open for researchers
interested in pursuing future fieldwork in Anglophone West Indian locations for
which we have relatively little data.
Phonology as a general linguistic-based topic has not received the same atten-
tion from researchers that Creole language syntax has. Perhaps this observation
482 Michael Aceto
relates to the fact that syntax is often tied directly to cognitive science (which
has influenced the field of linguistics enormously) as well as the popularity of
substrate arguments in discussing creole language genesis. Perhaps it is because
of the highly variable nature of sound segments, especially vowels. Whatever the
reason, in-depth phonological treatments of any specific Creole language have
been few and far between. For evidence of this descriptive statement, simply ex-
amine the titles in the Creole Language Library. Though individual articles on Cre-
ole phonology appear in edited collections, not a single volume examines Creole
phonology in depth while several volumes concentrate largely if not exclusively
on syntactic data.
This chapter is largely based on Holm (1989), Volume 3 of Wells (1982), Aceto
and Williams (2003), various specific articles referenced below, and the author’s
own notes from fieldwork whose results have not yet appeared in published ar-
ticles. Map 1 shows the location of the islands discussed in the paper.
Map 1. (Courtesy of http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas/caribbean.gif)

Eastern Caribbean English-derived language varieties: phonology 483
2. Some general phonological features of Eastern Caribbean English-

derived languages
2.1. Introduction
It is worth remembering that the varieties of English that Africans in the Western
Hemisphere originally heard were regional, social, and ethnic (e.g. Irish and Scot-
tish) dialects of British English as spoken in the 17-19th centuries. As Africans and
African-descended peoples began to acquire English forms, initially as a second
language, they would have heard varieties of English spoken by Europeans and
whatever earlier restructured forms they might have heard on the West African
coast or perhaps at slave entrepots in the Caribbean such as St. Eustatius or St.
Kitts (see Baker and Bruyn 1998 for references to a scenario in which St. Kitts
may have influenced emerging Englishes on other islands). Later, as local variet-
ies began to emerge in the decades to follow, slaves would have acquired local
varieties as first-languages or as native speaker varieties as spoken in the relevant
communities by peoples of both African and European descent. Thus, from a dia-
chronic perspective, English-derived Caribbean varieties in general are more Brit-
ish-oriented in their phonology, though in the last century American and Canadian
influence can be expected and documented (e.g. see Van Herk 2003).
There appear to be some satisfactory reasons for linguistically dividing the region
of the Caribbean into geographical-designated Western and Eastern varieties on the
basis of comparative phonology and syntax (see Holm 1989: 445; Volume 3 of Wells
1982; 1987). However, the grounds for this division are largely abstract and impres-
sionistic since it is my experience, having done fieldwork in both general locations,
that there are few specific features that one may absolutely find in one region that can-
not be found in the other. In general, creolists are often comfortable with the highly
questionable assumption that earlier varieties of creole languages were monolithic and
contemporary synchronic variation is a more recent (i.e. post-emancipation) phenom-
enon. Whether these overlapping patterns represent parallel historical developments
or are due to intra-Caribbean migration, especially in the post-emancipation period,
is open to debate. Aceto and Williams (2003) focused on the Eastern Caribbean sim-
ply because the locations that comprise this chain of islands have rarely if ever been
documented via fieldwork. However, as has been made clear in dialect studies over
the last 50 years, it is not any specific feature that is diagnostic of a dialect (whether it
be a regional, ethnic, or social one), but the bundle of features that is associated with
a particular designation. And it is on these grounds that one may find some validity in
the motivation for separating Caribbean Englishes into Western and Eastern varieties.
However, due to the lack of research in the Eastern Caribbean, no table of “typical”
Anglophone Eastern Caribbean speakers and their sound segments can be considered
to be accurate and inclusive at this point in time. Many of the islands of the region
have never been documented via linguistic fieldwork.
484 Michael Aceto
In this chapter, I discuss some phonetic/phonological features found in the gen-

eral Eastern Caribbean (while making reference to features believed to be repre-
sentative of the Western Caribbean as well), and then discuss specific islands and
their English-derived varieties. It should be acknowledged that we do not have
much research on many of these varieties, at least when compared to the impres-
sive amount of research carried out on, say, Jamaica and the Surinamese Cre-
ole languages. The Surinamese Creoles are ignored in this discussion. However,
though not specifically considered in this section, the geographically proximate
English-derived languages spoken in the Bahamas (which is often geographically
linked with North American varieties of English such as Turks and Caicos and
Gullah rather than the Eastern Caribbean, though included in Aceto and Williams
(2003) because of its general proximity), Trinidad, Barbados, and Guyana are ref-
erenced occasionally for comparative purposes since their creole language variet-
ies manifest some phonological similarities with the Anglophone Eastern Carib-
bean chain in general.
2.2. Vowels
2.2.1. Long vowels

In words of the FACE and GOAT/GOAL sets, the off glides [ei] and [ou] of standard
varieties of English are often not found in the Eastern Caribbean where these
sounds most often correspond to [e˘] and [o˘]. However, recent work by Childs,
Reaser and Wolfram (2003) suggests that in some Bahamian communities the
sound [ei] can be heard. In many Western Caribbean varieties these same sounds
correspond to those with on-glides, e.g. /ie/ and /uo/ as in [fies] face and [guot]
goat. These same vowels can be realized as diphthongs with variants such as [iE]
and [uç]. In the Leeward Islands, specifically Montserrat (see Volume 3 of Wells
1982: 587), words that historically had long vowels are shortened and they have
no off-glides (e.g. [eJ]) as they do in metropolitan varieties, e.g. /ki/ key and /de/
day.
2.2.2. Unreduced vowels

Many other varieties in the Eastern Caribbean (except for Bajan), especially the
deeper or so-called basilectal ones, have no mid-central vowels, i.e. /´/ or /√/.
Even in positions not associated with word-final or post-vocalic /r/, West Indian
varieties of English often display a preference for unreduced vowels, e.g. [abIlItI]
ability, [tawIl] towel, where other dialects of English often display schwa [´] in
the third and second vowel positions respectively.
2.2.3. Other vowels

The low front vowel /Q/ found in many metropolitan varieties of English in words
such as TRAP is often realized further back in the mouth as [a]. The /√/ of words
like STRUT in metropolitan varieties is backed and close to [ç]. However, some
varieties of English in the Turks and Caicos Islands (as well as in Bermuda) reveal
the presence of [æ].
Eastern Caribbean English-derived varieties often maintain the difference be-
tween sounds in words in metropolitan dialects like the /ç:/ in jaw and the /a:/ in
jar (which often has an r-less pronunciation in many varieties but not all, e.g. Ba-
jan). Both sounds have typically merged into /a:/ in the Western group.
2.3. Consonants
2.3.1. Rhoticity
Except for varieties of English in Barbados, post-vocalic /r/ is often not heard in
the Eastern Caribbean. Bajan English is recognized by its full rhotic nature at all
levels of society. Van Herk (2003:260) states that Bajan is “if anything, more rhot-
ic than North American [Standard English].” This is not the case in other areas in
which full r-lessness after vowels (e.g. in Trinidad and the Bahamas) and the vari-
able nature of [r] across a geographical space (e.g. in Guyana) are salient dialect
features. In non-rhotic dialects, additional phonemes such as /ea/ (e.g. /nea/ near)
and /oa/ (e.g. /foa/ four) are often created by absence of /r/ after vowels.
One correlate associated with non-rhoticity in general West Indian English va-
rieties is the avoidance of central [´]-like vowels in favor of unreduced vowels or
a vowel identical or similar to [a] in word-final cases, e.g. /lEta/ letter. Wells (Vol-
ume 3, 1982: 571) believes this vowel to be the same as found in words such as
/an(d)/ and and /at/ at. He adds that “it is very hard to find a satisfactory criterion
for determining whether or not a phonemic opposition really exists between /a/
and a putative /´/, but the existence of such a phoneme is something of a hallmark
of educated speech”. However, middle-class and educated West Indians often use
the unreduced vowels (i.e. they avoid [´]) as well.
2.3.2. /v/-/w/ merger

The contrast between /v/ and /w/ is often neutralized or merged in the Eastern
Caribbean. That is, many dialects of Caribbean English (e.g. Bahamian, Bermu-
dan, and Vincentian) may alternate [w], [B] (the voiced bilabial fricative), or [5]
(the voiced labiodental approximant) for words which in metropolitan varieties
begin with [v], e.g. village [wIlIdZ]. This feature may be related to component
dialect varieties of English heard in the Caribbean in the 18th century which con-
486 Michael Aceto
tain this same alternation (e.g. Cockney) or possibly to African languages that
lacked the /v/ segment. Some Anglophone Caribbean communities may reveal
/b/ where metropolitan Anglophone varieties display /v/, e.g. vex “angry” [bEks],
river [rIba], and love [l√b].
2.3.3. Word-initial /h/

In the Leewards (Antigua, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla, Barbuda), unlike
in Jamaican and other Western Caribbean varieties, /h/ is most often not dropped
from the beginnings of most words. So-called “h-dropping” or word-initial “h-
deletion” is common in Jamaica and in the Bahamas as well. H-dropping also
occurs in other dialects of English; often British Cockney is cited as the source
of h-dropping in English-derived Caribbean varieties. In dialects with this feature,
which is generally not found in the Eastern Caribbean, pairs such as hair and air
are homophonous (both are sometimes [Er]).
2.3.4. Nasals
Syllable- or word-final alveolar nasals following /√/ are often velarized or become
/N/, e.g. /d√N/ down, which often creates new homonyms (e.g. in this case with
dung). A variant of this type of pronunciation, although likely archaic, is where
the preceding vowel becomes nasalized instead of displaying a consonantal seg-
ment, e.g. [dç‚].
2.3.5. Th-stopping
The neutralization of /D/ and /T/ as /d/ and /t/, e.g. /tiN/ thing and /fada/ father, is
a common feature of many dialects of Caribbean English as well as in regional,
ethnic, and social dialects spoken in North America and Great Britain (which often
display reflexes different from those in the Caribbean). This process creates new
homonyms in the specific dialects in question. Some of the many examples are:
thin-tin [tIn], faith-fate [fet], though-dough [do], breathe-breed [brid].
Neutralization appears to operate particularly readily in the environment pre-
ceding an /r/ in an onset consonant cluster: three-tree [tri˘], through-tru [tru˘],
though often these segments are realized as palatalized allophones [tSru˘] or [tSri˘].
Sometimes interdental fricatives in metropolitan varieties do not correspond with
a stop consonant in Caribbean Englishes. In Kokoy, a variety of Creole English
spoken in Dominica, where /T/ occurs in onset consonant clusters in metropolitan
varieties with /r/, the output often becomes [f], e.g. three [fri], through [fru].
Many so-called acrolectal speakers of many varieties of Caribbean Englishes
realize interdental fricatives as similarly articulated in metropolitan varieties. In
St. Eustatius, many speakers, at all levels of society, display interdental segments,
while the stop correspondences are still the preference for most speakers. Cutler
(2003) makes a similar observation about this feature in the English of Gran Turk
Island as does Williams (2003) about some varieties of English spoken in An-
guilla.

As is typical in many dialects of English around the world, the word-final /t/ seg-
ment in consonant clusters preceded by an obstruent is often not realized, e.g. /-ft,
-st, -kt/. For example, words such as left, nest and act are realized as /lEf/, /nEs/,
and /ak/. Consonant clusters in codas in which /d/ is in the final position are also
often not realized in many English-derived West Indian creoles, e.g. /sEn/ send or
/bIl/ build.
The reduction of consonant clusters in codas also affects the realization of past
tense allomorphs as heard in metropolitan varieties of English as in pushed /pUSt/,
stopped /stapt/ and staged /stedZd/. The past tense allomorphs /-d/, /-t/ and /-Id/
are generally absent in Creole varieties of English, but it is difficult to be certain
if they always were. However, they are part of the metropolitan speech varieties
spoken in many Anglophone Caribbeans locations today.
Word-final clusters of a nasal and a voiceless consonant are heard in West In-
dian varieties of English, e.g. [lamp] lamp, [tnt] tent, tenth (see description above
regarding th-stopping), and [bak] bank. Clusters in codas are also found in com-
bination with liquids (in combination with [l] and [r], if it is a rhotic dialect such as
Bajan), e.g. [mlk] milk, [lf] shelf, [part] part, and [hard] hard. Other consonant
cluster combinations occur freely such as /ks/, e.g. [aks] ask, [baks] box, [sks] six.
In some deep Creole varieties, consonant clusters in onsets or word-initially are
dispreferred, e.g. [tat] start, [tan] stand, [tap] stop.
2.4. Stress, tone, prosody, and suprasegmentals

There are many words in West Indian varieties of English that receive final stress
as opposed to initial stress found in metropolitan varieties of English (an apostro-
phe before the syllable in question indicates final stress), e.g. rea’lize, cele’brate,
ki’tchen. Sutcliffe (2003: 265) adopts the approach of Carter (1987) in her analysis
of Guyanese and Jamaican Creole suprasegmentals and of Devonish (1989) in his
study of Guyanese suprasegmentals. Sutcliffe defines suprasegmentals “as pitch
patterns mapped onto syllables or phrases, creating intonation and tonal patterns”.
He shows that English-derived Caribbean Creoles can be analyzed as having tonal
systems, even if somewhat evolved in the direction of metropolitan English vari-
eties that do not display tonal systems. By “tonal systems” Sutcliffe means those
that organize the melodic pitch used by speakers into two or more pitch phonemes
or tones (contrasting high and low in the case of two-tone systems). Sutcliffe
488 Michael Aceto
focuses on Bajan, Trinidadian and Guyanese suprasegmental systems within the

wider context of the Anglophone Caribbean. Sutcliffe views lexical tone, in the
sense of distinguishing one word from another, as particularly developed in the
Eastern Caribbean, compared with restructured English-derived varieties in the
Western Caribbean and North America.
Sutcliffe suggests that basic features of the suprasegmental system indicate a
link between Bajan and Guyanese in the Eastern Caribbean. Both languages dis-
play lexical minimal pairs in common, mostly disyllables, which are differenti-
ated by pitch patterns alone: síster (with the pitch pattern / – _ /) “female sibling”,
sistér (with the pitch pattern / _ – /) “a nun or sister in the religious sense”; wórker
(with pitch pattern / – _ /) “one who works,” workér (with the pitch pattern / _
– /) “seamstress or needlewoman” (Sutcliffe 1982: 111). This feature has not been
attested for other Caribbean creoles. Sutcliffe (2003) provides data derived from
Roberts (1988: 94) for Bajan: mu=hda “mother, i.e. female parent”, mùhda= “fe-
male head of a religious order or organization”; faèada “father, male parent”, fa>ada=
“priest”; bru=hda “male sibling”, bru?hda= “male member of a religious order”; fa=rma
“one who farms”, fa?rma= (Fa?rme=r) surname; béeka “one who bakes”, be?eka= (Bàkér)
surname. Sutcliffe (2003) also presents Guyanese data derived from Devonish
(1989): práblem “problem”, pràblém “a mathematics problem”; sìngín “singing
practice”, síngin “singing” (verb); wa?sha= “washing machine”, wa=sha? “one who
washes”; rìidá “reader (text book)”, ríida “someone who reads.” Sutcliffe (2003)
also discusses such suprasegmental features as lexical tone, downstepping, final
cadence, final rise, high rise intonation, emphasis, and focus marking.
3. Features of specific Eastern Caribbean Islands
3.1. Turks and Caicos Islands

The following information is from Cutler (2003). The Turks and Caicos Islands
(TCI) are a British dependency comprised of eight major islands and more than
forty islets and cays forming the southeastern end of the Bahamas archipelago.
The Turks Islands are Grand Turk (the capital) and Salt Cay. The Caicos Islands
are West Caicos, Providenciales, North Caicos, Middle Caicos, East Caicos, and
South Caicos. The population of the TCI in 2000 was 17,502 (U.S. Census Bu-
reau). The official language of the TCI is English. Most of the population is con-
centrated on Providenciales (Provo) and Grand Turk. Approximately 90% of the
population throughout the islands is black. The TCI have been under political and
cultural influence from the United States during the 20th century (e.g. Grand Turk
was home to two U.S. military bases from World War II until 1983). In the mid
1960s, when the salt industry closed, many Turks and Caicos Islanders sought
employment in the Bahamas and the United States.
The islands of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos were originally inhabited
by Lucayan Indians. The Spanish deported the Lucayans to work in silver mines
on Hispaniola in the early 16th century. The islands remained uninhabited until the
late 1600s when Bermudian traders began sailing there to gather salt, which was
exported to British colonies in North America. In 1676, Bermudians established
the first settlement on Grand Turk. In 1799 the islands were placed under the ju-
risdiction of the Bahamas. Subsequently, the islands were annexed to Jamaica as
one of its dependencies in 1873. When Jamaica gained its independence in 1962,
people in the TCI voted to remain a colony and were placed once again under the
governance of the Bahamas. When the Bahamas gained its independence in 1972,
the TCI received its own governor. Today, the TCI is one of twelve so-called “De-
pendent Territories” with British colonial status.
The Caicos Islands remained uninhabited from the 16th century until the ar-
rival of the Loyalist refugees, mainly from the southern American colonies, in the
1780s following the American Revolutionary War. Many of the slaves brought to
the Caicos Islands from Georgia and South Carolina may have spoken a creole
language, either a Caribbean Creole or an early form of Gullah, an English Creole
that had been established in coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia between
1720 and 1750, or had some familiarity with the variety of English emerging in
that region. Most of the Loyalists who had previously arrived in the Caicos Islands
abandoned their plantations and departed for other destinations in the British West
Indies by 1820 after cotton crops began to fail. In many cases, they left their slaves
behind. Over the course of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, the
remaining inhabitants in the Caicos Islands (virtually all descendants of Ameri-
can-born slaves) lived in relative isolation. The Caicos Islanders represent one of
the few remaining unstudied “enclave” speech communities of persons descended
from American-born slaves living outside the USA. The population of the Caicos
Islands dropped to a low of 2,995 in 1970; it began increasing slowly over the next
two decades to its present level of about 11,000 people.
Cutler (2003) presents an overview of the variety of English spoken on Grand
Turk, which is part of the Turks and Caicos Islands in the British West Indies.
No prior linguistic research has been carried out in the Turks and Caicos Islands
(see Aceto 2002a). Sometimes the Turks and Caicos islands are seen as part of
the chain of islands associated with the Bahamas and thus considered part of the
category designated as North American varieties of (restructured) English. Again,
Aceto and Williams (2003) have included these islands in their presentation of
Eastern Caribbean varieties because of their general proximity. Cutler concludes
that Turks Island English is an intermediate variety that may have more in com-
mon with African American Vernacular English, Gullah, and Bermudan English
than other West Indian varieties of English to the south.
Regarding the phonology of Grand Turk, Cutler (2003) sees parallels between its
system and that also heard in Bermudan English: the alternation of /Q/ and /E/, e.g.
490 Michael Aceto
hat [hεt], ten [tQn], and the interchange of /w/ and /v/, as discussed above. Whites in
Bermuda pronounce grass [grQs], but blacks favor the vowel [a]. Cutler states that
Turks Islanders were similar in this regard in that they did use /Q/ in words where
many other West Indians would use /a/. Perhaps this feature is due to influence
from North American varieties of English. Further features of the English spoken on
Grand Turk as listed by Cutler are: speakers have little or no monophthongization of
diphthongs such as [aI]; they do not centralize the diphthong in words like oil to [aI]
as is common in other parts of the West Indies like Jamaica; unlike other Caribbean
varieties of English, speakers do not palatalize velar stops; and speakers do not have
“h”-dropping or insertion as is common in varieties of Jamaican and Bahamian
Cutler lists the following features of the vowel system of Grand Turk English.
Words like if often sound like [f]. The mid front vowel /E/ in words like rest and
Betty is lowered to [Q] i.e., [rQst] and [bQRI]. The second vowel in again is closer
to [e] than [E], i.e., [´»gen]. The vowel in company and nothing is closest to the
low front vowel [a], i.e., ['kampni] and ['natn]. The vowel in up is close to
[ç]. Low mid back rounded vowels are slightly diphthongized before nasals as in
gone [gçan] and haunted ['hçand]. The vowel in could is closer to a rounded one
like [u]. Speakers in Grand Turk reveal the widespread use of [Q] in back and man
where many other Caribbean varieties use [a] or [a˘]. However, there is consider-
able variation among speakers: Some use [Q] in master but [a] in after and can’t.
The diphthong in words like go and boat is fronted, sounding closer to [öu]. The
diphthong in about is closer to [ou].
English on Turks Island has no rhotic vowels. Words like birth are pronounced
[baf] or [bf]. This feature contrasts with Bahamian English and Gullah, both of
which have the diphthong [I] in words like first and skirt. In fact, Turks Islanders
identified the [I] diphthong as a feature of Bahamian English.
Cutler also describes the consonants of Grand Turk English. The definite article
the is categorically pronounced [di], but some speakers vary between stops and
interdental fricatives for other words. The same description applies to St. Eustatius
Creole English as well (Aceto fc.). Voiceless initial dental fricatives are variably
realized as affricates. The Turks Island pronunciation of thief does not involve a full
stop as it does in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean (i.e. ([tif]). Instead Turks
Islanders say [t if]. Medial dental fricatives are realized as labiodental fricatives,
i.e., birthday [bfdeI], as they often are in African American Vernacular English.
The so-called –ing suffix is most commonly realized as [In], e.g. [sINIn] as is com-
mon in many English vernaculars in the Caribbean as well as in North America and
Great Britain. In some words, the nasal is syllabified, e.g. meeting [mitn@]. Initial
/v/ and /w/ merge into a voiced bilabial approximant, e.g. well [Al], vex [Aks] (see
discussion above). Syllable final /t/ and /k/ are preceded by or replaced by glottal
stops, e.g. that [dæt]. Other speakers do not have complete closure on final stops.
Turks Islanders variably apply flapping to medial alveolar stops, e.g. Betty [bQRI].
Cutler presents some discussion of syllable structure in Turks Island English as

well. Consonant clusters are reduced in morpheme final consonant clusters of the
same voicing, e.g. last [las], stricter [strIk]. Medial consonants are elided in spe-
cific words, e.g. little [lIl]. Turks Island English is non-rhotic (see discussion above),
e.g. Turks Island [taksailn]. In some cases, vowels that may have been combined
with [r] historically are slightly diphthongized, e.g. Lord’s [lçadz].
3.2. Virgin Islands

The US Virgin Islands are comprised of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John; The
British Virgin Islands are Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and Jost Van Dyke. The
following sociohistorical information is from Holm (1989: 455). The Dutch oc-
cupied Tortola in 1648; the British claimed it in 1672. English varieties have been
spoken on the British Vrigin Islands beginning with this contact. In 1672, the
Danes occupied St. Thomas but allowed Dutch and British colonists to settle there
as well. The Dutch comprised nearly half of the European-derived population of
St. Thomas, and among the majority African and African-descended population,
a Dutch-derived creole began to emerge as did an English-derived creole as well.
St. John was settled from St. Thomas; St. Croix was purchased by the Danes from
the French in 1733. Danish seems to have been reserved for administration and
within Danish social groups; English varieties, both creolized and otherwise, be-
gan displacing the Dutch-derived creole as more English-speaking settlers arrived.
After abolition in 1848, as ex-slaves moved from plantations (which were centers
for Dutch Creole speakers) to the towns, the influence of English language vari-
ties became even stronger on these islands. Danish schools adopted English as the
language of instruction in the 19th century. In 1917, the USA purchased St. Croix
from Denmark. Dutch Creole is believed to be extinct on these islands.
St. Thomas and St. John lack the off-glide found in tense vowels of metropolitan
varieties, e.g. /e˘/ and /o˘/ as in /fe˘s/ face and /bo˘t / boat respectively (Holm 1989:
456). These two islands of the American Virgin Islands chain also display the alter-
nation and merger of /w/ and /v/. St. Croix (the remaining island of the American
Virgin Islands) and the chain in the British Virgin Islands (i.e. Tortola, Virgin Gorda,
Anegada) may also contain this feature, but there has been little linguistic research in
general on these islands (see Aceto 2002a; see Sabino, Diamond and Cockcroft 2003
for a treatment of plural marking in some of these same neglected locations). St.
Thomas and St. John also reveal the use of /:/ in words like fierce and bare. Holm
(1989: 456) believes this last feature may represent a local innovation.
3.3. St. Eustatius

St. Eustatius is part of the Dutch Windward Islands, which also comprise Saba
and St. Martin. English-derived vernaculars are spoken on all three islands (except
492 Michael Aceto
for the French side of St. Martin). St. Eustatius has played a central though often
unrecognized role in the European colonization and settlement of the West Indies.
Le Page (1960: 30) states that “the Dutch islands of Curaçao and St. Eustatius
became great slave depots for the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, supply-
ing all other colonies there, including Jamaica, either legally or illegally.” In the
17th century, St. Eustatius was sought after by various European colonial interests
due to its central location and proximity to other islands in the Eastern Caribbean.
Williams (1983: 97) writes, “St. Eustatius was highly prized by the Dutch due to
its proximity to St. Kitts and other British possessions.” Both French and English
settlers began to arrive in 1625, and again in 1629, but soon left in both instances
due to the lack of fresh water. In 1636, the Dutch established themselves on Statia.
At first tobacco, coffee, and cotton were the dominant crops (with some salt gath-
ering). These activities were later replaced, albeit limitedly, by sugar production.
Amerindian slaves mostly from Guiana were shipped to work on the island, but
they were soon replaced with African slaves by the middle of the 17th century. The
island is relatively small and its drought-ridden climate eventually made it largely
unsuitable for use as a significant plantation colony.
French, Spanish and English colonists were already buying slaves at Statia by
1675 (Hartog 1976: 49). Keur and Keur (1960: 39) state, “[t]he main traffic was
with St. Kitts, Barbados and St. Thomas.” In 1679, one transport of African 200-
250 slaves went directly to St. Eustatius. Until this event, slaves were generally
supplied from Curaçao, the center of the Dutch West India Company slave trade
during this period. In 1665, Statia contained 330 Europeans, including children,
and somewhere between 800-1000 slaves.
By 1689, Attema (1976: 16) states, “besides Dutch, there were also English,
French, Germans, Scots, Irish and Koerlanders” living on the island. Hartog
(1976: 29) suggests that Statia was always multilingual from it earliest colonial-
ization, and that, because it was situated among other islands in the Caribbean
being colonized by the British, “English soon became the common language of
trade”. He explicitly states that “the Dutch customarily adopted the language of
the colonized people, whereby Dutch remained as a sort of ruling language for
the upper-ten. So the settlers on Curaçao began to speak Papiamento and those
on St. Eustatius, Saba and St. Maarten spoke English.” Keur and Keur (1960: 43)
report that “the Dutch language was gradually replaced by English, and by 1780
St. Eustatius had adopted and [sic] English pattern of life. The churches asked for
bilingual preachers from the homeland. Continued relations with the USA after
1780 kept the English language alive on the islands [i.e. both St. Maarten and St.
Eustatius] to the present day”.
In the 18th century, Statia briefly found its niche in the West Indian economy
as first a central slave trading depot in the 1720s, and later in the 1770s, when it
became known as the shopping center of the West Indies where all manner of ma-
terial goods (as well as slaves) could be purchased and exported. Statia emerged as
a local slave-trading center by about 1721, just as Curaçao was losing this distinc-
tion. The St. Eustatius slave trade reached its peak in 1726 and then seemed to end
abruptly by 1729. From this brief peak in Statian slave-trading, the island fell into
a lull in general trade until the 1750s-1770s when it earned the names associated
with great commerce listed below (e.g. Golden Rock, etc.), without ever reassert-
ing its dominance in the slave trade again.
In 1757, the slave markets in Suriname and Curaçao had reassumed their
prominent roles in the distribution of slaves for the Dutch West Indies, while
the free trading policy caused St. Eustatius (also known during this period as
Money Mountain, Golden Rock, Diamond Rock, Emporium of the Caribbean) to
become the commercial center of the Caribbean (Keur and Keur 1960: 40), es-
pecially regarding the sale and movement of sugar. Colonists, settlers, and ships
of many origins navigating the Americas docked at St. Eustatius to purchase
goods and still, to a limited extent, slaves. Ships originating from the so-called 13
colonies in what would eventually become the USA used the facilities on Statia
in order to purchase goods and arms in fighting the subsequent American War of
Independence. In 1774, as many as 20 American ships at a time could be found
in Statia’s harbor. Thus, contact with varieties of English was intense on St. Eu-
statius during the latter half of the 18th century. Regarding the island’s role as a
meeting place of goods and people during this era, Hartog (1976: 40) states, the
number of ships annually anchored at Statia were between 1,800 and 2,700, with
its peak reached in 1779 with 3,551 ships. In 1781 the British Navy, under the
command of Admiral George Rodney, attacked the island, looted its warehouses,
confiscated millions of dollars in goods, and expelled many of its merchants (es-
pecially Jews).
In the years following the attack on Statia by Rodney and the British Navy, the
free trade in slaves was forbidden in 1784. The Netherlands abolished the slave
trade in 1814 and the importation of slaves from Africa to its islands in the Carib-
bean in 1821 (Attema 1976: 30). The French controlled the island again from 1795
to 1801. The English took over again for one year in 1801. The territory did not
return to Dutch control until 1816.
From the population peak of 8,124 persons in 1790, the number of Statia’s resi-
dents began to dwindle. The population of Statia has stabilized at approximately
2,000 persons today.
Preliminary data from St. Eustatius (Aceto fc.) reveals a high incidence of in-
terdental fricatives. Th-stopping is the general norm in the Caribbean, including
in Statia, but the fricatives [T] and [D] are also heard to a significant degree in
naturally occurring speech in informal contexts (i.e. playing poker or dominos,
drinking in a bar). The social correlates for the distribution of interdental frica-
tives versus alveolar stops in this location have yet to be determined. Furthermore,
Statian Creole English is primarily non-rhotic, though [r] is variably pronounced
by speakers in some contexts.
494 Michael Aceto
3.4. Anguilla
The following information is from Williams (2003). The English undertook the
first permanent European settlement on the island in 1650. The sugar industry on
Anguilla suffered throughout the 17th and 18th centuries due to drought and a lack
of investment capital by local planters. Anguillian settlers owned small plots of
land, and typically only a few slaves worked with them and their family members
in the fields. Slavery did not become fully established on Anguilla until late in the
18th century, and even then, the ratio of slaves to whites and free coloreds never
matched the proportions found in other Caribbean plantation economies. The
1750 population information for Anguilla shows 350 whites, 38 free coloreds, and
1,962 blacks. The census of 1830 reveals the following demographics: 200 whites,
399 free coloreds, and 2,600 blacks. The 1830s on Anguilla saw a period of pro-
longed droughts that destroyed food crops, animals, and caused human famine.
After emancipation in 1838, a number of white colonists left the island to settle
in North America and other parts of the Caribbean. The general distressed condi-
tions of Anguillian life prompted some Anguillians to work as indentured laborers
on the sugar plantations in St. Croix during the 1870s. The 1880 census of the
island shows 202 whites and 3,017 free coloreds and blacks. The end of the 19th
century brought Anguilla a devastating drought and corresponding famine.
Until recently Anguilla was relatively isolated from other islands of the area.
Phone service was not available on the island until the 1960s. Electricity was not
brought to the far eastern end of the island, to the villages of Island Harbour, East
End, and Mount Fortune until the 1980s. The most recent census of May 2001
reveals a population of 11,300 for Anguilla.
Williams (2003) is the only source for linguistic features in Anguilla. His re-
search focuses on the Webster dialect of Island Harbour, a white enclave dialect of
English in the Eastern Caribbean. Non-Afro-American Anglo-Caribbean varieties,
i.e. those English varieties spoken among the descendants of Irish, Scots, and Eng-
lish settlers, have largely been ignored within research paradigms except for the
work of Williams (1985, 1987). These English-derived language varieties spoken
largely by Euro-Caribbeans on the Bahamas, Saba, St. Barts, Bequia, the Cayman
Islands, Barbados, and Anguilla may shed light on the Anglophone component
heard by Africans and Afro-Caribbeans working alongside many of these Euro-
pean immigrants. Historically, these white indentured servants were often treated
socially no differently than African slaves; some of them even joined African-de-
rived Maroon communities. Williams (1987, 1988) uses the term Anglo-Carib-
bean English to designate the variety spoken by these speech communities.
Williams’ research reveals some phonological features that are clearly derived
from Scots or Scottish English sources. Unlike other dialects of English spoken in
West Indian white enclave communities such as Cherokee Sound in the Bahamas,
the Webster variety does not exhibit a significant degree of h- dropping. Williams
correlates this pattern with the fact that there is no h-dropping in Scotland (Volume
1 of Wells 1982: 412). (However, the absence of h-dropping is a regional feature
of the Eastern Caribbean in general.) Another feature associated with the Scottish
component of this variety is that lexical items with vowels similar to mouth in
metropolitan varieties are typically realized with the Scots pronunciation /u/.
The Webster dialect is primarily non-rhotic, although [r] is variably pronounced
in some contexts by some speakers, e.g. [gyanfa r] grandfather, [wamz] worms.
The Webster dialect exhibits the /w/ and /v/ alternation (typically with the interme-
diate value of [A]) that is found in many of the English-derived languages of the
Eastern Caribbean and beyond (see discussion above). The Webster dialect differs
in this regard from the Bahamian white dialect of Cherokee Sound where only the
use of v in place of w was recorded by Childs, Reaser, and Wolfram (2003).
Th-stopping is a feature of the Webster dialect and other dialects of Anguilla,
e.g. [diz] these, [doz] those, yet there are instances of interdental fricatives, e.g.
[gyanfa r] grandfather. There is a degree of variation in the replacement of
the fricatives with the corresponding stops, especially in careful speech. Williams
(2003) states, “[c]ontext and the effect of vernacular language loyalty are the
factors that affect whether pronunciation / / and / / will occur”. Similar factors
are discussed in Aceto (fc.) for the St. Eustatius speech community and in Cutler
(2003) for Turks Island English.
The Webster dialect also exhibits a slight degree of palatalization of velar stops be-
fore non-back vowels, e.g. [gyIlz] girls, [kyarId] carriage but [gol] gold, [kolor]
color. Other features include the intervocalic voicing of /f/, e.g. [nevuz] nephews,
and the lenition of word-final /t/ and /d/ when preceded by another consonant, e.g.
[gol] gold, [ain] ain’t.
3.5. Montserrat
Part of the local folk history in Montserrat is that Irish or Irish English has in-
fluenced the variety of English that emerged there. However, in Volume 3 Wells
(1982: 586, 1983) reports there is no linguistic justification for this claim, even
though Irish Catholics from nearby St. Kitts did settle the island in the early 17th
century and several place names and surnames reflect Irish influence.
Montserrat English reveals short vowels in open syllables in segments that were
long historically, e.g. tea [ti], play [ple], straw [stra]. However, in closed syllables
there appears to be a contrast between long and short vowels, e.g. beat [bi˘t] vs. bit
[bit], pool [pu˘l] vs. pull [pul]. In Volume 3, Wells (1982: 586) insists that this is
not a difference in vowel quality but in length as presented above (however, two
allophones of /o/ do reveal differences in quality, e.g. show [So] and cut [kç_t]).
This issue of short vowels in open syllables in Montserrat English means that the
short vowels of words like tea are linked phonemically with the /i/ of bit rather
than the [i˘] of beat. Likewise, the [u] of two is linked with /u/ of put rather than
496 Michael Aceto
the /u˘/ of boot. Furthermore, in closed syllables, Montserratians often reveal diph-
thongs for mid vowels reminiscent of those heard in Western Caribbean varieties
like Jamaican, e.g. boat [buot] and bait [biet], but these diphthongs are not found
in open syllables, e.g. bay [be], show [So].
Montserrat English is non-rhotic. Consequently, long vowels are found in open
syllables (as well as closed ones) where historical /r/ was once present, e.g. star
[sta˘], war [wa˘], start [sta˘t], farm [fa˘m]. Other words with long vowels that
revealed /r/ historically resulted in the emergence of new diphthongs, e.g. near
[nia] and four [fuo].
3.6. Barbuda
The following information is from Aceto (2002b). Barbuda lies 28 miles north of
Antigua. As is common in the Leeward Islands, droughts are often prolonged. Am-
erindian sites on the island indicate that Arawaks lived on Barbuda until the 13th
century. Carib Amerindians visited the island occasionally from (what would even-
tually be called) Dominica from the 13th century to the early European period. The
first group of European colonists arrived from nearby St. Kitts in 1628; due to Carib
attacks and poor soil, this first effort was soon abandoned. In 1632, colonists, again
from St. Kitts, made another attempt to settle Barbuda; however, they were driven
away again by Caribs. In 1681, Caribs from St. Vincent and Dominica raided a
settlement of 20 Europeans on Barbuda in several hundred canoes, killing eight of
the settlers.
In 1668, James Winthorpe leased Barbuda and began the first period of private
“ownership” of Barbuda by English speakers from Europe. Winthorpe eventually
relinquished his lease, and in 1685 Christopher and John Codrington leased the
island for the next 200 years. Thus, Barbuda became the private property of the
Codrington family, who first settled in Barbados but were often absentee owners
living in Somerset, England. The Codringtons’ goal was to use Barbuda as a means
to create supplies for their plantations on nearby Antigua. Barbuda was not a “true
colony” since it was the private property of the Codringtons. The presence of Eu-
ropeans on the island during the colonial period varied from a single Anglophone
to perhaps as high as three or four. Slaves lived virtually on their own except for a
solitary (and often absent) Codrington manager and one or two overseers.
The population of Barbuda has never been large. Even today it is only about
1,500 persons. In 1715, there were 118 persons on the island; in 1804, 314; and in
1832, 492.
Barbudan Creole English (BCE) exhibits many of the same sound segments
typical in the Anglophone Eastern Caribbean. However, there are contraction pro-
cesses and reciprocal phonetic effects similar to vowel harmony rules that, to my
knowledge, have not been described in the creolistics literature. That is, discrete
grammatical markers may appear to be reduced or even disappear on the surface of

some utterances. Some examples of the vowel harmony-like effects (in bold) are:
[ya a du dat tumaro] “Are you going to do that tomorrow?” and [mo o du dat
tumaro] “I’m going to do that tomorrow.” In isolation, the future marker is [go]
and the first person singular pronoun is [mi]. Examples of contraction processes
at play are (note that the forms within parentheses are a transitional stage assumed
by this researcher; contracted forms are in bold): [Si a go siN (Si a ga siN ) ~ Si
aa siN] ”She is going to sing” (the [a] of the future tense marker a go influences
the quality of the vowel in go) and [(mi go biit yu) ~ mo go biit yu ~ moo biit
yu] “I’m going to hit you” (the [o] in go influences the quality of the earlier vowel
in the pronoun mi).
Some of the more robust contraction processes involve the co-occurrence of
bilabial nasals when past tense utterances are spoken in the first person singular.
That is, when the first person pronoun mi is immediately followed by [mIn], the
past tense marker, the pronoun mi is often submerged or contracted within the past
tense form: [mn de krai haad ~ mi mIn de krai haad] “I cried hard” and [mn
da taak ~ mi mIn da (~ de + a) taak] “I was talking.”
3.7. Windward Islands (Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines,
Carriacou, and Grenada)
Though English restructured varieties are common on these islands today, they
all share a joint Francophone/Anglophone history. That is, before the 19th century
these islands were all once controlled by the French, and consequently, in most lo-
cations, there are speakers of earlier French-derived creoles that predate the emer-
gence of later English-derived restructured varieties. Dominica has two English-
derived creoles that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries: one is an intermediate
variety that emerged locally and the other is a deep creole called Kokoy that is
related to immigrants from Antigua and Montserrat who arrived to work on fruit
plantations in the post-emancipation setting. Carriacou Creole English emerged
largely in the late 18th and 19th centuries, according to Kephart (2003). St. Lucian
Vernacular English, which Garrett (2003) insists is not a creole, emerged in the
late 19th and 20th centuries in largely educational institutional contexts. There is
not much linguistic information on English-derived varieties spoken on St. Vin-
cent and the Grenadines as well as on Grenada, but these areas seem to be largely
Anglophone today. Francophone varieties that were once spoken widely on these
islands appear to be disappearing.
In regards to phonology, none of the Anglophone Windward islands have been
linguistically documented to any significant degree. In Dominica, Kokoy speak-
ers exhibit voiceless labio-dental fricatives, i.e. [f], in onsets that correspond to
voiceless interdental fricatives in metropolitan varieties, i.e. /T/ and /t/ in other
Caribbean Englishes. For example, the words three and thing are often realized
498 Michael Aceto
as /fri˘/ and /fIN/ respectively in this Creole language variety. St. Vincent and
Grenada lack a contrast between by and boy. Both locations lack /´/, /√/, and the
post-vocalic /r/ found in Bajan.
Kephart (2003) offers a brief presentation of Carriacou phonology. Carriacou
Creole English has a basic seven-vowel system, which marks it as quite different
from other creoles, especially Jamaican. To find a similar system in the Carib-
bean we have to go to Dominica, which also contains an earlier variety of Creole
French similar to that found in Carriacou. Kephart believes that, among the At-
lantic English-derived Creoles, the Suriname creoles probably come closest to
the Carriacou Creole English system. In both systems, the only tense/lax contrast
is in the mid vowels. Another phonological feature that distinguishes this variety
of Creole English is the presence of nasal vowels. These vowels occur in words
that Carriacou Creole English shares with Carriacou Creole French, e.g. [sukuya‚]
vampire, [tetshe‚] boa constrictor, [kç‚koSa‚] biased, [gwa‚gozhei] brown pelican.
Kephart insists that speakers pronounce these words with the nasalization intact;
that is, these nasalized vowels do not correspond to a vowel plus nasal consonant,
even in word-final position.
4. Conclusion
There are many polemical topics of great interest to creole studies (e.g. the nature
of the creole continuum, the possible effects of decreolization, possible loci of
creole genesis and language diffusion, the structural features and historical pro-
cesses shared by the group of languages called creoles by linguists, et al.) and most
conclusions based upon English-derived data are largely drawn from Jamaican,
Guyanese, and, most often, one of the several English-derived creoles of Suri-
name. This reductionist attitude is insufficient since the sociolinguistic profiles of
many of the locations in the Anglophone Eastern Caribbean have never even been
documented. Once we have documented the languages spoken in these neglected
locales, only then, will researchers be able to accurately and precisely discuss
– with an extensive set of attested data in hand – how these varieties fit into a larger
linguistic and sociohistorical view of English-derived language genesis in the Ca-
ribbean and the Atlantic region in general.
Selected references
ROM.
Aceto, Michael
2002a Going back to the beginning: Describing the (nearly) undocumented
Anglophone creoles of the Caribbean. In: Glenn G. Gilbert (ed.), Pidgin and
Creole Linguistics in the 21st Century, 93–118. New York: Peter Lang.
2002b Barbudan Creole English: Its history and some grammatical features. English
World-Wide 23: 223–250.
fc. St. Eustatius Creole English: Why did an English-derived creole emerge in a
Dutch colony?
Attema, Y.
1976 St. Eustatius: A Short History of the Island and Its Monuments. De Walburg
Pers Zutphen Holland.
Baker Philip and Adrienne Bruyn (eds),
1998 St. Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The Texts of Samual Augustus Mathews
in Perspective. (Westminster Creolistics Series 4). London: University of
Westminster Press.
Carter, Hazel
1987 Suprasegmentals in Guyanese: Some African comparisons. In: Gilbert (ed.),
213–263.
1980 The place of Gullah. American Speech 55: 3–15.
Childs, Becky, Jeffrey Reaser and Walt Wolfram
2003 Defining ethnic varieties in the Bahamas: Phonological accommodation in
black and white enclave communities. In: Aceto and Williams (eds.), 1–28.
Cutler, Cecilia
2003 English in the Turks and Caicos Islands: A look at Grand Turk. In: Aceto and
Williams (eds.), 51–80.
Garrett, Paul B.
2003 An “English Creole” that isn’t: on the sociohistorical origins and linguistic
classification of the vernacular English in St. Lucia. In: Aceto and Wiliams
(eds.), 155–210.
Hancock, Ian
1980 Gullah and Barbadian: Origins and relationships. American Speech 55: 17–35.
Hartog, J.
1976 History of St. Eustatius. Aruba: De Wit.
Kephart, Ronald
2003 Creole English on Carriacou: A sketch and some implications. In: Aceto and
Keur, John Y and Dorothy L. Keur
1960 Windward Children: A Study in the Human Ecology of the Three Dutch
Windward Islands in the Caribbean. Assen: Royal Vangorcum.
Le Page, Robert B
1960 An historical introduction to Jamaican Creole. In: Robert B. Le Page and
David DeCamp (eds.), Jamaican Creole, 3–124. New York: Macmillan.
Rickford, John R.
1992 The creole residue in Barbados. In: Joan H. Hall, Nick Doane and Dick Ringler
(eds), Old English and New: Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honor of
Frederic G. Cassidy, 183-201 New York: Garland Publishing.
500 Michael Aceto
Sabino, Diamond and Cockcroft

2003 Language variety in the Virgin Islands: Plural markings. In: Aceto and
Sutcliffe, David
1982 British Black English. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
1987 Phonological relationships in Caribbean and West African English. English
World-Wide 8: 61–68.
2003 Eastern Caribbean suprasegmental systems: A comparative view, with par-
ticular reference to Barbadian, Trinidadian, and Guyanese. In: Aceto and
Van Herk, Gerard
2003 Barbadian lects: Beyond meso. In: Aceto and Williams (eds.), 241–264.
Williams, Jeffrey P.
1983 Dutch and English creole on the windward Netherlands Antilles: An historical
perspective. Amsterdam Creole Studies 5: 93–111.
1985 Preliminaries to the study of the dialects of white West Indian English. Nieuwe
West-Indische Gids 59: 27–44.
1987 Anglo-Caribbean English: A study of its sociolinguistic history and the de-
velopment of its aspectual markers. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The
University of Texas at Austin.
1988 The development of aspectual markers in Anglo-Caribbean English. Journal
of Pidgin and Creole Languages 3: 245–263.
2003 The establishment and perpetuation of anglophone white enclave communi-
ties in the Eastern Caribbean: The case of Island Harbor, Anguilla. In: Aceto
and Williams (eds.), 95–119.
Bajan: phonology
Renée Blake
1. Introduction
Barbados is a contemporary nation-state that won its independence from Britain

in 1966. This island, the most easterly of the Caribbean countries, is 21 miles long
by 14 miles wide and has an approximate population of a quarter million people.
It is a densely populated country, with more than 1 500 persons per square mile
in urban areas; and much less in the rural areas where the land is appropriated for
tillage. Geopolitically, the island is divided into eleven parishes, with the capital,
Bridgetown, located in the southwest parish of St. Michael. The remaining parish-
es are divided into subsidiary centers in terms of region (e.g., southern, etc.). The
eastern side of the island has been relegated to national historical landmark status,
thereby prohibiting industrial development and limiting tourism.
While the official language of this country is English, the population also speaks
an English-related Creole, Bajan, arising out of a particular language contact situ-
ation, slavery and bond servitude, under British colonization. As opposed to “Bar-
badian English” or “Barbadian Creole (English)”, the name Bajan (also Barbadian
or Badian) for the vernacular language of Barbados is derived from the island
name and does not carry the potential charge that suggests a position on the ori-
gins of the language, as discussed below. Although Barbados was an entrepôt for
slaves (serving as the springboard for settlements elsewhere in the Caribbean),
Bajan is unique amongst languages in the Anglophone Caribbean territories, i.e.,
from Jamaica to Guyana, because its creole affiliations have been questioned (as
is the case for African American English). This is largely due to the nature of the
island’s historical links to Britain and its demographics during the early colonial
period. Almost twice as long a term as its sister territories in the Atlantic, Bar-
bados experienced an uninterrupted colonization period of more than three hun-
dred years by English-speaking rulers, lending to the cognomen “Little England”.
Moreover, in the first quarter century of colonization, whites outnumbered blacks,
further lending to its image.
Archeological records indicate that prior to the appearance of the English in Bar-
bados, the island had been inhabited by Arawak or Taino Indians, since sometime
502 Renée Blake
between 200 and 400 BC, sailing from what is now known as Venezuela. How-
ever, it is believed that these tribes no longer inhabited the island by the time of
the first British arrival in 1625 under the authority of King James I. Under British
rule, two racial groups, whites and blacks, populated the island, with their pro-
portion changing over time according to the needs of the plantation system. For
instance, during the early colonial period (1627–1660), the island consisted of
small farms on which tobacco, cotton, ginger and indigo were cultivated, neces-
sitating servants but few slaves. As a result, African slaves were outnumbered by
whites, comprised of planters and a large prisoner of war and bondservant popula-
tion from Ireland and later Scotland who performed servile and agricultural work
under several years of indentureship.
Within a quarter of a century of colonization, planters found it more lucrative
to cultivate sugar, which required large amounts of manpower. Thus, accompany-
ing the “sugar revolution” was a dramatic increase in the importation of African
slaves originating from present-day Ghana, Togo, Dahomey, and western Nigeria.
This increase of Africans in Barbados resulted in a reverse shift in the population,
such that between 1667 and 1670 blacks outnumbered whites two to one. This pro-
cess continued until the 1800s at which point blacks would henceforth represent
the overwhelming majority of the island’s population. Emancipation of slaves was
finalized in 1838. Due to a large African slave population, Barbados, unlike many
of the other Caribbean islands, did not lack manpower, hence the low percentage
of other ethnic minorities (e.g., East Indians, Chinese) comprising the island’s
population. In terms of the nation’s economy, since the mid-17th century the vast
majority of Barbados’ landmass has been under sugar cane. However, in recent
times, the massive growth in tourism as its major income-generating activity has
caused a shift in the country’s economy. As a result, recently, there has been a
shortage of agricultural manpower leading to recruitment of temporary labor from
neighboring islands.
3. Research background
Researchers have almost exclusively examined the morphosyntactic structure

of Bajan in their quest to discover the linguistic origins of the language. Since
the 1980s, linguistic research on the Bajan language has focused on the extent to
which the language was influenced by the provincial dialects of England and the
West African languages spoken by the slave populations. Debates ensued regard-
ing the genesis of Bajan in terms of whether it should be considered a dialect of
English or a Creole (similar to other Caribbean Creoles) with linguistic links to
West Africa (cf. Hancock 1980; Cassidy 1986; Fields 1995; Rickford and Handler
1994). In the end, historical and synchronic studies of its grammatical structure
suggest that Bajan has shown a wide range of linguistic variation throughout its
Bajan: phonology 503
history, with great co-occurrence of features attributable to superstrate (British

dialects spoken in Ireland and southwest England), as well as substrate (African)
influences (cf. Winford 2000).
The work of Fields (1995) reveals linguistic residues (e.g., invariant word order
for questions, absence of number distinction in nouns, invariant pronoun usage) of
a pidgin stage for Bajan that appears at least since the 18th century. Fields argues
that the social history and demographics of Barbados in the 18th century provided
an environment conducive to the formation of a creole from an earlier formed
pidgin. Firstly, there was a dominant white planter group and a subordinate slave
group with little social interaction between the two. Secondly, there was a period
in which blacks vastly outnumbered whites. And thirdly, there was at some point
a steady influx of new African slaves onto the island. Due to its extensive contact
with English, Bajan has decreolized. One may argue that the language has decre-
olized to the extent that the range between its most creolized forms and Standard
English is the smallest for the Anglophone Creoles spoken in the Caribbean.
4. Bajan
4.1. Survey
Bajan, then, a member of the Caribbean English Creole (CEC) family, shares a
number of distinctive linguistic features at the level of phonology, grammar and
lexicon with its sister territories. Nonetheless, it has several marked phonological
features that lend to the distinctive Bajan ‘accent’. Very often speakers of other
CECs stereotype Bajan speakers by their r-fullness, their seemingly ubiquitous
use of glottal stops and the quality of the first vowel of PRICE/PRIZE. Unlike the
other CECs, Bajan is fully rhotic, with [r] rarely deleted among all levels of so-
ciety. Moreover, within the Caribbean, glottalizing of the voiceless obstruents
[p, t, k] in syllable-final position is specific to Bajan; an example is departments
pronounced [dBpamns]. Also distinctive to Bajan is the phonetic quality of
the first element of the diphthong that is pronounced as [ai] in the other CECs.
Typically, the nucleus of PRICE/PRIZE backs and heightens to []. The last two
features, specifically, often cause non-native Bajan speakers to conjecture that
Barbadians are speaking some form of dialect reminiscent of the west of England,
or an Irish English brogue.
4.2. Phonological system

Although Bajan is most distinguished by its phonology, there has been little research
on its phonological system, most likely due to the nature of the inquiries surround-
ing the linguistic origins of the language. Most notably, Wells (1982) provides an
504 Renée Blake
essential phonological inventory of Bajan, and Haynes (1973) correlates the degree
of use of several stigmatized phonological features with individuals’ ethnic iden-
tity, education and geographical location on the island. Researchers and locals note
that language varies by parish, but this is largely impressionistic. Generally, there
is agreement that the speech of the most northern parish, St. Lucy, and most eastern
parish, St. Philip, (both of which may also be considered rural) are most distinct
from the rest of the island. In her research, Haynes’ found a distinct intonation
in the northeastern parish of St. Andrew, also referred to as the Scotland District,
physically demarcated from the rest of the flat island by its “hilly” character. That
dialect differences exist can be attributed to degree of proximity to urban centers,
and the ramifications stemming from this (e.g., education, industry).
The phonological inventory of Bajan has much in common with the other CECs.
Together it stands in contrast to other varieties of English, particularly in terms
of vowel quality (primarily with respect to its diphthongs) and prosody. Unlike
RP and General American, the mid [e] and low [o] vowels in FACE and GOAT
generally have not undergone Long Mid Diphthonging in the Caribbean English
Creoles. Whereas in RP and General American, the long vowels have diphthongal
allophones, in the CECs, the long vowels tend to remain pure. The CECs also
tend to have unreduced vowels in unstressed syllables instead of the reduced []
typifying other varieties of English. This contributes to the perception of these
creoles as syllable-timed, as opposed to stress-timed languages, and conveys a
rhythmic quality. Finally, the intonation of the CECs tends to utilize a broad pitch
range. For example, more than other varieties of English, these languages employ
rising intonation at the end of clauses to indicate a question. Table 1 summarizes
the distinctive vowel realization of Bajan.
Table 1. Bajan vowel realizations
KIT FLEECE i
DRESS FACE e ~ ei / ~ i
TRAP a PALM a
LOT ~ THOUGHT ~
STRUT GOAT o > o
FOOT
GOOSE u
BATH a PRICE
CLOTH CHOICE / o
NURSE ( MOUTH u ~
Table 1. (continued) Bajan vowel realizations
NEAR er CURE or
SQUARE er happY i

START ar lettER (
NORTH r / r horsES
FORCE or commA
4.3. Vowels
Unlike what is found for some popular CEC speech, TRAP and LOT are not merged
in Bajan. However, the vowels of LOT, CLOTH and THOUGHT are generally merged
like in many rhotic accents. While CLOTH always appears to be rounded, this fea-
ture is variably manifested as unrounded for LOT and THOUGHT. Realization of
FACE may vary by region and education/class. In the speech of urban and more
educated speakers of Bajan, FACE is generally realized as monophthongal [e], al-
though it appears that, more recently, Long Mid Diphthonging has become produc-
tive in the language, adding a closing offglide to the long mid vowel [ei]. FACE is
manifested in rural and uneducated speech with the more open and lower monoph-
thongal variant []. While Wells (1982: 584) notes that the alternating variant may
be the centering diphthong [e], I suggest that it is rather the opening diphthong
[], common in popular CEC speech. GOAT, on the other hand, while traditionally
monophthongal in Bajan, appears to be moving towards the centring diphthong
[o]. Like STRUT, the first element of the PRICE diphthong is generally half-open
and unrounded [] (although Wells provides a broader range between [] and []).
Highly educated speakers may have the more fronted open [a] as the first element
of this diphthong. CHOICE is variably manifested as [] and [oi], the latter viewed
as markedly Bajan for this lexical class by neighboring CEC speakers. The first
element of the MOUTH diphthong appears to be slightly more rounded than [],
although not to the extent of [ç]. START, BATH and PALM are in the same phonetic
class, realized as the relatively front unrounded [a]. In other rhotic environments,
NEAR and SQUARE are merged, and NORTH and FORCE are phonemically distinct,
although FORCE and CURE are manifested as the pure variant of GOAT.
5. Current issues
Today in Barbados, one still finds remnants of class and race stratification delin-
eating the vestigial struggles of the colonial era. While black Barbadians have
506 Renée Blake
made social and economic strides, largely controlling the local political sector in
the upper and middle classes, whites have near monopoly in the larger commercial
sectors. Along these lines, class differences within the racial strata of the island
are also evident. Within the scholarly literature on Barbados and other Anglo-
phone islands, poor whites, although relatively small in number, are historically
and socially placed in the national sphere, albeit as a mythical or oftentimes auton-
omous entity. Despite the social existing partitions, researchers note that Barba-
dian identity is tied to a strong sense of and commitment to a national identity and
shared culture. Such portrayals are evident in the unofficial national slogan, “All
O’ We Is One” [All of us are one]. However, the Bajan language, despite being
viewed as the local national language, has been ideologically linked to the island’s
black population. Blake’s (1997) research on a racially-mixed poor community in
Barbados shows its black and white populations to speak the local vernacular in
a typically creole manner, particularly regarding morphosyntactic features, with
whites at times displaying even more creole-like behavior. The linguistic similari-
ties of these two groups may be crucially linked to their socioeconomic status on
the island, which can be located in the political economy.
Clearly, diachronic and synchronic studies of all aspects of the Bajan language
are wanting. Rich areas for linguistic inquiry include internal and regional varia-
tion, contact-induced change, race relations, as well as changes due to the current
social and political economy of the island. While the Bajan language has been ad-
equately examined in terms of genesis arguments, it remains an area for research
in terms of broader issues arising in creole studies and sociolinguistics.
Selected references
ROM.
Blake, Renée
1997 All O’ We Is One?: Race, class and language in a Barbados community. Ph.D.
dissertation, Stanford University.
1986 Barbadian Creole — possibility and probability. American Speech 61: 195–
205.
Fields, Linda
1995 Early Bajan: Creole or non-creole? In: Jacques Arends (ed.), The Early Stages
of Creolization, 89–112. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Hancock, Ian
1980 Gullah and Barbadian — origins and relationships. American Speech 55: 17–
35.
Haynes, Lilith
1973 Language in Barbados and Guyana: attitudes, behaviors and comparisons.
Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.
Rickford, John and Jerome Handler
1994 Textual evidence on the nature of early Barbadian speech, 1676–1835. Journal
of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9: 221–255.
Roberts, Peter
1988 West Indians and Their Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wells, John C.
1982 Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winford, Donald
2000 ‘Intermediate’ creoles and degrees of change in creole formation: The case of
Bajan. In: Neumann-Holzschuh and Schneider (eds.), 215–246.
The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago: phonology
Valerie Youssef and Winford James
1.1. Introduction
The histories of the islands of Trinidad and Tobago (see Map 1) are divergent, and
although the two have comprised a single political entity since 1889, they must be
considered as separate entities for the purposes of describing both their histories
and the distinct linguistic elements in their language varieties. This need has been
under-stated in the literature on Trinidad and Tobago, since the two islands have
hardly been treated differentially in any detail in survey texts (e.g., Holm 1989/90;
Winford 1993).
Solomon (1993: 2) mentions a paucity of information available on Tobago, but
there has been work (e.g. James 1974; Minderhout 1979; Southers 1977) which
has simply drawn less attention to itself because of the political ascendancy of the
larger island. It is hoped that a new publication on Tobagonian will redress the
balance (James and Youssef 2002), since the basilectal variety peculiar to Tobago
alone merits attention in its own right, and the interplay among varieties in the
island is also unique. For phonology, this is undisputably the most comprehensive
source. The best sources on the phonology of Trinidad are Winford (1972, 1978),
Winer (1993) and Solomon (1993).
Broadly it can be said that the history of conquest, exploitation and migration
was different for Trinidad and Tobago, notwithstanding their common Amerindian
indigenous base and initial Spanish incursions. Both were claimed by Columbus
in 1498, but Tobago was sighted and not invaded at this time. However, Trinidad
remained officially Spanish until 1797, with a strong French presence up to the
late-eighteenth century, while Tobago was continuously squabbled over until 1763,
but with no lasting linguistic impact either from Spanish or French. The difference
was one of skirmishes in Tobago versus long-lasting settlement in Trinidad, with
the latter having more far-reaching linguistic results on the lexicon.
With regard to the history and development of Caribbean creole languages gen-
erally, there is likely to have been a spectrum of language varieties from the outset.
A full language continuum ranging from the basilectal creole to the standard is likely
to have developed in early slave societies according to the extent of exposure of
different sub-groups in the society to the Standard. House slaves are likely to have de-
The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago: phonology 509
Map 1. Trinidad and Tobago

510 Valerie Youssef and Winford James
veloped near-acrolectal varieties, whereas the field slaves would have developed and
continued to use the basilect. Field slaves were cut off from real social contact with
the ruling class or from any motivation to move towards its language. Children born
into the society would have heard their parents’ native African languages as well as
interlanguage varieties adopted by the adults as they made more or less accommoda-
tion to the superstrate languages. In some measure, it would have been these children
who would have augmented their parents’ language creation, becoming the ultimate
architects of the new creole language.
1.2. Trinidad
If we examine Trinidad first, as the larger territory in size and population, we
find that the Spanish had little sustained interest in it since it did not yield precious
metals. As a result, the Spanish residents of the island never numbered more than
a few hundred, though these did succeed in severely decimating the native Amer-
indian population in the course of time. By 1765, the Amerindians numbered only
2503 of an original 30-40000 (Brereton 1981). It is notable, however, that a great
many towns in Trinidad have retained Amerindian names down to the present e.g.
Arima, Tunapuna, Arouca, Tacarigua. This is unlike Tobago, whose main retention
is the name of the island itself, originally Tavaco (for full coverage of the ranges
of lexical items in Trinidad see Baksh-Soodeen 1995).
In the late eighteenth century, the Spanish encouraged French migration to
Trinidad. This allowed those fleeing the political upheaval which climaxed in the
French Revolution to set up sugar plantations, using slaves brought either directly
from West Africa or from French Caribbean territories such as Martinique, Guade-
loupe, Haiti, Grenada, St. Lucia and Cayenne (now French Guyana). Chacon, the
then governor, granted a second Cedula giving free land to settlers bringing slaves
with the result that Trinidad’s population was transformed between 1783 and 1803.
At that time there were reported to be 20,464 ‘French’-speaking slaves, 5275 free
coloureds of whom the majority spoke French, and 2261 whites of whom the ma-
jority again were French speaking (Wood 1968: 33).
As a direct result of these incursions the first Creole language spoken in Trini-
dad was a French-lexicon creole (Thomas 1869). That language, which we see
recorded by Wood as French, was undoubtedly a French-lexicon creole, for the
slaves at least, and most probably for the plantation owners at that time. This
language survived intact throughout the nineteenth century, notwithstanding the
establishment of a strong British rule during that period. The first attestations of
an English creole are found recorded for 1838 in the diaries of a Mrs. Carmichael
(quoted in Winer 1984) and by others. They reported on some of the slaves know-
ing two creole varieties, French- and English-lexicon, and feigning ignorance of
the latter for reasons of excluding the British master class from their conversa-
tion.
Trinidad is sometimes held not to have had a basilectal English-Creole variety,

but the Spectator texts found by Winer and Gilbert (1987) show that she did have
a basilect in the 1860’s. It appears that the island experienced a gradual shift in
language use from a French-lexicon basilect to an English-lexicon mesolect under
the steadily encroaching influence of English varieties. Villages such as Paramin,
Blanchisseuse and La Fillette on the north coast, and Carenage in the west, retain
elderly native French Creole speakers down to the present time.
Solomon (1993) makes a strong case for a language crossover element in the
evolution of the creole languages, noting the lack of syllable final -r in words
such as car and cart as being a direct effect of this. He argues that this feature
distinguishes Caribbean islands with a French background e.g. Grenada, St. Lucia,
Dominica, from those with an English background like Barbados, Guyana and
Jamaica with a history of colonization by r-pronouncing British varieties including
the south-west of England and Ireland. However, basilectal Tobagonian exhibits
lack of syllable-final -r also as well as some Jamaican varieties with no French
influence.
Trinidad had to look outside for the support of its agrarian economy. From
1845 until 1917 there was continuous Indian migration to Trinidad as the British
government encouraged labourers to come mainly from Uttar Pradesh in Northern
India to populate the plantations that the African population had abandoned fol-
lowing emancipation. They brought a number of languages including Bhojpuri
and Tamil, but the one which won out and became a lingua franca was Bhojpuri, a
language related to, but not a dialect of, Hindi. Moving to the rural areas of central
Trinidad, the Indian population retained Bhojpuri for some time with French Cre-
ole as their first Trinidadian language. Historically it has been difficult to disam-
biguate some of the lexicon between these two languages. Winford (1972; 1978)
found the speech of rural Trinidadians to be the most conservative phonologically,
and this is discussed further in Section 2.2. below. Solomon (1993: 166) has also
noted the fact that syllable-final [-r] is pronounced in words and names of Indic
and Arabic origin as distinct from those of European origin.
There was a Spanish presence in the nineteenth century through a group of 4000
Spanish-Amerindian persons who came mainly from Venezuela and settled in the
foothills of the Northern Range to cultivate cocoa. These were the ancestors of the
few remaining Spanish speakers in Trinidad today.
Also contributing to the multiracial and cultural environment of the time were
1298 Madeirans who arrived in 1846 and approximately 2400 Chinese who ar-
rived between 1853 and 1886. Between 1841 and 1861 a large number of African
ex-slaves, including 6500 from St Helena and Sierra Leone, came into Trinidad;
these Alleyne (1980: 211) considers to have had a direct influence on the emerg-
ing English-lexicon creole of Trinidad. There were others who spoke Yoruba, Ibo,
Congo and Manding. In addition, there were many who migrated from other parts
of the Caribbean, including 14,000 Barbadians. These migrant Caribbean people
introduced a number of creole varieties to Trinidad and were particularly impor-

tant in the transition of Trinidad from French-lexicon to English-lexicon Creole
earlier alluded to.
1.3. Tobago
Tobago was nominally Spanish from 1498 until the first British settlers arrived in
1625 but, as with Trinidad, the Spanish had little real interest in the territory. The
Dutch landed settlers in 1628, but a Spanish and Amerindian force from Trinidad
invaded and retook Tobago. The British landed again in 1639 and again the Amer-
indians fought them off. By 1674, when Tobago was ceded to the Dutch, the island
had changed hands more than a dozen times. European policy at that time was
that the island should be sufficiently desecrated as to hinder all development, so
intense was the competition over it. The island was granted a neutral status from
1684-1763, which was virtually ignored. None of the European forces, save the
British, stayed sufficiently long to impact the language situation.
With regard to the ethnic origins of the Africans of Tobago and their languages,
the records are few. Elder (1988:16, 19) states that Congoes lived in the Toba-
gonian villages of Culloden Moor, Belle Garden, Pembroke and Charlotteville,
as reported in ‘oral accounts of living informants’. Ibos are also mentioned in
government records, and a Moravian minister apparently reported to the pioneer-
ing creolist Hugo Schuchardt in the 1880s that most Negroes at that time were
Cramanti, with a few Ibos (Winer and Gilbert 1987).
Tobago was ceded to the British by the French in 1763, and from that year, the
British proceeded to purposefully build a colony. Planters, mostly of Scottish ori-
gin, sailed from Barbados, Grenada, and other already colonised islands, as well
as from Britain itself, with their slaves, to carve up the island into parishes and
plantations as part of Britain’s great sugar enterprise. The colony started out as part
of the Grenada government. Except for a very brief 12-year discontinuous French
interregnum (1781-1793; 1802-3), the British formally governed Tobago until 1962,
when the country of Trinidad and Tobago became independent. Tobago became a
formal part of Trinidad and Tobago, as a ward of the colony, from 1899.
Although slavery was abolished in 1838, the plantation continued to be the focal
point of Tobagonian life to a much greater extent than in neighbouring Trinidad.
The Tobagonian planters passed a number of laws after Emancipation in 1838 to
keep the ex-slaves tied to the land by a metayage (share-cropping) system; this
served to preserve the sugar estates initially but brought competition between the
sugar work of the estates and the metayers’ trend towards developing other crops
for internal trade. Sugar and cotton production gradually gave way to the produc-
tion of cocoa, coconuts, hides, animals, vegetables and fruits. Skilled tradespeople,
artisans, shopkeepers and seamstresses came to proliferate, and moved away from
plantation work, with the result that the sugar economy collapsed in the 1880’s
despite the planters importing labour from other islands for their estates. Nonethe-
less, the island of Tobago remained village-based in a way that Trinidad did not.
The continuation of such a social and economic state meant that the English
lexicon Creole, which had undergone no noticeable effect from the brief French
incursions to the island, remained intact.
1.4. Twentieth century developments

One further fact that distinguished Trinidad from Tobago linguistically, apart from
ethno-historical difference, was the faster spread of education through urbaniza-
tion in the former. Both islands witnessed the spread of primary education through
Canadian missionaries from 1868 since they focussed on rural areas in both ter-
ritories initially. In the long term, rural areas in Tobago remained more resistant
to education because of the need for children to be employed in estate work, such
that there was an earlier trend towards Standard English in the urban rather than
rural environments. More schools were built in Trinidad than in Tobago as part of
a government policy which underdeveloped the smaller island in relation to the
larger. It is true, however, that, from the 1960s, parents in Tobago insisted that
their children go to school at all cost. Prime Minister Eric Williams, who came to
power in 1956, decreed that “the future of the children” lay “in their schoolbags”
and this focus determined a shift from the land by the new generation. Unfortu-
nately there was not the level of infrastructural and economic development to
provide employment for these newly educated youngsters in Tobago, however.
Today the two islands share a mesolectal English-lexicon creole, which is alike
in most particulars. Since the Creole was officially recognized as a language vari-
ety in its own right from 1975, it has been more used by teachers in schools, and
contexts for monolingual Standard production are declining. The mesolect has
become increasingly shared because of continuous movement between Tobago
and Trinidad, the upsurge in education across the board, and especially because of
Tobagonian migration to Trinidad as the territory offering greater opportunities for
training, employment and other benefits.
A common factor in both territories are both North American and Jamaican
influences, which manifest particularly among radio announcers and teenagers.
Solomon (1993: 167-8) comments that, like most imitations, the changes towards
American English in phonology are not consistently maintained, and this is also
true for Jamaican.
Increased status for the creole and an identification with it as the language of
the territory have made for greater use of it in public contexts, such as parliament;
motivation towards a pure Standard is disappearing since most people balance
out their use of standard and creole in relation to the demands of each situation. If
StE is the language of power, TrnC is the language of solidarity, and appropriate
language use necessarily entails balancing the two varieties.
In a study focussed on the village of Bethel in Tobago, Youssef (2001) found

that the oldest and least educated informants still spoke largely the basilect, with
shifts to the lower mesolect in public contexts. Retired professionals spoke both
the acrolect and the basilect and had negative views of the mesolect as a mixed
unstable variety. Young people, in contrast, spoke more mesolect, although they
commanded the basilect; some disdained the acrolect, and all showed a measure
of identification with the mesolect and specific features within it particularly char-
acterized that group. These kinds of complex interaction demand further investiga-
tion.
2. Phonological description
2.1. Introduction
Firstly, we must acknowledge considerable phonological variability in both is-
lands and a situation of ongoing flux in the language varieties caused by internal
and external influences upon them alluded to in the previous section. It is unclear
whether the language varieties are achieving a measure of overall stability in rela-
tion to one another or whether there is a steady process of decreolization brought
about by the overarching effect of English in education.
In public contexts too, the upper mesolect is merging to some extent with the
Standard in general usage with the result that many educators are not entirely clear
on their separate and distinct features. So where we might still expect to hear Stan-
dard English, as for example in church or school, a pseudo-acrolect is emerging
within which both grammatical and phonological features often show variability
(cf. Youssef, James and Ferreira 2001). Some speakers, constrained towards Stan-
dard, but limited in its grammar, imitate a pseudo Standard ‘accent’ with which
they are not very familiar, and a great deal of variation results.
It is worth noting again that we may link Trinidad and Tobago more readily at
the acrolectal and mesolectal levels but, beyond this, need to consider the Toba-
gonian basilect separately.
2.2. Trinidad and Tobago: Acrolect and mesolect
2.2.1. Vowels
There has been little careful sociolinguistic study of the distribution of vowel
sounds according to features such as age, class, ethnicity and geography, but
a notable exception is Winford (1972, 1978). He was able to posit a system of
vowel change in progress in Trinidad, with the number of vowels in the sys-
tem very reduced for older rural Indians and their descendants but gradually
broadening towards the norms at the acrolectal end of the scale. He studied the
variables (Œ˘) as in work (√) as in hut, (ç) as in hot and (´) as in the unstressed
syllable in father and found considerably more variation among the rural com-
munity than the urban. Urban informants used the prestige variants, correspond-
ing with those documented in table 1 below, more than any other, but the rural
informants showed more variability with ‘significant patterns of age and ethnic
differentiation’ (1978: 285). Younger rural speakers evidenced more use of the
urban patterns than did older, while the older rural speakers used the more stig-
matized variants. The oldest rural Indians of the lowest status group, whose first
language was Bhojpuri, used highly stigmatized variants absent from the urban
varieties. Most evidenced was a generalized [a] for the variables above, and here
we notice an interesting correlation with the Tobagonian basilect. Winford hy-
pothesized that they had reduced the range of vowels available in the StE system
considerably at the time of first contact and that these were now in process of
re-establishment. As the reader will observe in the discussion below, however, a
considerable measure of vowel mergence does exist and persist across the more
normative variety.
With such a measure of variation in mind we can proceed to table 1 below,
which sets out Wells’ list of 28 items with most typical norms represented. Where
there are significant differences from other national varieties these are bolded, and
where there is a range of variation about the norm this too is specified. Overall it
will be noted that there is a tendency to produce as monophthongs what in other
national varieties are diphthongs. Four items are added finally from the extended
Foulkes/Docherty listing and one other, BARE:
Table 1. Vowels of decreolized varieties
KIT [I] > [i] CLOTH [ç>ç˘] GOOSE [u:]

DRESS [E] NURSE [:>ç] PRICE [aI]
TRAP [a> æ] FLEECE [i:] CHOICE [çI]
LOT [ç>√>Å] FACE [e:] MOUTH [çU]
STRUT [√>ç˘>Å] PALM [a:] NEAR [»˘]
FOOT [U] THOUGHT [ç˘>Å] SQUARE [˘>»˘]
BATH [a:] GOAT [o:] START [a:]
NORTH [ç˘] FORCE [ç˘] CURE [juŒ]
HAPPY [> i] LETTER [´>√] HORSES [I]
COMMA [a>´>√] FIRE [ai´] BEER [»˘>i]
EIGHT [e:] METER [´>√] BARE [»˘>i]
Most of these features of the vowel system of the normative national Trinidadian
and Tobagonian variety are adapted from a chart compiled by Ferreira for Youssef,
James and Ferreira (2001) which was verified and extended for this paper. In put-
ting it together she drew upon her own native speaker competence as well as on
that of Solomon (1993) and on the work of Allsopp (1996). Ferreira isolated 22
phonemes in comparison to 17 isolated by Winford (1978).
Vowel length is one of the most variant features in Trinidadian and Tobagonian
speech. The most striking difference with other StE varieties is the low incidence
of [Q]. Often it is lost in one place so that, for example, [a] and [Q] may merge
rendering heart and hat the same, and then length may be reintroduced elsewhere,
e.g in a word like salad, pronounced /sQ»la˘d/ with stress on the final syllable. (In
the Tobagonian basilect, however, heart and hat are distinguished by vowel length
and salad has two short vowels.)
There is a tendency towards neutralization of complex vowel sounds particular-
ly in combination with [´] and occurring word finally. These produce homophones
that are distinguishable by context and include beer and bear, peer and pear and
similar combinations. Solomon (1993: 15-16) has observed that acrolectal speak-
ers may have either [i] or [E] before [´] but not both and suggests that educa-
tion may be a critical factor with women outstripping men in production of [E´]
particularly on the Trinidad radio. He believes that this variant correlates with a
higher level of education and is more prestigious, but admits to a general increase
in the use of [i´] in the media for both sexes. In the mesolect and increasingly in
the acrolect [e:] is produced.
In the Trinidadian mesolect it is generally recognized that the vowel sounds in
cut, cot, caught and curt may not be distinguished with the sounds /√/, /Å/, /ç/, and
/Œ/ rendered as the single back open rounded vowel /Å/. Other neutralizations in
the same vowel group produce the following:
– [Å] and [√] in StE as in body and buddy merge in [√], rendering these items as
well as others like golf and gulf homophonous.
Sometimes, however, there may be a lengthening resulting in the following
merger of [Å] and [ç]; body and bawdy become neutralized, long becomes
“lorng”.
– [з ] and [√] merge so that bird and bud are homophonous.
The major other neutralizations, which do not hold for all speakers, are as fol-
lows:
– [A] and [a] in SE as in ask and axe (where metathesis can also occur) merge in
[a];
– the vowels in harm and ham, become homophonous with the use of [a].
– the vowels in bit and beat become homophonous with the use of [i˘].
Warner (1967) associated these last two mergers with French Creole, Spanish or
Bhojpuri influence, but today they are more generalized allophonic variants, as
real contact with these disappearing languages rapidly diminishes.
Other characteristic vowel sounds occur in words like down and sound which
are rendered [dÅN] and [sÅN] respectively. Most usually the vowel is nasalized.

The consonants show much less variation than the vowels, being mostly shared
between Creole and English. As with other Caribbean Creoles, in both Trinidad
and Tobago there is the shift to representation of [T] as [t] and [D] as [d] across the
board, and these features are ceasing to be stigmatized even in pseudo-acrolectal
speech. In Winford’s study in the 1970’s he found variation in the alternation
among these variables in predictable patterns according to class and style, but in
2002 [t] and [d] as norms are a recognized and accepted part of pseudo-acrolectal
speech with these variants having become markers with no censure attached to
their use.
Final consonant clusters which exhibit the same voicing quality are reduced in
all Caribbean creole varieties and Trinidad and Tobago are no exception. This is
particularly the case with final /-t/ or /-d/ (although not [-nt]), and unusual with
/-s/ or /-z/. As Labov (1972a) has pointed out for African American and Winford
(1972) for Trinidadian, items that omit these behave differently according to their
grammatical status, however, and are more likely to be retained when they rep-
resent a grammatical meaning, e.g. passed as opposed to past. From Winford’s
(1972) data he was able to order such clusters according to frequency, showing
some phonological constraint, but also, for speakers in the middle class, gram-
matical constraint. A variable which shows little social or stylistic stability is final
-ng, which is realized word-finally as either [n] or [N].
The consonantal features outlined thus far are becoming increasingly consistent
in usage across the social and stylistic board.
Less frequent are the variation between [v] and [b] as in [bEri] for very, and the
palatalization involved in the production of [tS] for [tr] as in [tSri] for tree. Metath-
esis commonly occurs in voiceless clusters like ask which is rendered [aks], and
crisp realized as [kips]. For older Indian speakers there is aspiration on voiced
stops, as in [bhAji], bhaji, a leafy spinach, cited by Winer (1993: 17) from Mohan
and Zador (1986). These sound types have all become stereotypes associated with
rural and Indian speech. The variation on /r/, as for example when it is rendered
[w], is derived from French Creole and the retroflex flap [”] from Bhojpuri.
Trinidad is distinguished for its non-rhoticity, in this contrasting with neigh-
bouring Barbados and Guyana, as well as Jamaica. Wells (1982: 578) has noted
that metropolitan English had become non-rhotic at the time when English was
established in Trinidad but this connection remains speculative. It is also distin-
guished by the palatalization of velar consonants /k/ and /g/ so that [kja‚] represents
can’t and [gjA˘dEn] represents garden. In this feature there is no clear style or
social differentiation (Solomon 1993: 181). But it is found more in rural Indian-
rather than rural African speakers, with less clear-cut distinctions in urban areas
(Winford 1972; Solomon 1993). Solomon suggests that it is word particular, being
obligatory in can’t, and rare in words like calypso and ganja.
2.3. Tobagonian basilect
2.3.1. Vowels
A number of vowel sounds are particular to Tobagonian and occur mostly in the
basilect in the shortest words and in function words. Where the basilect and the
mesolect share a pronunciation it is usually on distinctive content words.
The table of words equivalent to table 1, which displays acrolectal and mesolec-
tal vowels, is presented below in table 2 but it should be noted that the basilect
variants are not consistently produced in the reading of a Standard English text or
word list. The variety in question is not used for reading purposes and informants
necessarily shift varieties in reading.
Table 2. Vowels of the basilect
KIT [I] CLOTH [A˘] GOOSE [u:]

DRESS [E] NURSE [ç] PRICE [aI]
TRAP [a] FLEECE [i:] CHOICE [ai]
LOT [A] FACE [e] MOUTH [çU]
STRUT [ç] PALM [A:] NEAR [er]
FOOT [U] THOUGHT NA SQUARE [er]
BATH [A:] GOAT [o] START [a:]
NORTH [A˘] FORCE [o] CURE [jç˘]
HAPPY [] LETTER [a] HORSES [I]
COMMA [a] FIRE [ai´] BEER [er]
EIGHT [e] METER [A] BARE [er]
Major vowel oppositions according to variety and territory include the following:
Tobago’s basilect retains [a˘] for Trinidad’s [ç>ç˘] cloth, lot, north.
Also characteristic are [o], e.g. force, for Trinidad’s [ç˘] and [ai] e.g choice for
Trinidad’s [çI].
Among consonants the occurrence of [/] word-initially for general English [h]
is prevalent.
[a] is the most frequently occurring Tobagonian vowel. It is used in a vast number
of words where the vowel sounds [Q], [´], and [Å] would be used in British English.
Table 3 below, adapted from Youssef and James 2002, gives examples of words
it is used in as compared to corresponding words in Standard English.
Table 3. Tobagonian [a] on English words
Monosyllabic Stressed syllable æ Monosyllabic in non-monosyllabic Stressed syllable ç- in

æ words of non-monosyl- ç- words words non-monosyllabic words
labic words
hat, cat, back DA.ddy, HA.ppy, flop, long, CO.llapse, wa.TER, BO.dy, FO.llow, CON.
PAM.per knock (> flap, to.LE.rant fi.dent (> BA.dy, FA.llow,
lang, knack) (> CA.llapse, war.TA,) KAN.fident).
(Relevant syllables in non-monosyllabic words capitalised)
In the first two categories of words, [a] is general Tobagonian but for the third it
is purely basilectal; [a] gives way to [å] in both mesolectal and acrolectal usage
(though, for [´] words, it may be retained). [a] is an unrounded sound while its
mesolectal counterpart is rounded [å]. Apparently because of this varietal distinc-
tion, [a] is, to an extent, socially stigmatised.
There are two diphthongs that occur particularly in certain word types in basilec-
tal speech; these are [ai] (e.g. bwai> ‘boy’, spwail> ‘spoil’), and their counterparts
in mesolectal speech are respectively [oi] and [ai]. [ei] is associated particularly
with the towns of Charlotteville and Speyside in the eastern part of Tobago and
with Bethel and Plymouth in the west.
There are two single vowels in all varieties that seem to be reduced monoph-
thongal versions of English diphthongs: [e˘]/[e] (<[ei]), and [o˘] (<[Ú]). BrE /Q/
is lowered to /a/.
The single vowel [e:] in function words in basilectal speech seems to be a re-
duction of both of the diphthongs [i´] and [e´], while [(y)i] is its mesolectal and
acrolectal counterpart which is shared with Trinidad.
[o] represents a reduction of the diphthong [ow] in basilectal, but not mesolec-
tal or acrolectal, speech. As example we find ho > ‘how’.
Because Tobagonian speech involves an interaction of three varieties which share
the same general lexicon, it is impossible to totally separate basilect or mesolect, and
so it would be difficult to specify all the vowels that occur in basilectal speech.
The short vowels that occur most in function words in basilectal speech are
the nasal vowels (ĩ, ữ, õ and ã ) and oral [a]. The long vowels that occur most in
basilectal speech are nasal [ã:] and oral [a:], [o#:], and [e#:]. Examples of all these
sounds are given in the following:
[ĩ]e.g di (remote past marker, reduced form of did e.g. he di go)
[ã] e.g. an (shortened form of and)
[ữ] e.g. kữ (reduced form of couldn’t)
[õ] e.g. [dõ] (a reduced form of don’t)
[ã:] e.g. [wã:] (a reduced form of wan ‘one’)
A striking feature of fast basilectal speech is the lengthening of the single vowels
[a], [o], and [i] in association with pronoun subjects or the negator no; these are
full words that end in a short vowel, which is then incorporated in the lengthened
vowel. These vowels at the same time represent words. /a/ is both a copula and an
imperfective marker; /o/is a future marker that has lost its onset g (go > o); and /i/
is the remote past marker that has lost both its onset /b-/ and its coda /-n/ (bin > i).
2.3.4. Consonants
The most distinctive Tobagonian consonant sound is ///. It may be heard in the
pronunciation of words like [/ows] ‘house’, [/ow] ‘how’, and [soo/m] ‘some-
thing’. In addition, the word-initial consonants [h], [b], [d], [g] and [y] are most
usually dropped in basilectal Tobagonian speech. In the speech of some speakers,
the h- is absent from all English words containing it—a phenomenon that is not
unusual in speakers of a range of non-standard English dialects across the world.
Examples of content words with this form are: home > ome, house > ouse, hot >
at, hat > at, hit > it, hoe > oe, hand > an(d). The h- is absent from monosyllabic
words, and the stressed syllable of non-monosyllabic words such as appy. For
function words we find the unstressed-stressed pronoun pair hi-hii > i ‘he/his’ and
ii ‘he/him/his’, and huu > uu ‘who’, which may occur as an interrogative pronoun,
relative pronoun, or clause intensifier.
Syllable structure differs in Tobagonian from both Trinidadian and StE in that,
word initially, there is only a single sound produced rather than a cluster; hence we
find: [fr-]> [f-]. In adult speech, this feature is limited to from > fom/fam, which is
the only function word in English that starts with the cluster [fr-].
Whereas /s/ can be the first of up to three consonants at the onset of a word in
English, in basilectal Tobagonian speech it may be dropped, for example, from
words like skin, squeeze, smell, spit, and start (> kin, kweeze, mell, pit, and tart).
[s-] is not dropped when it combines with the liquids and semi-vowels [r], [l], [w],
and [y].
In even the most acrolectal speech in Tobagonian (but not in Trinidadian), the
single-initial consonants b and p are lengthened by the addition of bilabial [w] to
become [bw-] and [pw-] before the diphthong [oi] in a small group of words that
include boy > bwoi, boil > bwoil, boycott > bwoicott, spoil > spwoil, and poison
> pwoison.
The shift from [v] to [b] recorded variably for Trinidadian also occurs in basilec-
tal Tobagonian. It is found in words like the following: crave > crabe, love > lob,
governor > gobna, and heavy > (h)eaby. As the list suggests, it occurs wherever
the [v] may occur in a word. The shift does not seem to be motivated by any spe-
cial phonological conditioning. When a fricative gives way to a plosive there is a
change in lip movement which historically was important for registering negative
emotions visibly.
The cluster [-lf] is reduced to [-f] in the grammatical word self as the latter com-
pounds with pronouns, even, and adverbs of place and time.
Basilectal Tobagonian speech also evidences the dropping of final single-con-

sonants especially the nasal ones, from grammatical words.
In the second syllable of words, and intervocalically, [t] is replaced by [k] and
[d] by [g]. The effects are seen in the following words: little > likku, bottle > bokku,
riddle > riggu, middle > miggu, handle > ha[]gu, gentlemen > jenkumen. Voice-
less [t] becomes voiceless [k], and voiced [d] becomes voiced [g]. The movement
from front to back consonants seems motivated by the back vowel [-u], with which
syllabic [l] is produced. This change may also be heard in some mesolectal Trini-
dadian speech.
2.4. Suprasegmental features

The most common lay reaction to Trinidadian speech world-wide is that it is ‘sing-
song’. Associations have been made very broadly to Welsh as well as to African
tone languages (e.g. Carter 1979) and, for Trinidad specifically, some speakers’
intonation patterns have also been linked with Spanish, French creole, and Bho-
jpuri. The current and overall reality is a prosody which has been adapted through
all these influences, and which is, at this point in time, peculiarly ‘Creole’.
Trinidadian and Tobagonian also exhibits a peculiar intonational characteristic
in mesolectal speech of a rising intonation at the end of an utterance as if the
speaker is in doubt or questioning (cf. Allsopp 1972). It may be that the speaker is
seeking a responsiveness in the hearer as he/she does when using the very popular
local tag Right?
Solomon (1993: 34) identifies pitch as the critical prosodic feature rather than
stress although he admits it is difficult to abstract pitch from tone. Winer (1993:
19-20) also notes ‘a higher and wider’ pitch range than in StE and ‘less degree
of fall at sentence end’. The features of pitch and stress are confounded between
English and Trinidadian speakers, the former hearing Trinidad pitch as stress.
Solomon (1993: 34) equates the system with the Guyanese one as described by
Allsopp (1972). The result is that disyllable words are most often either high-low
or low-high, the latter being the more common and older pattern; in trisyllable
words it is common to find a low-low-high or high-high-low pattern. Solomon has
described longer items, as characteristically either low-low-high-high or, when
they break into two, as low-high-high, low-high. All this can often result in a
change of the characteristic English pattern such that unstressed syllables in that
variety often come to carry high pitch in Trinidadian. The most common pat-
terns in Trinidadian overall are low-high, low-low high and low-high high, and
this creates some contrasting patterns with many varieties of Standard English,
e.g (Capitals indicate stress, apostrophes denote pitch) COCKroa’ch, MAChine;
TRInida’d; CARpe’nte’r. Interesting contrasts may be observed between ’oppo-
nent and cha’racter, ’component and com’merce. These features of the language
can cause difficulty in comprehension for speakers of other varieties and the in-
consistencies are very challenging for learners of the Trinidadian variety.
James (2003) analyses the role of tone in the organisation of grammatical mor-
phemes in a number of the subsystems of TobC. Among his findings about tone
are that:
a) In TobC tone is morphemic in the case of the homophones kyã ‘can’ vs.
kyã ‘can’t’);
b) In TobC tone distinguishes emphatic from non-emphatic meanings in the
homophones dèm vs. dém;
c) In TobC tone typically combines with rhyme length to distinguish the
members of emphatic-nonemphatic pairs—high tone with long-vowel
and vowel-consonant sequences, and low tone with single vowels (e.g.,
shíí vs. shì and dém vs dè);
d) In TobC tone is differentially associated with certain grammatical
(sub)categories, with low tone associating with the definite article dì, the
singularising article wàà, certain preverbal articles (e.g., imperfective
à and future gò), the third person singular general object pronouns àm /
òm, certain prepositions (e.g., à and pàn), and infinitival/possessive fù;
and high tone associating with negators (e.g., nó and ẽ), emphasiser dúú,
interrogative / relative wé, demonstrative dà(t), certain prepositions (e.g.,
tón ‘according to’, gí ‘to/for’), intensifier húú, reportive sé, and certain
preverbal particles (e.g., completive dón and passive gé); and
e) In TobC tone is variable on suffixes (e.g., sèf, séf) and the morpheme wan,
among other morphemes, depending on where they occur in the syntax.
All in all, prosody contrasts markedly with other English varieties; the tendency to
shared tonal and intonation patterns across Caribbean Creoles undoubtedly links
back to the sharing of a common African tonal base despite the fact that no direct
and precise links now survive.
3. Conclusions
Separate recordings are included with this chapter for both Trinidadian and To-
bagonian to highlight their most characteristic similarities and differences, which,
as illustrated throughout the chapter, appear mainly in basilectal features which
distinguish Tobagonian from Trinidadian speech overall. As travel between the
two islands becomes increasingly frequent, and as young people in particular look
to Trinidad for employment and advancement, the differences may slowly break
down at every level. The mesolect is becoming increasingly widespread in usage

right across the twin-island territory.
Thus far language change is indicated. But there remains a distinct national-
ism rooted in Tobago, as well as an essentially rural lifestyle, which ensures the
continued vitality of the basilectal variety. As noted earlier, Youssef (2001), in a
small-scale study in the village of Bethel, indicates that there remains a common
level of basilectal usage for both old and young at home, but that the young favour
the mesolect over the acrolect as a badge of modern identity in the wider world.
The continuing use of the basilect as a home variety, and the relative weight of
the mesolect in wider contexts, suggests that the continuous change from basilect
to acrolect, considered to characterize a continuum situation, is not going through
and that the situation may become relatively stable, with each variety having its
own contexts for usage in the society at large.
Selected references
ROM.
Allsopp, Richard
1972 Some suprasegmental features of Caribbean English. Paper presented at
the conference on creole languages and educational development, UWI, St.
Augustine, 1972.
Baksh-Soodeen, Rawwida
1995 A historical perspective on the lexicon of Trinidadian English. Ph.D. disserta-
tion, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
Brereton, Bridget
1981 A History of Modern Trinidad. London: Heinemann
Carter, Hazel
1979 Evidence for the survival of African prosodies in West African Creoles.
Society for Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Paper 13.
Elder, John D.
1988 African Survivals in Trinidad and Tobago. London: Paria Press.
James, Winford
1974 Some similarities between Jamaican Creole and the dialect of Tobago.
Caribbean Studies thesis, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
2003 The role of tone and rhyme structure in the organisation of grammatical mor-
phemes in Tobagonian. In: Plag (ed.), 165-192.
James, Winford and Valerie Youssef
2002 The Languages of Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago: School of Continuing Studies,
University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
Minderhout, David
1973 A sociolinguistic description of Tobagonian English. Ph.D. dissertation,
Georgetown University, USA.
Mohan, Peggy and Paul Zador
1986 Discontinuity in a life cycle: The death of Trinidad Bhojpuri. Language 62:
291–320.
Solomon, Denis
1993 The Speech of Trinidad - A Reference Grammar. Trinidad: School of
Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies.
Southers, Donna
1977 A transformational analysis of Tobagonina English Creole. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Thomas, J. J.
1869 The Theory and Practice of Creole Grammar. (1964 reprint London: New
Beacon Books).
Warner, Maureen
1967 Language in Trinidad with special reference to English. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of York, UK.
Winer, Lise
1984 Early Trinidadian Creole: The Spectator texts. English World-Wide 5: 181–
210.
Winer, Lise and Glen Gilbert
1987 A 19th century report on the Creole English of Tobago: The Uh-Schuchardt
correspondence. English World-Wide 8: 235–262.
Winford, Donald
1972 A sociolinguistic description of two communities in Trinidad. Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of York: UK.
1978 Phonological hypercorrection in the process of decreolization – the case of
Trinidadian English. Journal of Linguistics 14: 129–375.
Wood, Donald
1968 Trinidad in Transition. London: Oxford University Press.
Youssef, Valerie
1996 The competence underlying code-mixing in Trinidad and Tobago. Journal of
Pidgin and Creole Languages 11: 1–22.
2001 Age-grading in the anglophone creole of Tobago. World Englishes 20: 29–46.
Youssef, Valerie, Winford James and Jo-Anne S. Ferreira
2001 Is there a Trinidad and Tobago Standard English? Paper presented at a
Workshop on English Language Teaching, UWI, St. Augustine, Trinidad and
Tobago, April 2001.
Suriname creoles: phonology
Norval Smith and Vinije Haabo
1. Introduction
The question of the origins of the English-lexifier creole languages spoken in Su-
riname, and also French Guyana, by several hundred thousand people is a contro-
versial one. By origins we mean linguistic origins rather than population origins,
although we have of course to take into account the influences of the languages
spoken by the earliest African populations.
In the case of creole languages it is also controversial whether one can speak of
a break in continuity or not. Did creole languages develop in a special fashion, or
were normal processes of language change involved? With the Surinamese creole
languages in mind, it appears patently ridiculous to envisage any direct continu-
ity in the sense of normal complete language transmission between the kinds of
(sub)standard English reflected in the segmental phonologies of Surinamese cre-
ole words and the Surinamese creoles themselves. Smith (1987) claims that there
is a regular relationship between the forms of lexical items in the Surinamese
creoles and the incidence of phonemes in the various forms of English – standard
and substandard – spoken in mid-17th century London. However, this is not the
same as claiming that normal intergenerational language transfer took place. No
kind of popular or colonial English is known which could fulfill the role of over-
all direct precursor to these languages. In regard to syntax, morphology, lexical
semantics and even phonotactics all known varieties of popular/colonial English
are far removed from the Surinamese creoles. The records of Sranan now go
back to 1707 (Van den Berg 2000), a mere two generations after the settlement of
Suriname by the English in 1651, and only three generations after the founding
of the first Caribbean English colonies of St. Kitts and Barbados. The Sranan of
the early 18th century is not however radically different from present-day Sranan
in respect of its distance from the standard Englishes of England and the United
States.
Smith (2001) assumes the creation of a Proto-Caribbean Plantation Pidgin in
the English colonies in the Caribbean in the first generation of slavery – roughly
between 1625 and 1650. One reason for this is the existence of a common core
of loans from a disparate selection of African languages, referred to by Smith
(1987) as Ingredient X. Together with English vocabulary displaying common
deviations from the regular Standard English developments in semantics and
phonology, reconstituted function-words, and innovative syntactic constructions,
526 Norval Smith and Vinije Haabo
these are shared by a considerable number of circum-Caribbean creole languages,

such as St Kitts Creole, Jamaican Creole, Guyanese, Krio, Providencia Creole,
Miskito Coast Creole, the Surinamese creoles and others. The conclusion seems
to be warranted that there was some common linguistic stage showing a degree of
stability underlying these creoles. The fact that some function-words and syntactic
constructions are shared would also seem to rule out a pidgin of the most primitive
type, a jargon pidgin.
This stable pidgin must have come into existence during this first generation of
English plantation-holding in the Caribbean. This is guaranteed by the fact that
Suriname was settled in 1651, and that the English colonial presence lasted only
until 1667. The vast majority of the English population had left by 1675, so that
all the ingredients of Sranan must have been in place before then.
This is not to deny that there are clear differences in type between the various
English-lexifier creoles spoken in the Caribbean area. These are particularly ob-
servable in the typology of the vowel systems.
1.1. The Suriname creole languages

Let us now turn to a consideration of the phonologies of the three Surinamese
creole languages we will deal with here. The first is Sranan, the former language
of the coastal plantations, and of the capital, Paramaribo. The second is Ndyu-
ka, which we may take to be descended from an 18th century plantation variety
of Sranan. The speakers of Ndyuka descend from maroons (escapees) from the
coastal plantations. The third language is Saramaccan, which has a more complex
history. This is also a maroon language, but one spoken largely by the descendants
of slaves who escaped from the Jewish-owned plantations on the middle Suriname
River. In the late 17th and early 18th century there was a concentration of Jewish-
owned plantations in this area, with as its mini-capital the settlement of Joden-Sa-
vannah (‘Jews’ Savanna’).
The origin of this Jewish population is the subject of controversy (cf. Arends
1999; Smith 1999a), but we will adhere here to the scenario sketched by Smith that
the Jews hailed indirectly from Brazil, and that they brought Portuguese-speaking
slaves with them, who influenced the local Sranan to the extent that some 300
English-derived forms were replaced by Portuguese Creole forms, giving rise to
a new creole language that was to some extent mixed in vocabulary. This was the
precursor of Saramaccan.
There are other creole languages/dialects spoken in Suriname, but these do not
differ to any large degree from the three we will be dealing with. Closely related to
Ndyuka are Aluku, Paramaccan and Kwinti, while Matawai resembles Saramac-
can. For more on these see Smith (2002) and other articles in Carlin and Arends
(2002).
Suriname creoles: phonology 527
1.2. Methodological preliminaries

We exclude from consideration here any word whose source is not clearly English.
As the Netherlands was the colonial power for over 300 years there are a number
of forms whose origin could be either Dutch or English. We will not go into any
detail on why we consider a particular form to be of English origin. Some aspects
of this methodological problem are discussed in Smith (1987).
2. Phonological systems of the Suriname creoles
We will deal with the vowel systems, consonant systems and tone systems in that
order. Two of the three languages are lexical tone languages and we will give a
very brief characterization of this aspect here.
All three languages are in a sense unusual—for varieties of English—in that
they have official or semi-official writing-systems, which are very close to be-
ing phonemic. As these are already very familiar to linguists who work on these
languages, we will make use of them here, with slight modifications where they
deviate significantly from the IPA, such as in the use of y for /j/, or where they fall
short. This we will take account of. We provide a description of the IPA values of
the principal allophones.
One major difference from most other varieties of “English” is the large-scale
occurrence of anaptyctic (epithetic) vowels. For instance foot appears as /fu=tu/ in
all three languages. The first /u/ here we will refer to as the organic vowel, and the
second as anaptyctic.
2.1. Vowel systems

Sranan and Ndyuka have a five-vowel system: /i, e, a, o, u/, and Saramaccan has
a seven-vowel system: /i, e, E, a, ç, o, u/. In Saramaccan there is an additional
vowel harmony restriction forbidding contiguous sequences of low-mid and high-
mid vowels. A further restriction affects the incidence of vowels in Saramaccan
insofar as /..e=.e#, ..o=.e#/ sequences seem only to occur in more recent forms. Older
English-derived forms seem to have /..=.E#, ..ç¤.E#/ instead.
The approximate phonetic qualities of the vowels are as follows:
(1) a. Sranan: /i/ [i]

/e/ [E3 ~ I4]
/a/ [a2 ~ A1]
/o/ [ç3 ~ U4]
/u/ [u]
b. Ndyuka: /i/ [i]

/e/ [E ~ e]
/a/ [a]
/o/ [o]
/u/ [u]
c. Saramaccan: /i/ [i]
/e/ [e]
/E/ [E]
/a/ [a]
/ç/ [ç]
/o/ [o]
/u/ [u]
Note that tenseness and laxness play no role in these vowel systems. /e/ and /o/
in Sranan, and /E/ and /ç/ in Saramaccan would appear to be [–ATR], the other
vowels being [+ATR].
Long vowels occur in all systems, although only marginally in Sranan. In Sran-
an stressed vowels preceding /r/ are lengthened considerably, and those following
consonant-/r/ clusters are lengthened to a lesser degree.
2.2. Consonant systems

(2) a. Sranan: p t tj k
b d dj g
f s sj h
m n nj N
l~r
w j
b. Ndyuka: p t tj k kp~kw
b d dj g gb~gw
f s h
v z
m n nj
l
w j
c. Saramaccan: p t tj k kp (kw)
b d dj g gb (gw)
f s h
v z
mb nd ndj Ng
m n nj
∫ Î
l
w j
The phonetic values of /tj, dj, sj, nj/ are [tS, dZ, S, ¯]. The distinction between /kp/
and /kw/ is only made in some forms of Saramaccan. Other forms have /kp ~ kw/,
and the concomitant /gb ~ gw/ indifferently.
2.3. Tone systems

The two tone languages, Ndyuka and Saramaccan, have high tones H (marked by
acute accents) opposed to low tones L (unmarked). Saramaccan also has change-
able tones, which must be regarded as underlyingly unspecified ∅. These occur
in words of European origin, and represent generally the old unaccented vowels
in those words, as well as some epenthetic and all anaptyctic vowels. These are
subject to raising under a combination of phonological and syntactic conditions.
Unmarked vowels in words of African origin are lexically low.
Examples of tone contrasts would be the following:
(3) ∫E L ‘red’
∫=E H∅ ‘belly’
∫EE LL ‘fiery red’
∫E=E ∅H∅ ‘bread’
Î= H ‘they’
Î== HH ‘the’ (plural)
3. Detailed phonological descriptions
3.1. Vowel systems

Each vowel described will be introduced in terms of Wells sets, with the addition
of only a few supplementary keywords. The total list of keywords used to define
vowel-sets is as follows:
(4) KIT DRESS TRAP LOT STRUT FOOT
BATH CLOTH NURSE FLEECE ACE PALM
THOUGHT GOAT GOOSE PRICE CHOICE MOUTH
NEAR SQUARE START FORCE NORTH CURE
FIRE POWER happY horsES lettER commA
rottEN
3.1.1. KIT
The KIT set of words with Middle English (henceforth ME) /C/ are represented
in Suriname creoles by words derived from Early Modern English ship, bit, dig,
skin, drink, dinner, sieve, busy, and so on. In the rest of this article we will simply
describe these for convenience as English words, whether the meaning has un-
dergone a change or not. The normal realization of these words in the Suriname
creoles is [i], a short high front vowel.
Table 1. The KIT set
English Sranan Ndyuka Saramaccan
fit f=ti f=ti f=ti

bitter b=ta b=ta ∫=ta
skin skin sik=n siNk=i
drink dr=Ni di=Ngi di=Ngi
finger f=Na f=Nga f=Nga
bit - - a∫=ti
live l=bi l=bi l=∫=
A number of words that belong to this incidence set in RP and AmE have different
realizations in the Suriname creoles.
Table 2. KIT words with deviant vowels
whip (w=pi) (w=pi) hu=pi, u=pi

if e=fu,e=fi e=fu e=e
him en e=n (h)=n
mix mo=ksi mo=kisi mç¤k=si
Whip has a form in Sranan and Ndyuka concomitant with a derivation from a form
[wIp]. Saramaccan, however, might be based on a form [hwIp], to judge by the
optional /h/. The /u/ vowel appears in a number of other forms where it must also
stand for earlier /wi/.
If has a lower vowel in other Caribbean creoles as well. Compare Krio /Ef/, Ja-
maican /ef, efn/, Miskito Coast Creole /ef/ etc.
Mix must derive from an unrecorded EModE form /*m√ks/. In ME we do have a

rounding of /C/ to /uC/ after /w/, and in isolated words after /b/ as well as before /m/ (Dob-
son 1957). A possible parallel for this form is found in Cameroonian Pidgin /bç¤ks/.
3.1.2. DRESS
DRESS words with ME /eD/, and to some extent /E˘/, are represented in Suriname cre-
oles by English words like neck, bed, egg, bread, dead, head, any, bury, ready, etc.
The /E˘/ words are generally spelt ea. The normal representation of these differs in
the various languages, although the phonemic symbol /e/ is traditionally used in all
of them. In Sranan /e/ is usually [E3 ~ I4] for instance. In Ndyuka /e/ is normally [e ~
E], and in Saramaccan /e, E/ are usually [e, E] respectively. /E/ is employed largely in
Saramaccan in these words in combination with an anaptyctic vowel /-E/.
Table 3. The DRESS set
bed be=di be=di ∫e=Îi

bread bre=de bee=le ∫E=E
dead de=de de=de Î=ÎE
yesterday e=srede, e=sde e=s=de e=siÎe
gentle ge=ndri, dje=ndri dje=nde=e dj=ndE
beg be=gi be=gi be=gi
remember me=mre me=mbe=e m=mbE
wench we=Nke, we=ntje - w=ndjE
A number of words that belong to this incidence set in RP and AmE have different
realizations in the Suriname creoles.
Table 4. DRESS words with deviant realizations
heavy (e=bi) (e=bi), =bi (he=Ei)

every =bri =b=i (h)=bi
any- =niwan =ni (h)=niwa=n
egg(s) (e=ksi) =gi -
Smith (1987) states: “According to Dobson (1957) raising of /e/ to /i/ is a fairly
common process in the fifteenth or sixteenth century in the South-east. In the
seventeenth century ships’ logs we find frequent examples of this raising, e.g.
chists ‘chests’. Matthews (1938) provides many examples from Cockney includ-
ing chistes (1553).”
3.1.3. TRAP
TRAP words with ME /aC/ are represented in Suriname creoles by English words
like cat, back, have, ants, thank, arrow, etc. The normal realization of these words
in the Suriname creoles is as a short low centralized vowel.
The anaptyctic vowel here seems to be normally sensitive to the nature of the
final consonant:
(5) Organic Anaptyctic

aP u
aT i
aK a
Table 5. The TRAP set
fat fa=tu fa=tu fa=tu

back ba=ka ba=ka ∫a=ka
ask a=ksi a=k=si (h)a=k=si
cabbage ka=bisi tja=b=si tja=b=si
carry tja=(ri) tja=i tja=
garden dja=ri dja=li dja=i
candle ka=ndra ka=nda=a ka=nda
ashes as=si as=si -
The metathesis of /sk/ removes ask from the ambit of the BATH words. Cabbage
was also earlier /tja=bisi/ in Sranan.
A number of words that belong to this incidence set in RP and AmE have differ-
ent realizations in the Suriname creoles.
Table 6. TRAP words with deviant realizations
catch k=si k=si k=si

hang (a=Na), hengi (1783) e=Nge h=Ngi
Catch is widely realized with a mid vowel in other creoles, as well as in many
English and American dialects: Jamaican /k(j)et/, Guyanese /ket/, etc. Further, a
form [kIt] is found in a number of places in S. and E. England.
The raising of the vowel of hang is present in the modern dialects around London,
and had taken place by the seventeenth century in Cockney (Matthews 1938).
3.1.4. LOT
LOT words with ME /oC/ are represented in Suriname creoles by English words like
stop, pot, box, wasp, watch, dog, etc. The normal realization of these words in the
Suriname Creoles is [a], a short low retracted front vowel.
Table 7. The LOT set
dog da=gu da=gu da=gu

hog a=gu a=gu ha=gu
god ga=do ga=du ga=Îu
wasp waswa=si wasiwa=si wasiwa=si
yonder ja=na a=nda -
strong tra=Na taa=Nga taa=Nga
stop ta=pu ta=pu -
bottle ba=tra ba=ta=a ∫a=ta
3.1.5. STRUT
STRUT words with ME /uC/ which developed to EModE /√/ are represented in Suri-
name creoles by English words like cut, jug, run, love, rub, money, enough, coun-
try, etc. The main realization of this set of words is with /o, ç/.
It is fairly clear that there must have been a Proto-Suriname-Creole vowel pho-
neme /*√/ which could be responsible for these /o, ç/-reflexes. We claim this be-
cause of the usual distribution of the anaptyctic vowels, which is different from
other items with mid rounded organic vowels:
oP u
oT i
oK o
Table 8. The STRUT set
cut ko=ti ko=ti ko=ti

gutter go=tro go=to=o (N)gç¤tç
jug djo=go djo=go djo=gu
ugly o=gri o=g=i (w/h)o=gi
rub lo=bi lo=bi loEi
bubby bo=bi bo=bi Eo=Ei
enough no=fo no=fo -
gun gon go=ni go=ni
A minority of words that belong to this incidence set in RP and AmE have the
phoneme /a/ in the Suriname creoles.
Table 9. STRUT words with /a/
suppertime sapate=n sapaten sa=pate(n)

brother bra=da, bra=ra baa=la ∫aa=a
tother tra taa= -
one wan wa=n wa=n
sun (son) sa=n (so=nu)
hungry a=Nri aNg=i ha=Ngi
someone (s(u=)ma) sama= -
something san(=) sa=n(i) (son(d)=)
The causation of this /a/-variant is not obvious. Possibly this is supportive of the
hypothetical Proto-Suriname-Creole vowel phoneme /*√/ referred to above.
Another group of deviant items in the Suriname creoles go together with the
FOOT set of words and will be dealt with there.
3.1.6. FOOT
FOOT words with ME /uC/ preserved in EModE are represented in Suriname cre-
oles by English words like bush, full, cushion, look, cook, wood, woman, etc. The
normal realization of these u- words in the Suriname creoles is [u], a short high
back rounded vowel. The split between the STRUT set and the FOOT set is at least
partially phonologically conditioned in EModE, the latter class having a concen-
tration of items with initial labials and, to a lesser extent, with postvocalic /k/.
Table 10. The FOOT set
foot fu=tu fu=tu fu=tu

book bu=ku bu=ku ∫u=ku
hook u=ku (h)u=ku hu=ku
look lu=ku lu=ku lu=ku
crooked kru=ktu ku=ku=tu kuuku=tu, ku=ku=tu
wood u=du u=du (h)u=Îu
full fu=ru fu=u fu=u
pull pu=ru pu=u pu=u
cushion ku=nsu ku=nsu ku=nsu
The odd word that belongs to this incidence set in RP and AmE has the phoneme
/o/ in the Suriname creoles. However, as we will shortly see, the exceptions in the
other direction are more numerous.
Table 11. FOOT words with /o/
put po=ti po=ti -

The fact that a number of words where Standard English has /√/ have /u/ in the Su-
riname creoles has to be seen in connection with the fact that the change in Standard
English (of London) is first evidenced around 1640 (Dobson 1957). It was just after
this that Suriname was colonized. The following words have unexpected /u/.
Table 12. Words with unexpected /u/
must mu=su mu=su mu=su

too much (tu=msi) (tu=m=si) tu=mu=si
thrust tru=su (too=si) tuu=si
drunk dru=Nu duu=Ngu (dçç¤Ngç)
sunk su=Nu su=Ngu -
blood bru=du buu=lu ∫uu=u
flood fru=du fuu=lu (foo=o, foo=u)
just now (djo=nsro) (djo=nso) dju=nsu
Note that four of the words exhibit variation between /u/ and /o, ç/ among the lan-
guages, suggesting the presence of variable pronunciations in the seventeenth century.
3.1.7. BATH
There is no sign of a separate BATH set as distinct from the TRAP set. This is not
unexpected given that the TRAP-BATH split only occurred in the eighteenth century
(Wells 1982: 134). Examples of BATH words in the Suriname creoles are:
Table 13. The BATH set
paths pa=si pa=si pa=si

fasten fa=si fa=si -
master ma=sra ma=sa=a ma=sa
nasty na=si - na=si
half a=fu a=fu ha=fu
laugh la=fu la=fu la=fu
3.1.8. CLOTH
There is no sign of a separate CLOTH set as distinct from the LOT set. Once again
this is not so surprising given that the LOT-CLOTH split occurred in the seventeenth
century. Examples of CLOTH words in the Suriname creoles are:
Table 14. The CLOTH set
cross (v.) kra=si kaa=si -

lost la=si la=si la=si
softly sa=afri sa=fili, saa=fi sa=a=pi
soft sa=fu sa=fu -
3.1.9. NURSE
With NURSE words, as with the other /r/-sets, we have clearly to take account of
/r/-less as well as /r/-ful dialects. Where /r/ is preconsonantal, we cannot distin-
guish with complete confidence between an early /r/-deletion, mainly affecting
sibilants but also to a lesser extent other coronals, which had taken place before
the sixteenth century (Wells 1982: 222), and the later general 18th century loss of
/r/ in word-final and preconsonantal environments. The fact remains that pre-con-
sonantal loss is only evidenced before coronal sounds.
Firstly, /r/-less forms:
Table 15. /r/-less NURSE words
hurt a=ti a=ti (h)a=ti

curse ko=si ko=si ko=si
first fo=si fo=si fo=su
dirt do=ti do=ti do=ti
curtsey ko=si - -
The same vaccilation between /o/ and /a/ as in the STRUT set appears here.
And secondly, /r/-full forms:
Table 16. /r/-full NURSE words
burn bron boo=n boo=nu

turn tron too=n too=n
work wro=ko woo=ko woo=ko
3.1.10. FLEECE
The FLEECE set of words, corresponding to ME /e˘/ and /E˘/, is represented in Su-
riname creoles by the English words meet, teeth, speak, leave, sweet, feel, believe,
field, and so on. The normal realization of these words in the Suriname creoles is
[i], a short high front vowel. In other words this set has fallen together with the
KIT set.
Table 17. The FLEECE set
meet m=ti m=ti m=ti

speak p=ki p=ki p=ki
creek kr=ki ki=ki ki=ki
week w=ki w=ki w=ki
sleep sr=bi si=bi -
heap =pi (h)=pi (h)=pi
seed s=ri s=i s=i
greedy gr=di gi=li gi=i
A feature of the Suriname creoles is the membership of an unexpectedly large

number of ME /E˘/ words in the FACE set. We will give these in the next section.
3.1.11. FACE
The FACE set words, corresponding to ME /ai/, /a˘/, and to a certain extent /E˘/, is
represented in Suriname creoles by words derived from Early Modern English.
When followed by a consonant this set is indistinguishable from the DRESS set.
Table 18. The FACE set
make me=ki me=ke mbe=i

take te=ki te=ke te=i
shake se=ki se=ke se=ki
snake sne=ki sine=ki sinde=ki
afraid fre=de fee=le fE=E
eight a=jti a=iti(n) a=iti
payment pa=jman - paima=
When this vowel occurs word-finally it is often diphthongized. The occurrence

of a semi-vowel in Sranan or a diphthongal element in Ndyuka is unforecastable.
Very exceptionally, we also see two words in the above table whose forms seem to
preserve diphthongs word-internally.
Table 19. The FACE set in word-final position

day dej de=i -
today tide= tide= tiÎe=
play prej pee= pE=
pay paj pa=i -
clay klej (obs.) kele=i (< Sranan) -
Words that normally belong to the FLEECE set include:
Table 20. FLEECE at FACE value
meat me=ti me=ti mbe=ti

peas(e) pe=si pe=si pe=si
beam - - ∫e=n
dream dren dee=n -
Some words that should normally belong to the FACE set in fact belong to the
FLEECE set.
Table 21. FACE at FLEECE value
grate gr=ti gi=ti -

wake w=ki (we=ki) (we=ki)
3.1.12. PALM
There are no items belonging to the PALM set in the Suriname creoles.
3.1.13. THOUGHT
In EModE /au/ gave [Å˘] by the mid-seventeenth century, by which time the LOT-
words had [Å]. The neutralization of length in Suriname would nullify this distinc-
tion. So this set falls together with the LOT set as /a/ in Suriname. Examples of
THOUGHT words in the Suriname creoles are the following;
Table 22. The THOUGHT set
saw sa sa= sa=n

talk ta=ki ta=ki ta=ki
walk wa=ka wa=ka wa=ka
bawl ba=ri ba=li ∫a=i
call ka=ri ka=i ka=i
haul a=ri (h)a=li ha=i
The nasal vowel in /sa=n/ probably reflects the influence of Gun /sa=n/ ‘to cut’.
3.1.14. GOAT
The GOAT set of words, corresponding to ME /ç˘/ and /ou/, is represented in Su-
riname creoles by the English words grow, blow, bow, hold, broke, smoke, soap,
clothes, and so on. The normal realization of these words in the Suriname creoles
is [o/ç], a short round mid back vowel. When word-final, a diphthongal realization
/ow/ is also possible.
Table 23. The GOAT set
bow bo bo= ∫ç¤

blow bro boo= ∫çç¤
go go go= go=
grow gro goo= gçç¤
tow tow to=u -
broke bro=ko boo=ko ∫oo=ko
locust tree lo=ksi lo=k=si lo=k=si
soap so=po so=pu so=pu
toad to=do to=do tç¤Îç
clothes kro=si koo=si koo=su
Occasionally a vowel /u/ appears in Saramaccan.
Table 24. GOAT words with exceptional realizations
nose (no=so) (no=su) nu=su

smoke (smo=ko) (somo=ko) sumu=ku
Dobson (1957: 674) does mention an occasional raising in ME of /ç˘/ to /o˘/ which
would give /u/ in EModE: “The raising is not characteristic of Standard English
but seems to have been common in Northern and Eastern dialects; but it made its
way early into London English, in which it was found chiefly in vulgar but occa-
sionally in educated speech.”
Confusingly, in eighteenth century Saramaccan (Schumann 1778) we find smo-
ko but nusso.
Unusually, for over we have a reflex of the stressed vowel in /a/.
Table 25. Over
over a=bra a=ba=a a=∫a

This presumably goes back to the form /çv´r/ recorded by orthoepists (Dobson 1957:
482) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This would naturally give /a/.
The words old and cold display deviant reflexes in the Suriname creoles, even
when compared with words like hold. The reflex is the same as in fowl.
Table 26. GOAT words with deviant reflexes before liquids
old owru o=lo, ha=u (< Dutch?) awoo

cold kowru ko=o -
hold o=ri (h)o=li ho=i
fowl fowru fo=o fou, fo=o
Older recordings such as Van Dyk (ca. 1765) reveal that words like old were origi-
nally trisyllabic – ouwere for [o=wuru]. Dobson (1957: 691) infers from the EModE
evidence that /ç˘/ sometimes became /u˘/ before /l/, with a subsequent diphthongi-
zation to /√u/ (> /au/), i.e. it joined the MOUTH set. Wells (1982: 312) sees rather
an allophonic development before /l/ of London /√u/ (=EModE /o˘/, the GOAT set),
to [ÅU ~ çU ~ aF], etc. This has subsequently been involved in a phonemic split.
We will not dwell further on this.
3.1.15. GOOSE
The GOOSE set of words, corresponding to ME /o˘/, is represented in Suriname cre-
oles by the English words shoot, spook, loose, spoon, fool, too, lose, do, two, and
so on. The normal realization of these words in the Suriname creoles is [u], a short
high back round vowel. Because of the lack of a length distinction this means that
there is no contrast with the FOOT set.
Table 27. The GOOSE set
do du du= Îu=
too tu tu= tu
two tu tu= tu=
true tru tuu= tuu=
shoot su=tu su=tu su=ti
Table 27. (continued) The GOOSE set

play fool prejfu=ru - peevu=

loose lu=su - lu=su
spoon spun supu=n -
root lu=tu lu=tu lu=tu
The following derive from original /eu, iu/.
Table 28. GOOSE words with original /eu, iu/
Jew dju dju= dju=

new njun nju=n nju=n
usen (=used) to nju=su - (n)ju=(n)su
3.1.16. PRICE
The PRICE set of words, corresponding to ME /i˘/, is represented in Suriname cre-
oles by the English words eye, cry, fly, tie, fight, night, white, ripe, wife, knife, time,
find, and so on. The normal realization of these words in the Suriname creoles is
[e], a short mid front vowel. This set falls together with the FACE and DRESS sets.
Table 29. The PRICE set
fight fe=ti fe=ti fe=ti

night ne=ti ne=ti nde=ti
right le=ti le=ti le=ti
white we=ti we=ti we=ti
ripe le=pi le=pi le=pi
knife ne=fi ne=fi -nde=fi
time ten te=n te=(n)
find fe=ni fe=nde fe=n(d)i
When the vowel is word-final we find variation between /e, ej, aj/ as in the FACE set.
Table 30. The PRICE set word-finally
buy baj ba=i ∫a=i

cry krej kee= kE=
dry drej dee= dE=
high ej e=i he=i
tie taj te=i ta=i
3.1.17. CHOICE
The CHOICE set of words, corresponding to ME /çi,
i /, is represented in Suri-
name creoles by words derived from Early Modern English boy, boil (n.), boil (v.),
and spoil. According to Dobson (1957) the /çi/ found in modern Standard English
is derived from one ME variant, alternating in many words with /Ui/ which later
became /ai/ (< /í/) in advanced pronunciation in EModE.
Table 31. The CHOICE set
boy boj bo=i -

boil (v.) bo=ri bo=li ∫o=i
boil (n.) - - ∫o=i
spoil po=ri po=li po=i
The forms for boy are not (necessarily) problematic, but those for the other three
words are. The reason is the unusual combination of organic and anaptyctic vowels
here. Usually, features of the organic vowel are repeated in the anaptyctic vowel:

i i
e e, i
E
ç ç
o o, u
u u
or, as in the case of low vowels, the final consonant plays a role:

aP (a<*a,ç) u
aT i
aK a
oP (o < *√) u
oT i
oK o
Here, however, the diphthong /çi/ gives us /o-i/. The other two diphthongs in Eng-
lish /ai/ and /au/ result in /e-i, e-e/ (see PRICE set) and /o-u, o-o/ (see MOUTH set)
respectively. In other words diphthongs are generally compressed to single vowels,
of forecastable quality. /e/ reflects the features of both /a/ and /i – low] and [front],
and /o/ the features of both /a/ and /u – low] and [round]. But, the /o/ in /bo=ri/ does
not reflect both the features of /ç/ and the features of /i/. We must look further.
Let us start from the anaptyctic vowel /-i/. This implies in general a front organic
vowel. We ignore the fact that coronal consonants following organic historic low
vowels trigger anaptyctic /-i/ because we expect the three English diphthongs to
be treated in a parallel fashion. As Smith (1987: 432) observes “The only case that
would fit the occurring patterns would be a model involving the EModE vowel /√/
followed by an alveolar”. Why /çi/ should result in /√/ is not at all clear. It is of
course the case that the CHOICE set has fallen together with the STRUT set.
Rounded vowels do have another source in the Suriname creoles than English
back or round vowels. We find not infrequent cases of the following (unsystem-
atic) changes:
(9) *wi > u

*we > o
*wa > o
Further, in these cases the comparison drawn with Krio and Jamaican by Smith
(1987) is illuminating:
Table 32. CHOICE words in Jamaican, Krio, and Suriname
English Jamaican Krio Suriname creoles
boy bwaj boj boj

boil (v.) bwajl bwEl *bo=li
spoil pwajl pwEl *po=li
If the diphthongs in the cases with codas were preceded historically by a situation
like that in Krio, then the anaptyctic front vowels can be explained. This is then
due to the organic front vowel present. Note that Krio, like the Suriname creoles,
systematically compresses pre-coda diphthongs /ai, au/ into single vowels. We
could then imagine a derivational path as follows:
(10) boy (bwai) > boi

boil bwail > *bwel > *bwe=li > bo=li
spoil pwail > *pwel > *pwe=li > po=li
Where does this vocalic structure /wai/ come from? Presumably from EME /Ui/.
On the evidence of Wright (1905) [wai] and [wí] only occur after labials. Dob-
son (1957: 825) compares the retention of /Ui/ here to the parallel tendency to
retain /U/ after labials. The intermediate stages he posits are of lesser interest so
we will ignore Dobson’s further discussion here.
3.1.18. MOUTH
The MOUTH set of words, corresponding to ME /u˘/, is represented in Suriname
creoles by the English words proud, house, louse, mouth, cow and so on. The
normal realization of these words in the Suriname creoles is [o], a short high back
round vowel. This set falls together with the GOAT set. There is only one vowel-
final case, varying between /ow/ in Sranan and /au/ in Ndyuka.
Table 33. The MOUTH set

proud pro=do poo=lo poo=lo
louse lo=so lo=su lo=su
house o=so o=su (w)o=su
cow kow ka=u ka=u
ground gron goo=n goo=n, gou=n
3.1.19. NEAR
The NEAR set of words, corresponding to ME /e˘/ and /˘/ before /r/, is represented
in the Suriname creoles by words like deer, here, overseer, beard.
Table 34. The NEAR set
deer d=a d=(j)a -

here dja ( older d=a, h=a) ja= -
overseer basja= bas=a ∫asi(j)a=
beard - - ∫=(j)a
3.1.20. SQUARE
The SQUARE set of words, corresponding to ME /˘/ and /a˘/ before /r/, is repre-
sented in the Suriname creoles by such words as square, care, wear, swear, there.
Unlike in the case of the front high vowel we clearly have two different develop-
ments with regard to /r/. In some cases it is retained, and in others it is not.
Hare shows a peculiar vowel development, which we will discuss together with
shear immediately below.
Table 35. /r/-less SQUARE words
there de de= Î=@

care ke - -
hare ej he= -
Table 36. /r/-full SQUARE words

square kwe=ri kwe=li kwe=i

wear we=ri we=i -
Just as with the FLEECE set of words, there are also words with ME /˘/ that in
standard English are in the NEAR class but show a different development in the
Suriname creoles.
Table 37. /r/-less SQUARE words with NEAR set vowels
ears je=si je=si je=si

shear (share) sise=j, sese=j sese=i sese=i
Table 38. /r/-full SQUARE words with NEAR set vowels
hear je=re je=e je=i

weary we=ri we=li we=i
Shear and hare show the same development in the vowel, neither a lowering diph-
thong nor a monophthong as might be expected, but a raising diphthong. What is
the source of this? Smith (1987: 335–336) provides a long technical discussion,
the conclusion of which is that we may be able to see a distinction between disyl-
labic and monosyllabic /r/-less vowel reflexes here.
(11) Model Suriname

disyllabic ai´ a=ja
au´/ u´ o=wa
i˘´ =(j)a
u˘´ u=wa
monosyllabic ´ e/
ç´ o/ç
I´ ej
Similar reflexes such as [I´] are actually encountered in words like hair in South-
ern England, and something similar is recorded for Cockney.
3.1.21. START
The START set of words, corresponding mostly to ME /a/ before /r/, is represented
in the Suriname creoles by such words as arse, garden, far, tar, yard, sharp, and
shark. Here /r/ is mostly retained. We have one case of early loss (heart) and one
case (arse) where metathesis uniquely occurs in a vowel-initial word. Note how-
ever that this is parallelled by Jamaican /raas/ and similar forms in other Carib-
bean creoles.
Table 39. /r/-less START words
heart a=ti a=ti (h)a=ti

arse la=si la=si -
Table 40. /r/-full START words
bargain ba=rki -
“parmacety” (spermacety) pramase=ti - -
crowbar kruba=ri - ku(lu)ba=li (< Sranan)
far fa=ra fa=a -
star sta=ri sita=li -
tar ta=ra ta=a ta=a, ta=la
yard ja=ri -
sharp sra=pu saa=pu saa=pu
hark a=rki a=l=ki (h)a=ka
shark sa=rki sa=liki -
3.1.22. FORCE
In FORCE words we see three developments: the reflex of possible early pre-con-
sonantal loss in fort, final loss in four and before, and preservation in more, sore,
door etc.
Table 41. /r/-less FORCE words
before bifo=(si) bifo= ∫ifç¤

four fo fo= fç¤
poor thing po=oti poo=ti poot=ma
gourd go=do go=o, go=du go=lu
fort fo=to fo=to fo=to
Table 42. /r/-full FORCE words
more mo=ro mo=o mç¤ç

sore so=ro so=o -
door do=ro fo=o dç¤ç
shore So=ro so=o -
story to=ri to=li -
3.1.23. NORTH
As we can see the contrast between FORCE words and NORTH words – derived
from ME /oC/ before /r – is maintained. Once again we have the two options with
ME short vowels preceding /r/ of possible early pre-consonantal loss and mainte-
nance of /r/.
Table 43. /r/-less NORTH words
short Sa=tu sa=tu sa=ti

mortar ma=ta ma=ta ma=ta
horse a=si a=si ha=si
Table 44. /r/-full NORTH words
corn ka=ru ka=lu ka=lu

man o’war manwa=ri - -
3.1.24. CURE
There is only one clear case of /u˘/ preceding /r/. And this is a non-standard case of
a word which would more normally belong to the FORCE set.
There are also two possible cases of retention of ME /u˘/, i.e. non-shifting of
this to a diphthongal reflex. However, as the developments are not clear, and also
involve forms which do show a development to a diphthong, we will deal with
these cases when we discuss the POWER set.
Table 45. The CURE set
court kru=tu kuu=tu kuu=tu
For an opposite case compare Table 11 above.
3.1.25. FIRE
The FIRE set of words is very small, but does show two interesting forms (deriv-
ing from ME /i/ before /r/). The one is an example of /r/-loss finally, while the
other must derive, because of the double vowel in Ndyuka, from an intermediate
structure like /*a=jeren/. Something resembling the r-full standard pronunciation
variant /ai´rn/ must lie behind this form. As far as the /e/-colour of the vowels is
concerned, we may see a parallel in the non-rhotic Krio /ajEn/.
Table 46. /r/-full FIRE words
fire fa=ja fa=ja fa=ja
Table 47. /r/-less FIRE words
iron - a=jee -
3.1.26. POWER
We have few examples of the POWER set. We assume the /ow/ alternants represent
the shifted reflex of ME /u˘/. The /u(w)/ variants are either non-shifted high vowel
reflexes, or later assimilations of /ow/ to /uw/.
Table 48. The POWER set
flour frowa, fru=wa foo=wa -

sour s(u)wa su=(w)a so=wa
3.1.27. happY
The happY set has two main reflexes. After mid vowels we get frequent assimila-
tion to /e, E/, and in other cases we get /i/. Words illustrating this set include ready,
heavy, busy, bury, sorry, money, curtsey.
Table 49. The happY set

already are=de - -
hungry a=Nri a=Ng=i ha=Ngi
country ko=ndre ko=nde=e kç¤ndE
ugly o=gri o=g=i (w/h)o=gi
belly be=re be=e ∫=E
3.1.28. horsES
This set was added to cover the vowel used in the plural forms of nouns, etc. How-
ever, as plurals, etc. are not formed in this way in the Suriname creoles the only
cases of such a vowel found are two cases of obsolete lexicalized plurals of nouns
ending in sibilants: ashes, peases. This second form is a plural of pease. The form
peas(e) ‘pea’ also exists in the modern languages, but with a different develop-
ment of the vowel: /pe=si/.
Table 50. The horsES set

peases (sic) pisis (?) (1783) - pisis (1778)
ashes a=sisi a=s=si -
3.1.29. lettER
This set also involves an /r/-final variant and an /r/-less one in Sranan. There does
not seem to be any conditioning involved. The /r/-less variant replaces /-´r/ with
/-a/. The /r/-full variant has a final vowel that echoes the previous vowel. Words
illustrating this set include: river, bitter and gutter.
It is clear from older forms that the original starting-point for a word like /ma=sra/
was a form like /*ma=sara/. To reach the modern forms we had syncope in Sranan,
/r/ > /l/, followed by liquid-loss in Ndyuka, and probably a further reduction of final
/v@v/ to /v/ in Saramaccan, which maintains the distinction between the two sets.
Table 51. /r/-less lettER words
river l=ba l=ba -

bitter b=ta b=ta ∫=ta
finger f=Na f=Nga f=Nga
sister s=sa s=sa s=sa
brother bra=da, bra=ra baa=la ∫aa=a
Table 52. /r/-full lettER words

master ma=sra ma=sa=a ma=sa
gutter go=tro go=to=o Ngç¤tç
cover k=bri k=b=i -
over a=bra aba=a a=∫a
3.1.30. commA
The commA set in the Suriname creoles largely comprises words ending in -o(w)
in Standard English. In substandard accents this frequently becomes /-´/.
Table 53. The commA set
narrow na=ra - -
yellow- jara- jaa- -
tomorrow tama=ra tama=a -
mosquito mask=ta makis=ta -
3.1.31. rottEN
The rottEN set has two types of reflex in the Suriname creoles. One set has the
reflex /-i(n)/. This is shared by other creoles in the Atlantic area like Krio, which
is fairly similar to the Suriname creoles in various respects.
Table 54. rottEN words in /-in/
bargain ba=rki - -
rotten rat=n - -
fashion fa=si fa=si fa=si
fasten fa=si fa=si -
The other involves a repetition of the main vowel of the preceding syllable.
Table 55. rottEN words with echo vowels
open o=po o=bo -

cotton- ka=nkan- (kattan- 1783) - kankan- (kattan- 1783)
“usen” (used) ju=nsu - ju=nsu
cushion ku=nsu ku=nsu ku=nsu
payment pajma=n paima=
The two above reflexes also occur with -ing items.
Table 56. -ing words

pudding pudun (1856) - -
herring ele=n - -
cunning ko=ni ko=ni kç¤ni
dumpling ado=mpri do=m=i -
3.1.32. Neutralizations of the Wells sets

The following are the neutralizations of the Wells stressed vowel sets observed in
the Suriname creoles:
(12) KIT = FLEECE

DRESS = FACE = SQUARE = PRICE
TRAP = LOT = BATH = CLOTH = THOUGHT = START = NORTH
STRUT = NURSE = CHOICE
GOAT = FORCE = MOUTH
FOOT = GOOSE = CURE
3.2. Consonantal specifics

We will restrict ourselves to mentioning the most significant deviations from Stan-
dard English consonantal values.
3.2.1. Reflections of non-standard consonantism
3.2.1.1. Palatalization of velars before /a/

The pronunciation of /#k, #g/ as [kj, gj] before /a/ had a brief vogue in standard
forms of English in the seventeenth century. It still occurs in a recessive form
in scattered dialects in England, and is also frequent in English-lexifier creoles
in the Caribbean. As far as London English is concerned, the Survey of English
Dialects recorded it for Cockney in Hackney, E. London in the word cabbage:
[kjæbIdZ].
Table 57. Palatalization of velars before /a/
cat - ka=ti -tja=ti

cabbage ka=bisi (earlier kja=bbisi, tjabbisi) tja=b=si tja=bsi
carry tja=(ri) tja=i tja=
cast-net tjasne=ti - -
candle ka=ndra ka=nda=a ka=nda
braggard bradja=ri - -
The further change of /kja, gja/ to /tSa, dZa/ can be associated with a change in the
substrate. See section 3.2.2.6. below.
3.2.1.2. Preservation, loss, and insertion of /h/

In modern Sranan [h] at the beginning of words is a mark of emphasis. However
up till the 19th century /h/ was a phoneme of Sranan. It also occurs optionally in
Ndyuka and Saramaccan at the present. There is a set of words in the Suriname
creoles that may begin (or in the case of Sranan, began) with /h/, and another set
that always begins with a vowel. These do not however agree with the correspond-
ing sets in English.
Table 58. Preservation, loss, and insertion of /h/
English Sranan Sranan 1855 Ndyuka Saramaccan
hunt o=nti ho=nti (h)o=nti (h)ç¤ndi

heap =pi h=pi (h)=pi (h)=pi
eight a=jti a=ti a=ti(n) a==ti
axe a=ksi a=ksi ak=si -
Indian =Ni ie=ngi =Ng=i =Ngi
ask a=ksi (h)a=ksi a=k=si (h)a=k=si
ugly o=gri (h)o=gri o=g=i (h)o=gi
The answer to the question how this state of affairs could come about must lie in
the presence of a mixture of /h/-less and /h/-full dialects. Cockney, for example, is
like most Southern and Midland dialects in not having initial /h/. However, Cock-
ney is famous for optionally inserting an [h] before vowel-initial words.
The statistical connection between /h/-initial words in Standard English and
those in the Suriname creoles must be explained by a basic Standard English heri-
tage. On the other hand, the occurrence of /h/ in non-/h/-inital words must reflect
the influence of a Cockney-like dialect. There are no /h/-words in Standard Eng-
lish that lack an /h/ completely in all Suriname creoles, a fact which argues for a
greater degree of standard than sub-standard influence.
3.2.2. Substrate features of African origin
3.2.2.1. Implosives
A feature of Saramaccan that escaped notice until quite recently was the fact that it
distinguished plain voiced /b, d/ phonemes from implosive voiced /∫, Î/. This was
first described in Haabo (2000), and is clearly an African feature. The distribution
of plain and implosive stops over the sets of words of different origins is interest-
ing, but has yet to be fully explained. Some examples follow:
Table 59. Examples of implosive voiced stops
English Saramaccan
bottle ∫a=ta
heavy he=∫i
dead Î=ÎE
toad tç¤Îç
Table 60. Examples of plain voiced stops
English Saramaccan
cabbage tja=b=si
every (h)=bi
burn boo=nu
paddle pa=da
drum do=un
doctor da=ta
devil did=∫i
English-derived items with plain /b/ are very rare. Voiced stops in nasal clusters
are however always plain. This also applies in Ndyuka where voiced stops /b, d/
are otherwise normally pronounced as implosives [∫, Î]. There is no phonemic
contrast in Ndyuka, however.
3.2.2.2. Tones
Ndyuka and Saramaccan (but not present-day Sranan) are clear tone languages.
In words of English origin the English stress accent virtually always corresponds
to a high tone. Many examples have already been given in the text so we will not
give any more here.
3.2.2.3. Final nasals

The subject of the developments undergone by the word-final nasals in the Surina-
me creoles is a complex one. We will merely mention here that all three languages
allow for a final /VN/ combination to be pronounced as a nasalized vowel, as in
one of the substrate groups – the Gbe languages. However, from a phonological
point of view there is a lot to be said for analysing these as underlying sequences
in all three languages.
In Sranan in particular the more normal pronunciation is with a vowel (nasal-
ized or not) followed by a velar nasal [N].
3.2.2.4. Initial sibilant clusters

The treatment of initial sibilant clusters by which the sibilant is lost is another
probable substrate effect, and one that appears in other creoles too. It is also one
that does not operate in new or nineteenth-century loans. As such it may provide
clues as to the relative age of an element. In general, nearly all English words of
this kind appearing in the Suriname creoles lose the initial sibilant.
Saramaccan has very few such sibilants preserved, while Ndyuka has more, and
Sranan has most of all. Words only occurring in Sranan are under suspicion of
being late loans.
Table 61. Initial loss of sibilant from cluster
square kwe=ri kwe=li kwe=i

squeeze kw=nsi kw=nsi kw=nji
scrape kre=bi kee=bi -
skin skin sik=n sink=i
squall skwa=la - -
speak p=ki p=ki p=ki
spoil po=ri po=li po=i
spit sp=ti - -
spoon spun supu=n -
Table 61. (continued) Initial loss of sibilant from cluster
stop ta=pu ta=pu -

stand tan ta=n ta=n
stink t=Ni t=Ngi t=Ngi
star sta=ri sita=li -
stewpan stjupan - -
3.2.2.5. Final consonants—vowel anaptyxis

We have discussed this undoubted substrate feature—in neither the Gbe languages
nor in Kikoongo are final consonants permitted—in the course of our treatment of
the various vowel sets.
3.2.2.6. Palatalization of velars

The velar phonemes have optional palatal/palato-alveolar realizations /tj, dj, nj/ in
the Suriname creoles before front vowels. We associate this with a change of /*ki,
kj/ to /tSi, tS/ in Gbe languages,
Table 62. Palatalizaton of velars
English Sranan
skin [skiN ~ stSiN]

catch [k=si ~ tS=si]
give [gi ~ dZi]
shark [sA@>rki ~ sA>@rtSi]
beg [bI@gi ~ bI@dZi]
drink [dr=Ni ~ dr=¯i]
It is not strictly possible to refer to these as allophones, because of the existence of

phonemic contrasts with non-front vowels.
3.2.2.7. Palatalization of /s/ before /i/ and /w, j/

Sranan and Ndyuka exhibit another optional palatalization, this time of /s/ to /S/
before /i/ or /w/. Also /s/ and /j/ combine in onset to give /S/ in Ndyuka. This also
appears to operate in Sranan across word boundaries: fos(i) júru > [fçSju=ru] ‘first
hour’. We interpret the alternate forms provided by Focke (1855) as indicating
the options /sj/ (si) and /S/ (sj) for the onset position as well in 19th century Sranan.
Although /s/ is palatalized preceding /i, j/ in some Gbe lects, we are less certain
that this change is due to substrate effects.
Table 63. /S/ in Sranan and Ndyuka
English Sranan Sranan 1855 Ndyuka Saramaccan
swim swen, Swen - suwe=n (su=n)

sweet sw=ti, Sw=t= - sw=ti, Sw=ti (su=ti)
see si, Si - s=, S= (s=)
sleep sr=bi - si=bi, Si=bi -
short Sa=tu siättoe, sja=toe sa=tu (sa=ti)
shore So=ro sjo=ro so=o -
shame Sen siem^, sjem^ sjen, Sen (se=n)
3.2.3. Innovations
3.2.3.1. /v/ > /b/

Most words of English origin in the Suriname creoles which had a /v/-sound re-
place this with a stop. This change is probably rather an innovation of the pidgin
precursor of the Suriname creoles, since items from Gbe languages and Kikoongo
which contained a /v/-sound retain this in Ndyuka and Saramaccan, and have al-
tered this to /f/ in modern Sranan. This last appears to be a nineteenth century
change, however.
The same change is recessive in other English-lexifier creoles of the Atlantic
region.
Table 64. /v/ > /b/
heavy (e=bi) (e=bi), =bi (he=∫i)

Table 64. (continued) /v/ > /b/

over a=bra a=ba=a a=∫a

river l=ba l=ba -
love lo=bi lo=bi lo=∫i
3.2.3.2. // > /t, f/

The Suriname creoles display both of the most frequent replacement sounds for /T/
in English. However, the distribution is unusual. English syllable-initial /T/ goes
to /t/, and English syllable-final /T/ to /f/. Note that due to anaptyxis all the realiza-
tions are syllabe-initial in the Suriname creoles.
Table 65. /T/ > /t, f/
think - - ta (1778) > n=Nga

throw away trowe= towe= tu=E
thrust tru=su too=si tuu=si
nothing no=ti -no=ti
poor thing po=oti poo=ti poot=-
teeth t=fi t=fi -
mouth mo=fo mo=fu -
broth brafu= baafu= baafu
3.2.3.3. // > /d, r/

There are not very many examples of items with English /D/. In a number of them a de-
velopment to /d/ is observable. The item t’ other shows a development /D/ to /r/. How-
ever this is parallelled in this word by forms in other creoles such as Jamaican /ta=ra/ and
Gullah /t√@R´/. Finally, the developments in Nduka (and Saramaccan) in brother are a
purely internal affair of the Suriname creoles, which we will briefly discuss below.
Table 66. /D/ > /d, r/
this d=si d=si Î=s=

there de de Î=
them den den Îe=
feather fe=da - -
together tige=dre - -
t’other tra (older ta=ra) taa= -
brother bra=da baa=la ∫aa=a
3.2.3.4. Liquids
In general there are three Suriname-internal developments concerning liquids.
Firstly, a tendency to neutralize the distinction between /l/ and /r/. In Ndyuka
and Saramaccan the result is always /l/. In Sranan we see a more complex near-
neutralization. “Near-neutralization”, because the process is not totally complete.
Word-internally liquids go to [r], and initially to [l]. The first liquid also goes to /l/
if pre-stress, even if a vowel precedes.
Secondly, a tendency to lose word-internal liquids altogether in Ndyuka and
Saramaccan. In Ndyuka intervocalic liquids tend to be preserved only if the sur-
rounding vowels are different; they are lost if the vowels are identical. Word-in-
ternal liquids are virtually always lost in Saramaccan, except in recent loanwords.
Clusters were epenthesized away, followed by loss of the liquid in Ndyuka and
Saramaccan.
Table 67. The treatment of liquids

love lo=bi lo=bi lo=∫i
rub lo=bi lo=bi lo=∫i
rain ale=n ale=n -
cully ko=ri ko=li kç¤i
bury be=ri be=li ∫e=i
belly be=re be=e ∫=E
tomorrow tama=ra tama=a -
clothes kro=si koo=si koo=su
Table 67. (continued) The treatment of liquids
scratch kra=si kaa=si kaa=si

middle m=ndri m=nd=i m=ndi
The third tendency is one of liquefaction of word-internal /d/’s following earlier

liquids. This is nowadays restricted to Ndyuka and Saramaccan, although in older
Sranan recordings it makes a sporadic appearance. As we can see, subsequent /l/-
loss has virtually removed the resultant liquid in Saramaccan.
Table 68. The liquefaction of /d/

afraid fre=de fee=le fE=E
proud pro=do poo=lo (poo=lo)
brother bra=da baa=la ∫aa=a
broad bra=di baa=la ∫aa=i
blood bru=du buu=lu ∫uu=u
flood fru=du (fuu=du) foo=o, foo=u
4. Conclusion
The Saramaccan form /∫aa=i/ ‘broad’ just quoted illustrates by itself how far re-
moved phonologically the Suriname creoles are from the – standard and substan-
dard – London English on which they are ultimately based. This form begins with
an African substrate-derived implosive stop. Then we have a vowel that is in ori-
gin an epenthetic vowel whose function was to break up the original liquid cluster.
The liquid itself has been lost although it was still present in the 18th century. Then
we have a vowel from the LOT set, but bearing a high tone. The original final /d/
was first subject to liquefaction, and then lost. Finally we have an anaptyctic vow-
el /-i/, whose original function was to prevent the occurrence of final consonants.
The only segments corresponding directly to the original structure are the /∫/ and
the /a=/, and even they are very un-English!
Selected references
Please consult the General references for titles mentioned in the text but not included
in the references below. For a full bibliography see the accompanying CD-ROM.
Arends, Jacques
1999 The origin of the Portuguese element in the Surinam creoles. In: Huber and
Parkvall (eds.), 195–208.
Carlin, Eithne and Jacques Arends (eds.)
2002 Atlas of the Languages of Suriname. Leiden: KITLV Press.
Dobson, Eric J.
1957 English Pronunciation, 1500–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Focke, H.C
1855 Neger-Engelsch Woordenboek. Leiden: P.H. van den Heuvell.
Haabo, Vinije
2000 Fonologie van het Saramaccaans. Unpublished manuscript, University of
Leiden.
Matthews, W.
1935 Sailors’ pronunciation in the second half of the seventeenth century. Anglia
59: 192–251.
Schumann, C.L.
1778 Saramaccan Deutsches Wörter-Buch. [MS., Moravian Brethren, Bambey,
Surinam. Republished in Hugo Schuchardt, Die Sprache der Saramakkaneger
in Surinam (= Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen
te Amsterdam, Afdeling Letterkunde Nieuwe Reeks XIV, 6). Amsterdam:
Johannes Müller.]
Smith, Norval S.H.
1987 The genesis of the creole languages of Surinam. D.Litt. thesis, University of
Amsterdam.
1999a Pernambuco to Surinam 1654–1665. The Jewish slave controversy. In: Huber
and Parkvall (eds.), 251–298.
1999b The vowel system of 18th-century St Kitts Creole: Evidence for the history of
the English creoles? In: Baker and Bruyn (eds.), 145–172.
2001 Reconstructing Proto-Caribbean Pidgin English. Paper given at the Pidginfest,
University of Westminster, April 2001.
2002 The history of the Surinamese creoles II: Origin and differentiation. In: Carlin
and Arends (eds.), 131–151.
Van den Berg, Margot
2000 “Mi no sal tron tongo”. Early Sranan in court records 1667–1767. MA thesis,
University of Nijmegen.
Van Dyk, P.
ca. 1765 Nieuwe en nooit bevoorens geziene Onderwyzinge in het Bastert Engels, of
Neeger Engels, zoo als het zelve in de Hollandsze Colonien gebruikt word
(...). Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont. [Republished with an English transla-
tion in Jacques Arends and Matthias Perl (eds.), 1995. Early Suriname Creole
Texts: A Collection of 18th-century Sranan and Saramaccan Documents
(= Bibliotheca Ibero-Americana 49). Frankfurt am Main/Madrid: Vervuert
Verlag/Iberoamericana, 93–242.]
Introduction: varieties of English in the Pacific and
Australasia*
1. A note on geographical coverage
This part of the Handbook provides linguistic sketches of the most significant
Englishes currently spoken in the Pacific (on islands between the American con-
tinents, Asia and Australia) and Australasia (in Australia and New Zealand and on
neighbouring islands of the South Pacific Ocean). These sketches cover a range of
the different variety types (including both native and contact varieties) that have
evolved as a consequence of the spread of English into these regions. Even though
the Hawaiian Islands are politically part of the United States, and have been since
1958, they are included in this volume on account of their geographical location
in the northern Pacific, and the special linguistic relationship with other Pacific
rather than North American varieties.
2. Australian and New Zealand English
Both Australia and New Zealand have in common a relatively recent history of
European settlement and both share transplanted Englishes. Towards the end of
the 18th century, the population of the British Isles was only about 15 million. A
considerable number of these people spoke their own Celtic languages and little
or no English. Moreover, a good many of the English speakers spoke only their re-
gional dialects and dialect differences could be striking – we are after all talking of
a time when horses and sailing vessels were the most efficient means of travel and
communication. This then was roughly the state of the language when exploration
southwards established the first English-speaking settlements in the Antipodes.
For Australia, the first appearance of English coincides with the arrival of Cap-
tain Cook in 1770. However, it wasn’t until later in 1788 that we can really talk
about a European settlement there. Over the course of the next 20 years or so Brit-
ain established its first penal colony in Sydney in order to alleviate the problem of
its overcrowded prisons. The early arrivals were therefore largely prisoners, prison
officers and their families. Non-convicts, or free settlers as they were known, did
not really reach significant numbers until the middle of the 19th century.
On the other side of the Tasman, English got off to a later and somewhat slower
start. Cook had charted the islands around the same time he visited Australia, and
568 Kate Burridge and Bernd Kortmann
although there was unofficial settlement in New Zealand as early as the late 1700s
(involving small numbers of people often from Australia), the official colony was
not established until 1840. After this time immigration from both Australia and
Britain increased dramatically.
The different mixes of original dialects, the different dates of settlement, the dif-
ferent settlement patterns and the contact with the different indigenous languages
have meant that varieties growing up in Australia and New Zealand are already
quite distinct. The physical separation from other English-speaking regions has
allowed this distinctiveness to flourish. Regional variation within Australian and
New Zealand English, however, is minor compared to other varieties. The blend-
ing of the original British dialects (the so-called “melting pot” effect) has left be-
hind remarkable regional homogeneity – even within Australia, a continent some
thirty times the size of Britain. Notwithstanding stylistically and socially marked
variation, there is very little in the way of clearly identifiable regional variation.
There is one notable exception; namely, those speakers from the Southern part of
the South Island of New Zealand. This group have a striking semi-rhotic variety
of English; in other words, /r/ is (variably) pronounced in postvocalic positions,
especially after the NURSE vowel (cf. chapters by Gordon and Maclagan and also
Bauer and Warren, this Handbook).
However, lay perceptions are quite different. Speakers are often puzzled by
linguists’ claims of regional homogeneity, pointing to obvious vocabulary differ-
ences they have encountered in their travels. A type of large, smooth sausage in
Auckland is polony, in Christchurch saveloy and in Southland Belgium or Belgium
roll/sausage. Both polony and saveloy are familiar terms for some Australians, al-
though people in Adelaide (South Australia) are more comfortable with fritz, Bris-
banites (Queensland) and Sydney-siders (New South Wales) with devon. Lexical
variation of this kind will always exist of course and is certainly fascinating to
speakers, but it does not make for distinct dialects. Moreover, popular claims that
people can identify someone’s place of origin purely on the basis of how s/he
speaks are exaggerated. With the exception of the so-called Southland “burr” just
mentioned, accent and dialect differences are more likely to be a matter of statis-
tical tendency, with certain differences occurring more or less frequently in one
place than another. Some of these differences have existed from the beginning of
settlement. They evolved because of the different dialect mixes in each region.
The Southland “burr”, for example, can be explained by the significant number of
Scots who settled in these southern regions.
Although there is limited regional diversity now, we might expect that over time
both physical and social distance will have the effect of increasing regional differ-
ences in Australia and New Zealand. Also the fact that there is no single prestige
regional variety of the language in either country means that varieties will be freer
to go their separate ways. In other words, speakers will not want to shift towards
a distinctively Canberra or Wellington usage because it has more status. Certainly
Introduction: varieties of English in the Pacific and Australasia 569
the separation of urban and rural communities looks currently to be inspiring the
richest regional diversity in these places. In Australia, for example, we already
find significant differences, particularly with respect to speed and also broadness
of accent. For example, people in the city of Melbourne (Victoria) tend to speak
faster than those in rural Victoria of the same socio-economic background. There
is also a greater proportion of broad speakers in the rural regions. This is one popu-
lar stereotype that does appear to have some basis in reality (although cf. Bradley,
this Handbook). Rural speakers of vernacular varieties are not only showing dis-
tinctness of accent and vocabulary, there are also signs of significant grammatical
differences emerging (cf. Pawley’s contribution in this Handbook). But social fac-
tors are crucial here as well. It is difficult to talk about regionally defined variation
without appealing to social aspects of the area. Non-standard vernacular varieties
are also typical of the lower socio-economic classes in a speech community – basi-
cally, the higher up the social scale you go, the closer the speakers tend to be to the
standard language and therefore the less remarkable the regional differences are.
Moreover these grammatical features are by no means confined to the vernacular
Englishes of Australia and New Zealand. Features such as irregular verb forms,
special pronouns for plural “you”, and never as a general negator crop up in non-
standard varieties all over the English-speaking world.
Effects of globalization are also contributing to this increasing diversity by fos-
tering new socially-defined ethnic variation in these countries. Massive flows of
people, including tourists, refugees and migrants, have produced an intermixing
of people and cultures which is unprecedented. Clearly culture and language at
the local level have been changed irrevocably by this “inter-national” movement
of people. And as each individual group seeks to assert its own identity, different
ethnic varieties of English can become an important means of signalling the group
boundaries. Italian or Greek features in a group’s English, for example, can be
potent markers of that group’s ethnicity. To give some idea of the potential for
diversity here, consider that over the last 30 years or so, speakers from well over
40 different ethnic groups have migrated to Australia. These different ethnic mixes
are now adding a vibrant new socially relevant aspect to Australian English. In cit-
ies such as Melbourne and Sydney, for example, the Italian and Greek communi-
ties are of particular interest because of their size and also because they have been
in these places long enough now to have teenagers who were born in the country.
Ethnicity is clearly a crucial part of social identity and is something that people
want to demonstrate through their use of language. Even though New Zealand
English and Australian English have incorporated very little from Maori or Ab-
original languages respectively, varieties of Maori English and Aboriginal English
are providing an interesting new dimension to the “Extraterritorial Englishes” in
the Antipodes (cf. section 3 below on contact varieties). In the face of the disap-
pearance of local indigenous languages in these two countries, such distinct Eng-
lishes have become an important means of signalling these speakers’ cultural and
social identity. Of the 200–250 Aboriginal languages that existed in Australia at

the time of earliest European contact, only around 90 have survived and of these
as few as 20 can be described as robust; e.g. Warlpiri, Arrente and Western Desert,
each with about 3,000 speakers (see Schmidt 1990). In New Zealand, by the 1980s
the number of Maori speakers was already as low as 12% of the total Maori popu-
lation. Few contexts remain where Maori is the natural means of communication
(cf. Benton 1991). In both Australia and New Zealand vigorous efforts are now
being made to maintain, even revive, these languages, and time will tell how suc-
cessful they are in reversing the overall trend toward language death.
Another consequence of the rise of the global village is that native Englishes
such as New Zealand English and Australian English are now much more open
than ever before to global influence. There is of course a pervasive American di-
mension to much of what is global – a clear distinction between globalization and
American cultural imperialism is at times difficult to maintain. It would be surpris-
ing therefore, given the global presence of the United States and the inevitable
loosening of ties between Britain and its former Antipodean colonies, if there were
not some sort of linguistic steamrolling going on. Certainly, the “Americanization”
of Australian and New Zealand English is currently a hot topic within these speech
communities – and reactions are generally hostile. Newspaper headlines like “Fac-
ing an American Invasion” go on to “condemn this insidious, but apparently virile,
infection from the USA”. In letters to the editor and talkback calls on the radio,
speakers rail against “ugly Americanisms” (many of which, it turns out, are not
Americanisms at all; cf. the discussion in Burridge and Mulder 1998: ch. 12). Lay
concerns about language usage are not based on genuine linguistic matters, but
reflect deeper and more general social judgements. In this case, the current hostil-
ity towards American usage is undoubtedly born of the linguistic insecurity that
comes from the dominance of America as a cultural, political, military and eco-
nomic superpower.
In fact, the actual impact of American English on Antipodean Englishes is diffi-
cult to determine. Most of the complaints centre around vocabulary. Lexical influ-
ences are the most obvious to speakers and intensify the wide-spread perception of
American influence. This is undoubtedly fuelled by the high visibility of spelling
– although Australian and New Zealand spelling conventions derive traditionally
from the British, the technological presence of America means this is an area of
rapidly growing American influence. Certainly there are areas, such as fast food in-
dustry and technology, where American influence on the lexicon is evident. There
is also a strong American aspect to teenage slang. Elsewhere, however, influence
remains slight. Phonological and grammatical transfers are also not much in evi-
dence. Apparent American imports in the area of phonology include features of
stress (such as primarily in place of primarily), affrication of /tr/ and /str/ (where
tree sounds much like “chree”) and flapping or tapping of inter-vocalic /t/ (where
latter and ladder become similar in pronunciation). Since examples like these il-
lustrate natural phonological changes, however, it is difficult to establish the exact

role of American influence here. Contact with American English could simply be
accelerating trends already underway. Apparent grammatical imports such as an
increase in the use of the subjunctive could also represent independently moti-
vated change rather than direct borrowing. And while the resurgence of conserva-
tive features like gotten may well be due to American English influence too, it is
also possible that these come from the vestiges of dialectal users downunder (cf.
further discussion in Hundt et al., this Handbook).
As a final note, we use linguistic labels such as Australian English or New Zea-
land English, as if each were a single immutable language variety. Clearly, this
is not the reality. The reality is that speakers from different regions, from differ-
ent social classes, of different ages, of different occupations, of different gender
identification, of different sexual orientation will all talk differently. People talk
differently in different contexts too – an informal chat, an interview, a lecture and
so on. It must always be remembered that labels like Australian English or New
Zealand English are convenient cover terms for what are really clumps or clusters
of mutually intelligible speech varieties.
2.1. A note on source material

For both New Zealand and Australian English there are several notable corpora
that the authors here have drawn from: the Canterbury Corpus (containing record-
ings over the last 10 years made by students enrolled in the New Zealand English
Course at the University of Canterbury), the Wellington Corpus of Written New
Zealand English (comprising texts from 1986), the Australian Corpus of English
held at Macquarie University (one million words of published material from 1986).
Descriptions in the morphosyntax chapters also derive from elicitation tests and
popular surveys (local or national-wide), as well as secondary references (such as
usage guides and grammatical handbooks).
3. Contact varieties
A number of the contributions in this Handbook focus on the English-based pidgin

and creole languages in the Pacific and Australasia. Generally speaking, pidgins
are a type of makeshift language that springs up when speakers of different lin-
guistic backgrounds come into contact and need to talk. In the formation of a
pidgin, there are always two (or more) languages that are involved, although the
pidgin takes one language, usually the socially dominant one, as its point of origin
for the lexicon. It is this language that contributes most of the vocabulary, though
significant features of the grammar are likely to derive from other sources. At one
time there were many more pidgin varieties in these regions. In the pearling fisher-
ies around Broome in Western Australia, for example, pidginized forms of Malay
were used during the early part of the last century. But pidgins such as this one are
typically as short-lived as the social circumstances that spawned them and Broom
Pearling Pidgin is now extinct. If the contact ceases or the different groups end up
learning each other’s language, the pidgin will then drop by the wayside.
If the situation stabilizes, however, and the contact continues, there can be a very
different outcome as the language expands beyond its original very limited context
of use. Change is then typically rapid, especially in vocabulary and grammar, as
the makeshift pidgin metamorphoses into a fully-fledged and dynamic language,
able to serve its speakers in all kinds of settings and circumstances. In theory it is
straight-forward to say when a pidgin ends and a creole begins, at least according to
those definitions that see pidgins and creoles as separate stages in a single process
of development – as soon as children in a community are brought up speaking the
pidgin as their first language, it becomes a creole. Accordingly, a creole is simply a
nativized pidgin. The linguistic reality, however, is another matter – linguistically it
is impossible to say where the boundary lies. Even before a pidgin becomes some-
body’s first language, it can develop a highly elaborated structure (close to that of
a so-called creole), if it is used for a number of different purposes. For this reason
some linguists avoid the labels “pidgin” and “creole” and refer to these varieties
straightforwardly as “contact languages” (cf. Crowley, this Handbook).
Clearly, both Australia and New Zealand offer situations where English comes
into close contact with other languages. Since European contact, Aboriginal Aus-
tralia and Maori New Zealand have seen members of several language groups liv-
ing in the same community and engaging in daily interaction. In Australia, pidgins
based on English appeared not long after the arrival of the Europeans. The pidgin
varieties became increasingly important for contact, not only between Aboriginal
speakers and English speakers, but also as a lingua franca between speakers of
different Aboriginal languages.
It has long been observed that linguistic change follows closely on the heels of
drastic social upheaval. We see striking illustration of this in the evolution of the
creoles in these regions. After the arrival of Europeans in Australia, for example,
there came extreme social disruption with the movement of Aboriginal people to
mission stations, pastoral properties and towns. More than ever before Aboriginal
people from different linguistic groups found themselves together and needing to
communicate. Although there had always been widespread bilingualism among
adults, this was not adequate to cover communicative needs in these new settle-
ments, where children of different linguistic backgrounds were thrown together
and where there was continued uneven interaction between Aboriginal and Eng-
lish speakers. Pidgins therefore fulfilled the communicative needs of these speak-
ers. Out of these, creoles evolved in the Kimberley Region, the Roper River area
and parts of North Queensland. These various English-based creoles have much in
common, but they also show some regional differences too. These depend on the
Aboriginal languages represented in the community where the pidgin originated

and also influences from other pidgins and creoles brought into Australia from the
outside (cf. Malcolm, this Handbook).
In New Zealand the situation was somewhat different. As Ross Clark (1979)
documents, in the early 1880s a “foreigner-talk” system known as South Seas
Jargon was used in various parts of the Pacific primarily between European whal-
ers and indigenous crew members, some of whom were Maori. In New Zealand
this jargon developed into Maori Pidgin English which was used for early contact
between Maori and Pakeha (or European New Zealanders). However, this pidgin
never stabilized enough to evolve further. For one, in New Zealand there was only
ever a single indigenous language, so there was never a need for a lingua franca
between indigenous groups as there was in Australia. The historical records also
suggest that the most common pattern was for English speakers to learn enough
Maori to communicate. As a result the New Zealand pidgin was short-lived. How-
ever, Maori continue to be recognizable linguistically when speaking English
through their preferential use of a wide range of linguistic forms, especially with
respect to pronunciation (cf. Warren and Bauer, this Handbook).
The Pacific/Australasia part of this Handbook contains descriptions of six other
contact languages: Bislama (as spoken in Vanuatu), Solomon Islands Pijin, Tok
Pisin (as spoken in Papua New Guinea), Hawai‘i Creole, Fiji English and Nor-
folk Island-Pitcairn English. The first three creoles all have their roots in earlier
Melanesian Pidgin and share lexical patterning and a number of structural charac-
teristics. However, different external influences (for example, contact with French
for Bislama and with German for Tok Pisin) and interaction with different local
languages have given rise to distinct developments within these varieties. Hawai‘i
Creole is another English-lexifier contact language, but also draws vocabulary
from Hawaiian and Japanese. Although its story is very different, it does have epi-
sodes in common with the creoles from the southwestern Pacific: (1) early links
with South Seas Jargon (as mentioned above, a jargon variety used for short-term
communication by crews on ships and by individuals on shore in various loca-
tions around the Pacific Islands) and (2) input from Melanesian Pidgin spoken by
labourers recruited for the sugarcane plantations in the early 1800s. These four
Pacific contact varieties have, since the beginning of the 20th century, undergone
substantial functional and structural expansion.
Fiji English shows many characteristically creole features although it is techni-
cally not a creole. For one, there is the absence of a stable pidgin at an earlier stage.
Descriptions such as “creoloid” and “semi-creole” for this variety attest to the
blurred nature of the category creole (cf. discussion earlier). Fiji English also has
historical links with the previous creoles and these links are still evident in lexical
and grammatical relics of Melanesian Pidgin (originally introduced by plantation
labourers during the 19th century).
Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English represents the linguistic outcome of contact be-

tween the British English of the Bounty mutineers and Tahitian. It is a remarkable
example of a contact language since we know precisely the number of speakers
who originally settled on Pitcairn in 1790, the places of origin of these speakers
and even their names. However, its subsequent development has not yet been fully
established and although there are clear early influences from the Pacific Pidgin
English of the Melanesian islanders on Norfolk, the exact relationship of Norfolk
Island-Pitcairn English to the contact varieties just described is problematic.
Variation within these speech communities is considerable. Speakers of Mela-
nesian Pidgin, for example, frequently switch between, say, Bislama or Tok Pisin
and their local variety of Standard English. The situation can become even more
complicated because of the so-called “creole continuum”. Take the example of the
interaction of Kriol with Aboriginal English and Australian English. As previously
discussed, linguistic labels such as these give the impression of easily identifiable
and neatly compartmentalized entities, but such tidy classifications are not reality.
The many different varieties of English and creole that Aboriginal people speak
range from something which is virtually identical to Standard Australian English
in everything but accent (dubbed the “acrolect”) through to pure creole which is so
remote from Standard Australian English as to be mutually unintelligible (dubbed
the “basilect”). In between these two polar extremes you find a whole range of va-
rieties (or “mesolects”). Generally, speakers have command of a number of these
varieties and they move along the continuum according to the situation and the
audience.
The label “variety of English” might at first seem problematic when dealing
with these creole varieties, especially at the basilectal end of the continuum. These
are very different Englishes in all respects – vocabulary, grammar and phonology.
The very “unEnglish-looking” structures that characterize creoles, as well as their
unique development (as contact languages resulting from pidgins), set them apart.
There is also the question of the lack of mutual comprehension. Moreover, these
languages have distinct names of course – Bislama, Tok Pisin, Kriol. The speakers
themselves would never call their language a kind of English. Nonetheless, these
contact languages share vocabulary and grammatical features that align them with
the English of the international community. All have links of some sort with the
group of continental Germanic dialects that ended up in the British Isles some-
time in the 5th century AD. These off-springs of English are clearly an important
dimension to the diversification of English world-wide (cf. also discussion in the
General Introduction to this Handbook).
4. A note on the order of chapters
The chapters are arranged (partly on linguistic and partly on geographical grounds)
in the following order: New Zealand English, Maori English, Australian English,
Aboriginal English together with Kriol and Torres Strait Creole (Australia), Bis-
lama (Vanuatu), Solomon Islands Pijin, Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea), Hawai‘i
Creole, Fiji English and Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English.
Clearly, all the chapters are self-contained entities and are not intended to be
read left to right, chapter by chapter – although of course readers can do that if
they wish. Nonetheless, the reader’s attention is drawn to certain contributions in
the Handbook that complement each other and are best read as companion chap-
ters. The shared linguistic features and trends between Australia and New Zealand
and the question of an Antipodean standard (as distinct from the supervarieties of
the northern hemisphere) make these chapters obvious ones for comparison. Simi-
larly, since Maori English and Australian Aboriginal English show some of the
same characteristics as their respective standard languages, the readers should also
think of these chapters collectively. A tangled linguistic history unites the various
contact varieties that follow. The Australian creoles that feature earlier also share
in this tangled history. The similar socio-historical conditions that gave rise to
these off-springs of English, coupled with common input early on from nautical
jargon, have given rise to obvious similarities between these varieties (similarities
also due in part to linguistic universals). Particularly striking are the linguistic re-
semblances between the contact varieties of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua
New Guinea. Their common origin in earlier Melanesian Pidgin naturally unites
the three relevant chapters here, and readers will find Crowley’s sociohistorical
backdrop for Bislama a useful backdrop also for Solomon Islands Pijin and Tok
Pisin. The account of Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English is placed last in this group of
Pacific contact varieties on account of the fact that the diffusion of creole features
from St Kitts now places this variety linguistically closer to Atlantic creoles.
All varieties have counterpart chapters in both the phonology and morphosyntax
volumes. There is not complete parallelism, however. Variation in New Zealand
English phonology has two special chapters devoted to it – one on general social
and regional differences, especially those that relate to on-going changes, and
another that looks specifically at Maori English. Morphosyntactic variation in
New Zealand English, on the other hand, is included within only the one general
chapter. The reader’s attention is also drawn to an additional contribution in the
morphosyntax volume. This is a chapter that deals specifically with features of
lexical morphology in Australian English.
4.1. The chapters on phonology

In the opening chapter, Bauer and Warren provide an account of the consonant and
vowel systems, as well as the prosodic features, of New Zealand English. Atten-
tion is also paid to contact with Maori, in particular the pronunciation of words of
Maori origin. The next two chapters are natural companion chapters. Gordon and
Maclagan focus on the social and regional variation in New Zealand English pho-
nology. Although, as they point out, regional variation is slight compared to other
varieties, there are notable differences to be heard in the Southern part of the South
Island (the variable rhoticity of Southland-Otago is something Bauer and Warren
also take up in their chapter). These two authors highlight in particular those as-
pects of variation that are indicative of vowel and consonant changes in progress
(e.g. NEAR-SQUARE merger, vocalization of /l/ and affrication of /tr/ and /str/). In a
separate chapter, Warren and Bauer go on to focus on the characteristics of Maori
English phonology. They emphasize that although many of these consonant and
vowel features appear in Pakeha English (spoken by European New Zealanders),
they are nonetheless more prevalent and more consistently maintained in Maori
English and therefore go to make this a distinct variety. Strikingly different fea-
tures also obtain within Maori English prosody, most notably with respect to voice
quality and rhythm.
The next three chapters move to Australia. Horvath examines the features of
Australian English phonology, the most significant being the vowels. She also
picks up on social dimensions, focusing on those sounds that are indicative of
change in progress. Bradley takes up the issue of change but looks at regional
characteristics. As alluded to earlier in this Introduction, these regional differences
are not striking but they do exist and they are on the increase, especially within the
system of vowels. Of particular interest with respect to variation elsewhere in the
English-speaking world are the regional differences in the BATH vowel class. In
the next chapter, Malcolm examines the complex variation that exists within the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speech communities. This includes the pho-
nological systems of two creole varieties, Kriol and Cape York Creole (with focus
on the basilectal varieties), and also Aboriginal English. Malcolm concludes by
examining some of the serious educational implications, especially the question
of better integration of these Englishes into the school system.
The next chapters present sketches of the other contact varieties. Crowley be-
gins with a description of the phonological features of Bislama. This is followed
by Jourdan and Selbach on Solomon Islands Pijin and Smith on Tok Pisin. Sakoda
and Siegel’s account focuses on the variety of Hawai‘i English that differs most
strikingly from mainstream varieties of English (namely, the basilectal or “heavy”
varieties) and compares these to the mesolectal varieties placed closer to English.
The descriptions in all four chapters attest to the rich diversity that exists in the
Englishes of these regions. This is diversity involving an array of different factors

such as education, bilingualism and location (in particular, urban versus rural).
Tent and Mugler go on to examine the extraordinary variation that exists within
the phonological systems of the different varieties that are included under the
broad umbrella of Fiji English. The authors point out that variation here depends
largely on two factors: (1) education of the speaker and (2) first language of the
speaker (principally Fijian and Fiji Hindi). Accordingly, these authors divide their
discussion into “Pure Fiji English” (spoken by indigenous Fijians and part-Eu-
ropeans) and “Indo-Fijian Fiji English” (spoken by Indo-Fijians or “Fiji Indi-
ans”) – readers are also provided with a brief phonological sketch of Fiji Hindi for
comparison. Mühlhäusler and Ingram conclude this part of the Handbook with a
description of the most salient aspects of the phonological system of Norfolk Is-
land-Pitcairn English, specifically that variety spoken on Norfolk Island (Norfuk).
They base their analysis initially on recordings made in 1957 (the Flint dialogues),
which they then compare with recordings made in 2002 of seven Norfuk speak-
ers.
4.2. The chapters on morphosyntax

The first two papers in this part of the Handbook are heavily corpus-based. Hundt,
Gordon and Hay present their analysis of the standard and non-standard features
of New Zealand English morphosyntax as they stand in relation to British English,
American English and also Australian English. The authors identify those features
that are genuinely New Zealand English and those that are used either more or
less frequently in New Zealand English as against other varieties. Their chapter
highlights the problem of identifying the shared morphosyntactic features that are
the result of external influences (principally in this case American English influ-
ence) and those that represent parallel but independent developments. Collins and
Peters’ analysis of Australian English is a useful companion chapter. In particular,
these authors examine the case for endonormativity; in other words, the extent
to which Australian English is “consolidating its own norms as an independent
national standard”. Comparisons are made with New Zealand English and the two
northern hemisphere standards.
Pawley’s contribution looks at regional variation within Australia, with a focus
on Tasmania. In particular, he examines the “Australianness” of what he calls
Australian Vernacular English, an informal spoken English, largely working class,
male and rural. This variety has a number of non-standard grammatical features
that can be found in many places where English is spoken, including other parts
of Australia. However, Pawley also identifies some distinctive features, most no-
tably the system of gender assignment (where animate pronouns he/she are used
in reference to inanimate objects). The next paper by Simpson shows the interface
between lexicon and grammar. One earmark of Australian English has become the
rich system of nominal derivation that produces forms like Chrissie (< Christmas)
and rellie or rello (< relative), journo (< journalist) and arvo (< afternoon), or
what Simpson calls “hypocoristics”. Here she examines the meanings and uses
of these forms and also the linguistic processes that produce them. In the next
chapter, Malcolm compares the morphology and syntax of Aboriginal English and
Kriol and Torres Strait Creole (in particular how these last two differ from Atlantic
creoles).
The following four chapters are also concerned with contact varieties and com-
plement each other and Malcolm’s contribution nicely. Crowley presents the mor-
phosyntactic features of Bislama, Jourdan the features of Solomon Islands Pijin,
Smith those of Tok Pisin and Sakoda and Siegel those of Hawai‘i Creole (with fo-
cus on the basilectal varieties). The grammatical structures examined in these four
chapters are strikingly different from mainstream Englishes. They include, for ex-
ample, extensive patterns of verb serialization, lack of inflectional morphology,
elaborate pronoun systems, distinguishing, for example, dual, sometimes even
trial, and plural as well as inclusive and exclusive first person.
In the chapter that follows, Mugler and Tent focus on those features that are
distinctively Fijian English and those shared by other varieties of English. Many
of these features are creole-like. The descriptions here are based on 80 hours of re-
cordings, television news and advertisements and also written sources (principally
newspapers). Once again, variation is rife within this speech community (again
depending largely on education and different first languages).
Finally, Mühlhäusler’s contribution highlights the creole features of Norfuk that
are shared with other Pacific contact varieties, and also those features that place
this variety typologically closer to the creoles of the Atlantic. The reader’s atten-
tion is also drawn here (as it is in many of the previous chapters) to the increasing
influence of English on the morphosyntax of this variety.
Readers of this part of the Handbook will be struck by the grammatical simi-
larities that obtain not only between the contact varieties in Vanuatu, Solomon
Islands and Papua New Guinea (i.e. derived from earlier Melanesian Pidgin), but
also between the English-based contact languages in the Pacific and Australasian
regions generally. Indeed contact varieties globally share striking resemblances,
and most dramatically in their grammars (cf. the creoles described in the Americas
and Caribbean section of this Handbook). Moreover, many of the features are also
prevalent in colloquial non-standard varieties of English spoken in places where
English is the first language of the majority; cf. for instance Pawley’s chapter on
Australian Vernacular English in this volume. Discussion of these shared features
can be found in the synopses.
* We are very grateful to Terry Crowley for his comments on an early version of this intro-
duction
References
Benton, Richard A.
1991 Maori English: A New Zealand Myth? In: Jenny Cheshire (ed.), English
Around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, 187–199. Cambridge:
Burridge, Kate and Jean Mulder
1998 English in Australia and New Zealand: An Introduction to its Structure,
History and Use. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Clark, Ross
1979 In Search of Beach-La-Mar: Towards a History of Pacific Pidgin English. Te
Reo 22: 3–64.
1991 Pidgin English and Pidgin Maori in New Zealand. In: Jenny Cheshire (ed.),
English Around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, 187–113. Cambridge:
Schmidt, Annette
1990 The Loss of Australia’s Aboriginal Heritage. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies
Press.
New Zealand English: phonology
Laurie Bauer and Paul Warren
1. Introduction
1.1. The historical background

The first discoverers of New Zealand were Polynesian explorers around AD 925,
and settlement by Polynesians was well established by 1150. Europeans arrived
in the form of the Dutchman Abel Tasman in 1642. A result of Tasman’s visit is
the name New Zealand, given to the islands by Dutch cartographers later in the
seventeenth century. The first contact of New Zealand with the English language
can be dated to Captain Cook’s arrival on the Endeavour in 1769. It was Cook
who claimed New Zealand for the British Crown. Until the arrival of Europeans,
the only language spoken in New Zealand had been Maori, the language of the
Polynesian settlers. English-speakers were not the only European settlers, but
clearly made up a large proportion of the early missionaries and traders to come to
New Zealand. Many of these early English-speaking settlers came not from Brit-
ain, but from Australia, where there were strong trading links. Indeed, until 1841
New Zealand was officially a dependency of New South Wales. Although it had
been established as the language of the colonial administration by the early nine-
teenth century, English was still not widespread amongst the Maori population.
The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 by Maori chiefs and representatives of the
British Government, established British colonial rule in New Zealand, and opened
the way for more systematic migration from Britain and Australia. Large-scale
organized settlement now began in earnest, for instance, the Europeans in New
Zealand numbered some 2,000 in 1838 but nearer 10,000 by 1842. This increase in
settlement meant that by the middle of the nineteenth century the English-speak-
ing population outnumbered Maori-speakers.
We can distinguish different waves of settlement which may have had influence
on the development of New Zealand English. The first covers the period 1840–
1860, and involved planned settlement by a number of organizations. The New
Zealand Company established settlements in Wellington and Nelson, with popula-
tions originating from London and the south-east of England. The Plymouth Com-
pany placed settlers from Devon and Cornwall in the Taranaki region, founding
the city of New Plymouth. In the South Island, Otago in the deep south was settled
by the Scottish free-church, while Canterbury’s early settlers were Anglo-Catholic.
Other historically interesting pockets of settlement include Waipu in Northland,
New Zealand English: phonology 581
which was settled by Scottish highlanders who had become dissatisfied with their
earlier attempts to establish a community in Nova Scotia.
The second wave of settlement followed the discovery of gold, and resulted in
a dramatic increase in the population of gold-field areas in the period 1860–1870.
The areas most affected were Otago and the West Coast of the South Island, which
gained a large number of settlers from Australia.
Planned immigration from the 1870s onwards forms the third wave of settle-
ment. The majority of the early settlers in this period originated from southern
England, and as many as 10 per cent from Cornwall alone.
By 1890 the population growth from New Zealand-born Europeans exceeded
that from new settlement and it is probably from this point that the influence on
New Zealand English from native New Zealanders begins to outweigh that of Brit-
ish or Australian varieties.
It is interesting to note that despite the pattern of rather focused early settle-
ment from certain areas of Britain into certain areas of New Zealand, the forms
of English that have evolved in New Zealand are remarkably homogeneous, with
very little dialectal variation throughout New Zealand (cf. the chapter by Gordon
and Maclagan, this volume). It is also noteworthy that the early influence of Aus-
tralia was strong. Not only was Australia an early trading partner and provider
of continuing settlement, but also many of the trading and communication links
between parts of New Zealand occurred via Australia. For instance, the sea-link
from Auckland across the Tasman and back to Wellington was for a long time
easier than the land route through the New Zealand bush.
1.2. Contact with Maori

The major contact language which might be expected to have had some influence
on New Zealand English is of course Maori. The phonology of Maori (cf. the chap-
ter by Warren and Bauer, this volume) is considerably simpler than that of English,
with five vowels /i, , a, ç, u/ and ten consonants /p, t, k, m, n, , f, h, r, w/ in
a (C)V(V) syllable structure. The vowels in a VV sequence can be identical (i.e.
a long vowel) or different (when the result may be either a sequence of vowels
or a diphthong depending on the vowels concerned). Voiceless stops were origi-
nally unaspirated, but have increasingly become aspirated under the influence of
English. /t, n/ can be alveolar or dental, /r/ is a voiced alveolar tap. The nature of
/f/ varies between dialects of Maori – it was written wh by the early missionaries
suggesting that it was heard as [„], though [∏] is also heard. A further significant
feature of Maori concerns its rhythm, which is mora-timed. Where Maori is con-
cerned, a mora is a unit of length such that a short vowel constitutes a single mora
and a long vowel or diphthong constitutes two. In mora-timing, a sequence of two
syllables each containing one short vowel is rhythmically equivalent to a single
syllable containing a long vowel.
582 Laurie Bauer and Paul Warren
2.1. Stressed vowel system
New Zealand English has, with very minor exceptions, a standard non-rhotic
stressed vowel system. The lexical sets are assigned to phonemes as below, with
the first symbol in the set of illustrative qualities being the one we select for a
phonemic transcription.
FLEECE i˘, Iˆ
BATH, START, PALM å˘
NURSE P˘, ø˘, O˘
THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE o˘, o´, o.å
GOOSE ¨˘, Y˘, I¨, å¨
KIT , ´, ´4, I
DRESS e, e , e
TRAP
STRUT å , å+
LOT ,
FOOT , ˆ¢
FACE æe, åe, åi
PRICE e, e, i
CHOICE oe, oi
GOAT å¨ , åˆ
MOUTH æ¨, ¨
NEAR i
, i.å, e.å, e
SQUARE e
, i.å, e.å, i
CURE ¨
, ¨.å
Some of these will be discussed in more detail below, in particular the NEAR –
SQUARE merger is a process of great interest in the phonology of current New
Zealand English.
Lip-rounding and spreading is never strong in New Zealand English. There is
some as-yet unexplained articulatory compensation for lip-rounding which can
give the auditory impression of lip-rounding without any difference in the actual
lip-position. Talk of lip-rounding in the descriptions below must be understood
in terms of this mechanism rather than in terms of the expected pouting gesture.
A video of one female speaker pronouncing a number of New Zealand English
vowels is provided on the accompanying CD-ROM and in the online version. Her
lip movement seems to us to be greater than is found with many speakers – per-
haps because of the formal environment of the recording and the fact that she was
reading isolated words. An interesting comparison can be made to illustrate this,
using the recordings for herd and word. The former is taken from the word-list
and the latter from an impromptu remark by the speaker, albeit produced with
accompanying laughter, which contributed to the different lip shape. The com-
parison is interesting not just as an illustration of the different lip shape in formal
and informal contexts, but also because auditory and acoustic comparison of the
two // vowels shows that they are remarkably similar, despite the different lip
configuration. As observed above, there would appear to be some other compensa-
tory articulatory configuration that results in the rounded quality in the absence of
rounded lip shape.
The fundamental system given above is subject to considerable neutralization
before /r/ and /l/. Much of the neutralization is variable, particularly that before
/l/, so that no simple statement of the system in neutralized positions can be given.
Furthermore, the context of neutralization does not seem to be consistent for all
vowels. In some cases there is neutralization before any /l/, in others the position
of neutralization appears to be restricted to where /l/ is in a syllable coda (i.e. af-
ter the vowel but in the same syllable), in others to environments where the /l/ is
not only in a coda but followed by an obstruent (perhaps particularly voiceless
obstruents).
The phonemes instantiated in the following lexical sets are generally neutral-
ized before /r/:
FLEECE, NEAR i
DRESS, SQUARE e
GOOSE, CURE
Note that this pattern is complicated by the NEAR-SQUARE merger where that oc-
curs.
The phonemes instantiated in the following lexical sets are frequently neutral-
ized before /l/:
FLEECE, NEAR
There is only one potential minimal pair here, reel vs. real, and these are homo-
phones for all New Zealand English speakers.
DRESS, TRAP
This neutralization is a sociolinguistic variable, but the neutralization is heard
from the majority of younger speakers before any /l/. Such speakers may therefore
not distinguish Alan and Ellen, or salary and celery. In Wellington data we have
analyzed, the neutralized vowel is realized as a vowel which is opener and more
retracted than either of DRESS or TRAP, although it appears that values intermedi-
ate between DRESS and TRAP are also found.
FOOT, GOOSE
These are commonly neutralized before coda-/l/, making pull and pool homopho-
nous.
KIT, FOOT
These are often neutralized before a coda-/l/, e.g. in pill and pull.
KIT, GOOSE
This follows from the last two examples: pill and pool, or skills and schools may
be indistinguishable.
KIT, STRUT
These may be neutralized, but are most usually kept distinct before /l/, even in a
pair like cult and kilt.
LOT, GOAT
These are regularly neutralized before coda-/l/. The vowel in troll may not clearly
belong to either phoneme, and is perhaps an instance of a new GOLD vowel (see
further below).
THOUGHT, GOAT
These may be neutralized before coda-/l/.
FOOT, THOUGHT
These may be neutralized before coda-/l/.
These last three can lead to homophony among poll, pole, pull, Paul.
This leads to a minimum of a six-vowel monophthongal system before /l/: three
long and three short vowels (ignoring the diphthongs). Individual speakers may,
of course, have more contrasts than this, depending on their age, gender, ethnicity
and so on, but none will have the full set of contrasts found in Received Pronun-
ciation (RP).
2.2. Unstressed vowel system

The unstressed vowel system is made up of three contrasting units, one of which
has two major allophones. The first of the units is the happY vowel, which na-
ïve speakers relate to the FLEECE vowel rather than to the KIT vowel in phonemic
terms. The patterns of diphthongization for FLEECE and happY are probably not
identical, although both can be diphthongized. The second unit is made up of
vocalized realizations of /l/. The phonetics of this vowel vary in ways which have
not been fully described. The actual vowel may be more or less rounded and
more or less back or open, rarely more open than cardinal [o] and generally more
back than central. Phonemically, it may be transcribed as //, but this is no more
than a viable symbol. The third member of the system is rather more problematic.
Introductory students identify it as the STRUT vowel when it is in final position
(and especially when it is in utterance-final position), and occasionally also in
word-initial position, and with the KIT vowel when it is in other positions. This
corresponds to the commA vowel in RP, but also to the horsES vowel, since chatted
and chattered, villages and villagers are homophones for nearly all New Zealand
English speakers.
commA, horsES ,
, ,
happY i,
i, i
treacLE , ç3, o, , u,
In phonemic transcriptions we use the first symbols in all of these sets.
2.3. The consonant system

The consonant system of New Zealand English is set out in the table. There is
nothing unexpected in this system except possibly the lack of //, which is dis-
cussed below.
Labio- Post-
Bilabial dental Dental Alveolar alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive p b t d k
Affricate t d
Fricative f v s z h
Nasal m n
Lateral
approximant l
Approximant w r j
Some conservative speakers still maintain a voiceless labial-velar fricative [] in

words like when and whimper, but this may be represented as /hw/ when it occurs.
It seems likely that where this feature is retained it now serves to mark regionalism
or social status.
The glottal plosive [] may be argued to be gaining phonemic status in word-
final position in utterances such as [ ] shut up, though for many speak-
ers it occurs only as an allophone of /t/ except where it is reinforcing one of
[p, t, k, t].
3. The vowels
3.1. The acoustic structure of the vowels
Published values for formants 1 and 2 in the more monophthongal of New Zealand
English vowels are presented in the table below. In the table headings, M means
‘male’ and F means ‘female’. A represents speakers from Auckland, analyzed by
Hall (1976), C represents speakers from Christchurch analyzed by Maclagan
(1982), and G represents speakers recorded in Dunedin but coming from through-
out New Zealand and analyzed by Watson, Harrington, and Evans (1998). It is thus
possible that there are diachronic and regional differences between the speakers
sampled. See also Easton and Bauer (2000).
Table 1. Published values for New Zealand English vowel formants
Vowel Formant AM CF CM GF GM
FLEECE F1 378 370 350 349 273

F2 2300 2750 2400 2022 2325
KIT F1 489 500 460 598 487
F2 1922 2200 1800 2022 1710
DRESS F1 467 420 410 455 365
F2 2144 2600 2200 2662 2248
TRAP F1 631 680 580 701 579
F2 1939 2460 2000 2278 1951
STRUT F1 747 920 800 952 759
F2 1525 1600 1500 1577 1303
START F1 783 920 800 985 789
F2 1478 1520 1480 1583 1315
LOT F1 677 780 620 739 615
F2 1119 1200 1080 1132 964
FORCE F1 444 430 410 438 384
F2 800 900 700 769 713
FOOT F1 431 550 490 562 472
F2 1111 1140 1100 1223 1044
Table 1 (continued) Published values for New Zealand English vowel formants
Vowel Formant AM CF CM GF GM
GOOSE F1 339 420 410 365 287

F2 1778 1600 1600 1926 1605
NURSE F1 450 430 440 492 430
F2 1721 1900 1750 1954 1630
3.2. The short vowels

The short front vowels are the site of the vowel shift which is so characteristic of
New Zealand English (as of other varieties, especially southern-hemisphere vari-
eties). Fundamentally, this means that KIT, DRESS and TRAP are phonetically dis-
placed one slot clockwise from their equivalent vowels in conservative RP. This
will be seen in the descriptions of the individual vowels below.
KIT
The KIT vowel in New Zealand English is notoriously centralized, to such an ex-
tent that it is parodied by Australians using their STRUT vowel. While KIT is rarely
as open as this suggests in New Zealand English, it is very centralized, probably
varying between [] and [
] or [
]. The KIT vowel provides one of the shibboleths
for distinguishing between Australian and New Zealand speakers, the phrase fish
and chips being one which causes hilarity on both sides of the Tasman when spo-
ken by people from the other side of the sea.
Because of the very central quality of this vowel, there is no phonetic distinc-
tion between the KIT vowel and the commA vowel where that occurs in non-final
position. In other words, commA and horsES do not contrast phonemically, leading
to homophony between boarded and bordered, and also between effect and affect.
The first type of homophony is occasionally overcome by the use of the NURSE
vowel in bordered, especially in slow speech or if a distinction is to be drawn. The
second type may be overcome by the use of full vowels [i] and [æ] respectively,
even in less careful speech.
The vowel before [] in words like sing and coming requires some comment.
It is much closer than other variants of the KIT vowel, and is regularly associ-
ated with the FLEECE vowel by students. Theoretically, there are at least three
possibilities here: (i) it is a close allophone of the same vowel as in KIT; (ii) it is
an allophone of the vowel in FLEECE, and the only tense vowel permitted before
[N]; (iii) it is a stressed variant of the happY vowel. It is not clear how these pos-
sibilities are to be distinguished from each other. For some speakers, but not all,
the same variant is found before [g] in words like big, wriggle (the latter forming
a minimal pair with regal). Close variants before other consonants are sporadic.
If vowels are to be paired in terms of length/tension, then in New Zealand
English the KIT vowel should be paired with the NURSE vowel, as being the clos-
est long vowel in terms of quality. Thus, bid and bird may for some speakers be
distinguished primarily by vowel length.
DRESS
The DRESS vowel is close in New Zealand, even by Australian standards, and may
overlap with the FLEECE vowel in terms of its formant structure, although more
central variants are also common.
There is neutralization with SQUARE before /r/ (making ferry and fairy homoph-
onous) and neutralization with TRAP before /l/ (as in Ellen and Alan).
If vowels are to be paired in terms of length/tension, then in New Zealand Eng-
lish the DRESS vowel should be paired with the FLEECE vowel, as being the closest
long vowel in terms of quality.
TRAP
The New Zealand English TRAP vowel is close even by Australian standards, and
unlike the corresponding vowel in RP and some varieties of Australian English,
shows no signs of becoming opener as yet. As in many other varieties of English,
there is some evidence of a TRAP-split, with longer and shorter versions poten-
tially contrasting in pairs such as banned and band. There is neutralization with
DRESS before /l/, whether or not the /l/ is in a coda. TRAP cannot be easily paired
with any long vowel in New Zealand English.
STRUT
STRUT is a near-open central-to-front vowel [] or []. The STRUT vowel may oc-
cur syllable-finally in expressions like See ya!, or the word the used as a citation
form, though even here it may be followed by []. Word or phrase-final vowels in
words like colour, data, koala, structure, tuatara may be open enough to fall into
the same area of the vowel chart as the STRUT vowel.
lish the STRUT vowel should be paired with the START vowel, with which it is virtu-
ally identical in terms of formant structure, resulting in a distinction primarily of
length between cut and cart.
LOT
The LOT vowel is slightly more centralized than its RP congener, and could be
transcribed as []. There is neutralization with GOAT before coda-/l/, whether or
not the /l/ is vocalized. Thus doll and dole are not distinguishable as they are in RP.
For some speakers, the vowel here may be phonemically distinct from both LOT
and GOAT. We refer to this above as the GOLD vowel. Note though that none of the
speakers in our sample data appear to have this as a distinct vowel.
LOT cannot be easily paired with any long vowel in New Zealand English.
FOOT
The FOOT vowel appears to be undergoing a dramatic diachronic change which

leaves it with two very different variants, distinguished at the moment in terms
of their lexical occurrence. The conservative value is a centralized back slightly
rounded vowel, [], while the innovative value is much more a central vowel and
unrounded. The innovative value is particularly common in the word good. It is
long established in the greeting good day (frequently written as <gidday>), but has
spread into other uses of the word good. Although there is danger of overlap with
the KIT vowel, this does not appear to be happening, and accordingly we choose to
transcribe this variant as [ˆ].
The FOOT vowel is neutralized with several other vowels before /l/. FOOT and
GOOSE are neutralized before /l/ in words like full and fool. Here the vocalization
of the /l/ makes it disappear entirely, and we are left with a long back rounded
vowel, [u]. There is also neutralization with KIT before /l/ in pairs like fill and full.
If all three are not neutralized together, the outcome here may be a back rounded
vowel, not as long as that for fool. This neutralization does not occur before onset-
/l/.
lish the FOOT vowel should be paired with the THOUGHT vowel, with which it is
sometimes virtually identical in terms of formant structure, so that put and port
may differ only in vowel length.
3.3. The long vowels

FLEECE
The FLEECE vowel is usually slightly diphthongized. It is a rising diphthong (Cat-

ford 1977: 216) with a very brief first element, which may nevertheless be quite
open.
FLEECE and NEAR are neutralized before an /l/, so that reel and real are never
distinct. They are also neutralized before an /r/, so that searing rhymes with key-ring
(and caring and key-ring may be homophonous where the NEAR-SQUARE merger
applies). In both these cases the vowel heard is monophthongal rather than diph-
thongal.
BATH, PALM, START
The phonetic quality of this vowel overlaps with the quality for STRUT. The dif-
ference between the two is purely length for many speakers, as in the cut, cart
example cited earlier.
Modern New Zealanders use this same vowel in words like dance and example.
Although there are New Zealanders (particularly conservative South Island speak-
ers) who use the TRAP vowel in this environment, and although there are Austra-
lian speakers who use the same vowel in dance and palm, this is perceived as a
shibboleth distinguishing Australian and New Zealand varieties of English.
THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE
This vowel is pronounced very close, near to Cardinal 7 position. This also makes
it the backest vowel in New Zealand English. For some speakers, there is overlap
in quality between FOOT and THOUGHT, the two being distinguished by length.
This vowel is frequently diphthongized in long positions, and may become di-
syllabic in free position, especially when utterance-final, e.g. [fo.] four.
GOOSE
The GOOSE vowel is very front, and should probably be considered a front rather
than a central vowel. It is, for example, much fronter than the RP GOOSE vowel,
and comparable to the Australian and South African qualities. When it is followed
by /l/ as in school, the /l/ vanishes and the quality of the vowel becomes genuinely
back. Consequently, spoon and spool sound extremely different. This contrasts
with the situation in, say, New South Wales or Victoria, and acts as a shibboleth in
distinguishing Australian and New Zealand varieties of English.
The GOOSE vowel may be diphthongized. When it is, it is a rising diphthong,
with a very short first element, which may nevertheless be quite open, starting
from near [
]. However, this is changing. In the phrase thank you, shop assistants
regularly use an extremely wide diphthong, which almost sounds like the GOAT
vowel. This may be a sign of an impending change in New Zealand English: not
long ago it was a pronunciation heard only in the speech of children.
NURSE
Acoustic studies of the NURSE vowel show it overlapping with the GOOSE vowel.
This implies a very close pronunciation of NURSE, perhaps [O=]. Impressionisti-
cally, this seems like quite a broad pronunciation, with more open variants being
more prestigious. Given this overlap, it becomes an open question as to how
GOOSE and NURSE are distinguished; there does not appear to be any merger, and
yet the difference in diphthongization is not necessarily present. There may be a
potential or incipient merger here: personalized car number plates show re-spell-
ings such as 2MIN8OR for ‘terminator’ suggesting that a NURSE-GOOSE merger
is on the cards.
Particularly in formal or slow speech, NURSE is used in many positions where RP
would have /
/, notably where it corresponds to an <er> orthography.
3.4. The diphthongs

Diphthong shift applies to FACE, PRICE and CHOICE in New Zealand English, mov-
ing them one slot anti-clockwise from their position in RP. NEAR and SQUARE are
variably merged, with many young speakers unable to distinguish them now.
FACE
The starting point for the FACE diphthong is considerably opener in New Zealand
English than for its RP equivalent, to the extent that it may be perceived as PRICE
by British speakers.
PRICE
The starting point for the PRICE diphthong is considerably further back in New
Zealand English than in RP, to the extent that it may be perceived as CHOICE
by British speakers. This confusion is understandable when speakers of a broad
variety are heard, since they may also round the first element of the diphthong,
giving something like [e]. Many speakers retain an unrounded first element,
[ e]. PRICE + // in words like fire either results in a disyllabic sequence or
may result in a monophthong, probably the same phoneme as in BATH/PALM/
START.
CHOICE
The first element of the CHOICE diphthong is raised, approximately to the position
of the THOUGHT vowel.
GOAT
The GOAT diphthong has a very open and central starting position. The second
element usually corresponds to a pronunciation of the GOOSE vowel. However,
for some speakers, especially in the word no or where the vowel falls under the
tonic syllable, the final element is becoming unrounded, giving a pronunciation
like [] or [ˆ].
MOUTH
MOUTH has a relatively close starting position, with closer variants belonging to
broader variants of the New Zealand accent. New tokens of MOUTH are arising
from DRESS or TRAP plus vocalized /l/, so that words like twelve, self and health
often contain a vowel which, if it is not identical with MOUTH, is extremely close
phonetically. Not only is this creating new tokens of MOUTH, it is widening the
distribution of MOUTH, which can occur before labials (help) and velars (talc).
MOUTH + unstressed // in words like tower either results in a disyllabic se-
quence or results in a monophthong, probably to be associated with the BATH/
PALM/START phoneme, although closer values than for BATH/PALM/START can be
heard.
NEAR, SQUARE
The NEAR and SQUARE diphthongs are undergoing merger in New Zealand Eng-
lish, and many young speakers not only fail to distinguish the two in production
but also have difficulty perceiving the distinction. There is some debate as to the
direction of the merger (see Gordon and Maclagan, this volume), but the consen-
sus appears to be that it is towards a close variant, [i
]. Monophthongal vowels
are produced by some speakers, especially before /l/ and /r/, resulting in the neu-
tralization of FLEECE and NEAR in this position, and also therefore of FLEECE and
SQUARE for speakers who merge NEAR and SQUARE. Word pairs like merry and
Mary are as a result distinguished largely by vowel length.
CURE
The CURE diphthong has a starting point comparable to that of GOOSE, and an
open central end-point. When the vowel occurs in open position, it may become
disyllabic.
GOOSE and CURE are neutralized before /r/, where the vowel heard is monoph-
thongal rather than diphthongal. There is no contrast before /l/ either.
The CURE vowel is heard in New Zealand English only following /j/. In words
like poor, moor, tour it has been largely replaced by FORCE. The overall result is
that the CURE vowel has very little functional load in New Zealand English.
4. The consonants
4.1. The plosives
The voiceless velar plosive is usually affricated (released with audible friction
at the point of articulation) in all positions. Alveolar [t] is affricated initially in
stressed syllables, but usually voiced and tapped between sonorants in words such
as getting, butter, bottle. The tapping may occur over word-boundaries as well as
within words, both within a foot and over foot-boundaries. (A foot here is a se-
quence of a stressed syllable and any following unstressed syllables up to but not
including the next stressed syllable.) It occurs over word-boundaries only where
the /t/ is word-final, e.g. in get eggs. In a tall person, aspiration/affrication of /t/
blocks the tapping. There are some slight indications that a glottal plosive may be
starting to replace this tap, but it is too soon to say whether this feature will spread.
A glottal plosive [] is in free variation with an affricated plosive in final position.
The bilabial [p] can be heard aspirated in all positions. Both [p] and [k] and also
[t] may get glottal reinforcement in word-final position, and this variant seems
to be gaining ground rapidly, having been virtually unknown in the 1970s. After
syllable-initial [s], [p, t, k] are unaspirated.
The so-called voiced plosives have very little voicing, and are distinguished
from their voiceless counterparts mainly by their lack of aspiration/affrication.
There may be no phonetic difference between an intervocalic /t/ and an intervo-
calic /d/, but this has not been carefully analyzed.
4.2. The fricatives

The most important feature of the fricatives is the devoicing of the so-called voiced
fricatives. It is not always clear whether the devoicing is phonemic or just pho-
netic, nor whether the same cause underlies all instances of fricative-devoicing.
For example the pronunciation of thither with an initial [] is probably a lexical
difference, parallel with the pronunciation found in Scottish English and some
American varieties. The pronunciation of president as though homophonous with
precedent seems more like a process of devoicing, which is currently variable
in New Zealand English. There may nevertheless be a lexical dimension to this
devoicing: president, positive seem particularly susceptible to it. So far, studies of
the phenomenon have not distinguished between phonetic devoicing and vowel-
shortening, so that it is not always clear whether a phonemic distinction is being
lost or not. Certainly, it seems to be true that there is more sibilant-devoicing than
there is corresponding vowel-shortening.
In /stj/ and /str/ clusters we find complex assimilation taking place. In /stj/ clus-
ters there is coalescent assimilation of the /tj/ to [t], and the post-alveolar quality
is then passed on to the /s/ to give [t], frequently heard in words like student. In
/str/ clusters, the very slight retroflection of the /r/ was originally passed to the
whole of the cluster, giving something that we might transcribe as [!"#] (although
this seems to imply greater retroflexion than is actually found), but this has been
reinterpreted by younger speakers as [t$], as in words like strange.
// and // in New Zealand are usually interdental fricatives rather than post-
dental fricatives. An apparently innovative dental variant of /s/ has been described
in studies carried out in Auckland, but it is not yet clear whether this is a regional-
ism or how widespread it is. There is some loss of // in favour of /f/, but this is
not yet a major tendency.
4.3. /r/ and /l/
4.3.1. Variable rhoticity
New Zealand English is usually described as being non-rhotic except for the
Southland-Otago area where non-pre-vocalic /r/ is pronounced. Both character-
izations leave something to be desired.
First, although it is true that standard New Zealand English is generally non-
rhotic, there are two words which are frequently heard with a non-prevocalic /r/.
The first of these is the name of the consonant ‘R’, and the second is the name of
the country Ireland. These are both heard with [$] across social classes and across
regions.
Other words or phrases are heard with sporadic non-prevocalic /r/. Expressions
and catchwords borrowed from American TV programmes or movies are fre-
quently pronounced with a pseudo-American /r/. Such expressions include what-
ever, wiener (as a term of abuse among children). This type of /r/-usage is clearly
lexically driven.
Some types of popular music appear to use non-prevocalic /r/ more system-
atically. A recent study of New Zealand hip-hop music by one of our students
found that non-prevocalic /r/ was used systematically after the NURSE vowel (bird,
heard), but nowhere else. This is despite the fact that this type of music is usually
produced by people of Maori or Pacific Island ethnicities, who have no obvious
reason to be more rhotic than anyone else.
Finally, although it is true that the Southland-Otago region is more rhotic than
other parts of New Zealand, the rhoticity is variable. It is particularly prevalent
following the NURSE vowel, much rarer elsewhere (despite the fact that one of the
words in which this type of pronunciation is most aped by the general populace
is the word Gore, the name of the town perceived as being central to the area of
rhoticity).
4.3.2. Consonant quality and vocalization

Both /r/ and /l/ are devoiced in stressed onset position when preceded by a voice-
less plosive. In this position, /l/ is usually pronounced [%], though /r/ is not consis-
tently fricated. Devoicing following voiceless fricatives (in words like free, flea,
slide, shrimp) is much less marked, and may be absent. We find fricative /r/ after
both /t/ and /d/, voiceless in the first case, voiced in the second, e.g. in train and
drain.
Like RP, New Zealand English has clearly different allophones of /l/ in onset
and in coda position. In onset position we usually find a slightly velarized lateral,
[l&]. In coda position there is variation between a ‘darker’ lateral, perhaps [l],
and a vowel of variable quality. This vocalized /l/ may merge with the preceding
vowel (and recall that the number of contrasts before /l/ is diminished) to form
a diphthong, or it may form a disyllabic sequence. Some typical outcomes are
transcribed below.
milk mk, mk, hypercorrect mljk

smile sm o, sm e. , sme.
∞
bottle bt, bt , bto, bt´l'
help hæ p, h p (NB: there is potential clash with MOUTH here)
feels fi. z, fi.z, fi.oz
One of the results of this is that most New Zealand speakers do not have a dental
allophone of /l/, since the places where dental allophones arise in other varieties
are precisely those where there is a vowel in New Zealand English.
Following //, /r/ is variably realized as [(] in words like through, three.
4.3.3. Linking /r/ and linking /l/ (or [w]) in New Zealand
Like other non-rhotic varieties of English, New Zealand English has both linking
and intrusive /r/, and in precisely the same environments for which these are de-
scribed in RP, for example. The interesting thing is that both appear to be variable,
although really thorough studies of these phenomena are just beginning. A phrase
such as far off may be pronounced as any of [f$f], [ff], [f
f], [ff].
Self-conscious speech appears to prefer the version with []. At the same time,
however, the use of intrusive /r/ is being extended to an environment following
MOUTH. A common word in which this is heard is how[$]ever. It is not entirely clear
why only MOUTH is affected. It might be assumed that such intrusion would take
place only when MOUTH was monophthongized (and thus phonetically similar to
START), but that does not seem to hold true.
Just as linking /r/ developed with the vocalization of /r/, so a linking /l/ is devel-
oping with the vocalization of /l/. A word-final /l/ followed by a word-initial vowel
in the same breath-group is resyllabified, and the onset-allophone is realized. This
(along with speaker intuition – probably strongly influenced by orthography) is
the strongest argument for seeing the vocalized version as still being an allophone
of /l/. However, there is an alternative to a linking /l/, though it is not as common:
it is linking /w/. Occasional pronunciations such as [fiwt] for feel it are heard
alongside the expected [fil&t]. Such pronunciations suggest that the vocalization
is starting to be reinterpreted as a new series of vowels. So far, linking [w] does
not appear to be found word-internally.
4.4. Glides
A distinction between /w/ and /hw/ was robust in New Zealand into the 1960s,
distinguishing Wales from whales and witch from which, but now seems to be
receding quickly. It has gone from the North Island except in a few conservative
individuals and is in retreat in the South Island. It may end up being retained as a
regional marker, though this currently seems unlikely.
/w/ and /j/ are strongly devoiced following stressed-syllable-initial [p, t, k], and
we could transcribe [tik], [c) ], [p) t] for tweak, queue, pewter. Similar de-
voicing of /j/ is found in words like huge, hue [) d, ) ].
There is often a rather strong palatal or labial-velar glide following respectively
a front or back vowel in hiatus with another vowel. So in examples such as see
it, allowing, doing, happiest there may be a stronger glide element than would be
expected in RP, although there is still a distinction to be drawn between the glides
in, for example, do one and do unlikely things.
Yod-dropping is variable in New Zealand English. After /r/ in words like rule,
/j/ has vanished, as elsewhere in English. After /l/, in words like lewd, illuminate,
it is extremely rare, though it is retained where the relevant syllable does not
carry primary stress in words like prelude. After // in words like enthuse, yod is
very rare. After /s, z/ the presence or absence of yod is to some extent determined
by the environment. In Zurich, which provides the only potential case of /zj / the
/j/ is variable (possibly reflecting the German [y] pronunciation of the vowel, see
below). After most /s/ types it has virtually vanished: for example Susan would
never have a /j/ and super(intendent), superstitious etc. have /j/ only extremely
rarely from very conservative speakers (these were still occasionally heard fifteen
years ago, but have become much rarer). In the set of words including assume,
consume, presume, resume there are many competing pronunciations. If we take
assume as a model, we can find any of /sj m/, / m/, /s m/, /j m/, and the
same variants arise for the other words in this set. The first of these is perceived
as being the most standard, but the others are common. These words are the only
place where /j/ clusters can arise. The clusters /tj/ and /dj/ usually coalesce to
affricates, but there are a few exceptional words: tuna is usually /t n/ whether
the large salt-water fish or the eel (from Maori tuna) is intended. The orthogra-
phy <tu> never gives rise to /tj / pronunciations in Maori words. Yod-dropping
is variable after /n/, especially in a few lexemes including new (particularly in
New Zealand, Air New Zealand and similar high frequency collocations), nude
and nuisance. The orthography <nu> in Maori words is nevertheless sometimes
pronounced as /nj /.
The glide /w/ is also regularly dropped in the words quart and quarter, with the
result that quart and court/caught become homophonous. It is not clear whether
this is lexical or due to the phonological environment, since there are so few words
which fit this pattern.
5. The pronunciation of Maori words in New Zealand English
A political language issue in New Zealand is the pronunciation of Maori words

when they are used in English. Broadly, we can sketch two extreme positions: (i)
an assimilationist position, according to which all Maori words are pronounced
as English, and (ii) a nativist position, according to which all Maori words are
pronounced as near to the original Maori pronunciation as possible. There are, of
course, intermediate positions in actual usage. Some of the variation is caused by
the fact that the original Maori pronunciation may not be easily determinable. Not
only is vowel length sometimes variable even in traditional Maori, in some cases
the etymology of place names may be in dispute within the Maori community
(Paraparaumu provides an instance of this, where it is not clear whether the final
umu is to be interpreted as ‘earth oven’ or not).
Where vowels are concerned, the major difficulty in pronouncing Maori words
with their original values is that vowel length (usually marked by macrons in
Maori orthography, as in Māori) is rarely marked on public notices. Not only can
this affect the way in which the particular vowel is pronounced, it can affect stress
placement as well, since stress in Maori words is derivable from moraic structure.
The reluctance to use macrons in public documents may simply be a typographical
problem (even today with computer fonts easily available, very few newspapers
or journals appear to have fonts with macrons available to them), but in the past
has also been supported by the sentiments of Maori speakers who have found the
macron unaesthetic. There may be good linguistic reasons for this, though they
remain largely unexplored. The point is that although all vowels show contrastive
length in Maori, long may be pronounced as short and short may be pronounced
as long in English. Since Maori has no reduced vowels while English tends to
reduce vowels in unstressed syllables (though this is less true of New Zealand
English than it is of RP), almost any Maori vowel may be reduced under appro-
priate prosodic conditions. Where toponyms are concerned, there has also been a
very strong Pakeha tradition towards abbreviating the longer names (a tradition
which does not appear to spread to English names). For example, Paraparaumu is
frequently called Paraparam, the Waimakariri river is called the Waimak, Wainui-
omata is frequently called Wainui. While there is also a tradition for the abbrevia-
tion of names within Maori itself, and the two traditions may support each other to
some extent, they appear to be largely distinct traditions with different outcomes.
Pakeha abbreviations of toponyms are frowned upon within the nativist position
on the pronunciation of Maori.
Table 2 shows a range of possible pronunciations of the individual vowels of
Maori, assuming that length has been correctly transferred to English. Table 3 pro-
vides some typical examples with a range of possible pronunciations, going from
most nativist to most assimilationist. Maori pronunciations are also heard, and
these may be considered to provide instances of code-shifting.
Table 2. Typical values for vowels in Maori loan words used in English
Maori vowel Short Long

Nativist Assimilationist Nativist Assimilationist
i i i
E e, æe / __ # e, i / __ # æe æe
a
ç o
u , , j
Table 3. Some examples of Maori loan words in New Zealand English
Word Maori value English values
Aotearoa ‘New Zealand’ aç»ta(ça «tæe*®o˘, +æeti*®å¨

katipo ‘poisonous spider’ kati»pç˘ »ktp¨, »ktip¨
manuka ‘tree species’ »ma˘n ka »mnk, m»n¨k
pohutukawa ‘tree species’ pç˘»h t kawa p+h¨t*kw
taonga ‘property, treasure’ »taça »tæ¨N, tæe»ÅNg
Wanganui toponym waa»n i wÅN»nï, wÅN»njÏ, wÅN»njï
The assimilation of /a/ to /ç/ after /w/ appears also to be a feature of Maori, at last in some varieties.
Maori diphthongs and vowel sequences do not transfer well to English. Maori /a/
and /ç/ are merged with Maori /ai/ and /çi/ respectively as English / e/ and /oe/.
Similarly Maori /aç/ and /au/ may not be distinguished in English. Maori /au/,
which in modern Maori is pronounced with a very central and raised allophone of
/a/, is replaced by / / in nativist pronunciations (where it may merge with Maori
/çu/), but by /æ / in assimilationist pronunciations. Because of the NEAR-SQUARE
merger in New Zealand English, Maori /ia/ and /a/ are not distinguished in Eng-
lish. Maori /u/ is often transferred into English as /j¨/ (presumably on the basis
of the orthography). Vowel sequences are transferred to English as sequences of
the nearest appropriate vowel, but often involve vowel reduction in English which
would not be used in Maori.
Most Maori consonants have obvious and fixed correspondents in English, al-
though this has not always been so. Some early borrowings show English /b, d, /
for Maori (unaspirated) /p, t, k/ and occasionally English /d/ for Maori tapped /r/:
for example English biddybid is from Maori piripiri. The phonetic qualities of the
voiceless plosives and /r/ are now modified to fit with English habits. However,
Maori // is variably reproduced in English as // or as //, especially when
morpheme internal. (See the pronunciations of Wanganui given in Table 3.) Word-
initial // is always replaced in English by /n/. The Maori /f/, written as <wh>, has
variable realizations in English. This is partly due to the orthography, partly due
to variation in the relevant sounds in both English and Maori: [] is now rare as
a rendering of graphic <wh> in English, and the /f/ pronunciation is an attempt at
standardising variants as disparate as [f], [], [-], [w]. The toponym Whangarei
may be pronounced /færæe, fræe, wræe, wræe/.
6. Lexical distribution
There are not many differences in lexical distribution of vowels between New
Zealand English and RP. The most obvious differences are listed below.
basic in old-fashioned pronunciation had TRAP in the first syllable,

particularly in the combination basic slag; now FACE is usual
because variation between LOT, THOUGHT and STRUT
geyser always has stressed PRICE in the first syllable
gross pronounced with GOAT when a children’s term meaning
‘disgusting’, often pronounced with LOT by adults in other
meanings
maroon sometimes heard with GOAT in the second syllable
off a rare THOUGHT is still heard alongside the usual LOT
project variably pronounced with LOT or GOAT in the first syllable
pronunciation non-standardly but frequently pronounced with MOUTH in the

second syllable
proven often pronounced with GOAT in the stressed syllable as an
alternative to GOOSE
tuna frequently has no yod
vitamin always has stressed PRICE in the first syllable
women pronounced as homophonous with woman, with FOOT in the
first syllable
worry increasingly with LOT
yoghurt has GOAT in the first syllable
When French loan-words which have /y/ in French are pronounced in New Zea-
land English, the /y/ is replaced with GOOSE rather than with a /j/ and then GOOSE.
So we find things like debut /dæeb /.
There is a marked tendency to spelling-pronunciation in New Zealand English.
Trentham is pronounced with // (although Thames, Thomas and Thompson are
not); Davis will be pronounced differently from Davies; Catriona is frequently
pronounced /kætri* n/; occurrence, deterrent with NURSE as the stressed vowel
are not infrequent; Wednesday may still be heard pronounced with two /d/s. Many
other examples are heard sporadically.
7.1. Lexical stress placement
Lexical stress in New Zealand English largely conforms to the pattern of RP. A few
differences have been noted, such as spectator, dictator and frustrate stressed on
the first syllable, and agriculture variably on first or third, as well as a tendency to-
wards strong secondary stress in words ending in -ary/-ory. Some of these patterns
may be attributable to the influence of other Englishes on New Zealand English
such as Scottish English, or possibly American English in the case of spectator,
dictator and frustrate.
Unpublished studies of bisyllabic verb/noun pairs such as import and survey
show that these also largely conform to the pattern of second syllable stress for
verbs and first syllable stress for the noun, with the qualification that stress place-
ment for the verb forms appears to be more variable.
7.2. Rhythm
The use of full vowels in unstressed syllables in New Zealand English has been
noted for some time. It affects both weak monosyllabic words – mainly function
words – and weak syllables in polysyllabic words. A number of reasons can be
conjectured for some of these full vowel forms. One is the unclear distinction
between commA and horsES, meaning that contrasts which in other varieties may
be dependent on this (e.g. affect vs. effect) are realized differently – if at all – in
New Zealand English. Another is spelling pronunciation, possibly accounting for
a full vowel in the first syllable of botanical and placate, for instance. A third fac-
tor involves the rhythm of New Zealand English, which has been claimed to be
more syllable-timed than in other varieties. This tendency towards syllable-timing
(which is not nearly as marked as for some varieties such as Singapore English) is
reflected in the equalization of stressed and unstressed syllables (full vowels for
reduced, long vowels for short), as well as in overall timing structures. Contact
with the Maori language, with its mora-based timing, could have contributed to
the rhythmic pattern of New Zealand English (see the chapter on Maori English).
7.3. Intonation
The most widely noted intonational feature of New Zealand English is the High
Rising Terminal, a rising nucleus high in the speaker’s pitch range that is found on
declaratives. This feature is not unique to New Zealand English. Sociolinguistic
studies have shown that this feature is a positive politeness marker, and functions
to include the hearer in the discourse. Other aspects of New Zealand English into-
nation that have been commented on include a relatively ‘flat’ but high intonation
pattern through most of the tone unit, with extreme and quite sudden nuclear pitch
movements.
Selected references
ROM.
Catford, John C.
1977 Fundamental Problems in Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Easton, Anita and Laurie Bauer
2000 An acoustic study of the vowels of New Zealand English. Australian Journal
of Linguistics 20: 93−117.
Hall, Moira
1976 An acoustic analysis of New Zealand vowels. M.A. thesis, University of
Auckland.
Maclagan, Margaret A.
1982 An acoustic study of New Zealand vowels. The New Zealand Speech
Therapists’ Journal 37: 20–26.
Watson, Catherine I., Jonathan Harrington and Zoe Evans

1998 An acoustic comparison between New Zealand and Australian English vow-
els. Australian Journal of Linguistics 18: 185–207.
Regional and social differences in New Zealand:
phonology
Elizabeth Gordon and Margaret Maclagan
The beginning of the main European settlement of New Zealand is usually dated
from 1840, when representatives of the British government signed the Treaty of
Waitangi with about 430 Maori chiefs. From 1840 to 1880 the European popula-
tion of New Zealand grew from about 2,000 people to half a million and by the
1880s the number of New-Zealand-born in the non-Maori population had exceeded
the number of immigrants. In this period between 1840 and 1880 the immigrants
came mainly from the British Isles; 49% came from England, 22% from Scotland,
20% from Ireland and 7% from Australia (McKinnon 1997). The first immigrants
came to planned settlements, established by the New Zealand Company, where
there was some attempt to control the mix and the nature of the colonists. This
soon proved to be ineffectual, and in 1861 with the discovery of gold thousands of
immigrants arrived in an unplanned way, including considerable numbers of Irish
Catholics, a group the original planners had tried to exclude. In the 1860s, there
was a period of conflict, now known as the New Zealand Wars, between Europe-
ans and certain North Island Maori tribes, which saw large numbers of soldiers
brought into New Zealand. They were given land when they were eventually dis-
charged and they also became settlers. In the 1870s, large numbers of immigrants
arrived, recruited and paid for by the New Zealand government. In 1874 alone,
32,000 assisted immigrants arrived in New Zealand.
The early settlers were a diverse collection of people who had come to New
Zealand for a better life. We know that in spite of different circumstances, histori-
cal events and social situations, in a relatively short period of time very different
individuals in all parts of the country were beginning to develop a common lan-
guage, so that by the end of the 19th century complaints were being heard all over
New Zealand of a “colonial twang”, something akin to “Austral English” (though
not quite so bad) the product of “the home and the street”. Throughout the early
part of the 20th century the complaints grew in number and ferocity. The new New
Zealand accent was said to be an abomination, so bad that it could even cause
“minor throat and chest disorders” (quoted in Gordon and Deverson 1998: 162). At
the same time there were consistent complaints about New Zealanders who tried
to emulate Received Pronunciation (RP). A member of a Commission on Educa-
tion in 1912 complained: “What hope is there for change when we find two of the
604 Elizabeth Gordon and Margaret Maclagan
Principals of the largest secondary schools in New Zealand in giving evidence,

using these expressions: ‘taim-table’ for ‘time-table’; ‘Ai’ for ‘I’; ‘may own’ for
‘my own’; ‘faive’ for ‘five’; ‘gairls’ for ‘girls’.” (Appendices to the Journal of the
House of Representatives, E-12: 624)
Recent research at the University of Canterbury has shown that the earliest mani-
festations of the New Zealand accent probably occurred much earlier than the ap-
pearance of written complaints. The analysis of a 1940s archive of recordings of
old New Zealanders, some born as early as the 1850s (the Mobile Unit archive),
shows that the rate of development of the NZ accent depended very much on social
factors. Speakers from homogeneous towns, like Milton or Kaitangata in Otago for
example, where the majority of the settlers came from Scotland, were more likely
to retain features of Scottish pronunciation and syntax. Speakers from towns with
a very mixed population, like the Otago gold-mining town of Arrowtown, for ex-
ample, were more likely to develop early manifestations of New Zealand English.
2. Regional variation in New Zealand English
The early immigrants to New Zealand came from all parts of the British Isles and
Australia. Of those who came from England (who made up 49% of the total – see
above), by far the largest number of immigrants came from the South of England,
and this was the trend at every stage of New Zealand’s development. People from
the south, and in particular the southeast, made up a majority of the earliest set-
tlers in the planned settlements (1840–1852); they made up the majority in later
government-assisted immigration schemes (1871–1880). The Southern English
influence could also have been reinforced by any Australian influence (seen es-
pecially at the time of the gold rush and the New Zealand Wars), as Australia
was also settled predominantly from the South of England. So although over 20%
of the early immigrants to New Zealand were Scottish and a similar percentage
were Irish, in the end their phonological influence was overwhelmed by Southern
English; the influence of other areas of the British Isles can be seen only in a few
lexical and morphological examples.
Table 1. New Zealand locations of UK immigrants (1871) (taken from http://www.nzhis

tory.net.nz/gallery/brit-nz/)
English Scottish Irish
Auckland 54.9 17.0 27.2

Taranaki 69.6 9.5 20.5
Hawke’s Bay 55.2 20.9 23.2
Wellington 63.5 20.0 15.4
Regional and social differences in New Zealand: phonology 605
Table 1. (cont.) New Zealand locations of UK immigrants (1871) (taken from http://www.
nzhistory.net.nz/gallery/brit-nz/)
English Scottish Irish
Nelson 56.4 15.9 25.9

Marlborough 62.1 20.4 16.4
Canterbury 62.7 16.9 19.4
Westland 40.1 19.9 37.9
Otago 31.0 51.5 16.9
Southland 24.4 61.4 13.9
New Zealand 49.7 27.3 22.0
There is one exception to this general rule, and that is in the Southern part of the
South Island of New Zealand – Southland and parts of Otago – where many of the
early settlements were predominantly Scottish as shown in Table 1. This influence
can still be heard in what is known locally as “the Southland burr”, a semi-rhotic
variant of New Zealand English (NZE).
Although the Southland variety of NZE is the only regional variety attested by
linguists, there are strongly held lay views that there are other dialects of NZE.
A recent broadcast series on “Coastal Dialects of NZE”, for example, claimed
that there were strong regional differences in New Zealand. These programmes
based this assertion on recordings of single speakers from different parts of New
Zealand, without any linguistic comment or discussion. Work by Pamela Gordon
(1997) on attitudes towards varieties of NZE demonstrated strongly held local be-
liefs about the “pseudo-English” of Christchurch and Canterbury, the slowness of
West Coast speech, and so on. The view of linguists is that regional phonological
variation in New Zealand (apart from Southland) has so far not been demonstrated.
However, new evidence is currently emerging that there are intonational differ-
ences in Taranaki in the North Island. Folk linguistic knowledge has described
Taranaki intonation as “sing song”, and analysis is demonstrating that there are,
indeed, more pitch shifts per intonation unit than in other areas of New Zealand.
Results like this indicate that detailed analysis may reveal some differences in
other regions around the country. Nevertheless such regional differences are minor
when compared with those that characterise dialects in other varieties of English,
or the Southland variety of NZE to which we now turn.
2.1. The Southland variety of NZE

The Southland variety of NZE has been commented on for many years but has only
recently been the subject of systematic research. In the 1990s Chris Bartlett carried
out interviews in Invercargill and rural districts of eastern and central Southland
with speakers from three age groups: 15–19 years, 40–49 years and 65 years and
over (see Bartlett 1992). He found that while the majority of the phonological fea-
tures of Southland English (SldE) appear to fall within the normal range of varia-
tion for NZE there were also some distinctive features. The primary consonantal
feature of SldE is the presence of rhotic forms, which has always been the salient
diagnostic feature of the variety. Bartlett indicates that the realisation of postvo-
calic /r/ in SldE is approximal rather than rolled or flapped. He found considerable
variation in the degrees of rhoticity ranging from nearly fully-rhotic speakers (es-
pecially older males from rural areas) to non-rhotic speakers. However, partially
rhotic speakers were in the majority with extremes being rare. Bartlett’s research
has shown that phonological context is highly significant in the mechanism of /r/
maintenance (or loss). In words like first term (the standard lexical set NURSE) the
/r/ is more consistently maintained than in any other context, though in this context
it is realised as an r-coloured vowel. Younger speakers produce more tokens of /r/
in this context than do older speakers. The /r/ in word final position (e.g. in car) or
a syllabic /r/ (e.g. in letter) is maintained to widely varying degrees. Preconsonan-
tal /r/ (e.g. card, fort) is less likely to be maintained by a partially rhotic speaker.
Bartlett’s research found that rural speakers over the age of 65 were more likely to
be rhotic; those aged 40–49 were variably rhotic and those 20–29 were likely to
maintain the /r/ only on the NURSE vowel. Examples of speakers from these three
age groups are given on the accompanying audio clip.
Bartlett found two other less marked phonological characteristics in his study
of Southland. It is often noted that Southland speakers use the TRAP vowel in the
BATH lexical set. This usage is declining rapidly, though older Southland speakers
still use TRAP in the word castle and also in dance and chance. In younger speak-
ers, TRAP is being replaced by the standard NZE BATH.
He also found that older speakers retained a contrast between /„/and /w/ as in
which and witch. There was a correlation between the age of the speaker and the
extent of /„/ retention, with older speakers retaining /„/ in a greater variety of
words. All speakers were more likely to retain it in lexical words than in gram-
matical words. Bauer and Warren (this volume) note that the /„/ ~ /w/ distinction
is disappearing in NZE. It appears to be being retained for a slightly longer time
in Southland.
The three Southland speakers in the attached audio clip illustrate the gradual loss
of rhoticity in Southland speakers over time. Arthur, aged 77 (the oldest speaker),
is rhotic on almost every opportunity. He is rhotic on THOUGHT, START, MOUTH
and NEAR as well as NURSE and lettER. The only potential site for rhoticity that is
not realised is in board. Paul, aged 44 (the middle aged speaker), is considerably
more variable. Never and farm are sometimes pronounced with rhotic vowels and
sometimes without. He has two examples of rhotic START (farm and car), but most
of the rhotic vowels are NURSE and lettER. Jim, aged 16 (the youngest speaker),
uses a rhotic vowel for all the tokens of NURSE, but not for lettER or for any other
vowels. There are no examples of possible voiceless /„/ in content words for any
of the speakers. Arthur, however, uses a voiceless /„/ for whether, but not on any
other function word. Neither Paul nor Jim use /„/ on function words. There are no
examples of chance words in these recordings.
3. Social class variation in New Zealand
The earliest settlements in New Zealand planned by the New Zealand Company
aimed to replicate a vertical slice of British society with the top and the bottom
levels removed so that there were not large numbers of people from the highest
class in Britain or the very lowest class:
The pioneers of New Zealand were not from the highest, nor were they usually from
the most down-trodden sections of British society. They were people who while poor,
while usually from the upper working class or lower middle class – ‘the anxious classes’
Wakefield called them – had lost neither enterprise nor ambition. (Sinclair 1991: 101)
Social class stratification in early New Zealand settlements differed from Brit-
ain. The historian James Belich (1996: 321) remarks: “Colonial life blurred class
boundaries and mixed together all elements of society. Jack considered himself in
many respects as good as his master. But there were still boundaries to blur and
elements to mix. Master was still master, and Jack was still Jack”. Evidence from
the Mobile Unit archive shows that some of those who would have been consid-
ered upper class in New Zealand maintained strong ties with Britain and their
speech shows little or no evidence of a New Zealand accent. Miss Brenda Bell,
for example, a third generation New Zealander born in 1880 in Otago who talks at
length about her titled ancestors, and who was educated by an imported English
governess, speaks old-fashioned RP. Mrs Catherine Dudley, born six years later
also in Otago, who was married to a road mender, is always identified by New
Zealand university students as “sounding like a New Zealander”.
Although New Zealanders like to portray themselves as a “classless society” it
is widely recognised that social class differences exist in present-day New Zea-
land. Social scientists, however, are very wary of using imported standards of
classification. The standard New Zealand index used by social scientists to as-
sign social class (Elley and Irving 1985) is based on occupation, and needs to be
used with some caution. The Elley-Irving scale gives a numerical category of 6 to
those in the lowest social class (e.g. unskilled labourers and supermarket check-
out assistants) and 1 to professional workers (e.g. lawyers, doctors and university
lecturers). For recordings in the Canterbury Corpus archive at the University of
Canterbury (see Maclagan, Gordon and Lewis 1999), a revised version of the
Elley-Irving scale prepared by the New Zealand Ministry of Education (1990) is
used for occupations. A 6-point education scale is also used where a rating of 6 is
given to those who have no secondary school education and 1 to those with a Ph.D.
or higher tertiary degree. The two ratings are combined so that the final social
class categorisation is based on both occupation and education.
However, the conventional method of classification used to define social class
variation within NZE is the system devised for Australian English by Mitchell
and Delbridge (1965) of Cultivated NZE, General NZE and Broad NZE. On a
continuum, Cultivated NZE is nearer to RP, and Broad NZE is farthest from RP.
These are not discrete categories but rather points on a continuum.
3.1. Cultivated, General and Broad NZE

Differences because of social class are clearly identifiable in present-day NZE.
The three young women in the accompanying audio clip were selected in terms
of social class. Karen is from a middle social class, Christine from a lower so-
cial class and Wendy from a higher social class. However, the recordings can be
clearly differentiated linguistically as can be heard in the accompanying audio clip.
Wendy speaks Cultivated NZE, Karen General NZE and Christine Broad NZE.
The letter they are reading is widely used in investigations of NZE. It contains
most of the key vowels in stressed position. The text is given in Table 2.
Table 2. Text of letter containing features characteristic of NZE
Dear Mum and Dad,
Hi, How are you? Well here I am in the big city. Although the weather is nice at the moment
the forecast is for hail, but that should soon clear. I bought a new coat because they say it
gets really cold. I have to stay at Auntie Deb’s house for now but I’m hoping to get a flat
soon.
The trip up was great even though it took about ten hours.
Well I must go. You know how rarely I write, but I’ll try to do better this year.
Love,
Claire.
Social class is marked most clearly by the pronunciation of the closing diphthongs,
FACE, PRICE, GOAT and MOUTH, with women from higher social classes in par-
ticular avoiding pronunciations associated with lower social classes. The front
vowels, KIT, DRESS and TRAP and the centring diphthongs NEAR and SQUARE also
receive different pronunciations from different social groups. The consonant that
shows social class differentiation most clearly is //, which is fronted, so that think
is pronounced /fk/ by many speakers from lower social classes. TH-fronting is
overtly stigmatised by those who speak Cultivated NZE, and speakers from the
higher social classes avoid it. Another consonant which shows social class differ-
entiation is /l/, which is vocalised less by speakers of Cultivated NZE. Cultivated

NZE speakers are also less likely to use flaps in words like city or to affricate /tr/
and /str/ so that they sound like [t$/] and [t$/]. In the previous section, we noted
that the /„/ ~ /w/ contrast is still maintained by some speakers in Southland. Some
older women from the higher social classes from other parts of the country also
maintain this distinction, but more often in reading than in speech. Table 3 com-
pares the pronunciation of Cultivated and Broad speakers of NZE. Most of these
features are illustrated in the recordings.
Table 3. The main differences between Cultivated and Broad NZE
Variable Cultivated NZE speaker Broad NZE speaker
kit 0
DRESS e e
TRAP
FACE æe1 e
PRICE A1e Å3>e or çe
MOUTH a e
GOAT
NEAR/SQUARE i
(e
) / e
i
FOR BOTH
Dark /l/ often […] usually []
Intervocalic /t/ usually [tH] usually [(]
/tr/ and /str/ usually [t$/] and [st$/] usually [t$/] and [t$/] or [t$/]
// f, especially in with
/„/ [w] or [„] [w]
The consequences of using a Broad NZE accent can be particularly marked for
women. In 1993 Elizabeth Gordon carried out a study (Gordon 1997) where sub-
jects listened to recordings of the three young women chosen to represent Culti-
vated, General and Broad NZE in the audio clip described above. They were then
asked to match the individual recordings to three different photos of the same
model wearing clothes chosen to represent three social classes − higher to lower.
Subjects were then given subjective tests in which they answered questions about
each person represented by the voice/photo pairings. The results showed very
clearly that the clothes and speech variety associated with a young lower class
New Zealand woman produced a depressing stereotype, in which she was said to
have the lowest intelligence, lowest family income, and be most likely to smoke
and to be promiscuous. When asked for a possible occupation, the most frequent
responses given by the subjects were “unemployed,” “single parent” or “prosti-
tute”.
4. Sound change in progress
Many of the phonemes mentioned in the previous sections are currently under-
going change in NZE. The post-vocalic /r/ that is still heard in Southland, for
example, is decreasing markedly in frequency. Some older rural males, for ex-
ample, still use it over 80% of the time, but most younger urban speakers use it
only after the NURSE vowel and no more than 20% of the time. As post-vocalic /r/
has decreased in most contexts in Southland, urban speakers have increased their
use of a rhotic NURSE vowel, so that it may be becoming a mark of Southland
identity. These patterns are demonstrated in the audio clips from the three South-
land speakers, described above. The /„/ ~ /w/ distinction that is still maintained
by some speakers in Southland has almost disappeared elsewhere. Older women
from higher social classes now use it less than 50% of the time in reading tasks and
less still in conversation. The most salient class markers, the closing diphthongs
FACE, PRICE, MOUTH and GOAT, have changed slightly over time, but the relative
differences between Cultivated and Broad pronunciations have been maintained.
Younger speakers, however, both male and female, are leading in the move to pro-
nounce the second element of MOUTH as [
] rather than a [] or [ ].
We will consider the vowel changes that are currently taking place in NZE fol-
lowed by the consonantal changes. Most of the information in this section comes
from analyses of the Canterbury Corpus, an archive held at the University of Can-
terbury which consists of over 350 recordings of speakers chosen so that there are
approximately equal numbers of younger (20–30 years) and older (45–60 years)
speakers, of upper and lower social class speakers and of men and women (see
Maclagan and Gordon 1999). Each speaker reads a word list designed to empha-
sise features of NZE and engages in 30 minutes of casual conversation with a
student interviewer.
4.1. Vowel changes

The most obvious vowel change taking place in NZE is the merger between the
vowels of NEAR and SQUARE, so that ear and air or cheer and chair can no longer
be distinguished. Because these two vowels are relatively rare, it is usually only
the word pair really and rarely that causes comprehension problems − did they re-
ally do something, or was it only rarely? Gordon and Maclagan have followed the
progress of this merger for twenty years, and it has now worked its way through
most of the social and age groups studied. Most New Zealand speakers pronounce
all NEAR and SQUARE words with a close onset [i
], but some older women of the
higher social classes use a more open onset for some NEAR words, as Wendy did
for really on the audio clip.
Over the twentieth century the front vowels DRESS and TRAP raised (to [e] and
[] for the most advanced speakers), and KIT centralised and lowered so that the
most advanced NZE speakers now use a vowel more open than schwa []. Aus-
tralian English KIT raised over the same period so that the pronunciation of KIT
is one of the most striking differences between the two varieties of English, and
one that is commented on by speakers in both countries. New Zealanders accuse
Australians of saying feesh and cheeps and Australians accuse New Zealanders of
saying fush and chups. Very few New Zealand speakers now use a vowel that is as
front as [] for KIT, though some older Maori or higher social class Pakeha women,
i.e. women of European descent, still may. Within New Zealand the changes to
the front vowels are not stigmatised, and young women who would not dream of
using Broad NZE variants of the closing diphthongs use the most advanced vari-
ants of KIT, DRESS and TRAP, leading to what we have called “the white rabbit
[„aet $bt] phenomenon”, where the stigmatised PRICE diphthong in white re-
ceives a conservative pronunciation but the non-stigmatised TRAP vowel in rabbit
receives an advanced pronunciation.
A different sort of change that is increasingly common in NZE is the pronuncia-
tion of -own past participles like grown, known and thrown as disyllables /ro
n/,
/no
n/ and /ro
n/, presumably on the model of words like take, taken. There
are very few such participles, but the disyllabic pronunciation produces the new
minimal pairs of grown, groan, mown, moan and thrown, throne. The disyllabic
pronunciation is now used by approximately 50% of all speakers middle-aged and
younger, regardless of social class, so that it seems that both the monosyllable
grown pronunciations and the disyllable growen pronunciations are now regarded
as equally correct within New Zealand.
4.2. Consonantal changes

The vocalisation of /l/ mentioned under social class is a consonantal change that
is very advanced in New Zealand. In this change, post-vocalic /l/ (also called
‘dark’ /l/) which is articulated with the back of the tongue raised, loses its tongue
tip contact so that it is articulated as the vowel [] or [3]. Women from the higher
social class in the Canterbury Corpus still use an alveolar lateral when this sound
occurs in a word list just over 60% of the time, but the younger, lower social
class speakers, both male and female, now vocalise /l/ almost 70% of the time
even in this most formal of contexts. The rate of /l/-vocalisation is higher still in
casual speech. /l/-vocalisation has reached the level of consciousness within New
Zealand, and people write letters of complaint to the paper about it (one writer
complained about seeing a sign advertising warnuts for sale). /l/ has not yet been
lost in most words, so that child and chide are still distinct. Vocalisation of post-
vocalic /l/ is parallel to the loss of post-vocalic /r/, and eventually the /l/ in child
may be completely lost so that child and chide become homophonous as father
and farther are in NZE.
Another consonantal change that is moving quickly in NZE is the affrication of /
tr/ and /str/. The /t/ in /tr/ has always partially devoiced the following /r/ so that the
cluster has been pronounced with friction in NZE. Now, however, the lips are be-
ing rounded, and the cluster is pronounced as though it were spelt chr, so that tree
is now pronounced [t$/i]. /str/ is also affected so that street may be pronounced
[t$/it] or even [t$/it]. People are not yet aware of this sound change, so we have
not yet found letters complaining about it. The younger lower class males are in
the lead with affrication for more than 60% of word list tokens. The other younger
speakers and the older lower class males affricate approximately 40% of tokens,
while the older female professional speakers affricate less than 20%.
TH-fronting, where mother is pronounced as /m√v
/, is still avoided in formal
contexts by people from the higher social classes. Its use is spreading rapidly
among younger speakers from the lower social classes, women as well as men. It
now reaches just over the 5% level for young, lower class males in the Canterbury
Corpus reading tasks, but is considerably more common in the casual conversation.
The first word to be pronounced with /f/ for most speakers is with. If a speaker
does not say /wf/, they will probably not use /f/ for // in other words either. There
are already two possible pronunciations for with in NZE, /w/ and /w/. It has
been suggested that the variability in the pronunciation of this word created the
conditions for the development of the new pronunciation, /wf/ or /wv/. Informal
observation indicates that words like the and them are often spelt ve and vem by
young children who are just learning to read and spell.
Another consonantal change that is also still not common in formal speech is
flapping or tapping of /t/ in intervocalic position in words like city or letter. Al-
though it is very common in the conversations, only 11% of the Canterbury Cor-
pus speakers use flaps in the word lists. However, each set of words in these word
lists is preceded by a number which the speakers read out. Although only 11% of
speakers use flaps on the words in the list, 55% use flaps in some of the numbers,
especially thirteen, fourteen and thirty. Speakers do not consider that the numbers
are part of the word list, and use a more casual style in reading them thus demon-
strating that /t/ flaps are used much more often in more casual speech. As expected,
older, higher social class women seldom use them. In the Canterbury Corpus, the
lower social class men, older as well as younger, are leading this change, though
the younger, lower class women are close behind them. There is little indication
yet that the younger higher class women are involved, though other research has
shown them using a high percentage of /t/ flaps in casual speech.
Selected references
ROM.
Bartlett, Christopher
1992 Regional variation in New Zealand English: the case of Southland. New
Zealand English Newsletter 6: 5–15.
Belich, James
1996 Making Peoples. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane.
Elley, Warwick B. and James C. Irving
1985 The Elley-Irving socio-economic index: 1981 census revision. New Zealand
Journal of Educational Studies 20: 115–128.
Gordon, Elizabeth M.
1997 Sex, speech and stereotypes: why women use prestige forms more than men.
Language in Society 26: 47–63.
Gordon, Pamela
1997 What New Zealanders believe about regional variation in New Zealand
English: a folklinguistic investigation. New Zealand English Journal 11: 14–
25.
Gordon, Elizabeth and Tony Deverson
1998 New Zealand English and English in New Zealand. Auckland: New House
Publishers.
Maclagan, Margaret A. and Elizabeth Gordon
1999 Data for New Zealand social dialectology: the Canterbury Corpus. New
Zealand English Journal 13: 50–58.
Maclagan, Margaret A., Elizabeth Gordon and Gillian Lewis
1999 Women and sound change: conservative and innovative behaviour by the
same speakers. Language Variation and Change 11: 19–41.
McKinnon, Malcolm (ed.)
1997 New Zealand Historical Atlas. Auckland: Bateman.
Mitchell, Alex G. and Arthur Delbridge
1965 The Speech of Australian Adolescents. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
Sinclair, Keith
1991 A History of New Zealand. Auckland: Penguin.
Maori English: phonology
Paul Warren and Laurie Bauer
1. Introduction
1.1. Background
The existence of a particular variety of New Zealand English referred to as ‘Maori
English’ has been indicated for some time, yet many commentators have noted that
the variety continues to be rather elusive. Nevertheless, there are several distin-
guishing features that are generally agreed on, and these will be outlined later in this
chapter. An important fact to note at the outset is that these features are largely also
features that can characterize ‘Pakeha’ New Zealand English (‘Pakeha’ is a term
widespread amongst both Maori and European New Zealanders that is used to refer
to the latter). The difference is that these features are more clearly evident (in terms
of degree, consistency and their co-occurrence) in Maori English than in Pakeha
English, and it is this that makes it a distinct variety. It is a variety that is used by its
speakers as an expression of ethnic and cultural identity, regrettably replacing the
Maori language in that function for many speakers. It has also been suggested (e.g.
Richards 1970) that there are two types of Maori English, one possibly ‘broader’
than the other. The existence and use of a Maori English variety has not always
been welcomed, notably in official education documentation in the 1970s.
The ancestors of the present Maori people were Polynesian explorers who first
arrived in New Zealand around AD 925. They came into increasing contact with
English from the time of early European settlement, and were quick to adopt Eng-
lish as a language of trade and negotiation. From the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury, scarcely more than a century after European settlement began in earnest, Eng-
lish speakers outnumbered Maori speakers. Unsurprisingly English had a marked
impact on the Maori language, not only in terms of the ensuing threat to its very
existence, but also on aspects of its pronunciation (such as the aspiration of previ-
ously largely unaspirated voiceless plosives). Maori, as a contact language, has in
turn had an influence on the English of New Zealanders and can be implicated in
a number of features identified in the chapter on New Zealand English phonology,
as well as on the lexis of New Zealand English. It is in this last characteristic that
Maori English is possibly also most distinguishable from Pakeha New Zealand
English, i.e. in the level of incidence of terms (largely but not exclusively relating
to features of Maori culture) from the Maori language.
Maori English: phonology 615
The phonology of Maori is considerably simpler than that of English, with five
vowels /i, , a, ç, u/ and ten consonants /p, t, k, m, n, , f, h, r, w/ in a (C)V(V)
syllable structure. The vowels in a VV sequence can be identical (i.e. a long vowel)
or different. If different, they may yield a diphthong or a disyllabic sequence, de-
pending on the vowels concerned, but also on the context: in situations requiring
greater clarity disyllabic sequences become more common. Voiceless stops were
originally unaspirated, but have increasingly become aspirated under the influence
of English. /t, n/ can be alveolar or dental, /r/ is a voiced alveolar tap. The nature
of /f/ varies between dialects of Maori: it was written wh by the early missionaries,
suggesting that it was heard as [„], though [∏] is also heard. A further significant
feature of Maori concerns its rhythm, which is mora-timed. Where Maori is con-
cerned, a mora is a unit of length such that a short vowel constitutes a single mora
and a long vowel or diphthong constitutes two. In mora-timing, a sequence of two
syllables each containing one short vowel is rhythmically equivalent to a single
syllable containing a long vowel.
The following sections highlight some of the distinctive features observed for
Maori English. In other respects, Maori English shows the same characteristics
as New Zealand English, and so the reader is referred also to the chapter on New
Zealand English phonology (Bauer and Warren, this volume).
1.2. ‘Maori English’

It should be noted at the outset that Maori English is not a homogeneous variety,
and that there may be several distinguishable Maori Englishes. It should also
be noted that there is a great deal of research which indicates clearly that Maori
English cannot simply be equated with ‘the English spoken by people of Maori
ethnicity’. There are Pakehas who speak Maori English, and Maori people who
speak Pakeha English. Experiments in which New Zealanders are asked to judge
the ethnicity of other New Zealanders on the basis of their accent typically find
low rates of accuracy. What we are dealing with is, thus, to some extent a stereo-
type of a variety, a stereotype which is nevertheless well recognized in New
Zealand. Bell (2000) terms it ‘Maori Vernacular English’ or ‘MVE’. Because this
stereotype is most often met among young men of relatively low socio-economic
status, the variety has low overt prestige in New Zealand. Speakers of high socio-
economic status or speakers who aspire to high socio-economic status may use a
very modified version of Maori English, although they may also be bi-dialectal.
Most of the speakers in the sound recordings deviate from the most stereotypi-
cal forms of Maori English in this way, although they do have audible ‘Maori’
features in their speech. As noted above, for many Maori people, Maori English
appears to provide an expression of identity, and as such has its own set of values
attached to it, separate from the low overt prestige it bears within the Pakeha
community.
616 Paul Warren and Laurie Bauer
The systems of Maori English are fundamentally those of New Zealand English,
and usually relatable to the variants that are found in the broader realizations of
that variety. We continue to use the same notation as is used in the chapter on the
phonology of New Zealand English (Bauer and Warren, this volume).
Alongside the English system, speakers of Maori English frequently have a
Maori system which they use when code-switching into Maori (or, an alternative
interpretation, when using Maori loan words in their English). This is a marked
contrast to the way in which most Pakeha speakers of English in New Zealand
operate, where Maori loan words are assimilated to the English sound system to a
much greater extent. This shift to a Maori system can be heard on personal names
and toponyms as well as on Maori terms used in the middle of English sentences.
This relatively dense use of Maori vocabulary is a marker of one particular type
of Maori English, and the Maori terms which will be used are not (from a Pakeha
point of view) entirely predictable – although words for Maori cultural institutions
are clearly among them.
3. The vowels
3.1. The acoustic structure of the vowels
The values for formants 1 and 2 of the more monophthongal of the Maori English
vowels are presented in the table below. These figures are for male Maori speakers
from Kaikohe, analysed by Hall (1976). They may represent old fashioned values,
and they may also represent regionally specific values, but we have no other com-
parable figures.
Table 1. Vowel formant figures for Maori male speakers (Hall 1976)
Vowel F1 F2
FLEECE 383 2387

KIT 447 2277
DRESS 461 2236
TRAP 593 2010
STRUT 773 1480
START 830 1443
LOT 687 1057
FORCE 479 807
FOOT 457 1285
Table 1. (continued) Vowel formant figures for Maori male speakers (Hall 1976)
Vowel F1 F2
GOOSE 417 1389
NURSE 480 1767
Patterns of neutralization appear to be similar to those for general New Zealand

English, with a similar range of variation.
There is in Maori a general rule of phrase-final vowel devoicing, especially for
close vowels. Although there are some reports of this phenomenon being trans-
ferred to Maori English, we have not heard it.
3.2. The short vowels

The KIT vowel is considerably less centralized in Maori English than in Pakeha
English, possibly as a result of the Maori substrate short /i/, which has the same
quality as Maori long /i/. The LOT vowel is rather more peripheral than in Pakeha
English, with a quality like [ç4].
3.3. The long vowels

The FLEECE vowel is probably rather less diphthongized than in Pakeha English,
and possibly a little closer, reflecting the quality of Maori /i/.
The BATH/START vowel is backer than in Pakeha English, while still not clearly
a back vowel.
The THOUGHT/FORCE vowel is slightly less close than the corresponding vowel
in Pakeha English, perhaps [o].
The GOOSE vowel is even more fronted in Maori English than in Pakeha Eng-
lish: Bell (2000) suggests a quality such as [y] in many cases. The fronting of
Maori /u/ is usually attributed to the influence of English. Perhaps the perception
of English GOOSE as fronter than Maori /u/ has led to the very front GOOSE vowel
in Maori English.
3.4. The diphthongs

The diphthongs do not differ in terms of variants heard from those which occur in
other varieties of New Zealand English, although claims have been made that the
NEAR-SQUARE merger is on a more open variant in Maori English than in Pakeha
English.
4. The consonants
4.1. The plosives
Despite the fact that Maori plosives have generally become aspirated (presumably,
though not necessarily, because of contact with English), there is variable loss of
aspiration on voiceless plosives in Maori English. Figures of around 20% deaspi-
ration are frequently cited, although this may include instances where the stop is
aspirated, but not as strongly as would be the norm in other varieties of English.
The discussion is sometimes focussed on /t/, where the frequent affrication in
general New Zealand English may provide a confusing factor. Intervocalic /t/ is
tapped as in other varieties of New Zealand English.
4.2. The fricatives

Devoicing of voiced fricatives was commented on as being a feature of general
New Zealand English, but it is an even stronger feature of Maori English. Again
figures of around 20% total devoicing are cited. The discussion in the literature
centers on /z/ devoicing, but the other voiced fricatives are also devoiced, though
we have no quantitative studies of the extent of such devoicing.
The dental fricatives are sometimes replaced, not by labio-dentals (as might be
expected given both English variation and the structure of Maori) but by affricates,
[t] and [d].
4.3. /r/ and /l/

The fact that Maori has only one liquid, usually pronounced as an alveolar tap [(],
but occasionally heard as a lateral, might lead to the expectation that /r/ and /l/
would be confused in Maori English or that /r/ would be tapped. There is no such
evidence, except for the usual possible tapping after // in words like thread. The
lack of tapped /(/ may be the result of the fact that intervocalic /t/ is tapped.
5. Lexical distribution
There is little difference between the lexical distribution of sounds in New Zealand
English and in Maori English. The use of the LOT vowel in the first syllable of
worry is perhaps more frequent in Maori English, and some spelling pronuncia-
tions may also be more frequent in Maori English.
Studies of the rhythm of New Zealand English have observed that Maori English
in particular strongly reflects a tendency towards syllable-based timing found
more generally in New Zealand varieties. Syllable-based timing is where there
is a near-equal interval between the beginnings of adjacent syllables, regard-
less of the type of syllable. This contrasts with stress-based timing, typically
attested for most main varieties of English, where the unit of rhythm is the stress
foot. In stress-based timing the intervals between the beginnings of stressed
syllables are near-equal, regardless of the number of unstressed syllables be-
tween the stressed syllables. The tendency towards syllable-based timing has
been demonstrated both in acoustic comparison of the timing patterns with those
of Received Pronunciation, and in the greater incidence of full vowels for weak
vowels in unstressed syllables (Warren 1999). As with other varieties, such as
Singapore English, differences in timing patterns may be the influence of con-
tact, in this case with Maori. Maori itself is mora-timed, as mentioned above, but
it has been observed that the influence of mora-based timing on a stress-timed
language such as English is comparable to that of syllable-based timing (Grabe
and Low 2002).
It seems likely that the most distinctive feature of stereotypical Maori English
is the voice quality, with, however, men’s and women’s voice qualities being dif-
ferent. For male speech some of the following features seem to characterize Maori
English: lowered larynx, greater lingual tension, a degree of pharyngealization
(constriction of the pharynx during speaking, resulting in a “dark” voice quality),
possibly greater nasalization than is used in Pakeha English (for further descrip-
tions of voice qualities, see Laver 1994, chapter 13).
According to Robertson (1994) speech rate may correlate with Maori English,
speakers who are identified as Maori speaking rather more slowly in reading and
rather faster in conversation than speakers who are identified as Pakeha. This has
not been confirmed on a wider sample of speakers.
7. Intonation patterns
The high rate of use of High Rising Terminals (HRTs) was noted in the
chapter on New Zealand English. This intonation pattern is prevalent also in
Maori English, and may indeed be in more general use than in Pakeha English,
where HRT use is more typical of female speakers than male speakers (Bell
and Johnson 1997). It has also been commented that Maori speakers maintain a
relatively high level of pitch overall, which may also be an influence from Mao-
ri.
8. The sound recordings
Because of the very nature of Maori English, getting good recordings of this vari-
ety in formal settings, in a Pakeha institution (a university) and with Pakeha re-
searchers is difficult. None of the recordings provided here is completely proto-
typical, even when we have Maori people speaking to each other without Pakeha
people present. Nevertheless, some of the typical features of Maori English can be
heard in these recordings.
The sound files provided include a short conversation about a recent graphic
series of drink-driving ads on New Zealand television, the ‘South Wind’ passage,
and the extended word list. The passage and word list are read by one of the two
speakers in the conversation (speaker C, who is on the left channel of the stereo
file). The speaker is a young female from the Wellington region, and who identifies
as Maori. In addition, the words from the word list have also been made available
in separate speech files, in which each word is paired with the version produced
by speaker F, the young female speaker of Pakeha New Zealand English (see the
chapter on New Zealand English phonology by Bauer and Warren, this volume).
Many of the features that might be commented on in the Maori English samples
can be characterized as features of a broad New Zealand English pronunciation.
As noted above, it is a high level of co-occurrence of such features that may con-
tribute to the character of Maori English. Nevertheless, some of the characteristics
of the read speech in these Maori English samples are ambiguous in their interpre-
tation, since they could reflect a careful speech style rather than being features of
Maori English. For instance, the more peripheral vowels found in weak syllables
might reflect the tendency in Maori English towards syllable-based rhythm (and a
consequential lessening of the contrast between full and reduced vowels), but they
might also be a result of a more deliberate reading style. Similarly, the two-vowel
like nature of some of the diphthongs might result from careful reading. However,
some of these features can also be identified in the conversation recording, and so
may be more broadly characteristic of this Maori English speaker.
The second conversation is an interview between a male Maori interviewer and
a female Maori interviewee, originally broadcast by Radio New Zealand. The
male interviewer sounds rather more obviously Maori than the female speakers in
the first conversation. For the interviewee, code-switching on Maori words is very
obvious, although the Maori words do not always get the value that they would
have in monolingual Maori.
Finally, there is a comment by a mature, male Maori speaker. This is a read pas-
sage, written by the speaker, The Right Reverend Muru Walters, MA, Dip Ed, LTh
(Aot), Adv Dip Tchg, PGD (Arts) who is the Maori Anglican Bishop of Aotearoa
(New Zealand) for the district ki te Upoko o te Ika (the Wellington region). The
passage was first broadcast on Radio New Zealand. This speaker illustrates the use
of English by someone who is a fluent Maori speaker, older than the other speak-
ers illustrated here, and also highly educated. The voice quality is typical of a
speaker of his generation, and the code-switching into Maori is obvious. Because
the passage is read for broadcast, it is very clearly enunciated, and in that respect
is not typical of conversational Maori English.
8.1. Conversation sample 1
8.1.1. The short vowels

The KIT vowel is less centralized than in Pakeha New Zealand English, in both kit
and sing from the word list.
The TRAP and DRESS vowels are very similar to those of the Pakeha New Zea-
land English speaker, but the merger before /l/, exemplified in malady and melody,
appears to be towards a more open variant (see also belt in the conversation at
around 75 seconds).
The short vowels in the read material appear somewhat longer than in the Pak-
eha New Zealand English sample, but this may be due to the more deliberate
reading style. A consequence of this additional length is that the // vowel in us is
almost //-like.
8.1.2. The long vowels

The FLEECE vowel is somewhat closer than that of the Pakeha New Zealand Eng-
lish speaker.
BATH/START – The words bath and palm have very similar vowels for the two
speakers. In the word start, the Maori English vowel is somewhat fronter, despite
our general observation that BATH/START is backer than in Pakeha New Zealand
English.
The GOOSE vowel is clearly fronter than Pakeha New Zealand English.
The NURSE vowel seems much more rounded and fronter than Pakeha New
Zealand English, both in nurse and in girl, which has a very broad pronunciation
in this set. This quality for NURSE is also noticeable in the conversation, in the
words work (around 23 seconds) and first (around 161 seconds).
8.1.3. The diphthongs

The merger of NEAR and SQUARE is more noticeable for this Maori English speak-
er than for the Pakeha English speaker. Contrary to Bell and Johnson’s (1997)
observations, the merger is to a closer onset. A close onset to the diphthong is also
found in occurrences of the word where in the conversation (57 and 72 seconds).
The FACE vowel in the word list has a more distinctly two-part diphthong, but it
is not clear if this is a result of a deliberate reading style.
The second part of the GOAT vowel is quite front (matching the GOOSE vowel),
especially noticeable in a number of words in the conversation (e.g. home at 54
seconds, road at 62 and 96 seconds).
It is not clear that these realizations of diphthongs are characteristically Maori
English, or just more generally broad New Zealand English.
8.1.4. The reduced vowels

In each of the words comma, horses, nothing, happy and letter, the reduced vowel
is more peripheral than in the Pakeha New Zealand English recordings. The sec-
ond syllable of letter may be the result of spelling pronunciation. A peripheral
pronunciation is also found in the conversation, in words such as lady (a clear
FLEECE vowel at 58 and 72 seconds) and pushing (60 seconds). In disgusting (110
seconds) and driving (123 seconds) the final vowel is FLEECE-like in its quality
and also has a brief /
/ onglide. In all of these cases, the vowel is a more extreme
version of the Pakeha New Zealand English one, and may well result from the
lessening of the distinction between full and reduced vowels that arises as a con-
sequence of syllable-based timing.
8.1.5. Vowels before /l/

The forms pool and pull overlap in the Maori English word list, but were distinct
in the Pakeha New Zealand English.
8.1.6. /l/-vocalization
Vocalization of /l/ is more widespread than in the Pakeha New Zealand English
word list, again probably reflecting a generally more broad pronunciation. Where
there is no vocalization, there is a tendency towards a clear /l/ postvocalically.
8.1.7. The plosives

The conversation contains many examples of the tapping of /t/ and /d/ as in other
varieties of New Zealand English. This speaker also frequently replaces final /k/
with a glottal stop or glottalization.
8.1.8. Prosodic features

Although there is little clear evidence of consistent syllable-based timing, the more
peripheral realizations of many of the weak vowels supports the tendency towards
this type of rhythm, and there are some short stretches of the conversation that
appear more syllable timed (notable around 114−117 seconds and 125−129 sec-
onds).
8.2. Conversation sample 2

Although we have marked instances which appear to show code-switching to
Maori (indicated by, for example the use of a tap [(]), vowel qualities are vari-
able across these, and while they sometimes show pronunciations modified in the
direction of Maori, they do not do so consistently or in the same way. Some of the
Maori phrases used are translated below:
kapa haka Maori cultural performance

kete basket of woven flax
korero speak, talk
mana wahine woman power, feminism
Ngati Palangi Ngati means ‘people’ or ‘tribe’ and is the usual word for
one of the Maori tribes; palangi is a Pacific word for
Maori pakeha ‘person of European descent’; the entire
phrase means ‘white people’.
pakeha person of European descent, white
te ara reo the language path
te reo Maori the Maori language
tikanga Maori Maori custom
waiata song
whare wananga house of instruction, university
Note the unexpectedly back vowel in the second syllable of demand, the variable
pronunciation of coda-/l/ (especially after back vowels), the use of full vowels in
a number of unstressed or unaccented words, variable NEAR-SQUARE merger, the
quality of the vowel in what might be thought of as GOAT + /l/ contexts (but which
should probably be reanalyzed as GOLD contexts), the pronunciation of pronun-
ciation showing its derivation from pronounce (though the two nuclei are far from
identical phonetically), the quality of STRUT when followed by coda-/l/, tapped
/n/ in ninety. Plosives appear to have standard English values throughout, even in
Maori words, and devoicing, while marked on occasions, is not pervasive. High
Rising Terminals are found, but are not as common as one might expect from a
young female relating a narrative.
Selected references
ROM.
Bell, Allan
2000 Maori and Pakeha English: a case study. In: Bell and Kuiper (eds.), 221–248.
Bell, Allan and Gary Johnson
1997 Towards a sociolinguistics of style. University of Pennsylvania Working
Papers in Linguistics 4: 1–21.
Grabe, Esther and Low, Ee Ling
2002 Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class hypothesis. In: Carlos
Gussenhoven and Natasha Warner (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 7,
515–546. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hall, Moira
1976 An acoustic analysis of New Zealand vowels. M.A. thesis, University of
Auckland.
Laver, John
1994 Principles of Phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Richards, Jack
1970 The language factor in Maori schooling. In: John L. Ewing and Jack Shallcrass
(eds.), Introduction to Maori Education, 122–132. Wellington: New Zealand
Universities Press.
Robertson, Shelley A.
1994 Identifying Maori English: a study of ethnic identification, attitudes and pho-
netic features. M.A. thesis, Victoria University, Wellington.
Warren, Paul
1999 Timing properties of New Zealand English rhythm. Proceedings of the 14th
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1843–1848. San Francisco.
Australian English: phonology
Barbara M. Horvath
1. Introduction
English was brought to Australia in 1788 and the people who provided the original
linguistic input to what was to become a distinctive national variety of English
came from all over England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. People from the whole
social spectrum were represented but the colony began with its own built-in social
division based on whether a person was a freeman or a convict, and this social
division was passed on to the children of these original settlers as well. In the
early days, men far outnumbered women. We know very little about how this
diversity of input dialects was distributed across that social spectrum nor how that
social spectrum helped to structure the ways of speaking of the first generations
of native born speakers of Australian English (AusE). We do know that migration
from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland has continued from the earliest days
and that these migrants have been joined by others, initially from northern Europe,
and since the 1950s from southern Europe and the Middle East and in more re-
cent times from Asia. Although the varieties of AusE are many, only some have
been described in any detail. The English spoken by some Aborigines, for instance,
is only just being examined as are the ethnolects, the particular contributions to
AusE by the many migrants who learned English as a second language.
There is only the beginning of a discussion about how all of these diverse dia-
lects of English came together to form AusE, but in the earliest descriptions of the
phonology of AusE in the 1940s, Alexander G. Mitchell recognized a spectrum
of pronunciations which were spread over the whole of the Australian continent.
He believed, as did many others following his lead, that there were no social dia-
lects (i.e. dialects associated with social class) nor any regional dialects. He later
recognized three points on the pronunciation spectrum which he labelled Broad,
General and Cultivated Australian English and these three have remained to this
day as descriptors of the range of variation in pronunciation. On the prestige scale,
Cultivated is the highest and is estimated to be spoken by only about 10% of Aus-
tralians. Broad, spoken by about a third of the people, has the most marked AusE
characteristics and has the least prestige. General falls in between these two variet-
ies, is spoken by a majority of the people, and may well be increasing in strength
as speakers move away from the more stigmatized Broad variety.
In the early 1960s Mitchell and Delbridge (1965) surveyed a large sample of
high school students from across Australia and provided a detailed account of the
phonological system of AusE. Later acoustic analysis by Bernard (1970) provided
626 Barbara M. Horvath
the basis for the pronunciations given in the Macquarie Dictionary published in
1981, the first dictionary of AusE. Mitchell and Delbridge found little to differenti-
ate Australians either among themselves or other English speakers in the pronun-
ciation of the consonants, but found the greatest source of variety in the FLEECE,
GOAT, GOOSE, FACE, PRICE and MOUTH vowels. They took the position that Aus-
tralian English was a single dialect with three varieties because they found no firm
regional or cultural boundaries (Mitchell and Delbridge 1965: 87). More recent
studies have shown that, although it is certainly the case that regional and social
variation exists, the differences in pronunciation are often quantitative rather than
qualitative. The consonants, too, have now been more widely studied and have
also been found to represent sociolinguistic and/or geolinguistic variables. The
vocalization of /l/, for instance, is widespread in Adelaide, not so prevalent in
Sydney, and hardly ever heard in Brisbane. We will begin with a description of the
vowel system for AusE and then proceed to discuss just those consonants which
either have some particular significance or which have been the topic of research.
2. The vowel system of AusE
As in most varieties of English, the most distinctive characteristic of the phonologi-

cal system of AusE are the vowels. In this section we will approach the description
of the AusE vowels from three perspectives. First of all, an auditory description
of the phonetic variants following Clark (1989: 209–212) will be presented. An
acoustic description taken from the work of Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997)
will demonstrate how the variants are distributed across the three major varieties
of AusE, Broad, General and Cultivated. Finally, the sociolinguistic description of
a selection of vowels will show how the Broad, General and Cultivated vowels are
distributed across social dialects.
2.1. An auditory description of AusE vowels

Clark (1989) divides the vowels into four groups: simple target long vowels, simple
target short vowels, complex target long vowels and complex target short vowels.
Table 1. An auditory description of AusE vowels (Clark 1989: 209–211)
Vowel Type Keyword Phonetic Symbol Phonetic Description
Simple target START [6] A long low central vowel; very stable;
long vowels may be marked retraction in extreme
cases of speakers aspiring towards an
RP model. Some instances of a central
offglide may occur.
Australian English: phonology 627
Table 1. (continued) An auditory description of AusE vowels (Clark 1989: 209–211)
NURSE [] A long mid-high central vowel; some

variability but central form is most
common.
Simple target KIT [I], [
] A short high front vowel; first vari-
short vowels ant may be more fronted than its RP
counterpart. The second variant is
commonly heard as a reduced form
in AusE.
DRESS [e], [] A short mid-high front vowel; second
variant may occur with very open
front vowels but not common.
STRUT [] A long low central vowel; very stable
and has a true length contrast with the
START vowel.
FOOT [] A short mid-high back vowel.
Complex target FLEECE [i], [

i], [
i] A long high front vowel with an
long vowels onglide. The latter two are very com-
monly heard in AusE with a continu-
um of realisations varying from slight
onglide to full diphthongization.
CLOTH [o], [o
], [o
] A long mid-high back vowel with
an offglide. All are common and in
some cases the degree of inglide may
warrant treating this sound as a true
diphthong.
GOOSE [ ], [
], [
] A long high central vowel with an
onglide; an unstable target as evi-
denced by onglide or offglide due to
its unpressured position in the phono-
logical vowel space. In some extreme
cases the target realization may ap-
proach [y]. The phonetic properties of
this sound in AusE are problematic.
FACE [e], [æe] A mid-low front vowel with a closing
glide.
PRICE [ e], [çe] A low central vowel with a closing
glide.
GOAT [
] A mid-low central vowel with a clos-
ing glide.
Table 1. (continued) An auditory description of AusE vowels (Clark 1989: 209–211)
MOUTH [æç], [ç] A mid-low front vowel with a retract-

ing glide.
CHOICE [o] A mid-high back vowel with a front-
ing glide.
NEAR [
], [
], [] A high front vowel with an offglide;
a dominant first target, and marginal
diphthongal status with a weak cen-
tralised second target. In some speak-
ers this becomes either a weak central
offglide gesture or a simple target
long vowel. The general tendency
seems to be to trade the second target
for length.
SQUARE [e
],[e
], [e] A mid-high front vowel with an
offglide. The variant forms parallel
those found in the NEAR vowel. The
tendency to replace the central second
target or offglide with length is prob-
ably even more common.
CURE [
], [
], [o] A mid-high back vowel with an off-
glide; may have diphthongal status
or may be a two vowel sequence;
auditorily very difficult to distinguish
from [
] in some instances. The third
and commonly heard variant parallels
the sound change occurring in the two
preceding vowels in which the central
second target is replaced by length,
with the additional consequence of
losing contrast with the CLOTH
vowel.
Complex target TRAP [æ], [æ
], [æ] Varying degrees of offglide occur and
short vowels some instances of lengthening.
LOT [ç], [ç
], [ç´] The first and second forms are most
common but the diphthongal form is
possible in extreme cases of central
offglide.
The indetermi- commA [
] Realised in a wide range of auditory
nate vowel lettER qualities around the vowel space;
horsES strongly influenced by phonetic con-
text.
Although Clark does not include it in his description, the happY vowel is realized
as [i].
2.2. An acoustic description of AusE vowels

The acoustic description of AusE vowels by Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997)
involved a sample of 119 men and women who had been identified as speakers of
Broad, General and Cultivated AusE; the goal was to describe the characteristics
of the vowels that differentiate the three varieties. Table 2 shows the phonetic sym-
bol or symbols that, according to Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) best describe
the vowel in AusE; however, much of the variability associated with one or the
other of the varieties is lost in the choice of a single symbol. The comments on
the table indicate the variability associated with each vowel. Harrington, Cox and
Evans (1997) divide the vowels into four types: tense and lax monophthongs and
rising and falling diphthongs.
Table 2. A comparison of Broad, General and Cultivated vowels in AusE (Harrington,

Cox and Evans 1997)
KEY WORDS Proposed Transcription COMMENTS

(B - Broad; G - General;
C- Cultivated)
TENSE MONOPHTHONGS
FLEECE i Long onglide from a central vowel
at onset;
B considerably longer onglide than
either G or C;
clear B/G/C differentiation for
males for onglide.
GOOSE Fronted for B; shorter onglide than
FLEECE;
not clear that onglide starts at a cen-
tral vowel.
CLOTH o
BATH or æ lexical/social/regional variation
NURSE Fronted for B.
LAX MONOPHTHONGS
KIT Fronted for B.
FOOT
Table 2. (continued) A comparison of Broad, General and Cultivated vowels in AusE

(Harrington, Cox and Evans 1997)
KEY WORDS Proposed Transcription COMMENTS

(B - Broad; G - General;
C- Cultivated)
LOT ç
STRUT
DRESS e Fronted for B.
TRAP æ
RISING DIPHTHONGS
FACE æe Low first target;

more fronted for C than G or B.
GOAT
or
Ends between /U/ and /u/;
more fronted for B;
more raised in G than C.
CHOICE o
PRICE e Raised and backed first target for B
(extends into boundary between /a/
and // vowel space.
MOUTH æç First target fronted;
raised for B;
ends at // more than /ç/ or /u/.
FALLING DIPHTHONGS
NEAR
; Long monophthong and bisyllabic
variants; second target ends in /æ/
or /a/ vowel space.
SQUARE e
; e Long monophthong and bisyllabic
variant; second target ends in /æ/ or
/a/ vowel space.
CURE
and ç Long monophthong and bisyllabic
variant; first target more open and
fronted than //; second target ends
in /æ/ or /a/ vowel space.
2.2.1. Monophthongs
The ellipse plots of the vowel targets for male and female tense and lax monoph-
thongs are given in Figure 1. Each ellipse includes at least 95% of the tokens. The
labels b, g, and c represent the mean F1 and F2 values for Broad, General and
Cultivated speakers (Harrington, Cox and Evans 1997: 164).
Figure 1. Ellipse plots of vowel targets in the formant plane for male and female
monophthongs (Harrington, Cox and Evans 1997: 164)
There is not much variation across the three varieties in the targets for the monoph-
thongs. No significant differences were found between General and Cultivated,
but there were some for Broad, particularly for the GOOSE vowel for both men
and women and the NURSE vowel for women. The GOOSE vowel was fronted for
men and women and the NURSE, KIT and DRESS vowels were fronted for Broad
speaking women. Ongliding for both FLEECE and GOOSE have often been noted as
characteristic of AusE. In this study FLEECE was found to have an onglide from a
more central vowel but there was much less evidence for ongliding of the GOOSE
vowel. The longest onglide was found for Broad speakers for the FLEECE vowel;
the oldest Broad speakers exhibited the most extensive onglides and young Culti-
vated speakers the least marked onglide.
2.2.2. Rising diphthongs

The rising diphthongs are often cited as a feature of AusE that distinguishes it
from many other dialects of English. FACE has a low first target; MOUTH has a
fronted first target which is also raised for Broad speakers; and the first target
of the PRICE vowel for Broad speakers is raised and backed, extending into the
boundary between the /a/ and /Q/ vowel spaces. The second target for the front-
rising diphthongs FACE and CHOICE point toward the // vowel space but is much
lower for PRICE. The two back-rising diphthongs, GOAT and MOUTH, point toward
the // space but fall well short of it.
When Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) compared the rising diphthongs
across the three varieties of AusE, they found that the first targets of these vow-
els, unlike the monophthongs, were important differentiators within AusE, par-
ticularly so for the PRICE and MOUTH vowels. The first target for PRICE is higher
and more retracted for Broad speakers than for either General or Cultivated
speakers and for MOUTH, the Broad speakers’ first target is considerably fronted
and raised compared to the others. For both PRICE and MOUTH, the Cultivated
speakers have the lowest first target and General falls between the two. The
GOAT vowel indicates that women classified as Broad speakers have a more
fronted first target. The CHOICE vowel shows the least amount of differentia-
tion.
2.2.3. Falling diphthongs

What is most characteristic of AusE with respect to the falling diphthongs is the
[ç] pronunciation of the CURE vowel. This is especially so for the lexical item
sure but is frequent for all words containing the CURE vowel. There is very little
differentiation in the articulation of the falling diphthongs among the three variet-
ies. The first target is close to the corresponding lax monophthongs / / and the
offset ends near the /æ a/ vowel space. The pronunciation actually varies from a
fully two-targeted variant, to a diphthongal variant (having an offglide), to a long
monophthongal variant. Although Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) found only a
small number of monophthongal variants in their study, they suggest that this may
be an artefact of the corpus.
3. The social distribution of Broad, General and

Cultivated varieties of AusE
The earliest work on AusE by Mitchell and Delbridge and the acoustic studies
of Bernard presented the phonological continuum as one with little association
with social or geographical boundaries. Much work since the 1960s has been
done to investigate whether such is the case (Horvath 1985; Bradley 1989; Cox
and Palethorpe 2001). Certainly regional variation is being found for a number
of phonological features (see the chapter on regional variation in AusE by Brad-
ley in this volume) and Horvath’s study of Sydney English drew attention to the
social class, gender and ethnic correlates of the Broad, General and Cultivated
continuum.
3.1. The social dimensions of the phonological continuum – vowels

Whereas most other researchers have classified speakers as belonging to one of
the three varieties, Horvath approached the description of the vowel system from
a different perspective. Using a statistical procedure called principal components
analysis, she was able to group the speakers from her sociolinguistic study who
were similar in their overall linguistic behavior on five vowels (FLEECE, FACE,
GOAT, PRICE and MOUTH). In place of a three-way division of the AusE spectrum,
she argued for a four way division and simply named them Sociolects 1–4, with
Broad corresponding most closely to Sociolect 1, Cultivated to Sociolect 4 and
General to Sociolects 2 and 3. As Figure 2 shows, no speaker used only Broad,
General or Cultivated vowels but each variety consisted of a mix of all of the
vowel pronunciations; the Broad variety used more ‘broad’ vowels and the Culti-
vated used more ‘cultivated’ vowels, but all speakers often used ‘general’ vowels.
No variety existed in a ‘pure’ form. Furthermore, the varieties correlated with
social class and gender. At the Broad end of the continuum men and the working
class predominated while women and the middle class were associated with the
Cultivated end. In fact, at the most Cultivated end of the continuum, there were
only women.
The falling diphthongs also show an interesting social and linguistic distribu-
tion. Horvath (1985) found that the NEAR vowel was more than twice as often
pronounced with the two targeted variant [i
] than it was for the SQUARE vow-
el. The reverse was true for the monophthongal variant: speakers are more than
twice as often heard pronouncing hair as [he:] than they are heard saying [bi˘]
for beer. The social distribution indicates that the middle class favours some
kind of diphthongal realization, either an offglide or a two-targeted variant. The
monophthongal variant was associated with working class speakers, older speak-
ers, and men.
Figure 2. The social distribution of Broad, General and Cultivated vowels (Horvath
1985: 77)
3.2. The social dimensions of the phonological continuum – consonants
Little attention until recently has been paid to the consonants in AusE since it
is the vowels that most dramatically differentiate the speakers of AusE and it is
the vowels that have been the focus of attention. Although the consonant system
of AusE does not differ to any great extent from other dialects of English, there
are a number of consonants that vary among its speakers, but even these are also
characteristic of various other dialects of English. The consonants that have been
studied are the plosive, flapping, frication, and glottalization of /t/; the palataliza-
tion of /t, d, s, z/; h-deletion; [n] substituted for [] for the -ing morpheme; ‘thing’
words such as nothing and anything pronounced with [k] substituted for []; and
the substitution of [f] and [v] for // and //, respectively. The vocalization of /l/ is
one of the sounds of AusE that is currently a change in progress and it will be dis-
cussed at some length because of its interest both historically and phonologically.
3.2.1. Flapping, frication and glottalization of /t/

There are two pronunciations of /t/ that are particularly associated with AusE. One
is strongly fricated [ts] and most noticed in prepausal position, for instance in an
expression such as ‘And that’s as far as it went.’ [wnts]. The other is a flap or tap
[(] and is heard widely in the pronunciation of the numbers thirteen [*Rin] or
eighteen [ei*Rin]. It is interesting to note that the first, [ts], is not widely distributed
over the speech community and is more likely to be heard by speakers of Culti-
vated AusE. Although the [R] is often thought to be a feature of Broad AusE, it is
actually widely used by Australians.
A recent study of AusE (Tollfree 2001) gives a detailed account of the four
variants of /t/. The first of these, plosive [t], has the usual English allophonic
distribution for the aspirated and unaspirated variants but in addition it also has a
voiced tap [(], a glottalized variant [/], and a fricated variant [ts]. The voiced tap
[(] occurs in intervocalic final contexts, e.g. lot of, get up, and in medial contexts,
e.g. bitter, mutter. For some words, such as attitude, beauty, data or city, Tollfree
found that [(] was almost categorical while in words followed by a syllabic /l/ like
bottle or subtle or by a syllabic /n/ like mutton or baton both plosive [t] and [(]
were found. The glottalized variant was also found in medial positions such as
cutlass or hitman, occasionally in intervocalic medial contexts like lot of or get
out, but they were not found in intervocalic medial contexts like bitter. The fric-
ated [ts] was found in intervocalic and prepausal contexts. As mentioned earlier,
the [ts] variant was associated with women and the middle class, along with Cul-
tivated vowel usage, in Horvath (1985). Tollfree (2001) also notes its occurrence
in prepausal position in the formal style of young lower socioeconomic speakers
but it occurred more often in both the prepausal and intervocalic medial contexts
in both formal and informal styles in the speech of middle socioeconomic speak-
ers. In comparing the three variants quantitatively, Tollfree found a small number
of the fricated variant [ts] and she believes that it is receding in AusE; tapping and
glottalized /t/ were more prolific but in those contexts where both could be used,
tapping was strongly favored over glottalization.
3.2.2. Palatalization of /t, d, s, z/

AusE shares with a number of other English dialects a possible realization of /t,
d, s, z/ preceding the GOOSE vowel [u] either as the as [tj, dj, sj, zj] or the corre-
sponding palatals /t, d, , /. Thus the following variants regularly occur:
tune [*tjun] [*tun]

due [*dju] [*du]
assume [
*sjum] [
*um]
presume [pr
*zjum] [pr
*um]
Horvath (1985) found that the palatalized consonants occurred more frequently
when the following [u] was in an unstressed syllable (attitude, fortune, educate,
insulate) than when it was stressed, as in the preceding list of words. In examin-
ing the lexicon, a great deal of variability is found: in some cases, e.g., fortune
and educate, the Macquarie Dictionary lists only the [t] and [d], respectively,
and these are certainly not only the standard AusE pronunciations but also the
most usual. However, for attitude the dictionary shows only [tj] and for insulate
only the palatal [] and these do tend to vary across the speech community, al-
though [*æt
tud] may well be heard more often than [*nsjlet]. The makers of the
Macquarie Dictionary recognized the high degree of variability in the pronuncia-
tions of /tj/ and /dj/ and chose to record the way the words would most likely be
pronounced by speakers of Cultivated Australian. The results of Horvath’s study
suggested that men, young people, and the speakers from the working class were
most likely to use the palatals.
3.2.3. /h/ deletion

The deletion of /h/ in initial position is frequent in all English dialects, especially
in normal conversational speech in words that receive little or no stress. For the
pronouns his, her, him, or hers, for instance, the deletion of /h/ is commonplace.
However, when /h/ is deleted in initial position in stressed words, it is frequently
remarked upon. There are two indications that the widespread deletion of /h/ is
probably linked to a former period in AusE. The first is an indication that /h/ de-
letion and /h/ insertion at one time worked hand-in-hand; a number of people
remember that it used to be true that someone riding on a train might “drop their
aitch in ’aberfield and pick it up again in Hashfield”. The saying is no longer so
well known nor is the linguistic practice. The other bit of nostalgia is an advertise-
ment that was popular on television until the company disappeared; a variety of
scenarios were shown, all of which concluded with an old man, obviously work-
ing class, recommending that the listeners go for their building requirements to
“’udson’s, ’udson’s with a haitch”.
Horvath’s study of /h/ found no /h/ insertion and the rate of /h/ deletion was low.
However, the distribution of /h/ deletion was clearly at the Broad AusE end of the
dialect continuum and occurred infrequently in Cultivated AusE. It was also more
likely to be heard by men than women.
3.2.4. [f, v] substitution for /, /

The substitution of [f] for // and [v] for // are rarely recognized variants in AusE
but they are nonetheless widespread. Horvath’s study of [f] for // found a very
low frequency (less than 5%) but the social distribution was unusual in that it was
one of the consonant variables that never occurred in Cultivated AusE. It is, in fact,
a pronunciation that many speakers are certainly aware of and which is generally
avoided by many and in times past has been cause for referral to the speech thera-
pist by teachers.
3.2.5. The -ing variable

Shnukal’s (1988) study of the -ing variable has shown that the common substitution
of [n] for [] is also prevalent in AusE but not with the high frequencies that have
been found for British and American varieties of English. In general most studies
of AusE have found that [n] is substituted in only about a quarter of the potential
occurrences. It will not be surprising either to learn that men use the [n] substitution
more often than women or that speakers at the Broad AusE end of the spectrum are
more likely to use the variant and Cultivated AusE speakers almost never use it.
3.2.6. The -thing words

Words such as nothing, something, anything, everything share with a number of
British English dialects the substitution of [k] for []. This substitution is more
clearly associated with the Broad end of the spectrum and is never found in the
Cultivated variety.
3.2.7. The social distribution of the consonantal variants

It is beneficial to look at these four consonantal variants in terms of their spread
across the AusE spectrum as shown in Figure 3 because it gives a clearer picture
of the clusters of phonological variables that go together to make up the social
dialects of AusE.
Figure 3. The social distribution of some consonant variants in AusE

(Horvath 1985: 99)
4. Intonation: High Rising Tone
AusE has a distinctive intonation pattern which has been the subject of a number of
studies (Guy and Vonwiller 1984; Horvath 1985 and Guy et al. 1986). The pattern
is variously referred to as High Rising Tone (HRT) or Australian Questioning In-
tonation and is defined as a rising contour on a declarative clause. This intonation
pattern receives a good deal of media attention and is widely believed to be used
excessively by teenage girls and to be a sign of insecurity. Below is an example of
a description of a primary school by an AusE speaker. The arrow indicates where
the rising tone occurred.
All right, um, there were two sections really. Uh, there was the juniors and the seniors. The
juniors was composed of the old Marrickville High building4, and a few portables4,
old fashioned portables, not the modern ones, the, you know, not the uh, aluminium ones,
just the wooden ones4, and it had a big, big area for playground, it’s all green grass4,
two areas really, big. Uh, um, had an asphalt centre4.
In order to study the distribution of this intonation pattern, a large number of inter-
views with AusE speakers was subdivided into the following text types: descriptions,
opinions, explanations, factual texts, and narratives. Statistical analysis showed that
HRTs were most likely to be found in descriptions and narratives and least likely
in opinions and factual texts. Explanations neither favour nor disfavour the use of
HRTs. The length of the turn at talk was also investigated and it was found that multi-
clause turns were most likely to include an HRT. The social distribution matches
somewhat the public perception: it is indeed teenage working class girls who are
most likely to use HRTs but it certainly is the case that HRTs are used by speakers
of all ages and from both working and middle class backgrounds. In fact, the case
has been made that the HRT is a language change that is currently going on in AusE
and is one that is being led by women. A number of potential interpretations of the
function of HRTs has been offered including seeking verification of the listener’s
comprehension or as requesting the heightened participation of the listener – both of
which are plausible when extended turns at talk are taken, e.g. in narratives. It cer-
tainly does not seem to be an indicator of insecurity since it is not found as often in
factual texts or opinions, texts in which the speaker might have some concern about
the correctness of their facts or the acceptability of their opinions to the listener.
5. Phonological change in AusE
5.1. Changes in vowels

A number of phonological changes have been studied since the descriptions of
AusE by Mitchell and Delbridge and Bernard first appeared. Cox and Palethorpe
(2001: 25–29) compared their acoustic study of vowels collected from a group of
men during the 1990s with a similar acoustic study reported by Bernard (1970)
who collected his data in the 1960s, also from males. The summary of the changes
are shown in Table 3. They note that these changes follow patterned relationships.
The raised second target of the MOUTH vowel follows the raised LOT vowel and
the fronted second target of the GOAT vowel follows the fronted GOOSE vowel.
The fronted GOOSE and NURSE vowels represent a parallel shift and raised LOT
and FOOT provide an example of a change shift.
Table 3. Changes in AusE vowels between 1960s and 1990s
KEYWORD TRANSCRIPTION CHANGE
KIT // Raised

TRAP /æ/ Lowered and Retracted
LOT // Raised
FOOT // Raised
GOOSE /u/ Raised and Fronted
NURSE // Fronted
FACE /e/ Fronted Target 1
PRICE /a/ Retracted Target 1 and Lowered Target 2
MOUTH /a/ Lowered Target 1 and Raised Target 2
GOAT /o/ Fronted Target 2
The variation in the pronunciation of the GOAT vowel is of particular interest. Mitch-
ell and Delbridge were the first to comment on the unusual behaviour of this vowel
in their survey of adolescents in the 1960s. “A curiously variable glide is heard in
the South Australian recordings. It ranges from [2] to [2y]2 and from [ç] to [y].
This group of sounds is the only one that emerged from our survey which seemed to
be regionally distinctive” (Mitchell and Delbridge 1965: 84). Cox and Palethorpe
(2001: 40) indicate that for their Sydney speakers, the first target has shifted toward
[ç] and the upward glide is quite fronted, approaching [y] before /d/.
5.2. The vocalization of /l/

Among consonant changes perhaps one of the most interesting is the vocaliza-
tion of /l/ (e.g. Borowsky 2001; Horvath and Horvath 2001, 2002). The vocalized
variant of /l/ has the sound of a back vowel [u] and may or may not be rounded
or labialized. Although /l/ vocalization occurs in many dialects of English, the re-
ported occurrence of a vocalized /l/ in intervocalic position found in some Ameri-

can dialects is not found in AusE; however, /l/ vocalization in London English
does appear to be comparable to AusE. Borowsky (2001) gives an account of the
phonological processes involved in vocalization. She begins with an articulatory
description of English /l/ as given by Sproat and Fujimura (1993). According to
their account, /l/ is bigestural since it has both a tongue tip (coronal) gesture and
a tongue body gesture (dorsal). It is the timing of the dorsal gesture in relation to
the apical gesture that accounts for the allophonic distribution of dark l and light
l in English and that timing depends on where in the syllable the /l/ occurs. Each
gesture has a strong affinity for different parts of the syllable (Sproat and Fujimura
1993: 291). The tongue body gesture is inherently vocalic and has an affinity for
the syllable nucleus and the tongue tip gesture is inherently consonantal and has an
affinity for the syllable onset. Dark l is produced when the /l/ is in the nucleus or
near the nucleus because the tongue body gesture precedes the tongue tip gesture;
light l is produced when /l/ is the onset of a syllable since the tongue tip gesture
precedes. A quantitative study of AusE speakers indicated that syllable type was
indeed important to the understanding of the vocalization of /l/. An important find-
ing was that vocalized /l/ never occurred in onset position, whether initially in a
word, intervocalically or pre-vocalically. Three syllable types were found to pro-
mote vocalization of /l/: coda cluster (milk), syllabic (pickle) and coda (fool/fill).
Coda /l/ was further analysed into those syllables containing a long vowel (fool),
in which the /l/ tends to be syllabic, and those containing a short vowel, where the
/l/ is just a coda consonant and does not get the extra promotion effect of being in
a nuclear position. The comparison of the occurrence of a vocalized /l/ in the four
environments is given in Table 4.
Table 4. The comparison of vocalized /l/ for syllable type (Borowsky 2001: 74)
Syllable Type KEYWORD Vocalized /l/ (Percentage)
Coda Cluster MILK 28

Coda (Long Vowel) FOOL 19
Syllabic PICKLE 15
Coda (Short Vowel) FULL 11
Three other conditioning factors have an effect on the occurrence of a vocalized /l/:
(i) the place of articulation of a preceding or following consonant, (ii) whether the
following environment is a consonant, a vowel or a pause, and (iii) the backness of
the preceding vowel. For both coda clusters and syllabic /l/, the preceding or fol-
lowing segment is a primary factor in vocalization. The vocalization of /l/ is most
likely when a dorsal consonant follows, next most likely when a labial consonant
follows and least likely when a coronal consonant follows the /l/. It is interesting
to note that this process is paralleled in the history of English. In the early Modern
English period [l] was lost between some vowels and a following labial or dorsal:
talk, half, balm, and folk, and [lt] and [ld] are the only clusters that still occur after
these vowels: halt, bolt, fold (Borowsky 2001: 75). When the effect of the place
of articulation of a preceding consonant is considered, dorsals clearly enhance the
likelihood of vocalization.
A following word beginning with a consonant has the strongest effect in promot-
ing vocalization for all coda /l/ syllables, and a following pause weakly promotes
vocalization. A following vowel, however, strongly inhibits vocalization because
the /l/ becomes a syllable onset, where, as we have seen, the consonantal gesture
is most likely. The effect of a following vowel for syllabic /l/ on the vocalization
process is interesting because it does not have the strong effect that a following
vowel has for coda /l/. Borowsky (2001: 82–83) explains that the differences occur
because when an /l/ is followed by a vowel-initial word, a final /l/ becomes am-
bisyllabic and provides an onset for the following vowel. A syllabic /l/, however,
functions as the nucleus of its own syllable as well as as the onset of the following
one. Thus a conflict arises for syllabic /l/ in prevocalic environments that does not
occur for coda /l/.
The place of the preceding vowel for clustered /l/ and coda /l/ also affects the
occurrence of vocalization. In both syllable types, vocalization is more likely fol-
lowing a central or back vowel and is inhibited following a front vowel. Vowel
height also plays an important role in the vocalization of /l/. A preceding high
vowel promotes vocalization for both syllable types and while mid vowels dis-
favour vocalization, low vowels strongly inhibit the process. In fact for clustered
/l/, as noted above, the process of /l/ vocalization which began in Early Modern
English after low back vowels in such words as palm and calm has resulted in the
loss of /l/ in those contexts.
The study of AusE vocalization of /l/ has shown that the process is promoted by
backness – adjacent backness of both consonants and vowels in combination with
syllable position.
6. Outstanding issues
The study of AusE has a firm foundation in the numerous studies that have been
done since the 1940s. The research questions that are currently being addressed
have to do with regional descriptions of AusE, as well as the description of eth-
nolects. The contributions that migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds
have made to AusE are only beginning to be understood, not only in adding to the
lexicon or the pronunciation of AusE but also to the process of language change.
The origins of AusE and the relationship of AusE to New Zealand English, and for
that matter other Southern Hemisphere Englishes, can now be addressed because
of the advances made so far in dialect description. The further study of Aboriginal
and Torres Straits Island English is a neglected area that is also beginning to attract
the attention of linguists (see Malcolm, this and other volume).
Selected references
ROM.
Bernard, John
1970 Towards the acoustic specification of Australian English. Zeitschrift für
Phonetik 2/3: 113–128.
Borowsky, Toni
2001 The vocalization of dark /l/ in Australian English. In: Blair and Collins (eds.),
69–87.
Bradley, David
1989 Regional dialects in Australian English phonology. In: Collins and Blair (eds.),
260–270.
Clark, John
1989 Some proposals for a revised phonetic transcription of Australian English. In:
Collins and Blair (eds.), 205–213.
Cox, Felicity and Sallyanne Palethorpe
2001 The changing face of Australian English vowels. In: Blair and Collins (eds.),
17–44.
Delbridge, Arthur John R.L. Bernard, David Blair, Pam Peters and Sue Butler (eds.)
1981 The Macquarie Dictionary. North Ryde: Macquarie Library.
Guy, Gregory, Barbara Horvath, Julia Vonwiller, Elaine Daisley and Inge Rogers
1986 An intonational change in progress in Australian English. Language in Society
15: 23–51.
Guy, Gregory and Julia Vonwiller
1989 The high rising tone in Australian English. In: Collins and Blair (eds.), 21–
34.
Harrington, Jonathan, Felicity Cox and Zoe Evans
1997 An acoustic phonetic study of broad, general, and cultivated Australian
English vowels. Australian Journal of Linguistics 17: 155–184.
Horvath, Barbara M.
1985 Variation in Australian English: The Sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge:
Horvath, Barbara M. and Ronald J. Horvath
2001 A multilocality study of a sound change in progress: the case of /l/ vocaliza-
tion in New Zealand and Australian English. Language Variation and Change
13: 37–57.
2002 The geolinguistics of /l/ vocalization in Australia and New Zealand. Journal
of Sociolinguistics 6: 319–346.
Mitchell, Alexander G. and Arthur Delbridge

1965 The Speech of Australian Adolescents. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
Shnukal, Anna
1988 You’re gettin’ somethink for nothing: two phonological variables of Australian
English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 2: 197–212.
Sproat, Richard and Osamu Fujimura
1993 Allophonic variation in English /l/ and its implications for phonetic imple-
mentation. Journal of Phonetics 21: 291–311.
Tollfree, Laura
2001 Variation and change in Australian consonants: reduction of /t/. In: Blair and
Collins (eds.), 45–67.
Regional characteristics of Australian English:
phonology
David Bradley
1. Introduction
The regional phonological characteristics of Australian English are much more

subtle than those in the British Isles or North America, but they exist and are con-
tinuing to develop. As the contribution to this volume by Horvath indicates, these
regional differences are much less substantial than the pervasive sociolectal dif-
ferences. The regional differences are especially in vowel realisations, as is usual
throughout English, but also in a few areas of consonant realisations. Australian
speakers are much less aware of most of them than they are of the substantial so-
ciolectal differences, though some speakers are aware of some of the most salient
regional differences.
Most older scholarly sources, following Mitchell and Delbridge (1965), state
that there are no such differences. This is increasingly the subject of derisive com-
ment by popular commentators on language, for example Buzo (2002).
2. Vowel characteristics
2.1. Variation between [æ] and [a˘]
The clearest example of a regional difference which is stereotyped (known to
many non-linguists) is in the BATH vowel class. For most lexical items in Austra-
lian English of all regional and social varieties, the distribution of the earlier TRAP
vowel between the modern PALM and TRAP vowels generally follows the south-
eastern British pattern: mainly PALM before /f, s, T/, variable before nasal plus ob-
struent – more so in Australia than in England – and mainly TRAP elsewhere. As is
well-known, there are exceptions both ways in southeastern British English and in
Australian English, such as gas with TRAP and the second syllable of banana with
PALM, and some forms such as plastic and the prefix trans- still vary in Britain.
However, for about sixty morphemes which are now mainly invariant PALM in
southeastern British English, especially preceding a nasal + obstruent, but also
a smaller number of prefricative words such as castle, graph, and so on, there is
regional and social variation in Australia between TRAP and PALM vowels. This
clearly distinguishes Australian English from New Zealand English, which has a
646 David Bradley
much stronger tendency to follow the more recent British distribution maximising
the number of former TRAP words now pronounced with PALM.
The current Australian regional distribution appears to reflect the historical
and social characteristics of settlement, and allows the chronology of this change
within southeastern British English to be traced indirectly, as suggested in Bradley
(1991): places settled by the early nineteenth century, and primarily by people of
lower socio-economic status, use more PALM as in Sydney, Hobart and Brisbane.
Melbourne, settled in the mid-nineteenth century, with a more mixed population,
shows a higher proportion of TRAP. Adelaide, settled later in the nineteenth cen-
tury primarily by people of middle or higher socio-economic status, uses the high-
est proportion of PALM, and shows a more advanced stage of the shift before nasal
+ obstruent than elsewhere in Australia, though not quite as far advanced as New
Zealand or modern southeastern British English. This implies that the change in
southeastern England was underway during the settlement of Australia, and that
PALM was a lower-status form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
but had reversed its social value and become a high status form by the late nine-
teenth century. Furthermore, the change in the nasal + obstruent environment must
have followed the prefricative environment by quite some time.
Tables 1 and 2 (from Bradley 1991: 229–230) show the overall regional distri-
bution of words which vary across four major cities, and the difference between
the two phonological environments: the earlier environment, before anterior frica-
tives, and the later environment, before nasal + obstruent.
Table 1. Per cent [æ] by socioeconomic status: middle class (MC) versus working class
(WC)
Adelaide Melbourne Brisbane Hobart
MC 6 27 45 54
WC 29 60 48 65
Table 2. Per cent [æ] by phonological environment
Before Nasal + Obstruent Before Fricative

Adelaide 9 30
Melbourne 42 11
Brisbane 42 31
Hobart 93 38
Table 1 shows a status difference which is substantial everywhere except Brisbane:

the PALM form is used more by those of higher status. There is also a parallel
Regional characteristics of Australian English: phonology 647
stylistic difference, not shown in the tables: the proportion of PALM increases as
style becomes more formal. Table 2 shows how the more recent environment is
less likely to have the PALM form, except in Adelaide where the pattern shows an
interesting reversal. Table 3 (from Bradley 1991: 230, with supplementary infor-
mation on Sydney from Horvath and Horvath 2001a: 350) shows the distribution
of the alternatives in seven frequent words. The striking differences show that the
lexical diffusion of PALM in this word class is proceeding differently in each part
of Australia.
Table 3. Per cent [æ] by lexical item
Hobart Melbourne Brisbane Sydney Adelaide
graph (100) graph (70) dance (89) chance (100) contrast (29)
chance (100) castle (70) castle (67) dance (93) castle (14)
demand (90) dance (65) graph (44) demand (50) dance(14)
dance (90) chance (40) demand (22) grasp (30) chance (14)
castle (40) demand (22) chance (15) graph (30) graph (14)
grasp (10) grasp (11) grasp (11) contrast (9) demand (0)
contrast (0) contrast (0) contrast (0) castle (0) grasp (0)
Many Australian non-linguists can cite regional differences in place names con-
taining castle, such as Newcastle or Castlereagh Street in New South Wales (with
the PALM vowel) and Castlemaine in Victoria (with the TRAP vowel), or other
words which vary, such as dance. Apart from the regional pattern, there is an over-
lying social pattern in which the PALM vowel is the more formal or high sociolect
form, especially for words with nasal + obstruent. So, for example, the first word
in the title and last line of the chorus of the national anthem, Advance Australia
Fair, is variable but much more likely to have the PALM vowel than the word ad-
vance in other contexts, and may do so even in places or sociolects which do not
normally have PALM in this or similar words.
In areas where the TRAP vowel is usual for a word, its pronunciation with the
PALM vowel is regarded as an affectation; so in Sydney dance is usually as in
TRAP, and with the PALM vowel it is regarded there as a British form, or an af-
fected pronunciation. Sometimes this is attributed, inaccurately, to the “other” – by
Sydney speakers, who actually use the TRAP vowel more frequently in most words,
to “posh” Melburnians, who actually use less PALM than Sydney speakers, and so
on. Of the people interviewed in our regional sociolinguistic survey, some in every
state and nine per cent overall were aware of this variation, and in all cases they
attributed the PALM form to somewhere else. Many Australians have quite strong
negative feelings about PALM in these words, which also reflects an increasing
departure from the former RP-as-superposed-prestige-norm situation. Conversely,
648 David Bradley
there is also some style shift towards PALM: when something happens in Castle-
maine in central Victoria, locally always TRAP, and is mentioned by a Melbourne
newsreader of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the mainly high-sociolect
national government network, it can then have the PALM vowel.
Also involved in the action here is the FACE vowel, a third alternative for many
variable words as in other varieties of English as well. While tomato has the PALM
and not the FACE vowel and potato is always FACE and never PALM in Australian
English, there are many words such as basic which vary between FACE (in most
places) and TRAP (mainly in Queensland). Others vary between FACE and PALM,
and there are even a few words such as data and lambaste which can have FACE,
TRAP or PALM. Again, quite a few of these are regionally distributed, like cicada
which has PALM in Sydney and FACE in Melbourne.
2.2. Varieties of /u/ and /oU/

Another particularly obvious and consistent regional difference, this one even
noted by Mitchell and Delbridge (1965: 84), is the front-of-central rounded onset
of the GOAT vowel, with a parallel in the GOOSE vowel, in Adelaide and else-
where in South Australia. As they say, this is especially noticeable in the speech of
higher socioeconomic status females, but is also used by males and lower-status
females there. Again, some nonlinguists are aware of this feature. These realisa-
tions contrast greatly with the “cultivated” high sociolectal forms elsewhere which
are much further back, though still not as far back as in many other varieties of
English, and also with the “broad” forms elsewhere, which show some centralisa-
tion and more diphthongisation but much less rounding and fronting.
There is a particularly stark contrast in Adelaide between the realisations of
GOOSE and GOAT words before a lateral as opposed to elsewhere. In most regional
varieties, similar vowel qualities occur for these vowels with or without a fol-
lowing lateral: vowels between back and central, with more or less rounding and
diphthongisation according to sociolectal form and region. But in South Australia
the vowels of words such as school and goal are fully back, and so differ very
markedly from the central-to-front vowels of Adelaide words such as coo or go,
and from the more or less central vowels heard elsewhere in Australia.
A difference first noted in Oasa (1979, cited in Bradley 1980) is that the trajec-
tory offglide in the GOOSE vowel differs somewhat between regions of Australia.
It starts well front of central and remains there in South Australia (other than
before a lateral), starts slightly back of central and moves slightly further back
in Victoria, and starts further back from central and moves slightly further front
in Sydney and much further front in Brisbane. There is also a tendency to pala-
talise the consonant preceding GOOSE + lateral, as in cool, school or pool; this
is both youthspeak for cool, and a Queensland tendency. This is also the second-
most-frequently cited regional stereotype: nearly eight per cent of our regional
sample cited differences in school or pool, correctly attributing a palatalised form

to Queensland. Surprisingly, this is more salient than the more extreme differences
involving a postvocalic lateral.
2.3. Vowels before postvocalic /l/

In many varieties of English, there are interesting vowel changes in progress in
prelateral environment; see Ash (1982) for the case of Philadelphia, with some
remarks on other related phenomena in North America. In addition, the /l/ itself is
often vocalised. Both are also happening in Australian English.
In Australian English, there are various regionally-differentiated vowel merg-
ers underway before postvocalic /l/. These include a nearly-completed merger of
DRESS into TRAP in Melbourne, which is shared with New Zealand (Buchanan
2001) and Brisbane, but not with Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide or Perth. Thus El-
len and Allen, pellet and pallet, telly and tally and so on become homophonous.
Melbourne speakers learning phonetics have no hesitation in transcribing words
which are unambiguously DRESS + lateral elsewhere, such as Melbourne, with
[æ]; but there is also limited variation and hypercorrection in the other direction,
with prelateral DRESS and even some TRAP words occasionally pronounced with
the DRESS vowel.
There is also regionally and socially distributed variation between [æ] ~ [ç]
before a lateral in mall, Albany, Malvern etc. In Melbourne there is variation in
Bourke Street Mall, which is usually [æ] but occasionally [ç]; in Perth there is Hay
Street Mall, which is usually [ç] but sometimes [æ]. All other cities in Australia
have [ç] in their pedestrian malls: Adelaide’s Rundle Mall, Sydney’s Pitt Street
Mall, Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall, Hobart’s Elizabeth Street Mall and Launces-
ton’s Brisbane Street Mall. The [æ] pronunciation in Melbourne and Perth is per-
haps influenced by spelling, or may reflect a more archaic form; the brand name of
the former Malvern Star bicycle was usually pronounced with [æ], but the suburb
of Melbourne where its factory was located is now mainly pronounced with [ç],
which is also the more prestige form, and more like modern RP. In another small
word class there is variation between [ç] ~ [Å] as in off or Launceston, but this
reflects mainly age and social differences rather than region.
There are two mergers in progress which tend to collapse prelateral high tense
vowels into the corresponding high lax vowel: FLEECE becomes KIT, and GOOSE
and CURE become FOOT; for example, deal merges on dill, fool merges on full,
and fuel also merges on the FOOT vowel, but keeps its medial [j] glide. This merger
is furthest advanced in Adelaide and Hobart, somewhat less so in Sydney and Bris-
bane, and least so in Melbourne; note also the differences between front and back
vowel patterns. Table 4 shows the regional distribution for four cities; comparable
Sydney data is not available. Table 5 shows the social and stylistic stratification of
these variables in Melbourne.
650 David Bradley
Table 4. Shortened prelateral high vowels (interview style, per cent)
Melbourne Brisbane Adelaide Hobart
/il/ to /Il/ 8 10 34 37
/ul/ to /Ul/ 25 20 41 40
Table 5. Social and gender differences in Melbourne shortened prelateral high vowels
(interview style, per cent)
MC female MC Male WC female WC male
/il/ to /Il/ 0 5 12 16
/ul to /Ul/ 3 10 50 35
A parallel phenomenon also variably merges GOAT into GOT before /l/, especially
in words of more than one syllable, so that poll usually has the GOAT vowel, but
polling very often has the GOT vowel.
2.4. Offglides
There is considerable variation in the presence and prominence of offglides in
the formerly mainly rhotic word classes NEAR, CURE, SQUARE, CLOTH. The main
regional characteristic here is the very frequent presence of long monophthon-
gal forms for NEAR and CURE vowels in Sydney. Monophthongs are very much
less frequent elsewhere other than preconsonantally within a word as in years or
toured. In addition, they are prevalent when prelateral in certain frequently-oc-
curring polysyllabic words such as really. Monophthongs for NEAR in Melbourne
range from three to 18 per cent of tokens overall, showing strong social and small-
er gender and stylistic differences: working class speakers, males and casual style
use more monophthongisation. Monophthongs represent 0 to 17 per cent of final
and 10 to 35 per cent of preconsonantal NEAR tokens, again with a strong social
difference, but also a substantial gender and style difference.
Monophthongal forms of SQUARE and CLOTH words are by contrast extreme-
ly frequent throughout Australia, with environmental constraints; a following
consonant within the word favours a monophthong, parallel to NEAR and CURE.
Conversely, strong stress and final position permit a virtually disyllabic realisa-
tion, [IjŒ] for NEAR, [(j)UwŒ] for CURE, [EjŒ] for SQUARE, and [çwŒ] for CLOTH
words without final consonant such as paw or pore (or for that matter poor; in
Australian English many CURE words without a preceding /j/ glide have merged
into the CLOTH class, and even those with the glide also vary between [jUwŒ]
and [jç] realisations). Table 6 (Bradley and Bradley 1979: 78) shows the pattern
of monophthongisation for the NEAR vowel in Melbourne among tertiary-age stu-
dents, favouring the offglide in isolation and also showing differences between
speakers based on the type of secondary school attended, reflecting social differ-
ences. In the sample, there were no female students who had attended technical
secondary schools.
Table 6. Monophthong pronunciation of /E´/ by Melbourne tertiary students (gender,

style, type of secondary school, per cent)
Male Female
interview wordlist interview wordlist
Technical 92 62
Catholic 37 23 86 48
Private 57 27 59 14
Prestige Private 75 13 81 19
2.5. Lax vowels

The regional differences in front lax vowels are clear: Sydney and Newcastle, just
to its north in New South Wales, have substantial centralisation of the KIT vowel,
though less extreme than in most sociolects of New Zealand English. Melbourne
has this vowel raised nearly to cardinal [i], and also has raised both DRESS and
TRAP vowels consistently more than other areas of Australia, as first noted in
Bradley and Bradley (1979). This occasionally leads to misunderstanding between
Melbournians and other Australians. The New Zealand centralisation or KIT and
raising of DRESS and TRAP are carried much further, but represent a continuation
of this unusual pattern of raising of lax vowels (Labov 1994: 138) already incipi-
ent in Australian English before its transfer to New Zealand, and extended further
in Melbourne.
3. Regional consonant characteristics
In Australia there is a clear regional difference in postvocalic /l/ vocalisation to

[F], which is quite frequent in South Australia and considerably less frequent else-
where in Australia, as in words such as fill, fell, feel, fail, fool, full, fuel and so
on. The result is a half-open nearly-back unrounded offglide following the vowel.
D’Onghia (1995) found an overall frequency of 40.8 per cent vocalization, both in
the capital, Adelaide, and in Millicent, a rural town. It is slightly more frequent in
652 David Bradley
more casual speech and in the speech of those who are younger, higher-status, and
male. For full quantified details see D’Onghia (1995).
Horvath and Horvath (2001b) give further details on the regional pattern: New
Zealand has much more vocalisation, nearly half overall; in Australia, vocalization
is least frequent in Brisbane and Melbourne, intermediate in Hobart and Sydney,
and greatest in South Australia (both Adelaide and Mount Gambier, a large town
in the southeast of the state). Vocalisation is increasing; it is more frequent among
younger speakers. The preconsonantal environment shows under ten per cent vo-
calisation in Brisbane and Melbourne and roughly similar proportions of around
20 per cent elsewhere, but the major regional difference resides in vocalisation of
final /l/ which ranges from under ten per cent in Brisbane to over 40 per cent in
South Australia (Horvath and Horvath 2001b: 40–42).
Vocalisation of syllabic /l/ as in pickle again differs within Australia; least (three
per cent) in Brisbane, nine to 15 per cent in Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney, and 26
and 28 per cent in Adelaide and Mount Gambier in South Australia. In New Zea-
land, syllabic /l/ vocalizes much more frequently (about 60 per cent); furthermore,
the conditioning environment also differs: a preceding velar consonant favours
vocalisation most in Australia, but a preceding labial favours it most in New Zea-
land (Horvath and Horvath 2001b: 42–45).
The pronunciation of -thing in something/nothing/everything/anything with
[INk] is socially and regionally variable in Australia, as in southeastern England.
The London-like [INk] is more frequent in informal speech and the speech of those
of lower social status across Australia, but is particularly frequent in some mining
towns in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney in New South Wales, as documented
by Shnukal (1982: 204) for Cessnock, where the overall frequency of [INk] is
nearly 60 per cent, and much lower elsewhere, as for example in Melbourne where
we found 33 per cent for males and 15 per cent for females (Bradley and Bradley
1979: 81).
There are various forms, such as the [f] and [v] realisations of /T/ and /D/, which
are found throughout Australia but are somewhat more often used in Sydney
(overall frequency of 4.4 per cent) than in Melbourne and elsewhere. Horvath
shows that this is more frequent among those of Italian background, males and
those of lower socioeconomic status; but it is by no means restricted to these
groups (Horvath 1985: 98–102). In addition to the usual pattern of sociostylistic
variation in which the [f] and [v] are the informal and low-status forms, there are
numerous individuals in all parts of Australia, not all male or of low status, who
use a very high proportion of [f] and [v]. Certain very frequent words such as with
also favour the [f] or [v] alternative.
4. Regional lexicon
The examples of regional differences in Australian English most often given by

non-linguists are lexical. One well-known instance is a kind of processed cooked
meat in a tube, called German sausage up to 1914. With anti-German feeling due
to World War I, all manufacturers around Australia changed the name: in Mel-
bourne, to Stras(s)burg (usually shortened to Stras(s)), in Adelaide to Fritz, in
Sydney to Devon, in Brisbane to Windsor, in Tasmania to Belgium and in Perth to
Polony. Other examples abound, in names of plants and animals, childhood and
school activities, household items, and so on. Some are more subtle: the Tasma-
nian predilection to specify types of potatoes (pinkeye, sebago and so on) while
most other regions do so much less. For a very large number of further examples,
see Bryant (1985, 1989).
Indeed, one of the popular criticisms of the first edition of the otherwise excel-
lent Macquarie Dictionary (Delbridge et al. 1981) is that it gives mainly or only
the Sydney or New South Wales forms. Most of these gaps are lexical, but some,
including words showing TRAP/PALM/FACE differences, are in regional pronun-
ciation; note, for example, cicada – the first edition gives only the Sydney PALM
alternative (1981: 346). Later editions have attempted to correct this bias; see
(Delbridge et al. 1987: 326) and the Federation edition (Delbridge et al. 2001:
353), which give both PALM and FACE for this word, but with the Sydney form
first and without attempting to localise the alternatives. Other minor errors in this
area include basic with TRAP cited as American; this is actually an older, espe-
cially Queensland alternative to the more usual FACE pronunciation, and is not
American. Here we have another example of stereotyping: attributing sociolectally
low-status things to American influence, a long-standing Australian tendency.
5. Rural versus urban
One popular stereotype about regional differences is that rural speech is more
broad (see the chapter by Horvath, this volume; briefly, the low-status sociolect)
and urban speech is more cultivated; or that the entire rural hinterland speaks
much the same – more slowly, more nasally, and more broadly. This is a part of
the national reverence for the bush (rural Australia) and the idea that it is more
typically Australian. It is clear that a higher proportion of rural Australians use
a greater frequency of broad vowels than urban Australians. The first to quantify
this were Mitchell and Delbridge (1965: 39), who found that 43 per cent of ado-
lescents outside capital cities used broad vowels, while only 23 per cent of urban
youth did so; and conversely, 19 per cent of urban adolescents but only four per
cent of others used cultivated (high-status sociolect) vowels.
654 David Bradley
However, the rural hinterland of each capital city shows much the same regional
(as opposed to social) characteristics as that city. Examples include the treatment
of postvocalic laterals in Millicent and Mount Gambier in South Australia, the
distribution of TRAP and PALM, and so on. The regional phonological boundaries
do not correspond exactly to state boundaries; from a linguistic point of view, part
of northern New South Wales is a part of Queensland, part of southwestern New
South Wales around Broken Hill is similar in some ways to South Australia, and
the Riverina region of southern New South Wales forms part of Victoria.
6. Conclusion
On the whole, the regional differences in Australian English phonology are small,
but growing. Some have started to come to the notice of more language-aware
members of the speech community, but curiously continue to be denied by most
Australian linguists. As is usual in many varieties of English, these differences re-
side mainly in the vowel system. Like many other non-rhotic varieties of English,
some changes involve the vowels affected by that deconstriction and the rear-
rangements of the system which result, as in the case of TRAP/PALM and so on.
Some current changes in progress revolve around the next wave of vowel shifts
found in many varieties of English, those associated with postvocalic laterals: vo-
calisation and/or changes in preceding vowels.
Selected references
ROM.
Ash, Sharon
1982 The vocalization of /l/ in Philadelphia. Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Bradley, David
1980 Regional differences in Australian English. University of Melbourne Working
Papers in Linguistics 6: 73−93.
1991 /æ/ and /a˘/ in Australian English. In: Cheshire (ed.), 227–234.
Bradley, David and Maya Bradley
1979 Melbourne vowels. University of Melbourne Working Papers in Linguistics 5:
64−84.
Bryant, Pauline
1985 Regional variation in the Australian English lexicon. Australian Journal of
Linguistics 4: 55−66.
Bryant, Pauline
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Australian creoles and Aboriginal English: phonetics
and phonology
Ian G. Malcolm
1. Introduction
English speakers began to occupy Australia on a permanent basis in 1788. The

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander encounter with English led to the development
of “restructured English” varieties which Holm (1988−1989: 538) sums up as
“ranging from contact jargon, pidgin, and creole to post-creole Aboriginal English.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander influence has not been the only factor leading
to the development of contact varieties in Australia. As Mühlhäusler (1991:
160) has pointed out, there have been three major pidgin traditions in Australia:
Aboriginal, Chinese and Melanesian. However, the most widespread and enduring
contact varieties have been those associated with Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander speakers and it is with these that this chapter will be concerned.
There are two major creole varieties currently spoken in Australia: Kriol, spo-
ken mainly in the Northern Territory and extending into North West Queensland
and the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and Cape York Creole, or Broken,
spoken in the Torres Strait Islands and neighbouring parts of the Cape York Pen-
insula. There is one major variety of Aboriginal English, which embraces a num-
ber of regional varieties. It is spoken within the context of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander communities in all parts of Australia. It is arguable that the creole
varieties, although English-derived, are not, like Aboriginal English, varieties of
English. The treatment of the creoles and Aboriginal English here will therefore
be separate, with the creoles being discussed first.
2. Historical and cultural background
Prior to 1788, an Indigenous population of some 300,000 people distributed across

what is now Australia spoke an estimated 250 languages and perhaps again as
many distinctive dialects. The speech communities were relatively self-contained
(though not necessarily monolingual), typically comprising 500 to 600 people
united with a common inheritance of language, land and world-view. There had,
indeed, been some foreign contact prior to the coming of Captain Cook in 1770,
including visits in the early 17th century from Spanish and Dutch navigators (see
Dutton 1970: 140−142) and contacts in northern regions with Portuguese and
Australian creoles and Aboriginal English: phonetics and phonology 657
Malay traders (Harris 1991: 196). There is, however, little or no linguistic legacy
from these contacts.
The British occupation of the area around Port Jackson in New South Wales
(NSW) from 1788 brought Aboriginal people for the first time into more or less in-
tensive contact with English speakers. From the first, the local people preferred to
keep with their own kind and entered into communication with the English speak-
ers only on an intermittent basis. However, as the number of colonists increased
and Indigenous society became increasingly devastated and depleted through the
effects of the colonial experience, cross-cultural communication increased, draw-
ing on the resources of both the local Indigenous varieties and the various dialectal
and sociolectal varieties of English brought by the newcomers.
It has been demonstrated by Troy (1990) that between 1788 and 1845 the in-
teraction between the Aboriginal people and the English-speaking colonists led
to the development of a jargon, incorporating elements of the Sydney language
and of English, which progressively stabilized into a variety, or varieties, of
pidgin, referred to as NSW Pidgin. Although the jargon served the purposes of
communication between Aboriginal people and colonists, its use soon extended
beyond this. The process by which it expanded in structure and function to be-
come NSW Pidgin was favoured by a number of factors. These included the
contribution of existing contact varieties developing in the Pacific (Mühlhäusler
1991: 169), the disruption of pre-contact social and territorial patterns, the bring-
ing-together of Indigenous people requiring a lingua franca, and the Indigenous
people’s need for a linguistic variety in which they “could rationalise the radical
social changes they experienced as a result of contact with the colonists” (Troy
1990: 7).
NSW Pidgin, then, became a highly significant medium of communication in
colonial Australia, and it developed two major varieties, one, more influenced by
the English superstrate, serving the needs of cross-cultural communication and the
other, more influenced by the Aboriginal substrate languages, serving the needs of
communication among Aboriginal people (Troy 1990). As it was used for Indig-
enous-based communication along traditional trade routes (Troy 1990: 2; Harris
1991: 199) and in the colonial explorations and expansion of pastoral properties
(Harris 1991: 198; Sandefur 1979: 12) taking place to the north, west and south
of the original settlement, as well as on ocean navigation routes (Malcolm 2001:
213), it provided the framework for the development of associated pidgins, creoles
and non-StE varieties in many parts of Australia.
It is likely that the circumstances of contact in New South Wales (and in the oth-
er southern states) did not lead towards the development of creole varieties. The
Pidgin performed the useful function of a lingua franca among Aboriginal people
and, where it was supplanted under the ongoing and growing influence of English,
it gave way to a non-StE ethnolect (Aboriginal English) rather than developing
into an independent language. The creoles which developed in the Northern Terri-
658 Ian G. Malcolm
tory and the Torres Strait Islands came about relatively more recently, favoured by
significantly different sociolinguistic circumstances.
By the late 19th century, the pastoral industry, which had expanded progressively
from its origins in New South Wales, had enabled the influence of NSW Pidgin to
extend through Queensland into the Northern Territory. It seems likely, according
to Harris (1991), that other pidgins developed in various locations where Aborigi-
nal people settled down on stations or settlements, but that, under the influence of
the Pidgin which had come from New South Wales, these had, by the beginning
of the 20th century, converged towards one widely-understood standard, which
he calls Northern Territory Pidgin English. The creolization of this Pidgin began
to occur in the context of an Anglican Church mission at Roper River which had
been established in 1908. This mission, according to Harris (1991: 201), provided
a refuge for Aboriginal people from eight different groups who had been facing
“near annihilation” from hunting gangs. The creole began to form when the Pidgin
was adopted by a generation of children at the mission as their language. The
Roper River Creole (incorporating at least one other variety which developed later
elsewhere) came to be spoken widely across the north of the continent, and by
the mid-20th century had come to displace an increasing number of Indigenous
languages (Hudson 1981: 1). In 1976 this creole came to be referred to by the
name Kriol, following the orthography which had been developed for the lan-
guage (Hudson 1981: 169). It has at least 20,000 speakers.
The second major creole variety in Australia arose in the Torres Strait Islands
where, according to Shnukal (1988: 5), following the discovery of commercial
quantities of various products of the sea, large numbers of Europeans, South Sea
Islanders, Papua New Guineans and others came to exploit these resources. A
common language was required and an existing variety, Pacific Pidgin English,
came to be used. Torres Strait Islanders who worked in the marine industries came
to use this Pidgin, and by the 1890s it was being used by children of Torres Strait
Islander and immigrant origin on one of the islands. Some years later the Pidgin
creolized independently on another island. The use of the creoles spread through-
out the islands, because they were not only found to be useful but also assumed by
many to be English (Shnukal 1991: 183). Torres Strait Creole (or “Broken”, as it is
called locally) has around 3,000 native speakers and up to 12,000 second language
speakers (Shnukal 1991: 180).
The origins of Aboriginal English varieties are diverse. Mühlhäusler (1991: 170)
has pointed out that there is evidence for the independent development of pidgins
in a number of parts of Australia, and there is thus the possibility that independent
Aboriginal English varieties arose in association with these. However, there is
also significant evidence of the widespread influence on Aboriginal English in
many parts of the country of NSW Pidgin (Malcolm 2001: 212−213). In places
where creoles developed, the Aboriginal English varieties show some evidence of
having undergone processes of decreolization. They have also been shown to bear
clear resemblances to local Aboriginal languages and to non-standard Australian

English (Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982: 134). Evidence from cognitive lin-
guistic research (Sharifian 2002) supports the view that even varieties which are
formally close to Australian English maintain a significantly different conceptual
basis. The strong resemblances between Aboriginal English varieties Australia-
wide, and their maintenance as distinct from Australian English, suggest that to a
large extent convergence has taken place upon an agreed ethnolect.
3. The phonology of Australian creoles
As Mühlhäusler (1991: 165) has indicated, the scholarly study of Australian pid-
gins and creoles is both scarce and recent in origin. There has been no extended
study of the phonology of an Australian creole, although phonological features
have been included in a number of descriptions, and what follows here will be
drawn from these, with the focus being particularly on Kriol (as spoken in Bamyili
[Barunga], Roper River and Fitzroy Valley) and Torres Strait Creole (Broken) and
will focus particularly on their more basilectal or “heavy” varieties. The voices in
the accompanying audio-material are those of Kriol speakers from the Kimberley
Region of Western Australia.
3.1. Vowels
Both Kriol and Cape York Creole, have reduced the number of vowel phonemes
of English to five: /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/ and /u/, allowing for some further differentiation
on the basis of lengthening. Table 1 (below) shows the effects of this on the pro-
nunciation of the 28 words in Wells’ (1982) list.
Table 1. Vowels in Australian creoles
KIT i> FLEECE *NEAR ija

DRESS e~a FACE e ~ eI SQUARE eja
TRAP e~a PALM a START a
LOT a *THOUGHT o NORTH o
STRUT a *GOAT o ~ oU FORCE o
FOOT u GOAL o *CURE jUa
*BATH a GOOSE u HappY i
CLOTH a PRICE a ~ aj ~ aI lettER a
NURSE o˘ ~ a˘ ~ e˘ CHOICE oj ~ aj ~ oI horsES idj
MOUTH a ~ aU commA a
660 Ian G. Malcolm
This table needs to be read with caution, since some of the words on it (those in-
dicated with an asterisk) were identified by Kriol informants as not occurring in
their language. Generally, the same trends are apparent in Kriol and Torres Strait
Creole, though the monophthongization of diphthongs and the phonemically
distinctive use of vowel length have been reported only with respect to the for-
mer. The open-close contrast among vowels is less significant than in StE. It has
been suggested with respect to Fitzroy Valley Kriol (Fraser 1977) that – under
the influence of the local language Walmajarri – the open-close contrast is less
salient than the short-long contrast. This may well apply more widely. It is note-
worthy that most Aboriginal languages have only three vowels, /i/, /a/ and /u/,
though sometimes distinguishing long and short forms of these (Eagleson, Kal-
dor and Malcolm 1982: 41). The creole systems are closer to such a pattern than
to the pattern of StE with the 28 discriminations represented in Wells’ (1982)
table.
3.2. Consonants
Australian creoles do not always recognize the voiced-voiceless consonant dis-
tinction, nor do they reliably discriminate most fricatives. Kriol varieties may
incorporate a number of retroflexed and lamino-palatal consonants not found
in StE. The consonants of basilectal Fitzroy Valley Kriol have been represented
(using Kriol orthography) by Hudson (1981: 28) in the following table:
Table 2. Consonants of basilectal Kriol (Hudson 1981)
Bilabial Inter- Alveolar Retro-flexed Lamino- Velar

dental palatal
Stop p th t rt tj k
Nasal m n rn ny ng
Fricative s
Lateral l rl
Rhotic rr
Semi- w r y
consonant
Torres Strait Creole (Broken) has 15 consonant phonemes, represented in Broken

orthography by Shnukal as follows:
Table 3. Consonants of Torres Strait Creole (Broken) (Shnukal 1991: 186)
Bilabial Dental Palatal Velar
Stops p, b t, d k, g
Nasals m n ng
Fricatives s, z
Liquids l, r
Semi-consonants w y
It is common for stops to substitute for fricatives and affricates. Fraser (1977)
reports that in Fitzroy Crossing Children’s Pidgin the bilabial stop /p/ substitutes
for /b/, /v/ and /f/ and that a dental /t/ substitutes for /t/, /d/ and non-final /s/, /z/
and //. Similar substitutions occur in Ngukurr-Bamyili Kriol (Sandefur 1979:
37).
Although voiced and unvoiced stops both occur in Torres Strait Creole, their
distribution may not be the same as in StE. Crowley and Rigsby (1979) note the
replacement of a voiceless stop with a voiced one when it occurs between two
vowels, as in /peba/ for ‘paper’. There is no phonemic opposition in Torres Strait
Creole between [p] and [f], between [t] and [], between [d] and [] or between
[b] and [v].
In Fitzroy Crossing Kriol, /d/ may alternate with /t/. Also, Sandefur (1979: 37)
observes that in Kriol, /d/ may be replaced by a flapped rhotic [ř] when it occurs
in a word between two vowels.
It will be observed from Table 2 that the sound represented in Kriol orthography
as <th> is not the interdental fricative of StE but an interdental stop. Similarly, the
retroflexed <rt> and the lamino-palatal <tj> function as stops (Hudson 1981: 28).
All the nasal consonants of StE, /m/, /n/ and // also occur in Australian creoles.
There are, however, in basilectal Kriol additional retroflexed and palatalized na-
sals.
Fricatives are generally absent from basilectal Kriol though in basilectal Fitz-
roy valley Kriol, there is one fricative, /s/. Fricatives are reduced in occurrence
in Torres Strait Creole. There is no phonemic opposition in Torres Strait Creole
between [s] and [] (Crowley and Rigsby 1979; Dutton 1970). In Kriol, sibilants
tend to be deleted to avoid consonant clusters (Sharpe and Sandefur 1976); in
Bamyili (Barunga) the affricates /t/ and /d/ are replaced by a lamino-palatal
stop /dj/ (Sandefur 1979: 37). The glottal fricative /h/ is generally absent from
the creoles.
The lateral /l/ is common to English and most Aboriginal languages and is re-
tained in the creoles. Basilectal Kriol also has retroflexed and palatalized laterals.
The rhotic /r/ is trilled in basilectal Kriol and Torres Strait Creole. It may also be
flapped when it occurs between two vowels (Sandefur 1979: 37).
662 Ian G. Malcolm
3.3. Supra-segmental features

In Kriol, the primary stress is usually on the first syllable. Hence /*dilib/ ‘tea’,
/*ginu/ ‘canoe’. In Torres Strait Creole words derived from English normally retain
their original stress (Shnukal 1991: 185).
The intonation patterns of Kriol and Torres Strait Creole are comparable to
those of English except for a distinctive pattern associated with ongoing action,
in which the pitch of the verb rises and is maintained over the verb’s successive
repetitions, accompanied by vowel lengthening before a final fall or rise. Such a
pattern would accompany a sentence such as: “ay bin wed wed wed wed wed wed
najing, ‘I waited for ages but nothing (came)’” (Sharpe and Sandefur 1977: 53).
Fraser (1977) observes that in Fitzroy Crossing Children’s Pidgin there are three
contours: a “sequence contour” in which the primary stress is on the first syllable
and the secondary stress on the final, with higher pitch; an “emphatic contour”
in which the final syllable receives primary stress, length and higher pitch; and
a “question contour” where the primary stress and pitch rise are on the final syl-
lable.
Sharpe and Sandefur (1977) and Fraser (1977) have observed among Kriol
speakers a characteristic laryngealisation accompanying high-pitched segments.
This may be especially in evidence in certain speech acts with a scolding or cor-
recting function.
3.4. Phonotactic rules

In Kriol, and to a lesser extent in Torres Strait Creole, there is a resistance to
consonant clusters in initial or final position. Many of the phonotactic processes
observed by Holm (1988−1989) in Atlantic creoles are also in evidence in Austra-
lian creoles. For example the omission of one or more sounds at the beginning of a
word (“aphesis”), as in /ton/ ‘stone’, /piya/ ‘spear’ (Sandefur 1979: 39); the omis-
sion of one or more sounds from the middle of a word (“syncope”), as in Torres
Strait Creole, where the middle consonant of three is often dropped word-medially
(Crowley and Rigsby 1979); the omission of one or more sounds from the end of
a word (“apocope”), as in /ek/ ‘axe’, /fren/ ‘friend’ (Sandefur 1979: 40); the ad-
dition of a sound at the beginning of a word (“prothesis”), as in njusimpat ‘to use’
(Fraser 1977: 152) and nother ‘other’ (Dutton 1970: 151); the insertion of a sound
in the middle of a word (“epenthesis”), as in jineg ‘snake’, jilib ‘sleep’ (Sharpe and
Sandefur 1977: 52), burrum ‘from’ (Sharpe and Sandefur 1977: 58) and anis ‘ants’
(Shnukal 1991); the addition of a sound to the end of a word (“paragogue”), as in
wandi ‘want’ (Sharpe and Sandefur 1977: 56) and aksi ‘ask’ (Dutton 1970); and
the changing of the order in which two sounds occur in a word (“metathesis”), as
in aksi ‘ask’ (Dutton 1970: 144).
Vowel harmony may be observed between affix and stem, as in the case of the
transitive verb suffix allomorphs, e.g. tjak-am ‘throw’, kuk-um ‘cook’ (Hudson
1981: 37).
4. The phonology of Aboriginal English
Like Australian English, Aboriginal English is characterised by a recognizably

similar pronunciation across the continent. Unlike Australian English, it may bear
interlanguage features in some areas associated with Indigenous languages or cre-
oles.
The treatment here will be inclusive, providing information on the main areas
where, at least in some places, Aboriginal English shows most contrast with StE.
There has been no focused study on the phonology of Aboriginal English, but
descriptions have been provided (often for the assistance of school teachers) in
the context of descriptions of the dialect as a whole. The description here will
draw principally on work carried out in Queensland (e.g. Readdy 1961; Alexander
1968; Flint 1968), the Northern Territory (e.g. Sharpe 1976) and Western Australia
(Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982; Malcolm 2001).
4.1. Vowels
Speakers in many areas distinguish fewer vowels and diphthongs than in StE. At
the more extreme end of the continuum of varieties, Aboriginal English would
show little difference from Australian creoles with respect to its repertoire of
vowels. Thus, for example, in a description of Aboriginal English as spoken in
Queensland, Flint (1968: 12) identifies the dialect as having five vowels, /i/, /e/,
/a/, /o/ and /u/, with phonemic length on /i/, /a/, /o/ and /u/. The dialect is, however,
much more inherently variable than this would suggest, and some of the variabil-
ity is suggested in the following table based on Wells’ (1982) word list:
Table 4. Vowels in Aboriginal English
KIT I~i>E FLEECE I~i NEAR i

DRESS E>Q FACE eI ~ e > √I SQUARE E
TRAP Q>E PALM a START a
LOT Å~ç THOUGHT ç>Å NORTH ç
STRUT √~Q~Å~I GOAT oU 5 o(U) 5 ç 5 √U FORCE ç
FOOT U GOAL Å CURE jU´
664 Ian G. Malcolm
Table 4 (continued). Vowels in Aboriginal English
BATH a GOOSE u happY i

CLOTH Å PRICE aI ~ a > ÅI lettER a~√>´
NURSE Œ ~ e > Œ´ CHOICE çI horsES ´z
MOUTH aU ~ Q > a(U) commA a
It will be observed with respect to high front vowels that (as in the case of the va-
rieties reported on by Holm 1988−1989), Aboriginal English may sometimes not
observe the opposition between /i/ and // or may simply observe long and short
forms of /i/. In addition, there may be no discrimination between the mid front
vowels /E/ and /Q/, or between these and the high front vowels.
The mid central vowel /Œ/ is not consistently present. It may alternate with, or
be supplanted by, the mid front vowels /E/ or /e/, or by the diphthong /E´/ (Alexan-
der 1965: 57). The neutral short vowel /´/ tends to be replaced by the mid central
vowel /√/, as in /j√sElf/ ‘yourself’ or by the low central vowel /a/. The StE vowel
/√/, for its part, may not always occur in contexts where it would be expected,
but may alternate with either front or back vowel alternatives. In Woorabinda,
Queensland, the following alternations have been noted: [√ ~ I ~ Q ~ Å] (Alexan-
der 1968).
The low central vowel /a/, which is the most commonly-occurring in Aboriginal
languages Readdy (1961: 60), is widely distributed in Aboriginal English and of-
ten occurs in contexts where StE would use /´/.
The mid back vowels /Å/ and /ç/ are often used interchangeably, thus /dçg/
‘dog’, and, under influence from creole, they may also alternate with /o/ (Alexan-
der 1968).
The high back vowel /u/, which is widespread in Aboriginal languages and cre-
oles, is also widespread in Aboriginal English.
There is a strong tendency in Aboriginal English (shared to some extent by
Australian English, as well as by creoles) for diphthongs to be monophthongized
(Readdy 1961: 64; Alexander 1968; Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982). Only
/çI/ and /U´/ seem unaffected by this. With respect to the other diphthongs, /eI/
may become /e/ or /E˘/, /oU/ may become /o/, /aI/ may become /a˘/; /aU/ may be-
come /a(U)/ or, under the influence of Australian English, /Q/, /I´/ may become /i/
and /E´/, /E˘/.
Although Australian English is well known for its diaphonic variation which
distinguishes cultivated from broad and general speech, the influence on Aborigi-
nal English of the broad variants is not as pervasive as might be expected, and
some of the Aboriginal English vowels have been compared to American rather
than broad Australian variants (Sharpe 1976: 15−16). Broad Australian variants
are, however, not entirely absent from Aboriginal English.
4.2. Consonants
The inventory of consonants in Aboriginal English, and their distribution, show the
influence of the pidgin/creole history of the dialect, although historic records show
that many of the phonetic modifications which took place in the early stages of
pidginization are no longer operating (Malcolm and Koscielecki 1997: 59). Table
5 represents the consonants of Aboriginal English, showing some of the common
substitutions which take place:
Table 5. Consonants of Aboriginal English
Bi- Inter- Labio- Alveolar Retro- Lamino- Velar Glottal

labial dental dental flexed palatal
Stop vl p t k
v b d g
Nasal m n N
Fricative vl T f s S (h)
v D v z Z
Affricate vl tS
v dZ
Lateral l
Rhotic rr r
Semi-consonant w y
Most of the consonants of Australian English, with the exception of /h/ in some
cases, may be heard in Aboriginal English, but the phonemic boundaries of the lat-
ter are much more porous, with respect to voicing versus non-voicing, stop versus
fricative articulation and alveolar versus lamino-palatal place of articulation.
There is clearly a preference for stop over fricative articulations. Bilabial,
alveolar and velar stops are strongly in evidence, and often substitute for other
sounds. The distinction between voiced and voiceless stops is not strongly
maintained, with the general exception of when they are in the initial position
(Flint 1968: 12; Alexander 1968; Sharpe 1976). There is a preference for voiceless
stops except before nasals (Sharpe 1976: 13). Although the /t/ is represented on the
chart as alveolar, in some communities it is dental (Flint 1968).
The labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ are often replaced by stops, as in /pçl/ ‘fall’
and /hQp/ ‘have’, though the substitution of the fricatives may be selective, as in
/faIp/ ‘five’ (Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982: 82). The interdental fricatives
/T/ and /D/ are highly vulnerable to substitution by alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/, as
666 Ian G. Malcolm
in most contact and non-standard forms of English. /T/ may also become /s/, as
in /nasIN/ ‘nothing’. Sibilants are not always clearly distinguished and may be
substituted for one another. This also affects the affricates /tS/ and /dZ/ which
may become /S/. The status of the glottal fricative /h/ is unresolved in Aboriginal
English. The tendency to remove it initially and medially is balanced by an equally
strong tendency, at least in some areas, to add it initially where it does not occur
in StE (see 4.4. below).
The nasals, which have counterparts in Aboriginal languages and creoles,
generally occur as in StE, except for the common substitution of the allomorph
/-an/ for /-IN/, as in /sINan/ ‘singing’.
The Aboriginal English consonant inventory, in places where there is influence
from Aboriginal languages and creole, includes a trilled variant of /r/, which
may occur where /t/ comes between vowels, as in gorrit ‘got it’ and purrit ‘put
it’ (Sharpe 1976: 15). In some places the variant is flapped rather than trilled, as
in /hIRIm/ ‘hit him’ or /S√R√p/ ‘shut up’ (Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982:
81).
Generally, the stress patterns of Aboriginal English are comparable to those of
Australian English, except for the tendency (observed also in Kriol) to stress initial
syllables, resulting in pronunciations like /*kægru/ ‘kangaroo’ and /*tibi/ ‘TV’.
Some Western Desert languages tend towards syllable timing, which reflects on
the stress patterns of Aboriginal English speakers in these areas.
As in Australian creoles, the intonation patterns are generally compatible with
those of Australian English, but the expression of prolonged or repeated action (as
in Kriol) is accompanied by a rise in pitch and the repetition or lengthening of the
vowel in the relevant word, as in
go go go g-o-o-o-o-o
We bin or We bin (Sharpe 1976: 6).
A rise of pitch and a slowing down of pace may occur wherever emphasis is be-
ing sought, as in, as in bi-i-iggest shark ‘very big shark’ (Eagleson, Kaldor and
Malcolm 1982: 88) or We bin go wi-i-i-ight aroun ebrywhere ‘We went all around’.
The high final level intonation of Aboriginal English, as in
long way
Me and Patrick wen (Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982: 84)
enhances narrative effect. Unlike the high rise terminal of Australian English, it is
level, not rising, and does not function as an attention holding device.
A number of scholars (Sharpe 1976: 5; Alexander 1968) have commented on

the relatively high speed of Queensland Aboriginal English, particularly among
children. Sharpe (1976: 5) suggests that, in this regard, Queensland Aboriginal
children’s speech may contrast with that of their Alice Springs counterparts.
Aboriginal English vocal quality can vary distinctly from that of Australian
English. Sharpe (1976: 4) has observed the huskiness of the pronunciation of Ab-
original children in Alice Springs at low volume, which contrasts with its penetrat-
ing quality at high volume and has attributed this to “faucalisation, or tightening of
the faucal pillars at the back of the mouth.”
4.4. Phonotactic rules

Like Australian creoles, Aboriginal English tends to reduce consonant clusters in
ways common to Atlantic creoles, as described by Holm (1988−1989).
Aphesis is common, as in bout ‘about’, roun ‘around’, cos ‘because’ (Sharpe
1976), leven ‘eleven’, long ‘along’, way ‘away’, I’z ‘I was’, we’z walking ‘we
was walking’, onna table ‘on the table’, alla people ‘all the people’ (Sharpe 1977),
we’ent ‘we went’. There are also frequent cases of the omission of initial /h/. Syn-
cope occurs occasionally, as in akn ‘acting’. Apocope often occurs, especially in-
volving the loss of final stops after nasals, as in /hEn/ ‘hand’, /hQvn/ ‘haven’t’ and
/wEn/ ‘went’. The cases of prothesis noted in Kriol are carried over into Aboriginal
English, with nused to ‘used to’ and nother ‘other’. In addition, /h/ is frequently
added to words where it does not occur in StE, as in hant ‘aunt’, happle ‘apple’
(Alexander 1968), hoval ‘oval’ and huncle ‘uncle’. Epenthesis occurs in /imiju/
‘emu’ (Sharpe 1976). The common case of paragogue from non-standard Austra-
lian English, anythingk ‘nothing’, occurs at least in Sydney Aboriginal English
(Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982: 135).
4.5. Morphophonemics
The forms of liaison which apply in StE are not always carried over into Aborigi-
nal English. Thus /D´/ ‘the’ does not become /Di/ before a vowel. Nor does /´/ ‘a’
become /Qn/ ‘an’. The contractions which are common in StE, such as I’ll, we’re,
are not as common in Aboriginal English, partly because of the less frequent use of
auxiliaries. However, the /D/ of the may be assimilated to the preceding consonant
(Sharpe 1977) and the preverbal tense marker bin may be contracted to ‘n, as in
They’n see it (Dwyer 1974: 19). Initial /w/ may be lost in words in both stressed
and unstressed positions, as in /aI√s/ ‘I was’ (Readdy 1961: 94) and I na wear it on
‘I want to wear it’ (Dwyer 1974: 19). Aboriginal English speakers, unlike Austra-
lian English speakers, do not always neutralize the vowels in function words such
as at, from and to when they are unstressed.
668 Ian G. Malcolm
5. Practical and research issues
The existence and the importance of Australian creoles and Aboriginal English
have long been disputed in public discourse in Australia. Although school systems
are beginning to recognize the fact that creoles and Aboriginal English may be
coherent linguistic systems, there is still a reluctance to allow them any significant
place in the development of school literacy. It is assumed that literacy skills in
StE will be best acquired by concentrating only on that variety, despite research
evidence of the relevance of home language to effective learning of standard vari-
eties. The better integration of creoles and Aboriginal English into school learning
depends on continued research to produce fuller descriptions of these varieties and
the development of a greater range of quality learning resources in them.
In parts of Australia where creoles are spoken one practical problem is the differ-
entiation between creole and Aboriginal English. In some cases, the creole speak-
ers have long believed that in speaking creole they have been speaking English.
As Aboriginal English in such areas may be (at least in part) describable as a
post-creole continuum, there are practical problems in deciding, for educational
purposes, where to draw the line between the creole and the English, although the
line has been drawn in written language with the development of an alternative or-
thography for Kriol. The problem of differentiating Kriol from Aboriginal English
has implications for the development of learning materials and for pedagogical
approaches.
There have been some attempts to describe the patterning of variation between
Aboriginal English and creole by employing the concept of the implicational scale.
An implicational scale is a continuum of features which form a hierarchy, where
each feature can be assumed to apply the existence of features above it. As Blumer
(1987: 1) who has been working on such a project puts it, “[o]ne example of im-
plication is the observation that if an Aboriginal creole speaker can pronounce the
fricative [th], he/she can and will also pronounce [t]. That is, the presence of the
phonetic feature [th] implies the presence of the phonetic feature [t], but not vice
versa.” On the basis of implicational analysis of data from over 900 children living
in regions close to where Kriol was spoken, Blumer (1987: 14) found that the data
fitted “a model implicational scale extremely well”, suggesting that a geographical
continuum existed in the area studied. It remains to be seen from further research
whether other continua (e.g. socio-economic) can also be traced.
Selected references
ROM.
Alexander, Diane H.
1965 Yarrabah Aboriginal English. B.A. Honours thesis, Department of English,
University of Queensland, Brisbane.
Alexander, Diane H.
1968 Woorabinda Australian Aboriginal English. M.A. thesis, Department of
English, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
Blumer, Caroline
1987 Linguistic variation in the Kimberley region. Unpublished paper.
Crowley, Terry and Bruce Rigsby
1979 Cape York Creole. In: Timothy Shopen (ed.), Languages and Their Status,
153−207. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop.
Dutton, Thomas E.
1970 Informal English in the Torres Straits. In: William S. Ramson (ed.), English
Transported: Essays on Australasian English, 137−160. Canberra: Australian
National University Press.
Dwyer, John
1974 The school and the Aboriginal child. The Aboriginal Child at School 2: 3−19.
Eagleson, Robert D., Susan Kaldor and Ian G. Malcolm
1982 English and the Aboriginal Child. Canberra: Curriculum Development
Centre.
Flint, Elwyn
1968 Aboriginal English: linguistic description as an aid to teaching. English in
Australia 6: 3−22.
Fraser, Jill 1977 A phonological analysis of Fitzroy Crossing Children’s Pidgin. Work
Papers of SIL-AAB A 1: 145−204.
Harris, John W.
1991 Kriol − the creation of a new language. In: Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language
in Australia, 195–203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hudson, Joyce
1981 Grammatical and semantic aspects of Fitzroy Valley Kriol. M.A. thesis,
Australian National University, Canberra.
Malcolm, Ian G.
2001 Aboriginal English: adopted code of a surviving culture. In: Blair and Collins
(eds.), 201−222.
Malcolm, Ian G. and Marek M. Koscielecki
1997 Aboriginality and English. Mount Lawley, Western Australia: Centre for
Applied Language and Literacy Research, Edith Cowan University.
1991 Overview of pidgins and creole languages of Australia. In: Suzanne Romaine
(ed.), Language in Australia, 159−173. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Readdy, Coral
1961 South Queensland Aboriginal English. B.A. Honours thesis, Department of
English, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
Sandefur, John R.
1979 An Australian Creole in the Northern Territory: A Description of Ngukurr-
Bamyili Dialects (Part 1). Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series B, Volume 3.
Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
670 Ian G. Malcolm
Sharifian, Farzad
2002 Conceptual-Associative System in Aboriginal English: Evidence from Western
Australian Urban Aboriginal Primary-School Children. Ph.D. dissertation,
School of International, Cultural and Community Studies, Edith Cowan
University, Mount Lawley.
Sharpe, Margaret C.
1976 The English of Alice Springs Aboriginal Children: Report to Teachers, Part 1.
Alice Springs: Traeger Park Primary School.
1977 Alice Springs Aboriginal English. In: Ed Brumby and Eric Vaszolyi (eds.),
Language Problems and Aboriginal Education, 45–50. Mount Lawley,
Western Australia: Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, Mount Lawley
College of Advanced Education.
Sharpe, Margaret C. and John Sandefur
1976 The creole language of the Katherine and Roper River areas, Northern
Territory. In: Michael Clyne (ed.), Australia Talks: Essays on the Sociology of
Australian Immigrant and Aboriginal Languages, 63–77. Canberra: Research
School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
1977 A brief description of Roper Creole. In: Ed Brumby and Eric Vaszolyi (eds.),
Language Problems and Aboriginal Education, 51−60. Mount Lawley,
Western Australia: Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, Mount Lawley
College of Advanced Education.
Shnukal, Anna
1988 Broken: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Torres Strait. (Pacific
Linguistics Series C 107.) Canberra: Australian National University.
1991 Torres Strait Creole. In: Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia,
180−194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Troy, Jakelin
1990 Australian Aboriginal Contact with the English Language in New South
Wales: 1788 to 1845. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School
of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
Bislama: phonetics and phonology*
Terry Crowley
1. Historical and cultural background
Bislama is an English-lexifier contact language spoken in Vanuatu in the southwest

Pacific which initially developed as a distinct variety over about half a century
between the mid-1800s and the end of the nineteenth century. The earliest devel-
opments in the history of Bislama took place outside of Vanuatu, which was then
known as the New Hebrides. Soon after the establishment of the British colony of
New South Wales in 1788, a pidgin developed which was used between settlers
and Aboriginal peoples along the ever-expanding frontier (Baker 1993). Features
of this pidgin made their way into what has often been referred to as South Seas
Jargon, which was spoken by ships’ crews and individuals on shore in a wide va-
riety of locations around the Pacific islands in the early 1800s (Clark 1979–1980;
Keesing 1988).
Bislama first became established in southern Melanesia on trading stations es-
tablished by Europeans in the southern islands of Vanuatu and the Loyalty Islands
of New Caledonia from around the mid-1800s (Crowley 1990: 60–65). Europeans
were engaged in a three-way trade which involved sandalwood and sea slugs (or
beche de mer) that were sold in China, tea from China that was sold in the Aus-
tralian colonies, and iron, cloth and other trade goods from the colonies of eastern
Australia that were traded for sandalwood and sea slugs in southern Melanesia. The
European traders employed substantial numbers of people from a variety of different
islands on their shore stations with the result that these stations were linguistically
very mixed. The fairly unstable pre-existing South Seas Jargon, based largely on
an English lexicon, quickly became the basis for a new variety of contact language
used in association with these stations. This variety began to stabilize during the
1850s–1860s and acquired a number of local characteristics. Given its association
with the sandalwood and beche de mer trades, it came to be known alternatively
as Sandalwood English or Beche de Mer English. The name Sandalwood English
was soon replaced completely by Beche de Mer English, which eventually became
Bislama, the name by which the language is generally known in Vanuatu today.
These developments were further promoted by the widespread use of the con-
tact language throughout the 1870s–1890s by Melanesian labourers on the sugar
plantations of Queensland. The subsequent repatriation of most Vanuatu labourers
after Queensland entered the new Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 ensured
that knowledge of Bislama had become fairly widespread not only in the south
672 Terry Crowley
but also in the central and northern islands of Vanuatu. However, while Bislama
spread throughout Vanuatu during this era, it underwent contraction in the Loyalty
Islands of New Caledonia, and it was gradually replaced there as the lingua franca
by French in the decades after France established itself as the colonial power in
1853 (Crowley 1990: 65–70).
It was not until 1906 that colonial government was established in Vanuatu, mak-
ing the islands probably the last part of the world to be placed under colonial
control. The system of government that was established was also unique in that
the New Hebrides were jointly administered by Britain and France as a “condo-
minium”. A local plantation economy was established during this period which
further encouraged the spread of Bislama throughout the entire archipelago, as
this promoted internal population movement. The language underwent a variety of
lexical and structural developments, to the point where it had come to acquire the
basic features that we find in Bislama today by the second quarter of the twentieth
century. Contact with both English and French on these plantations – as many of
the plantations were in fact French-owned – provided a point of contrast in the
development of Bislama with the mutually intelligible varieties of Melanesian
Pidgin spoken in Solomon Islands (where it is known as Pijin) and Papua New
Guinea (where it is known as Tok Pisin).
The traditional animist religions of Vanuatu have for the most part been replaced
by, or perhaps merged with, introduced Christianity. However, people continue to
live for the most part in small rural villages and are dependent on subsistence
agriculture for their livelihoods. The Melanesian speakers of Bislama are cultur-
ally and physically quite different from the indigenous people of Australia to the
west, as well as being quite different from their Polynesian neighbours to the east.
However, the Melanesian people of Vanuatu exhibit many cultural and physical
similarities with their Melanesian neighbours in Solomon Islands and Papua New
Guinea to the north and northwest, as well as with the indigenous people of New
Caledonia to the south.
One major point of linguistic similarity between Vanuatu, the Solomon Is-
lands and Papua New Guinea relates to the continued use of different varieties of
Melanesian Pidgin in the three countries. Intensive contact between people from
the three countries ceased with the end of recruiting to the sugar plantations of
Queensland after the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901. With more than
a century of independent development since then each variety has acquired a num-
ber of distinctive features. For part of this period, speakers of Tok Pisin in German
New Guinea were exposed to German and there has been some lexical influence
from this language which is absent in both Bislama and Solomons Pijin. Mention
has already been made of contact with French in Vanuatu which has resulted in a
significant input of French vocabulary that we do not find in the other two national
varieties. Finally, of course, the different vernaculars in the three countries have
each contributed a certain amount of vocabulary from local sources.
Bislama: phonetics and phonology 673
2. Sociolinguistic situation
The New Hebrides became politically independent from Britain and France in
1980. The nation renamed itself at that time as Vanuatu, a word which derives
from widely distributed indigenous words of the shape vanua ‘land’ and tu ‘stand’,
which was intended to symbolize the independent status of the new republic. Van-
uatu is a highly multilingual nation boasting at least 80 actively spoken languages
(and up to a couple of dozen other languages that have either become extinct or
which have become moribund since initial contact with Europeans) distributed
across a population of about 200,000 (Crowley 2000). It has the most complex
linguistic demography of any country in the world in terms of the number of lan-
guages per head of population.
At independence, Bislama was declared by the constitution to be the national
language, largely in order to avoid the need to make what would have been a polit-
ically divisive choice between English and French. This declaration makes Vanu-
atu unique among the countries of the world in that it has a former pidgin language
that has higher constitutional status than a former colonial language. English and
French are recognized alongside Bislama as co-equal “official languages”, and
they (but not Bislama) are also declared to be “languages of education”. However,
Bislama is effectively the default language throughout the country when people
with different vernacular backgrounds come together, with English and French
seldom being used informally or conversationally.
Bislama began its life as a plantation pidgin performing a fairly restricted range
of functions and having, therefore, a relatively restricted vocabulary. However,
over the last few decades it has dramatically expanded in the range of contexts in
which it is used. It is now widely used as a language, particularly in urban areas, of
religious worship, national and local politics (including parliamentary debate), the
bureaucracy, the legal system, shopping, work, sport, the radio, friendship and ro-
mance, and even family life. As a result, the lexicon of Bislama has expanded dra-
matically to allow its speakers to meet a wide variety of new needs. Much of this
expansion has been met by borrowing from English (e.g. palemen ‘parliament’)
or, to a lesser extent, French (e.g. lepap ‘pope’ < le pape), though a fair amount
of new vocabulary has also developed spontaneously on the basis of original Bis-
lama roots (e.g. mama loa ‘constitution’ < mama ‘mother’ + loa ‘law’).
A national identity for the new Republic of Vanuatu is currently being forged,
but this identity is largely expressed through the medium of Bislama rather than
any of the local vernaculars, or through English or French. Accompanying this
sense of national identity expressed through Bislama, associated to a significant
extent with the relatively young urban population in the main centres of Port Vila
and Luganville, is a very rapid stylistic expansion of the language into areas of
youthful enthusiasm and adventure. Since independence, there has been a dra-
matic resurgence of traditional kava drinking, which is largely carried out through
674 Terry Crowley
the medium of Bislama. Patterns of youthful indulgence in alcohol, partying and

dancing, along with urban issues such as unemployment and inter-communal dis-
putes have also brought Bislama into new social domains for which its speakers
have needed to acquire new vocabulary and stylistic variation (Crowley 1989).
Although nearly all children these days attend English- or French-medium pri-
mary schools for six years where metropolitan languages represent the dominant
(or only) medium of instruction – and smaller numbers proceed to secondary and
even tertiary education –, neither English nor French has any significant use in-
formally among Ni-Vanuatu (as citizens of Vanuatu are called). These formerly
colonial languages function as “high” languages in a kind of diglossic relationship
with Bislama at the national level, being reserved largely for written or official
purposes, with Bislama being the language of choice even for most tertiary-edu-
cated Ni-Vanuatu in informal and spoken contexts.
Despite the fact that Bislama began its history as nobody’s first language, there-
by qualifying unambiguously as a pidgin language, it has gradually been acquiring
small numbers of first-language speakers. Possibly as much as ten percent of the
population today grows up speaking Bislama and no local vernacular, largely as a
result of marriages between people from different language groups living in urban
centres or on plantations. Because of this, some writers insist on referring to Bis-
lama as a “creole” rather than as a “pidgin”, though in reality there are no clearly
recognizable features by which Bislama acquired as a second language and Bis-
lama acquired as a first language can be differentiated, with the distinction there-
fore being essentially meaningless in the local context. My own preference is to
avoid such a pointless distinction by referring to Bislama generically as a “contact
language”.
3. Lexicon
Although the lexicon of Bislama is predominantly English in origin, there is nev-

ertheless a substantial minority of words which derive from other sources (com-
pare Crowley 1995 for a fairly comprehensive and up-to-date dictionary of Bis-
lama). About 3.75% of the total number of entries in the Bislama lexicon derive
from local vernacular sources (e.g. /nakamal/ ‘meeting house’, /nawita/ ‘octopus’,
/nawimba/ ‘Pacific pigeon’), while between 6% and 12% derive from French (e.g.
/masut/ ‘diesel’ < mazout, /pamplimus/ ‘grapefruit’ < pamplemousse), and about
0.25% of the lexicon derives from a variety of other sources (e.g. /pikinini/ ‘child’
< Portuguese pequenho ‘small’ via South Seas Jargon, /burau/ ‘Hibiscus tiliaceus’
< Tahitian purau, /nalnal/ ‘club’ < Early Australian Aboriginal Pidgin nalanala).
The range 6–12% for words of French origin rather than a fixed figure is because
the forms of a substantial number of words are ambiguous betweeen an English
and a French origin, e.g. /sigaret/ < cigarette, /plastik/ < English plastic or French
plastique, /letrik/ < English electric or French électrique.
Melanesian etyma are most widely encountered in semantic fields for which
neither English nor French provided terms which were readily accessible to Eu-
ropeans in the early contact situation (or since). We therefore find a substantial
number of names for local flora and fauna being expressed by means of words of
local origin, e.g. /nakavika/ ‘Malay apple’, /nakatambol/ ‘dragon plum’, /naNai/
‘native almond’, /natora/ ‘island teak’, /nasiviru/ ‘coconut lory’, /natamap/ ‘cas-
trated boar’. Terminology relating to Melanesian cultural practices and artefacts
is also often expressed by words of local origin, e.g. /nakaimas/ ‘sorcerer’, /na-
kamal/ ‘meeting house’, /nimaNgi/ ‘grade-taking ceremony’, /nasama/ ‘outrigger
(of canoe)’, /laplap/ ‘type of food’. It should be noted that nouns of Melanesian
origin are often, though by no means always, incorporated into Bislama with the
widely distributed noun phrase marker proclitic (or prefix) /na-/ reanalyzed as an
invariant part of the noun.
French etyma are distributed across a wider range of semantic fields, making
it more difficult to predict what meanings are likely to be expressed by means of
words of English origin and which will be expressed by words of French origin.
Some words of French origin clearly relate in a variety of ways to the French colo-
nial presence, either through administrative terminology such as /delege/ ‘French
district agent’ < délégué, /lameri/ ‘town hall’ < la mairie, terminology associated
with catholicism such as /lames/ ‘mass’ < la messe, /per/ ‘priest’ < père, or termi-
nology associated with fine cuisine and restaurant dining such as /lai/ ‘garlic’ <
l’ail, /pima/ ‘chilli’ < piment, /susut/ ‘choko’ < chouchoutte, /gato/ ‘cake’ < gateau.
It will be noted once again that nouns from French are often incorporated into
Bislama with the preposed definite article le or la attached as an inseparable part
of the noun itself as /le-/ or /la-/.
However, other meanings seem to be fairly unpredictably expressed by means
of words of French or English origin. It is difficult, for example, to see why the
children’s game of tag should be referred to in Bislama as /lelu/ (< French le loup)
rather than by a word of English origin, or why some playing cards are referred
to by words of French origin (e.g. /las/ ‘ace’ < l’ace, /pik/ ‘spades’ < pique) while
others are referred to by means of English etyma (e.g. /daiman/ ‘diamonds’, /hat/
‘hearts’). It should also be noted that there is a substantial number of synonymous
pairs involving words of both English and French origin, e.g. /ariko/ (< French
haricot) and /bin/ ‘bean’, /pistas/ (< French pistache) and /pinat/ ‘peanut’, /lapul/
(< French l’ampoule) and /glop/ ‘light globe’.
The bulk of the Bislama lexicon, however, is clearly of English origin. In some
cases, either the form or the meaning of an English word, or both, has been sub-
stantially changed in Bislama (or the English form from which a Bislama word has
been derived is now seldom used in modern English). We therefore find examples
such as /purumbut/ ‘step on’ (< put ‘im foot), /kolta/ ‘bitumen’ (< coal tar), /gia-
676 Terry Crowley
man/ ‘tell lies’ (< nineteenth-century Australian English gammon), /solmit/ ‘pro-
miscuous’ (< salt-meat).
In yet other cases, the English source of a Bislama form is immediately obvi-
ous, though the meaning may have been substantially modified, often under the
direct influence of vernacular semantic patterns. Thus, Bislama /han/ comes from
English hand, but it translates as both ‘arm’ and ‘hand’, following the widespread
lack of separate terms for these meanings in vernaculars. In the same way, Bislama
/lek/ (from English leg) covers the meaning of both ‘leg’ and ‘foot’ in English.
There is a substantial component of the lexicon involving words that are ulti-
mately based on English lexical sources yet which have been compounded cre-
atively by speakers of Bislama to express meanings without having to resort to
direct lexical copying from English. During the Second World War, for example,
when Ni-Vanuatu were first exposed to grenades through their association with
American troups, they coined their own term for this, i.e. /hanbom/ < /han/ ‘hand/
arm’ + /bom/ ‘bomb’. The same pattern has been used for the more recent coin-
age /roketbom/ ‘missile’ < /roket/ ‘rocket’ + /bom/ ‘bomb’. Local flora and fauna
also often came to be referred to by means of such compound terms, e.g. /blufis/
‘parrotfish’ < /blu/ ‘blue’ + /fis/ ‘fish’, /retwut/ ‘Java cedar’ < /ret/ ‘red’ + /wut/
‘wood’.
4. Phonemic contrasts and phonetic realizations
4.1. Vowels
Table 1. Bislama vowels – summary
Orthographic form Phonetic form English source
FIT [fit] fit

DRES [dres] dress
TRAK [trak] truck
HOT [hot] hot
GAT [gat] gut
PUTUM [putum] put him
PAS [pas] pass
KOF [kof] cough
NES [nes] nurse
PIS [pis] piece
FES [fes] face
PAMA [pama] Paama (island)
Table 1. (continued) Bislama vowels – summary
Orthographic form Phonetic form English source
DOTA [dota] daughter

KOT [kot] coat
JUS [tSus] juice
PRAES [prais] price
JOES [tSois] choice
MAOT [maut] mouth
BIA [bia] beer
SKWEA [skwea] square
STAT [stat] start
NOT [not] north
FOS [fos] force
SUA [sua] sure
HAPI [hapi] happy
LETA [leta] letter
MASIS [masis] matches
BARAKUTA [barakuta] barracouda
Bislama is usually described as having the following five-way vowel contrast

(with no phonemically contrastive length):
i u
e o
a
These segments have phonetic values that correspond closely to the cardinal IPA
values, with little observable allophonic variation. There is a tendency for rural
or lesser educated speakers from the island of Tanna to phonetically lengthen a
stressed vowel in a disyllabic word, and to reduce an unstressed vowel in a closed
final syllable to a high central vowel, resulting in alternations for a form such as
/apol/ ‘apple’ as [ápol] and [á˘p6l]. Such pronunciations, however, are strongly stig-
matized, and their appearance seems to be exaggerated as a result of stereotyping.
As with the consonants, there are some fairly regular correspondences between
the shapes of Bislama words and their corresponding English or French etyma,
with substantial reduction in the number of contrasts between English and Bis-
lama. English /a˘/, /Q/ and /√/, for example, regularly correspond to Bislama /a/,
e.g. /mak/ ‘mark’, /man/ ‘man’, /taN/ ‘tongue’. New words are constantly being
678 Terry Crowley
incorporated into the language from English and French by generalizing on these
correspondences. This is not to say, however, that the forms of Bislama words can
be unfailingly predicted from the shape of an English word. There are substantial
numbers of unpredictable shifts such as /talem/ ‘tell’ (rather than /telem/), /rusum/
‘roast’ (rather than /rosem/) and /flaik/ ‘flag’ (rather than /flak/). The most regular
patterns of correspondence between English and French vowels on the one hand
and Bislama vowels on the other are set out in Table 2.
Table 2. Bislama vowels from English and French sources
Eng. Fr. Bis. Source word Bislama word
i i i leak lik ‘leak’

pique pik ‘spades (in cards)’
I I i lick + him likim ‘lick’
quitte-à-quitte kitkit ‘draw (in sport)’
– e e pétanque petoN ‘French bowls’
E E e leg lek ‘foot, leg’
arrière arier ‘reverse’
Q – a man man ‘man’
a a a mark mak ‘mark’
mazout masut ‘diesel’
√ – a tongue taN ‘tongue’
-´ — -a together tugeta ‘together’
o o o sauce sos ‘sauce’
gateau gato ‘cake’
ç ç o salt sol ‘salt’
pilote pilot ‘tug boat’
u u u boot but ‘boot’
bouton butoN ‘button’
U U u cook kuk ‘cook’
gourmand gurmoN ‘sucker (of plant)’
– y i putain piteN ‘whore’
– Y i butteur biter ‘shooting marble’
– ø e monsieur misie ‘sir’
– ø e butteur biter ‘shooting marble’
Table 2. (continued) Bislama vowels from English and French sources
– E‚ eN putain piteN ‘whore’

– ç‚ oN bouchon busoN ‘cork, stopper’
— a‚ oN croissant kwasoN ‘croissant’
It should be noted that non-final central vowels tend to be fairly unpredictably

reflected in Bislama as /o/, /e/, /i/ or /a/. We therefore find English etyma such as
the following where /Œ˘/ is reflected invariably as /o/: /bon/ ‘burnt’, /wok/ ‘work’.
In /tanem/ ‘turn’ it is reflected invariably as /a/, in /gel/ ‘girl’ it is reflected as /e/,
while in the word for ‘shirt’ it is reflected variably as /set ~ sot/. Non-final schwa
also often varies between /o/, /e/ or /a/, as in /ofisol ~ ofisel ~ ofisal/ ‘official’.
Words in English containing diphthongs beginning with mid vowels and end-
ing in a high vowel of the same value for frontness and roundedness tend to be
somewhat variable in their Bislama reflexes. Word-medially, such diphthongs are
generally reflected simply as mid vowels with no off-glide, e.g.
Eng. Bis. Source word Bislama word

oU o post pos ‘post’
eI e cake kek ‘cake’
Word-finally, there is rather more variation between monophthongal and diphthon-

gal reflexes in Bislama, e.g.

-oU -o(u) blow blo ~ blou ‘blow’
-eI -e(i) day de ~ dei ‘day’
Word-final diphthongs beginning with a mid vowel and having a schwa offglide
– corresponding to post-vocalic /r/ in rhotic dialects of English – also vary in their
Bislama reflexes between a simply mid vowel and sequences of /ea/ and /oa/,
e.g.

-o´ -o(a) more mo ~ moa ‘more’
-e´ -e(a) where we ~ wea ‘where’
680 Terry Crowley
4.2. Consonants
Table 3 sets out the consonants which can be shown to contrast in Bislama.
Table 3. Bislama consonants
p t c k
b d g
m n N
v
f s h
r
l
w j
This inventory represents something of a mesolectal variety which is quite widely

distributed among speakers of Bislama throughout Vanuatu. As will be demon-
strated in section 4.3., there are some variations to this phoneme inventory.
These segments once again have phonetic realizations by and large that are sug-
gested by the IPA values. The liquid represented as /r/ is phonetically normally an
alveolar flap, though an occasional trilled articulation can be heard as a free vari-
ant. Some speakers produce instead a retroflex flap for this sound, though this is a
strongly stigmatized pronunciation associated with speakers of particular local lan-
guages. The symbol /j/ represents a palatal semi-vowel. Particular note should be
made of the fact that /c/ is generally realized as a voiceless post-alveolar grooved
affricate, i.e. [tS], though there is often a slightly fronted realization, i.e. [ts].
Words of vernacular origin tend to be adopted into Bislama with minimal change
in shape, as the Bislama consonant inventory very closely resembles that of widely
distributed vernacular patterns. With a consonant inventory that is substantially
reduced vis-à-vis those of English and French, however, we find that a number
of contrasts are systematically merged in Bislama. In particular, the English con-
trasts between /s/, /z/, /S/ and /Z/ are merged as /s/, e.g. /sain/ ‘sign’, ‘shine’, /resa/
‘razor’. The contrasts between /t/ and /T/ on the one hand and /d/ and /D/ on the
other are merged as /t/ and /d/ respectively, e.g. /tin/ ‘tin’ and /tiNtiN/ ‘think’, /dis/
‘dish’ and /disfala/ ‘this (< this + fellow)’. The contrast between voiced and voice-
less segments is lost word-finally in Bislama, with only voiceless segments being
found. Thus, the contrast between English dog and dock results in the homopho-
nous form /dok/ meaning ‘dog’ and ‘warehouse (< dock)’ in Bislama.
The main patterns of correspondence between consonantal contrasts in standard
English and French on the one hand and Bislama on the other are set in Table 4,
along with illustrations of each pattern (with an English etymon presented first
and a French etymon presented second).
Table 4. Bislama consonants from English and French sources

p p p place ples ‘place’
pistolet pistole ‘pistol’
t t t tongue taN ‘tongue’
tricot triko ‘sweater’
k k k kitchen kicin ‘cook-house’
claquettes klaket ‘flip-flops’
b b b book buk ‘book’
barre à mine baramin ‘crowbar’
d d d dog dok ‘dog’
dame-jeanne damsen ‘flagon (of wine)’
g g g girl gel ‘girl’
délégué delege ‘district agent’
m m m man man ‘man’
manivelle manivel ‘starting handle’
n n n knife naif ‘knife’
cochonet kosone ‘jack (in bowls)’
– -¯ -in champagne sompain ‘champagne’
N – N tongue taN ‘tongue’
l l l light lait ‘light’
le loup lelu ‘tag (game)’
rV rV rV right rait ‘right’
robinet robine ‘tap’
– Vr Vr arrière arier ‘reverse’
h – h house haus ‘house’
f f f friend fren ‘friend’
profiter profite ‘take advantage’
v v v vinegar viniga ‘vinegar’
avocat avoka ‘lawyer’
T – t think + think tiNtiN ‘think’
D- – d- this + fellow disfala ‘this’
-D- – -r- an + other + fellow narafala ‘other’
s s s saucepan sospen ‘saucepan’
lycée lise ‘secondary school’
z z s razor resa ‘razor’
mazout masut ‘diesel’
682 Terry Crowley
Table 4. (continued) Bislama consonants from English and French sources

S S s ship sip ‘ship
bouchon busoN ‘cork, stopper’
Z Z s decision disisen ‘decision’
gendarme sondam ‘French police’
tS tS c church cec ‘church’
caoutchouc kaucuk ‘rubber’
dZ – c judge cac ‘judge’
w w w west wes ‘west’
oui + oui wiwi ‘French (arch.)’
j- – j- you ju ‘you (sg.)’
– -j -i l’ail lai ‘garlic’
Note that with respect to French words containing /¯/, forms have only been attest-
ed as being incorporated into Bislama in which this segment appears word-finally,
e.g. champagne. Note also that the correspondences presented above for /r/ hold
up despite the substantial phonetic difference between this liquid in the three lan-
guages. Finally, words beginning with /j-/ are extremely rare in French and none of
these have been incorporated into Bislama, hence the lack of examples above.
While it is often possible to predict by these fairly regular correspondence state-
ments what form a word of English origin will take in Bislama, there is by no
means a completely regular set of correspondences. Thus, while English /tS/ gen-
erally corresponds to Bislama /c/ as in /cec/ ‘church’, the form /sakem/ ‘throw (<
chuck)’ is idiosyncratically reflected as /s/. Also, while English /r/ is the primary
source of /r/ in Bislama, there are some forms in which Bislama intervocalic /r/
unexpectedly derives from a number of other sounds, as in /griri/ ‘greedy’ (where
/-d-/ is reflected as /-r-/ rather than /-d-/) and /wora/ ‘water’ (where /-t-/ is reflected
as /-r-/ rather than /-t-/). However, it is certainly not the case that all instances of
intervocalic /-d-/ and /-t-/ in English can be reflected with /-r-/ in Bislama, as evi-
denced by invariant forms such as /hotel/ ‘hotel’ and /lada/ ‘ladder’.
4.3. Phonemic variation

Although many speakers operate with the consonant inventory just presented,
there is considerable individual (and regional) variation in the maintenance of
this set of contrasts with particular words. No comprehensive regional study of
phonological diversity has ever been carried out on Bislama, nor has there been
any empirically-based quantitative study of phonological variation. Phonologi-

cal variation is also often related in informal comment locally to an individual’s
language of education – whether one is considered to be ‘anglophone’ or ‘franco-
phone’ – though such comments have once again not been subjected to detailed
empirical scrutiny.
It is difficult to present statements which cover all possibilities regarding varia-
tion from this basic pattern of consonantal contrasts given that there is a fairly
extensive range of possibilities. The following general observations can be made
about the loss of phonemic contrasts vis-à-vis the basic consonant inventory,
though it should be recognized that some additional phonemic mergers may be
encountered among small groups of speakers, or in particular lexical sets with
some speakers:
(i) The contrast between voiced and voiceless stops is not consistently made.
For some speakers, there appears to be little contrast at all, with only voice-
less unaspirated stops found in all environments. It is far more common,
however, for a contrast to be made, but for the contrast to be lost with some
words. That is, while some speakers may contrast /dok/ ‘dog’ and /tok/
‘talk’ on the one hand and /draim/ ‘dry (something)’ and /traim/ ‘try’ on the
other, other speakers may merge /dok/ and /tok/ as /tok/ while maintaining
a contrast between /draim/ and /traim/, and yet other speakers may merge
/draim/ and /traim/ as /traim/ while maintaining a contrast between /dok/
and /tok/. If any merger takes place, it is most likely to be in the direction
of the voiceless stops rather than the voiced stops.
(ii) The contrast between /v/ and /f/ is also not very stable. The /v/ segment is
not nearly as widely distributed as /f/ in any case, and some speakers lose
the contrast entirely, having only /f/. This results in alternations such as
/vanuatu/ and /fanuatu/ ‘Vanuatu’ within the speech community.
(iii) For many, perhaps even most, speakers, the contrast between voiced and
voiceless stops is lost in homorganic nasal-stop clusters, this time in the
direction of phonetically voiced segments. Thus, while for some speakers
there may be a voicing difference in pairs such as /stampa/ ‘base (< from
English stump)’ and /namba/ ‘number’, most people pronounce /stamba/
and /namba/ respectively.
(iv) A small minority of speakers may go further than this in tending to lose the
contrast between voiced and voiceless stops and homorganic nasal-stop
clusters, pronouncing all as voiced prenasalized stops, particularly in word-
initial position. Thus, a word that will be pronounced by many as /pik/ ‘pig’
may occasionally be encountered as /mbik/.
(v) There also is a substantial amount of unpredictable alternation between
voiceless stops and the corresponding voiceless fricatives, with /pik/ ‘pig’
684 Terry Crowley
and /faia/ ‘fire’ occasionally being heard as /fik/ and /paia/ respectively.
This kind of alternation is strongly stigmatized with some words, but quite
widespread with others.
(vi) There is a tendency for the distinction between /c/ and /s/ to be lost among
some speakers, or with some words, resulting in alternations such as /calus
~ salus/ ‘jealous’ and /cenis ~ senis/ ‘change’.
(vii) The glottal fricative /h/ is often lost. This is especially frequent intervocali-
cally with pronunciations such as /biain/ ‘behind’ being far more common
than /bihain/, though it can also be lost word-initially, resulting in not-in-
frequent alternations such as /harem ~ arem/ ‘hear’. (Note that /h/ is never
found word-finally in Bislama.)
Given that for the vast majority of speakers, Bislama is acquired after the acquisi-
tion of one of 80 or so local vernaculars in childhood, these kinds of phonological
mergers, as might be expected, correspond to some extent to the distribution of
particular features in the substrate languages. It has been noted, for example, that
in a number of languages from the island of Malakula, while there is a prenasal-
ized /mb/ phoneme, there is no correponding plain voiceless /p/, and it is precisely
with speakers of such languages that more widely distributed pronunciations such
as /pik/ ‘pig’ are encountered as /mbik/. The stigmatized retroflex flap articulation
of /r/ that was mentioned earlier also appears to correspond closely to the distri-
bution of retroflex rather than alveolar flap realizations of /r/ in local vernaculars,
particularly those of northern Efate and parts of Pentecost island.
However, having pointed to a correlation between such variations from the ba-
sic phonological pattern described above and differences between local vernacular
phonologies, we should exercise some caution in assuming that all regional phono-
logical variation shares the same explanation. Not only do we have an inadequate
knowledge of the distribution of variants to this basic phonological system of Bis-
lama, but we have a detailed knowledge of the phonologies of only a small number
of vernaculars (Lynch and Crowley 2001: 14–19). Even with the limited knowl-
edge that we do have, it is not difficult to point to features of vernacular phonolo-
gies which are not carried over into Bislama. In the Paamese language, for instance,
there is word-final neutralization of the contrast between /p/ and /v/ with phonetic
free variation between stop and fricative realizations, though this does not seem
to correspond to any tendency among speakers of Paamese to loose their contrast
between the stop and fricative word-finally when they are speaking Bislama.
In addition to the kinds of phonological mergers just described, there are speak-
ers who operate with somewhat expanded consonant and vowel inventories, at
least for some words. This seems to correspond to a considerable extent to a higher
command of English or French. With such speakers, we tend to find that not only
is the contrast between /s/ and /c/ maintained, but there is also a tendency to dis-
tinguish between /s/ and /S/ in words of English or French origin. Thus, in contrast
to the majority pronunciations of /sup/ ‘soup’ and /sus/ ‘shoe’ we may encounter
/sup/ and /Sus/ respectively.
There also appears to be a tendency among better-educated speakers for the
contrast between long (or diphthongized) and short (monophthongal) vowels in
English – which is ordinarily completely lost in Bislama – to be maintained in the
form of a tense-lax distinction. Thus, while /set/ for many speakers is the pronun-
ciation for ‘shirt’ and ‘agreed’ (< set), some speakers may make a contrast between
/sEt/ ‘agreed’ and /set/ ‘shirt’. It should be pointed out, however, that as far as I
am aware, such an observation has not been offered in any previously published
account of the language and study needs to be carried out by a well-trained phone-
tician to verify (or disconfirm) this.
Another area of phonemic uncertainty involves the relationship between vowel
quality and phonemically contrastive voicing with stops in word-final position in
words of English origin. It was indicated above that there is no contrast in Bislama
word-finally between /p, t, k/ on the one hand and /b, d, g/ on the other, with mini-
mally contrasting pairs in English ending up as homophones in Bislama. Although
I am fairly confident that there is indeed no final voicing contrast in Bislama, it
may be worth investigating the possibility that there may be some kind of surviv-
ing contrast in nature of the preceding vowel. My suspicion is that there may be
some kind of acoustically detectable laxness in the vowel of forms such as /pik/
‘pig’ in contrast to a more tense vowel in /pik/ ‘plectrum (< pick)’. Such a test
would need to be carefully constructed so that it is based on natural pronunciations
without any possibility of contamination from spelling pronunciations.
4.4. Orthography
Bislama is a written language with a spelling system that has been developing for
several decades. The development of the written form of the language coincided
initially with the greater use of the language for religious purposes with the first
translations of the gospels being produced in the 1970s, leading up to a transla-
tion of the entire Old and New Testaments by 1997. The 1970s also saw a rise of
political consciousness associated with a sense of nationalism. The struggle for
independence, along with political debates and campaigns since then, have largely
been conducted through the medium of both spoken and written Bislama.
The spelling system largely reflects the set of phonemic contrasts presented at
the beginning of this chapter, with orthographic ng representing /N/, j represent-
ing /c/, y representing the glide /j/, and ae and ao representing the diphthongs /ai/
and /au/ respectively. Some etymologically – rather than phonemically – based
spellings have become more or less universally accepted. In particular, the word-
final voicing contrast in English is typically maintained in the Bislama spelling
system for words of English origin, even though the voicing contrast is not made
686 Terry Crowley
by most speakers. We therefore find an orthographic contrast in Bislama between

dok ‘warehouse (< dock)’ and dog ‘dog’, even though phonemically both can be
represented as /dok/.
5. Phonotactics
Bislama phonotactics can be described in general as being somewhat simplified

with respect to the consonant-cluster possibilities that we find in English. Word-fi-
nal clusters which undergo sporadic reduction word-finally in English are system-
atically simplified in Bislama, e.g. /distrik/ ‘district’, /han/ ‘hand, arm’. Other final
clusters which do not undergo simplification in English are also regularly reduced
in Bislama, e.g. /stam/ ‘stamp’, /stiN/ ‘stink’. Some word-final clusters involving
a consonant followed by a sibilant are optionally separated by an epenthetic front
vowel, e.g. /bokis ~ boks/ ‘box’, /sikis ~ siks/ ‘six’, /canis ~ cans/ ‘chance’. Other
consonant sequences are also sporadically affected by vowel epenthesis, e.g. /me-
lek/ ‘milk’, /lasitern ~ lasiterin/ ‘in-ground water reservoir (< French la citerne)’,
/film ~ filem/ ‘film’.
Initial and medial consonant clusters are much less likely to undergo reduction,
though changes are nonetheless encountered. Three-member intervocalic clus-
ters may be simplified by deleting one of the consonants, e.g. /letrik/ ‘electricity
(< electric)’, while initial two-member clusters may be simplified by the optional
insertion of an epenthetic vowel, e.g. /bulu ~ blu/ ‘blue’. Sometimes, consonant
cluster simplification may not involve a reduction in the number of consonants
involved but involve instead assimilation of one consonant to another, e.g. /fraim-
pan/ ‘frying pan’.
Despite the general tendency for the simplification of consonant clusters in
Bislama, a substantial number of relatively complex consonant sequences are re-
tained, e.g. /faktri/ ‘factory’, /distrik/ ‘district’. Many of the kinds of consonant
clusters that are retained directly reflect permissible sequences in English. Thus,
just as we encounter three-member word-initial sequences of /str-/ in English but
no instances of /stl-/, so too do we find words in Bislama such as /strap/ ‘belt
(< strap)’ but no instances of Bislama words beginning with /stl-/.
It should be pointed out that statements about phonotactic changes between
English and Bislama do not invariably involve either retention of original clusters
or the simplification of original clusters. There is plentiful evidence also for the
development of new clusters in Bislama from English-derived forms where there
were no clusters to begin with. We therefore find instances of vowel loss between
English and Bislama which result in consonant clusters such as /wokbaut/ ‘walk
(about)’. In some cases, we find competing forms involving the presence or ab-
sence of a vowel between consonants, e.g. /sidaun ~ staun/ ‘sit (down)’, /sigaret ~
skaret/ ‘cigarette’, /basikel ~ baskel/ ‘bike (< bicycle)’, /finisim ~ finsim/ ‘finish’.
Apart from these observations about consonant clusters, Bislama phonotactics

is for the most part covered by the same kinds of observations that hold for Eng-
lish. There are, of course, subcomponents of the lexicon which do not derive from
English for which other kinds of phonotactic statements can be made. In particular,
those words which have local vernacular sources are based by and large on syl-
lable structures of the type CV(C), which allows for word-initial single conso-
nants, word-final single consonants or vowels, and two-member medial clusters,
in words such as /nakatambol/ ‘dragon plum’.
6. Phonological processes
There are very few general morphophonemic processes in Bislama. One of the
characteristic features of pidgin and creole languages is the tendency to avoid deri-
vational complexity in phonology and morphology. However, attention is drawn
to variation in the form of the transitive suffix canonically represented as /-Vm/.
The functions of this suffix will be dealt with in the chapter on Bislama morpho-
syntax (see Crowley, other volume), and I will concentrate here only on the forms
of the suffix.
With verbs ending in consonants preceded by either a diphthong or by a non-
high single vowel, the transitive suffix appears as /-em/, e.g. /tan-em/ ‘turn’, /bon-
em/ ‘burn’, /let-em/ ‘permit, let’, /boil-em/ ‘boil’, /fain-em/ ‘find’. Following a
consonant-final root preceded by a high vowel, the vowel of the suffix harmonizes
with the final vowel of the root, e.g. /kil-im/ ‘kill’, /pul-um/ ‘pull’. With vowel-fi-
nal roots, the transitive suffix appears as /-m/ after front vowels, e.g. /ciki-m/ ‘be
cheeky to’, /pe-m/ ‘pay’, as /-em/ after /o/, e.g. /boro-em/ ‘borrow’, as /-im/ after
/u/, e.g. /blu-im/ ‘blow’ and as /-rem/ after /a/, e.g. /hama-rem/ ‘hammer’.
7. Prosodic features and intonation patterns
Stress in Bislama is not predictable. Although this means that stress is phonemi-
cally contrastive, I am not aware of any pair of lexical items which differ in mean-
ing solely by the position of stress. However, there are words in Bislama in which
stress appears on the initial syllable in words of very similar phonotactic shape,
e.g. /nákamal/ ‘meeting house’, /kálabus/ ‘prison’, /píkinini/ ‘child’, the second
syllable, e.g. /novémba/ ‘November’, /nabáNga/ ‘banyan’, the third syllable, e.g.
/demonstrésen/ ‘demonstration’, /nakatámbol/ ‘dragon plum’, and even words in
which stress appears on the final syllable, e.g. /lakaskát/ ‘waterfall’.
It probably makes more sense to subdivide the vocabulary of Bislama into its
etymological source languages, treating English, French and Melanesian etyma
separately. Words originating from local vernaculars behave overwhelmingly ac-
688 Terry Crowley
cording to the pattern that we find in Oceanic languages whereby stress is system-
atically applied to the penultimate syllable. This would therefore account for the
position of stress in words such as /nabáNga/ ‘banyan’ and /nakatámbol/ ‘dragon
plum’ presented above. Following widespread vernacular patterns, a diphthong in
a final closed syllable is also stressed in Bislama, e.g. /namaláus/ ‘Garuga flori-
bunda’. Where two syllables have been historically reduplicated, the second ele-
ment does not count for syllable-counting purposes, meaning that stress is found
on the penultimate syllable of the unreduplicated root, e.g. /napíripiri/ ‘sea hearse
tree’, /nadúledule/ ‘red silkwood’.
However, the generalizations just presented represent strong tendencies in Bis-
lama rather than exceptionless rules, and some forms of vernacular origin exhibit
stress patterns which vary from these. In some cases, we find that the initial syl-
lable is stressed, e.g. /námarai/ ‘eel’, /nákamal/ ‘meeting house’, while in other
cases the second syllable is stressed, e.g. /namáriu/ ‘acacia tree’. These irregulari-
ties are unlikely to derive from divergent patterns in the substrate language, so
there seems to have been a genuine unpredictable shift of stress in these cases.
Forms of French origin are often found with stress on the final syllable, which
is what we would expect given the ultimate-syllable stress pattern of the source
language. Thus: /glasóN/ ‘ice block’, /restoróN/ ‘restaurant’, /limonát/ ‘soft drink
(< limonade)’, /maratóN/ ‘running shoes (< marathon)’. However, final stress in
words of French origin is again not universal, and we do find forms in which
stress has shifted, e.g. /kálsoN/ ‘(men’s) underpants’, /pétoN/ ‘French bowls (<
pétanque)’, /bóndi/ ‘criminal (< bandit)’.
Finally, we have the English-derived bulk of the lexicon. Unlike French and the
Melanesian languages, stress is not predictable in English, and this unpredictabil-
ity is mirrored in words of English origin in Bislama. For the most part, the posi-
tion of stress in Bislama can be deduced from the position of stress in English, e.g.
/pálamen/ ‘parliament’, /haibískis/ ‘hibiscus’, /demonstrésen/ ‘demonstration’.
One feature of Bislama that is immediately obvious to even a new learner of the
language is its intonation pattern. Not only is the primary intonation pattern of Bis-
lama clearly different from that of English and the various vernacular languages,
but it is also quite distinct from what we find in mutually intelligible Solomons
Pijin and Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin. In talking about Bislama intonation, it is
difficult (for the present writer at least) to go beyond vague impressions, but there
does seem to be a substantially greater rise towards the end of a statement, fol-
lowed by a much more noticeable drop immediately afterwards at the end of the
statement than we find in any of the other languages (or varieties of Melanesian
Pidgin) to which I have just referred. This gives the impression that Bislama has
something of a “sing-song” intonation. My only suggestion for a possible source
for this intonation is that it may reflect a French source, though this is little more
than an impression which would need to be verified by checking against a detailed
empirical comparison of the intonation patterns of both languages.
The amount of descriptive material relating to Bislama has increased substan-

tially since the 1970s, and we now have a fairly comprehensive published diction-
ary (Crowley 1995), as well as quite detailed discussions of particular aspects
of the grammar, but there is still no publicly available grammar of the language.
Matters of phonology have typically also been covered briefly (or not at all) in
published material relating to Bislama. As far as I know, this chapter contains the
only published statement of any kind relating to stress in Bislama, brief as this
may be. There has also been no acoustic verification of the set of phonemic con-
trasts postulated for Bislama, and this chapter has – albeit somewhat tentatively
– presented a number of specific suggestions regarding areas that might be worthy
of investigation. Finally, of course, there is a real need to follow up the suggestion
in the preceding paragraph regarding the need for a comparative study of Bislama
intonation patterns.
* Many thanks to John Lynch for comments to an earlier version of this paper. Final re-
sponsibility for all claims, however, remains with the author.
Selected references
ROM.
Baker, Philip
1993 Australian influence on Melanesian Pidgin English. Te Reo 36: 3–67.
Clark, Ross
1979–1980
In search of Beach-la-mar: towards a history of Pacific pidgin English. Te Reo
22/23: 3–63.
Crowley, Terry
1989 Referential and expressive expansion in Bislama. English World-Wide 16:
85–118.
1990 Beach-la-mar to Bislama: The Emergence of a National Language in Vanuatu.
(Oxford Studies in Language Contact.) Oxford: Clarendon.
1995 A New Bislama Dictionary. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies and Pacific
Languages Unit, University of the South Pacific.
2000 The language situation in Vanuatu. Current Issues in Language Planning 1:
47–132.
Lynch, John and Terry Crowley
2001 Languages of Vanuatu: A New Survey and Bibliography. Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics.
Solomon Islands Pijin: phonetics and phonology*
Christine Jourdan and Rachel Selbach
1.1. A brief history of Solomon Islands Pijin
Solomon Islands Pijin is one of the three Melanesian pidgins (along with Tok Pi-
sin spoken in Papua New Guinea, and Bislama spoken in Vanuatu) that are, more
or less directly, the offshoots of the Pacific trade jargon of the early 19th century,
known as Beach-la-Mar (Clark 1979; Keesing 1988). This early jargon is probably
based on a pidgin that developed in Australia between the British settlers in New
South Wales and the aboriginal population at the end of the 18th century (Troy 1985;
Baker 1993). It further expanded and stabilized during the plantation period of the
second part of the 19th century that linked the Melanesian archipelagos of Vanuatu
and the Solomons to Australia. The labour trade to Queensland lasted for roughly
40 years, from 1863 to 1906. At the beginning of the trade period, the Australian
planters started to recruit in New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Melanesian
archipelago closest to Australia; when recruiting in the southern islands became dif-
ficult, they moved north towards the Banks Islands, the Santa Cruz archipelago and
later, around 1874, toward the Solomon Islands. Around 13,000 Solomon Islanders
were taken to Queensland during the forty-year period. The pidgin language (called
Kanaka Pidgin English) that was used on the plantations became the lingua franca
spoken among Melanesian workers (the Kanakas, as they were called) who did not
share the same language, and between Melanesians and European overseers. When
Solomon Islanders went back to the Solomons at the end of their contract, or when
they were forcefully repatriated at the end of the labour trade period (1904), they
brought Melanesian pidgin to the Solomon Islands. The result was that the pidgin
became quite spread-out throughout the eastern part of the archipelago, but, not
having a social raison d’être, it remained largely unused, except for affect. Back
in the 1980s, old people could still remember the stories that were told by the old
former Queensland hands many years after their return.
Following the annexation of the Solomon Islands by the British (1893), the
pidgin became the medium by which Solomon Islanders interacted with British
colonial officers and with other Solomon Islanders from different ethnic groups.
Some employees of the early colonial administration, such as the constabulary,
were recruited among pidgin speakers because their knowledge of the language
meant that they had had previous contact with Europeans.
Solomon Islands Pijin: phonetics and phonology 691
One of the first outcomes of the Pax Britannica in the Solomon Islands (1920)
had been the expansion of a small local plantation economy that had appeared as
early as 1910. The plantations required many labourers, and they were recruited
from different islands. Solomon Islanders began to migrate within the archipelago,
between the areas supplying the labour force (typically Malaita island) and the
plantation areas (Guadalcanal and Russell islands). Not surprisingly, the first la-
bourers to be recruited to work on the Solomon Islands plantations were men who
had been to Queensland before and who knew pidgin. Thus, the Kanaka Pidgin
English of Queensland was reactivated on a larger scale by people building on
their previous knowledge of it. In those days, young men did not learn to speak
that language until they went to work on the plantations. Over the years, circular
migration allowed one or two generations of young men to be in contact with
the pidgin, particularly in work-related activities. As a result, the pool of pidgin
speakers progressively enlarged, and the language proved so successful as a lingua
franca that it expanded very quickly within the population. On plantations, work-
ers and overseers alike learnt the pidgin by listening to other people talk; workers
learnt it from their fellow workers. The unspoken sociolinguistic rule was that
people spoke their vernacular language with people belonging to their language
group and used the pidgin with everybody else, the overseers included. Some old-
timers acted as interpreters for the newcomers (niusam). Progressively the pid-
gin acquired local characteristics (phonetic and lexical particularly) and speakers
came to refer to it as Pisin. It is now called Pijin and referred to as such hereafter.
Another important event in the history of Pijin is World War II and the pres-
ence of the American army in the archipelago in 1942. Even though most plan-
tation labourers were repatriated during that time, many Solomon Islands men
(around 2,000) were enrolled in the Solomon Islands Labour Corps and in the Brit-
ish Solomon Islands Protectorate Defence Force, in which 680 Islanders enlisted
(Laracy 1983). Solomon Islanders who witnessed that period say that they spoke
to the American soldiers in pidgin and sometimes in English when it was known
to them. Many of the American soldiers had some very rudimentary knowledge
of the Pidgin English spoken then in New Guinea. This pidgin, now called Tok
Pisin, then called Melanesian pidgin, was one of the forty Pacific languages that
the American army deemed potentially useful to their soldiers fighting in the Pa-
cific. They taught it to the troops through the medium of a small handbook that had
some phrases in Tok Pisin. Even though it is difficult to assess the degree of the
transformation that Pijin underwent during that period, it is obvious that the more
intensive the contact with English, the more the presence of English was going to
be felt in Solomons Pijin.
It is during the time of Maasina Rulu ‘the rule of brotherhood’ (maasina ‘broth-
erhood’ *Are*Are, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, and rulu ‘rule’ Eng-
lish), the politico-religious movement that swept the island of Malaita after World
War II (1944−1952) that Pijin became a political tool. The lingua franca became
692 Christine Jourdan and Rachel Selbach
crucial to the movement very early on, as it was the only language that could be
understood by all ethnic groups alike. It is through Pijin that the political ideology
of the movement was disseminated in the Protectorate. Pijin assisted in the com-
munication of the ideas of Maasina Rule (Bennett 1979), but also in forging the
unity of the movement: linguistic barriers were broken down, and the notion of
group identity gradually incorporated the wider notion of brotherhood. Through
Pijin, the movement mobilized the Malaitan population and spread through tradi-
tional exchange networks, through mission links and through very large political
meetings where people from different language groups came together.
1.2. Contemporary Pijin

Solomon Islands Pijin is now spoken throughout the Solomons archipelago. It
is, by far, the primary lingua franca of the island group, superseding missionary
lingua francas. In view of its social history, Pijin from the start was used predomi-
nantly by adult males, most women and children simply having no access to it. It is
still quite common nowadays to come across mature women in remote areas of the
Solomon Islands who do not know Pijin at all. People, and women in particular,
who were not incorporated into the traditional settings or contexts of Pijin usage
and transmission (plantations, mission stations or schooling) had never had any
need for Pijin, and/or any opportunities or incentive to learn it. The situation is be-
ing modified nowadays with increasing urbanization, widespread primary school-
ing, encroachment of a cash economy everywhere in the country, and growing
transport links that make it possible for people to move back and forth between
the villages and Honiara, the main Pijin-speaking area of the country. All these
activities provide all members of the society, and not only men as had been the
case before, with opportunities (and sometimes money) for travel within the island
group. With increasing mobility, people of different linguistic traditions come in
contact in a way and on a scale that differs drastically from traditional inter-group
and/or inter-islands contacts. This has opened the way for Pijin to establish itself
as the main language of the country.
1.3. Sociolinguistic situation of contemporary Pijin

Since the 1960s, Pijin has become the main language of the capital city of Honiara
and the mother tongue of many young urban adults and of a new generation of
young urban children who know no other language but Pijin. Pijin is not only the
medium of communication of urban life, it is the medium of a type of culture that
is different in many respects from the cultural world of the plantations and vil-
lages. In Honiara, the strong position of Pijin is reinforced by the very high degree
of language diversity we find in town (most of the 64 vernaculars of the country
are represented in Honiara). People migrating to town had to learn Pijin quickly if
they wanted to create a social life for themselves outside of the limits of the wantok
system (wantok ‘friend’). Due to the high number of inter-ethnic marriages in town,
Pijin progressively found its way within the family circle, whereas it used to be used
almost exclusively with non-family members, and particularly, with non-wantok
people. The contexts of Pijin usage in town are far more diverse than they were
when the language served as a plantation pidgin: Pijin is used for church services
and church-related activities, in the public service, on the radio, in political circles
and in parliament, in family life and other domains of urban social life. Over the
years, Pijin has acquired some cultural depth that is expressed lexically through the
borrowing of new words from English (e.g. kompiuta ‘computer’) or through ex-
pansion of the lexicon from Pijin roots (e.g. masta liu ‘unemployed’ masta ‘master’
+ liu ‘hang around’). The opposite result is that the lexicon, and the phonology, are
changing quickly. A sociolinguistic norm essentially based on urban Pijin is appear-
ing and is becoming the measure by which young urban people evaluate Pijin com-
petence in others: they are quick to denigrate and make fun of non-urban ways of
speaking the language, and to associate ‘old’ words with provincial ways of speak-
ing and with lack of social sophistication. In the process, old words such as panikini
‘cup’, furumbutu ‘step on’, gras ‘hair’ are progressively being lost from the vocabu-
lary of young urban people and are replaced by kap ‘cup’, stepem ‘step on’ and hea
‘hair’. This meets with much resistance from provincial and older speakers, who are
quick to qualify urban Pijin as rabis (‘bad’) and overly anglicized. In the provincial
areas of the country, people tend to have access to Pijin at a much earlier age and in
wider contexts of communication than before.
Despite not having the official status of a national language, Pijin has become
the true national language of the Solomon Islands, the only linguistic mortar that
has the potential of binding this new country together. Papua New Guinea and
Vanuatu have recognized the major roles played by Tok Pisin and Bislama respec-
tively in these countries by giving them national language status. One hopes that
the Solomon Islands will soon do the same for Pijin.
But although Pijin is widely spoken, it is not widely written. Despite the efforts
made by the Literacy Association of the Solomon Islands (LASI) and the Solo-
mon Islands Christian Association (SICA) through the works of Solomon Islands
Translation Advisory Group (SITAG), the language is not a popular medium of
written communication. There are many reasons for this situation: Pijin lacks in-
stitutional support from government agencies, and it lacks cultural legitimacy. In
addition, schooling at advanced levels is done in English, the official language
of the country, and this puts pressure on the children to learn English at an early
age. Over the years, new tools such as word lists (Beimer 1995) and dictionaries
(Simons and Young 1978; Jourdan 2002) have been produced. No comprehensive
grammar is publicly available yet.
Along with the lack of official legitimacy of the language comes a lack of a
bona fide standard variety of Pijin. Variation therefore can and does flourish, both
within and across sociolinguistic boundaries. This poses some difficulties for the
unitary description of Pijin, including the level of phonology and phonetics. We
have attempted to provide a conservative description of the phoneme inventory of
Pijin below, followed by an introduction to the range and types of variation that
may be displayed by different speakers. It should be kept in mind that even such
basic description will be unavoidably tinged by analysis, and that what we provide
here is a preliminary sketch of a complex situation.
2. Phoneme inventory
Solomon Islands Pijin has a basic phoneme inventory that accommodates the
sounds of the lexifier language English, but is simpler than that of English in hav-
ing fewer phonemes. This also makes the phonology of Solomon Islands Pijin
more like that of the substrate languages (all except for eight of the languages
spoken on the Solomon Islands are Austronesian languages) whose presence in the
archipelago antedates that of English and of Pijin, and on which the sound system
can be said to be mapped. Very clear influence from the various Austronesian
vernaculars is found in the phonetics of Pijin, where there is a great deal of both
regional and idiolectal variation that can often be linked to the speakers’ prior or
other linguistic knowledge. There is also phonetic influence from English that is
becoming apparent in some speakers of Taon Pijin (Pijin spoken in Honiara). We
first describe the basic phoneme inventory, noting that it eschews uniform, unam-
biguous description. We then discuss further the range and type of variation that is
actually found in the pronunciation of Pijin.
Orthographic form Phonological form English source
FIT /fit/ fit
DRES /dres/ dress
MAP /map/ map
HOT /hot/ hot
NAT /nat/ nut
PUT /put/ put
PAS /pas/ pass
KOF /kof/ cough
NES /nes/ nurse
PIS /pis/ piece
FES /fes/ face
PAM /pam/ palm (tree)
DOTA /dota/ daughter
NANIGOT /nanigot/ goat

LUS /lus/ loose
PRAES /prais/ price
CHOISEUL /soisol/ Choiseul (Island)
MAOT /maut/ mouth
BIA /bia/ beer
SKWEA /skwea/ square
STAT /stat/ start
NOT /not/ north
FOS /fos/ force
KIUREM /kyurem/ cure
HAPI /hapi/ happy
LETA /leta/ letter
MASIS /masis/ matches
KOMMA /koma/ comma
2.1. Vowels
Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a
The phonetic realizations of the vowels depend on whether they occur in open or
closed syllables. Vowels may be laxed and slightly lowered in closed syllables, such
that /e/ will be realized as [] and /o/ as [ç] in such environments; cf. [drs] ‘dress’
and [hçt] ‘hot’.
Many speakers also make a phonetic distinction between long and short vowels,
such as between the short [a] of puskat ‘cat’ and the long [a˘] of baa ‘bar’, and
between the [u] of tufala ‘two’ and the [u˘] of tuu ‘also’. Vowel length and syllable
structure will be discussed in section 4 below.
Finally, there are speakers who use more than the three main diphthongs [ae], [ao]
and [oe]. In these more anglicized varieties, they will thus also make a distinction
between [ao] and [au], in such pairs as haos [haos] ‘house’ and maut [maut] ‘mouth’.
Other speakers use tense [ai] rather than [ae], distinguishing between the diphthongs
in baitim [baitim] ‘bite’, and bae [bae] (future/Tense-Mood-Aspect [TMA] marker).
Some examples of the vowels are given in the following set of Pijin words:
/a/ mama ‘mother’ /ae/ faet ‘fight’

/e/ save ‘know’ /ao/ taon ‘town’
/i/ pikinini ‘child’ /oe/ boe ‘boy’

/o/ orens ‘orange’ /au/ maut ‘mouth’
/u/ sukul ‘school’ /ai/ baitim ‘bite’
2.1. Consonants
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Stops p t k
b d g
Fricatives f s h
v
Affricate č
Nasals m n
Approximants
Lateral l
Central y w
Tap (
In general, Pijin consonants are rather similar to the corresponding consonants of
English, except that English /r/ is typically replaced by an alveolar flap /(/. A more
thorough comparison of Pijin words and their English cognates follows in section
5 below.
There is a good deal of variation across individual speakers’ phoneme invento-
ries, and as a result the decisions on inclusion and exclusion of phonemes in the
above inventory are to some degree arbitrary. Not all speakers make use of the
same set of distinctive features in their phoneme inventories, so that certain con-
sonants will be conflated along different lines for different speakers. The voicing
distinction is not always clear-cut, but both voiced and voiceless stops are includ-
ed in the inventory as proposed above. For the alveolar fricative and the palatal
affricate, however, we do not consider this distinction to be a phonemic one for
most speakers. In reality, [č] alternates with [j7], which in turn alternate with [dy]
and [d] in speakers who do not have palatal affricates. The palatal affricate may
also be replaced with a fricative. The place of articulation of the fricative varies
between alveolar [s] and palatal [].
č ~ j7 ~ dy ~ d
č ~ j7 ~ s ~
[ j7] and [ ] are not included in the inventory above, but are here considered pho-
netic variants of /č/ and /s/ respectively. Similarly, we will subsume [z] and []
under the voiceless /s/ as free variants, though clearly, some speakers apply a voic-
ing distinction here. Slight feature differences in voicing, manner and place of
articulation may therefore alter the individual speakers’ distribution of sounds in

their phonemic and phonetic systems.
Other salient variants in the system proposed here resulting from such minimal
differences occur with speakers who replace [p] with [f], or others who replace [f]
with [p]. Also, voiced stops are often prenasalized, a feature that is also present in
the vernaculars. Consonants /b/, /d/, /g/ are then realized as [mb], [nd], and [].
In some cases, written forms include the homorganic nasal, but in others, they do
not, the spellings selectively reflecting the variation, e.g. sindaon or sidaon ‘sit
down’ and babu or bambu ‘bamboo’. The influence of the vernaculars on these
variants will be sketched below; see also Table 1 for examples of frequently heard
alternate pronunciations.
3. Analysis of variation
Pijin phonetics and phonology are highly variable and change from region to re-
gion. Three predominant factors create this variability:
1. the presence of vernaculars;
2. the presence of English; and
3. urbanization.
3.1. The vernaculars

Vernacular refers to the languages that were present in the Solomon Islands be-
fore the arrival of the Europeans. Vernacular languages continue to be spoken in
rural areas as well as in the capital Honiara, there often as a first but not as a main
language. They were thus present before, during and after the formation of Pijin,
and their influence on the new language continues to be felt. The pronunciation
of Pijin is remarkable in that it resembles very much the pronunciation of these
vernacular languages. This indicates that speakers tend to apply to Pijin the pho-
nological rules that govern their own vernaculars. While keeping to vernacular
sound patterns, lexemes derived from English must be reshaped in order to be
accommodated, often in different ways by speakers of different vernaculars. This
pattern explains in part the differences that exist between speakers, according to
their islands of origin, or according to the vernacular they speak.
The variable influence of the vernaculars takes at least three different forms:
a. phonological substitution;
b. insertion of epenthetic vowels;
c. addition of final vowels
3.1.1. Phonological substitutions

As not all the languages of the Solomon Islands have all the consonantal phonemes
of ‘standard’ Pijin as it is coming to be codified, they will characteristically replace
some Pijin consonants with the closest equivalents available in their vernaculars.
They contrast, where possible, with the more canonical ones in no more than a
single distinctive feature. Below are some examples of frequent substitutions.
(1) voiced consonants > devoiced consonants
/b/ > [p]
/g/ > [k]
e.g. big > [pik] ‘big’
(2) fricatives > stops; stops > fricatives
/f/ > [p] (e.g. speakers of Tolo)
e.g. finis > [pinis] ‘finish’; TMA marker
sif > [sip] ‘chief’
tufala > [tupala] ‘two’
/p/ > [f] (e.g. speakers of Kwaio)
e.g. Pijin > [fisin] ‘Pijin’
(3) (palatal) affricate >
a. alveolar fricative
/č/ > [s]
e.g. jej > [ses] ‘church’
jifkuk > [sifkuk] ‘chef’
b. alveolar stop
/č/ > [d]
e.g. Japan > [dyapan] ‘Japan’
jes > [des] ‘just’
(4) voiced stops > nasalized voiced stops
/b/ > [mb]
/g/ > []
e.g. tabu > [tambu] ‘taboo’
sigaret > [siaret] ‘cigarette’
For example, if one’s mother tongue includes /p/ and not /f/, as in Tolo (an Aus-
tronesian language spoken on the island of Guadalcanal), the Pijin spoken by Tolo
speakers will likely use [p] whenever [f] is standard. Children growing up in town
and using Pijin as their main language, and sometimes as their mother tongue,
will tend not to make this substitution, as their phoneme inventory will be likely
to include both sounds.
Table 1 provides more examples of the possible substitutions most likely to take
place motivated by the phonological system of the speaker’s vernacular.
Table 1. Sound variations due to the vernaculars
Substitution Pijin English gloss
/b/ [p] blong [plong] belong

/b/ [v] kabis [kavis] edible greens
/b/ [mb] baebae [baembae] shall, will
/d/ [t] nogud [nogut] bad
/d/ [nd] oda [onda] order
/f/ [b] fis [bis] fish
/f/ [p] wanfala [wanpala] one, a, an
/g/ [k] pig [pik] pig
/g/ [] sigaret [sia(et] cigarette
/j/ [s] jamp [samp] jump
/j/ [di] jamp [diamp] jump
/l/ [r] liu [riu] to wander aimlessly
/p/ [b] pensol [bensol] pencil
/p/ [f] pijin [fisin] pidgin
/r/ [l] riva [liva] river
/r/ [d] rabis [dabis] rubbish
/v/ [f] riva [rifa] river
/v/ [b] muv [mub] move
/v/ [w] hevinat [hewinat] sago palm and nut
/w/ [w] wesis [wesis] wages
3.1.2. Epenthesis
In addition, as consonant clusters do not occur in most of the languages of the
Solomon Islands, speakers will tend to insert epenthetic vowels in Pijin words in
order to avoid such clusters. The choice of the vowel is directed by rules of vowel
harmony.
skul > [sukul] ‘school’
olketa > [oloketa] ‘they’; plural marker
spun > [supun] ‘spoon’
trae > [tarae] ‘try’
bisnis > [bisinis] ‘business’
klaem > [kalaem] ‘climb’
In town, and under the influence of English, this epenthetic vowel, more typical
of rural Pijin, tends to disappear from the speech of many speakers, young ones
especially.
3.1.3. Paragogue
Just as vernaculars permit fewer consonant clusters, very seldom do they have
words ending with consonants. And just as epenthesis can break up unwanted
consonant clusters, paragogue is used in avoidance of word-final consonants. Most
rural speakers, and older speakers for whom vernaculars are the overwhelming
medium of communication will tend to add a final vowel to Pijin words derived
from English words ending in a consonant, again according to the same principle
of vowel harmony. Hence, several of the words listed above may be further ex-
panded as follows, in order to arrive at preferred CV(CV) syllable structures:
sukul > [sukulu]
supun > [supuni]
bisinis > [bisinisi]
kabis > [kabisi] ‘leafy greens’
In sum, it should be stressed that (a) there are regional differences in the phonol-
ogy of Pijin and that (b) even in the capital city Honiara, there is no uniform,
homogenized variety. However, as explained in the introduction, sociolinguistic
norms are developing. People can often tell where someone comes from by their
accent; age, education and other sociolinguistic variables play an important role in
determining how people will speak.
3.2. English
Another cause of variation in Pijin is the speakers’ contact with English, made
particularly important through schooling carried out in that language. Since the
majority of the Pijin lexicon is essentially derived from English, one’s knowledge
of English can more easily influence one’s Pijin. Pijin /t/ or /d/ will then become
[]; /s/ will become [č]. This pattern is more predominant in town than in the vil-
lages, according to the different roles that English plays in these two areas. Under
the guise of hypercorrection, Anglicization as a social marker is also present in
the speech of some speakers, exemplified by an overuse of [č], [] etc. Below are
examples of the adoption of non-Pijin phonemes (into long-established core Pijin
lexemes):
brata > [braa] ‘brother’
diswan > [iswan] ‘this’
vilis > [vilič] ‘village’
sios > [čoč] ‘church’

siusim > [čusim] ‘choose’
Similarly to the continued effects of the local vernaculars on Pijin, the creole is there-
fore in a special situation regarding Anglicization. The recent phonological effects
of English are superimposed on the Pijin system, which, while accommodating Eng-
lish-derived lexemes, is strongly influenced by Austronesian phonemic systems.
3.3. Urbanization
Among most rural speakers and many older urban speakers, the phonetic interfer-
ences from the vernaculars are obvious. In the urban Pijin of the younger gen-
eration, particularly of the children, these variations tend to be neutralized. This
phenomenon is associated with the children’s loss of contact with vernaculars. It
seems obvious from research that the less the children are exposed to vernaculars
and their phonology, the less their Pijin retains the phonological features of these
languages. The phonetic system is regularized, often moving it away from that
of the vernacular, and for some speakers, clearly in the direction of English. The
epenthetic vowels are disappearing, along with some etymological ones; the result
is that consonant clusters are more common in urban Pijin than they are in rural
Pijin (although here, too, many ensuing clusters are rapidly eliminated by further
reduction). Paragogic and other final vowels are also disappearing. This leads to
the overall effects of regularization and, inevitably, shortening. For example:
[*olketa] > [*oketa] > [*okta] > [*ota] > [*ot] ‘they’; plural marker
[*mifala] > [*mifaa] > [*mifa] > [*mia] ‘we’
[sa*pos] > [*spos] > [*pos] ‘if’
> [sa*os] > [*sos]
[bi*kos] > [bi*os] > [*bis] ‘because’
[*wanfala] > [*wanfaa] > [*wafa] ‘one’
[bi*long] > [*blong] > [*blo] ‘of’
[baem*bae] > [ba*bae] > [*bae] TMA marker
Notice that the words most prone to such reduction are pronouns, conjunctions,
prepositions and other grammatical markers. Function words are, perhaps in part
due to their high frequency and their unstressed position in the sentence, most
prone to be affected by the tendency to shorten and reduce phonological material.
4. Phonotactics
As described in section 3.1., Solomons Pijin, like other Austronesian languages,

generally disfavors most consonant clusters. When English cognate forms from
which the Pijin word is derived have such unwanted clusters, Pijin can resolve the
conflict in one of three ways: by epenthesis, paragogue, or elision. Epenthesis and
paragogue have been discussed in 3.1.2. and 3.1.3.
A final strategy open for dissolution of clusters is elision, specifically apocope.
Pijin has used this strategy as well in order to derive canonical Pijin words from
English source lexemes, as in suam ‘swamp’, kol ‘cold’, and klos ‘closed’.
Presumably, all these strategies are guided by the aim to achieve a more opti-
mal syllable structure. The constraints imposed by various vernacular languages
certainly play a role in determining the shape of the Pijin form, as do for example
principles of sonority hierarchies. Systematic study is needed in order to pinpoint
more precisely what rules which speakers use. In general, it can be said that the
preferred syllable structure for Pijin lexical words is CV(CV). In monosyllabic
words, there is a requirement for the syllable to be heavy, which means that the
syllable must either be closed (CVC, e.g. kam) or that the vowel is a long one
(CVV, e.g. baa, kaa, saa, tuu). In the first cases, the vowel could alternatively be
described as being the result of compensatory lengthening for an etymological
final-r deletion; however, this is not true for words like tuu. Minimal word weight
requirements therefore account for why long vowels are found primarily in mono-
syllabic words.
The trochee is the preferred foot structure, but again, as seen in several of the ex-
amples of reduction above, successive stages of reduction produce new sequences
that may not conform to this pattern. Such forms may be more or less stable, but
are all present in the speech of urbanites. Hence, changes in phonotactics through
reduction and Anglicization are also occurring.
In the urban center, the effects of the loss of vernaculars and the influence of
English are compounded. Further, as it is a locus for new settings of standards,
speakers are learning and creating new systems of consensus. Very few rules in
Pijin are not open to negotiation, and most are tendencies rather than absolutes.
The most general rule is that in the process of reduction, the stressed parts of the
source word are retained longest.
Phonological reduction can also have consequences for other parts of the gram-
mar, and an interplay between phonology and syntax and semantics can then be
observed. For instance, heavy reduction may allow different forms of the word to
precipitate, which in turn are available to take on new meanings. Functions that
were formerly taken on by the same word can now be distributed across separate
words. For instance, the gradual reduction of olketa (the third person plural pro-
noun ‘they’, and also the nominal plural marker) has produced a range of pho-
nological forms, from oloketa to ot. The short form ota now is used mostly as a
plural marker, while the longest forms such as olketa are reserved for expressing
third person plural pronoun in object position (cf. Selbach 2000). The range of
phonological variation permissible and usual in Pijin thus appears to make gener-
ous room for grammaticalization to occur.
5. Historical derivation from English: comparison to source language
In the preceding section, we showed how final consonant deletion and vowel
lengthening are processes employed for attaining more optimal Pijin syllable
structure. The examples of suam and baa so derived by constraints on Pijin syl-
lable structure are standard Pijin forms and do not illustrate synchronic dialectal
or idiolectal variation, such as that exemplified in Table 1.
Given the amount of variation so characteristic of Solomons Pijin, it is never-
theless often quite difficult or impossible to assess which rules are active phono-
logical processes and which ones represent historical change, which are due to
Anglicization or the ongoing influence of the vernaculars. In section 5.1., we focus
on the historical relationship of Pijin and English. We provide a comparison of the
creole and its lexifier and sketch the rules historically deriving Pijin lexemes from
English lexemes. The following sections 5.1 and 5.2 owe a great deal to a 1998
manuscript by Marc Picard, The Naturalization of English loandwords in Pijin.
We are extremely grateful for his generosity in liberally sharing it with us.
5.1. Vowels
The vowels of the various English dialects which supplied the lexical material to
Pijin were reduced to a basic 5-cardinal-vowel system. Without study of the precise
dialects of English that played a decisive role in the formation of Pijin, it is not possi-
ble to provide more than a few of the basic brushstrokes that determined adaptations
to Solomon Islands Pijin phonology. The table of vowels below (Table 2) is meant
as such a broad indication of some of the mergers and correspondences. Bold face
vowels are those of both Pijin and English; this means that the normal font vowels
had to merge with the bold face ones. These correspondences are set out below.
Table 2. Vowels of English and Pijin
Front Central Back
High i u
Semi-high
Mid e o
Mid-low ç
Low æ a
5.1.1. Raising of front and back vowels

For front and back vowels, the problem was solved by raising: Front and back
semi-high vowels merged with their mid-high counterparts:
English Pijin
> u [kk] [kuki] ‘cook’
> i [aksdent] [aksiden] ‘accident’
Mid-low vowels merged with their mid-high counterparts:

ç > o [pç] [popo] ‘paw’
> e [´gEn] [agen] ‘again’
5.1.2. Fronting, backing, lowering of central vowels

The central vowels [
] and [√] merge with [e], [o] or [a] by fronting, backing or
lowering. This is partly determined by context:
Fronting to [e] (a context-free change, but applies especially to long and syllable-
final central vowels):
[profet] ‘prophet’
[meResin] ‘medicine’
[deleet] ‘delegate’
Backing to [o] before [l] (a context-sensitive change: [
l] > [ol]):
[pensol] ‘pencil’
[handol] ‘handle’
[pipol] ‘people’
Lowering to [a] before etymological [r] (often context-sensitive: [er] > [a]):
[aftanun] ‘afternoon’
[namba] ‘number’
[taepraeta] ‘typewriter’
While backing before [l] and lowering before [r] is largely predictable, some
contexts are not. For instance, there are several changes possible before [n]:
[neson] ‘nation’
[leman] ‘lemon’
[poesen], [poisin] ‘poison’
The remaining short vowels become low central.

5.1.3. Processes affecting long mid vowels and diphthongs

Long mid vowels and diphthongs ([ey], [e˘], [ou], [o˘]) of English were reduced to
[e], [o], while other diphthongs are retained
[e˘], [ey]
[pe] ‘pay’
[ples] ‘place’
[fevarit] ‘favourite’
[seksek] ‘shiver’, ‘shake’
[o˘], [ou]
[kol] ‘cold’
[holem] ‘hold’
[ao], [oe], [ae] remain unchanged:
[kaontem] ‘count’
[boe] ‘boy’
[karae] ‘cry’
5.2. Consonants
Pijin mostly retains the consonants of the English source, but again, those conso-
nants not found in Pijin merged with similar ones. As described in section 2.2.,
there is much variation in how the sounds of English were reanalyzed as phonemes
of Pijin, and there is much variation across individual speaker’s consonantal in-
ventories. Generally, the choices made for distributing the consonants missing
from the Pijin inventory across the new system were the following:
5.2.1. Dental fricatives became stops

a) Voiceless dental fricative becomes voiceless apical stop ([] > [t]):
[tanda] ‘thunder’
[tosde] ‘Thursday’
[trifala] ‘three’
[tintin] ‘think’
b) Voiced dental fricative becomes voiced apical stop ([] > [d])
[disfala] ‘this’
[wedekos] ‘Weather Coast’
5.2.2. Changes affecting affricates and palatals:

Voiceless affricates (often) became fricatives:
[sest] ‘chest’
Voiced affricates (often) became stops:
[des] ‘just’
Palatals became alveolars ( > s):
[susut] ‘shoot’
5.2.3. Stop deletion

As described in section 4, final stops of English were deleted following sonorant
consonants (e.g. suam ‘swamp’, govamen ‘government’), and as indicated in
5.1.2. above, English syllable-final -er was generally replaced by Pijin /a/ (e.g.
pepa ‘pepper’, snapa ‘snapper’).
6. Productive morphophonological processes
Certain aspects of Pijin phonology are clearly productive, and thus not easily
traced to the direct influence of the substrate or the superstrate. There are several
actively productive morphophonological processes specific to Pijin, such as the
vowel harmony displayed by the transitivizing suffix, and the morphophonetic
rules of reduplication.
6.1. Transitive suffix -Vm: vowel harmony

As described in the chapter on the morphology and syntax of Solomon Islands
Pijin (see Jourdan, other volume), Pijin transitive verbs are marked with a suffix
-Vm, variously -em, -im or -um. As with insertion of paragogic vowels, the vowel
in -Vm is selected with respect to rules of vowel harmony. The specific rules of
harmony can again vary from one speaker to the next. One possible system is the
one illustrated below, where roots containing mid and low vowels take -em as a
suffix, but roots with high vowels will take the identical high vowel in the suffix,-
im or -um.
Verb stem vowel Suffix Example
/a/ -em katem
/e/ -em tekem
/o/ -em kolem
/i/ -im hitim
/u/ -um hukum
Thus, while kat-, tek- and kol- become katem, tekem and kolem, /huk/ ‘to hook’
becomes /hukum/ ‘to hook something’ and /hit/ ‘to hit’ becomes /hitim/ ‘to hit
someone’.
However, /baet/ ‘to bite’ becomes /baetim/ for some speakers and /baetem/ for
others. Further, some streamlining common in the speech of young urban Pijin
speakers may shorten the -Vm to /m/. Thus ansam ‘to give an answer’ instead of
ansar-em, kalam ‘to colour something’ instead of kalar-em, etc.
There are more exceptions. While -em seems to function as the default suffix, -
im appears more likely in neologisms such as fotokopim ‘to photocopy something’
and faksim ‘to fax something’. Nevertheless, it appears that -em is always a pos-
sible realization of the transitive suffix. In this respect again, /e/ is the underspeci-
fied vowel (cf. 5.1.2.a.).
While the variation in the realization of the vowel in the transitivizing suffix is
quite large, vowel harmony nevertheless determines the insertion of the vowel into
the suffix whose vowel is underspecified for height or frontness. The quality of the
vowels added to the stem is determined by the stem. This applies for epenthesis,
paragogue and suffixation of the transitive marker.
6.2. Reduplication: morphophonemics

Pijin makes room for reduplication as a productive pattern in the morphology of
(primarily) verbs, where it can function to modify meaning or mood. It is also
present in the substrate languages of the Solomon Islands, such that it remains to
be seen whether the morphophonemic rules also correspond to those of the ver-
naculars. Reduplication may involve either full or partial reduplication of the first
syllable.
go ‘to go’ gogoo ‘after sometime’
suim ‘to swim’ susuim ‘swimming’
save ‘to know’ sasave ‘to be very knowledgeable’
dae ‘to die’ dadae ‘to pine away’
faet ‘to fight’ fafaet
fraet ‘to be afraid’ fafraet ‘to be very afraid’
krae/karae ‘to cry’ kakarae ‘to cry continuously’
stap ‘to stay’ sastap
ple ‘to play’ peple
siki ‘to be sick’ sisiki ‘keep being sick’
bisi ‘to be busy’ bibisi ‘to be very busy’
silip ‘to sleep’ sisilip ‘to sleep a long time’
kis ‘to kiss’ kiskis
presim ‘to praise’ pepresim
wan ‘one’ wanwan ‘one at the time’
The basic rule for verbal reduplication is to copy the first syllable of the verb and
to prefix it to the root (e.g. sasave, sisiki, kiskis). However, contrary to what is
happening in Bislama (Crowley, this volume), very rarely will speakers choose to
duplicate a consonant cluster if it is in initial position. Instead, when the root starts
with a cluster (a pattern predominantly found in the speech of young urbanites),
speakers will copy the root’s first consonant and the first vowel only (e.g. fafraet,
kakarae, sastap). It appears that in Pijin the more optimal reduplicant is maximally
of the pattern CV. The same pattern holds for one-syllable verb roots containing a
diphthong, where only the first vowel of the diphthong is reduplicated (e.g. dadae,
fafaet). Interestingly, the coda is, however, retained in some other words whose
roots-initial syllable is of the CVC pattern, such as in wanwan and kiskis.
7. Stress and intonation
In Solomons Pijin, stress follows two essential models: that of the Oceanic lan-
guages and that of English. Words derived from vernacular etyma follow the pre-
dictable stress pattern found in the Oceanic vernaculars, i.e. stress falls predomi-
nantly on the penultimate syllable as in kokósu ‘hermit crab’, múmu ‘stone oven’,
kakáme ‘swamp taro’. Pijin words derived from English etyma (the bulk of Pijin
vocabulary) will have the stress fall on the first syllable as in hóspitol ‘hospi-
tal’ and kámpani ‘company’, or on the penultimate syllable as in panikíni ‘cup’,
elékson ‘election’, tráke ‘truck’. Three Pijin words are of Portuguese origin and
entered Melanesian pidgins via the maritime jargon: sáve ‘to know’ and pikiníni
‘child’ follow the stress rule of Portuguese and are accentuated on the penultimate
syllable, while kalabús ‘prison’ is stressed on the last syllable. These data indicate
that word stress is lexically determined, and is retained on the original syllable of
the etymon, regardless of what language the word is derived from, and regardless
of where on the word the stress appears. (Note that section 3.3. also bears witness
to the robustness of stress retention, in that case within Pijin itself.)
Intonation and sentence stress in Pijin give important cues for interpreting
meaning. Intonation plays a vital role to mark sentence structure and is very dis-
tinctive. Subtle changes in intonation can dramatically change meaning and can
transform an affirmative sentence into an interrogative sentence, or a sequence
of clauses into relative clauses. Except for the short analysis that Jourdan (1985)
provides of the importance of intonation for sentence meaning, intonation patterns
in Solomons Pijin have not been described.
Perhaps increasing grammaticalization will reduce the need for intonation in
conveying information and, as the language gets older and more standardized, per-
haps the use of intonation will give way to grammatical markers, and the phonol-
ogy will become more regular. Perhaps they will not, and individuals will continue
to apply their own sets of rules to a language full of variation and possibility.
* We wish to thank Marc Picard for the phonetic transcription that accompanies the read-
ing passage and Kevin Tuite and Diana Apoussidou for their generous comments on
earlier drafts of this article.
Selected references
ROM.
Baker, Philip
1993 Australian influence on Melanesian Pidgin English. Te Reo 36: 3−67.
Beimer, Gerry
1995 We fo Raetem Olketa Wod Long Pijin. Honiara: Solomon Islands Christian
Association.
Bennett, Judith
1979 Wealth of the Solomons. Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University,
Canberra.
Clark, Ross
1979 In search of Beach-La-Mar. Towards a history of Pacific Pidgin English. Te
Reo 22/23: 3−66.
Jourdan, Christine
1985 Sapos iumi mitim iumi: urbanization and creolization of Solomon Islands
Pijin. Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra.
2002 Pijin Dictionary. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Laracy, Hugh (ed.)
1983 Pacific Protest: The Maasina Rule Movement, Solomon Islands, 1944–1952.
Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific.
Selbach, Rachel
2000 Oketa in Solomon Islands Pijin: homophony or conceptual link between the
third person plural and nominal plurality? Conference presentation at the
Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics held under auspices of the Linguistic
Society of America, Chicago, January 7, 2000.
Simons, Linda and Hugh Young
1978 Pijin Blong Iumi: A Guide to Solomon Islands Pijin. Honiara: Solomon Islands
Christian Association.
Troy, Jakelin
1985 Australian Aboriginal contact with the English language in New South Wales:
1788 to 1845. B.A. Honours thesis, University of Sydney.
Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea: phonology
Geoff P. Smith
1. Introduction
Like various types of pidginised English around the world, the variety spoken in
the New Guinea area has been the object of interest for many years, usually for
the wrong reasons. It has in turn evinced hostility, ridicule, amusement and more
recently, serious study. Early administrators and other expatriate observers were
often scathing in their contempt for what was seen merely as an improperly ac-
quired and mangled form of English. It was much later that Prince Philip charac-
terised it as a “splendid language” but even then he failed to conceal a somewhat
patronising tone. It was not until the last few decades that the language has been
taken seriously on its own terms, and although even today many negative attitudes
persist, it is at last receiving some of the respect it deserves. This variety, now
so widely spoken in Papua New Guinea, is “based on” English in the sense that
most lexical items are ultimately derived from it, but observers will soon discover
that the language is not comprehensible to English speakers without considerable
instruction. It has sometimes been referred to as “Melanesian Pidgin English”, al-
though this more accurately includes sister dialects Bislama in Vanuatu and Pijin
in Solomon Islands. The name “Neo-Melanesian” enjoyed brief currency among
some academics, but was never widely used. Most speakers refer to it simply as
Tok Pisin (“talk pidgin”) or simply Pidgin. It is today Papua New Guinea’s largest
and fastest-growing language and the de facto national language.
1.1. The origins of Tok Pisin

As Crowley (this volume) points out, the early history of an English-based contact
language in the Pacific goes back to the time of early trading activities in the newly
opened-up European colonies in Australia. A New South Wales pidgin English
had already come into existence as a means of communication between settlers
and Aboriginal people, and some features of this were to appear in the early Pa-
cific pidgin. Indeed, some elements, such as pikinini ‘child’ and save ‘know’ based
on the Portuguese pequeño and sabir respectively, may have had a considerably
longer history in maritime contact. Whaling expeditions out of Sydney probably
proceeded from the late 18th century, but successive interest in sandalwood and
trepang (sea slug or bêche de mer) in the mid-19th century in the south-west and
central Pacific saw a great increase in commerce and communication that favoured
Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea: phonology 711
the formation of a stable Pacific Pidgin English. At first, ships’ crews of mixed ori-
gin and shore-bound trading posts provided areas of contact, but later, large-scale
population movements took place as Melanesian labourers were recruited to work
on plantations in Queensland and the Pacific.
While the origins of Tok Pisin are firmly rooted in this Pacific Pidgin Eng-
lish, its development is somewhat different from its sister dialects. Melanesian
labourers from New Britain and mainland New Guinea entered the labour trade
somewhat later than those from the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands and were
not involved in the Queensland plantations to the same extent, so the develop-
ment of Tok Pisin proceeded along its own path. Critical in this development
was the role of Germany in colonising the area. German New Guinea, or what
is now the northern half of the Papua New Guinea mainland and the islands
of the Bismarck Archipelago, became effectively cut off from neighbouring re-
gions. Labourers from this area did enter the plantation economy, thus promot-
ing conditions conducive to the stabilisation of the pidgin, but this took place
mainly in Samoa in the Central Pacific. Labourers were drawn mainly from the
New Guinea Islands region, although some may have been drawn from the north
coast regions of the mainland as well. Since the area typically has large numbers
of languages spoken by small populations, the need for a lingua franca on the
plantations favoured the development of the already existing pidgin language.
There may well have been some mutual influence between this variety and the
Queensland “Canefield English” used by other Melanesians, but the extent of
this is difficult to determine.
1.2. Early development in the New Guinea Area

At the end of the indentured labour schemes in the early years of the 20th century,
labourers on the Samoan plantations were returned home. Most were initially repat-
riated to centres in Rabaul in East New Britain, or the Duke of York Islands, lying
between New Britain and New Ireland in the Bismarck Archipelago (Mühlhäusler
1978). From there they were taken back to their home areas unless involved in lo-
cal labour schemes. Further isolation from other south-west Pacific varieties led to
considerable influence from the Austronesian languages of New Britain and New
Ireland, especially in the lexicon, but also in grammatical structures. Features of
the grammar of the early pidgin are also likely to have been reinforced if similar
to structures widely present in local languages.
As noted, Papua New Guinea is an area of great linguistic diversity. A survey by
the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Grimes 1992) lists over 860 languages cur-
rently spoken in a population of 4–5 million. At the beginning of the 20th century,
poor communication and contact were the rule, with traditional trading activities
operating along a complex though limited network of contacts. The upsurge in ac-
tivities from overseas missions, traders and administrators led to an acute need for
712 Geoff P. Smith
a language of wider communication, and the newly formed pidgin of the Samoan
plantations, now fairly widely known, fitted ideally. In the monolingual Samoan
society, however, it was no longer of any use, and soon died out there. The devel-
opment of New Guinea Pidgin English thus proceeded in German-occupied New
Guinea, and as it stabilised and expanded, it came under two influences not pres-
ent in other varieties in Solomon Islands and New Hebrides.
The first of these was the language of the colonial power, German. A number of
lexical items of German origin were adopted, especially in certain lexical fields,
such as those related to education, woodworking, agriculture and so on, where
German missionaries were intimately involved with the local population. Perhaps
of equal significance was the fact that the English-lexicon pidgin was now effec-
tively removed from further contact with its lexifier language.
The second influence on the stabilising pidgin on the north coast of Mainland
New Guinea was a substratum of non-Austronesian or Papuan languages. The
languages of the Central Pacific as well as New Hebrides and Solomon Islands are
almost uniformly Austronesian, and Austronesian languages are also dominant in
the islands to the north and east of mainland New Guinea (Manus, New Britain,
New Ireland and Bougainville). However, in parts of these areas, and most of the
New Guinea mainland, the typologically different Papuan languages are spoken
beyond a number of coastal enclaves of Austronesian speakers. The early pidgins
exhibited a number of features typical of Austronesian languages, which tend to
be reinforced by Austronesian-speaking populations, but there was little pressure
to maintain exotic syntactic distinctions in non-Austronesian speaking areas. A
good example of this is the so-called predicate marker i, which accords with the
grammars of many Austronesian languages, and is thus retained in the Tok Pisin
in these areas, but is routinely ignored in many non-Austronesian-speaking areas.
Reesink (1990) has shown that some substrate syntactic features such as switch
reference patterns and subordination are reflected in parallel differences in the Tok
Pisin spoken in the area.
1.3. Stabilisation and expansion

After the First World War, Germany ceased to be the colonial power, and a com-
plex arrangement was put in place, whereby the former German territory came un-
der a UN mandate, while the southern part of the mainland, formerly British New
Guinea, became the Australian external territory of Papua. In practice, the two
were administered as a single entity by the Australian administration. In the ter-
ritory of New Guinea, Tok Pisin continued to spread and expand, while in Papua,
another lingua franca based on a local Austronesian language developed into the
most widely used medium of communication. This was known as Police Motu,
due to its use by the police in administration, and is today known by the name of
Hiri Motu. The hiri was a seasonal trading expedition in the Gulf of Papua, and
while a simplified trade language may have been used for this, it is likely that the
pidginised Motu used today is a separate development.
At independence in 1975, the language issue was tackled by giving three lan-
guages, English, Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu, the status of “national languages”, a
rather vague concept which fell short of conferring on any the status of an official
language. Prince Charles’ speech in Tok Pisin to the newly independent parliament
was a notable milestone, and although his intonation and stress patterns made it
clear that he was not a speaker, and even suggested that he did not really under-
stand everything he was reading, the gesture was widely appreciated. The designa-
tion of Hiri Motu as a national language was more controversial, and the decision
was undoubtedly influenced by widespread secessionist sentiment in the Papuan
provinces in the time leading up to independence. Few people see Hiri Motu as a
truly national language, and its role has decreased as Tok Pisin gains more currency
in what was formerly Papua, now known as the Southern Region of the country.
English is the language of education and much written communication in govern-
ment and administration, but it is Tok Pisin which is the de facto national language,
being used in an increasing number of domains and expanding its range.
1.4. The lexicon of Tok Pisin

The great majority of lexical items derives from English. However, whether this
justifies the description of Tok Pisin as a “variety of English” is open to question,
especially if the grammar as well as the derivation of the lexicon is taken into
account. Some of the English words in use at the time they entered the emerging
pidgin in the 19th century are now obsolete although they may survive in Tok Pisin.
An example is giaman ‘lie, deceit’, from the informal English “gammon” in com-
mon use at that time. Other words of English origin may be similarly difficult to
recognise as they have been reinterpreted in a grammatical role. Examples include
the reinterpretation of the English pronoun he and him as the predicate marker i
and transitive suffix -im respectively. Most words adopted from German now ap-
pear to be obsolescent, although a few, such as beten ‘pray’ and rausim ‘take off,
expel’ (from German heraus ‘get out’) are still in common use.
Words have also entered Tok Pisin from a number of other languages, and in-
ternal word-formation processes of the expanding pidgin have provided additional
lexical resources. There appear to be one or two survivals from languages of the
Pacific such as lotu ‘church service’ from Samoan and kanaka ‘bush person, hill-
billy’ from the Hawaiian word for ‘person’, but by far the greatest source of non-
English vocabulary are the languages of the New Britain and New Ireland area
to the north-east of the New Guinea mainland. As noted above, the early pidgin
spoken in Samoa took root in this area, and words needed for flora and fauna or
cultural items tended to be taken from languages of this area. Tracing an exact
source is not always easy, as a word may have a similar form in several related
714 Geoff P. Smith
languages. Much of the confusion about specific vernacular sources for Tok Pisin
etyma was cleared up by Ross (1992). Typical items from languages of this area
include kurita ‘octopus’, muruk ‘cassowary’, karuka ‘pandanus’, kunai ‘sword
grass’, pukpuk ‘crocodile’, umben ‘fishing net’ and many locally occurring fishes
and trees. Few items from the non-Austronesian languages of the New Guinea
mainland have been adopted, but borrowing is continuing. More recently, speak-
ers of Tok Pisin who also have a reasonable command of English are borrowing a
large number of items from English.
1.5. Current status

Although the name “Pidgin” is frequently used to refer to the language, Tok Pisin
is spoken by an increasing number of children as a first language, i.e. as a creole.
The use of a pidgin as a first language used to be considered a critical factor in the
rate of change and development of a creole as it expanded to meet a full repertoire
of communicative needs. However, studies on Tok Pisin such as Sankoff and La-
berge (1973) have shown that creolisation has not had the dramatic effect which
might have been expected, and that children merely accelerate tendencies which
had already been developing in the expanded pidgin through second language
use in an increasing number of situations. As with Bislama, then, the distinction
between the use of Tok Pisin as a pidgin or as a creole is somewhat fuzzy and does
not seem to be as critical as was once thought.
In addition, Tok Pisin is continually expanding its geographical range into more
and more remote locations, and to some extent the synchronic acquisition of the
language in these situations is recapitulating its historical development. The pos-
sibility of re-pidginisation also exists in this situation, although an investigation by
Holm and Kepiou in the Southern Highlands (1993) found no evidence of this.
The question of standardisation of the language has arisen frequently, but there
has been little inclination for government intervention, and successive administra-
tions have been happy to adopt a laissez faire approach, and government-sponsored
written communications in Tok Pisin are notorious for their variable and at times
ambiguous style (Franklin 1990). A number of initiatives have been made to regu-
larise or standardise vocabulary and syntax, even if some such as Bálint (1969)
have been more an exercise in individual creativity than a reflection of the realities
of a speech community. A number of academics have made some useful com-
ments on the issue of standardisation, but the most influential practical standards
have been mission-initiated. Firstly, the Bible Society’s translation of the Old and
New Testament has provide a lasting standard formal register, and considerable
effort has gone into dealing with the linguistic complexities involved (Mundhenk
1990). Then there is the enormous contribution of the late Father Frank Mihalic of
the SVD (Society of the Divine Word). His Jacaranda Dictionary of Melanesian
Pidgin, first published in 1957 and revised in 1971, was a huge boost to the accep-
tance of the language. Although, as Mihalic (1990) himself realised, much in the
dictionary is now looking distinctly dated, the absence of more up-to-date com-
petitors has ensured that it remains the most widely used dictionary of Tok Pisin
and the closest to a standard that exists. In addition to this, Mihalic translated the
constitution of Papua New Guinea and his work also led to the standardised style
sheet of the influential Wantok Niuspepa, a weekly publication begun in 1969.
This reports overseas and local news in a formal style, as well as more creative
sports reports (Romaine 1994) and items written in a more vernacular style such
as letters to the editor and traditional stories (see Lomax 1983 for an analysis).
In the absence of formal investigations, it is difficult to know what effects these
standards have on the language of today’s speakers.
The term Tok Pisin, then, refers to a complex of first and second language vari-
eties. These are spoken with varying degree of fluency, and influenced to varying
degrees by other languages used. Much remains to be known about Tok Pisin,
especially with regard to regional variation in lexico-semantics and morphosyntax.
One or two small-scale corpora have appeared recently (Smith 2002; Romaine
1992), to supplement earlier studies, but some large-scale research on the language
in use would be desirable before major policy initiatives.
2. Phonology of Tok Pisin
As we have seen, the term Tok Pisin covers rather a wide range of varieties, with
variation along a number of dimensions, such as the speaker’s first or second lan-
guage status, area of residence, degree of formality and familiarity with the lexi-
fier, English. Different speakers vary considerably not only in core phonology, but
lexis and morphosyntax as well. Indeed there is so much variation that, unlike the
case with non-standard regional dialects of English, it is very difficult to identify
a variety which can be considered typical or standard. However, an attempt will
be made to do just this so that a yardstick can be established for comparison with
other varieties of Melanesian Pidgin described in the volume.
Mühlhäusler (1975) identifies four sociolects of Tok Pisin: Bush Pidgin, Rural
Pidgin, Urban Pidgin and Tok Masta, and this is a useful point of departure. Bush
Pidgin is described as the somewhat unstable second language variety heavily
influenced by the phonology and syntax of the mother tongue. Rural Pidgin may
also be influenced to varying degrees by the first language, but is the stable variety
generally used for inter-ethnic communication throughout the rural areas where
Tok Pisin is spoken. There may also be a gradation between Bush Pidgin and Ru-
ral Pidgin as speakers acquire greater competence in the language. Urban Pidgin
is characterised as a variety heavily influenced by English and spoken mainly
in urban areas. Finally, Tok Masta, which has little relevance here, refers to the
unsystematic attempts by English-speaking expatriates to incorporate Tok Pisin
716 Geoff P. Smith
features into their speech, possibly in the belief that Tok Pisin is little more than a
garbled form of English. In the light of today’s knowledge it is not really a “vari-
ety” of Tok Pisin at all.
While this classification provided a valuable insight into variation in Tok Pisin,
my impression is that the rural-urban distinction is somewhat problematic. It is
possible that a more valid criterion would be emerging bilingualism in Tok Pisin
and English, which is not necessarily determined by urban or rural status. Many
young people in the Manus and New Ireland Provinces, for example, appear to
be becoming bilingual in these languages whether resident in rural or urban areas,
and there is increasing influence from English phonology in their speech. The
closest to a standard among the four lects above would be rural pidgin, and it is
this which most closely approximates the ideal core phonology attempted here.
2.1. Phonemic contrasts in “Standard Rural Tok Pisin”

The phoneme inventory of Tok Pisin is somewhat reduced compared with its prin-
cipal lexifier, English. There are some 24 phonemes in the core phonology, with
no evidence of lexical tone. The following account is based on two standard ac-
counts of Tok Pisin phonology, Mihalic (1971) and Laycock (1985), the latter also
drawing on Laycock (1970). Mihalic based his phonology and grammar on the Tok
Pisin spoken around Madang in north-east New Guinea, while Laycock’s Tok Pisin
materials are more wide-ranging, but mainly draw on data from the Sepik and Bou-
gainville areas. Laycock also refers to a paper by Litteral (1970) as the most com-
prehensive account yet of the Tok Pisin phonological system, but unfortunately this
has not been published. Comments about variation as noted by these writers, and
also based on some regional data from Smith (2002), will be made as appropriate. A
fuller discussion of the relationship between Tok Pisin and English will follow.
2.1.1. Consonants
The following are the basic contrasting consonantal phonemes described in Mi-
halic (1971):
p t k
b d g
m n N
v
f s h
r
l
dZ
w j
Note that this is identical to the inventory provided by Crowley for Bislama (this
volume) apart from the inclusion of the affricate /dZ/. The consonants are gener-
ally close to their IPA values.
Laycock’s (1985) core inventory also identifies the above phonemes, but in
addition lists six pre-nasalised stop clusters: /mp, nt, Nk, mb, nd/ and /Nk/. Their
inclusion is justified on the basis that they do not permit epenthetic vowels. How-
ever, four fricatives /f, v, S, Z/ are included only parenthetically as of marginal
use. He observes that these fricatives may be used contrastively only in heavily
Anglicised speech.
The great majority of Tok Pisin lexical items are ultimately derived from Eng-
lish, and a number of correspondences between English sources and Tok Pisin
words can be demonstrated. A number of these correspondences are listed in Lay-
cock (1985: 296). The phonemes /p, t, k, s, m, n, N, r/ and /y/ are generally un-
changed, as in the following, all shown in initial position:
English Tok Pisin

/p/ pig pik
/t/ time taim
/k/ kill kilim
/s/ sun san
/m/ man man
/n/ name nem
/t/ tongue tan
/r/ rope rop
/y/ you yu
Other phonemes in the core Tok Pisin inventory also present in English may be
variably represented. Voiced stops, for example, may appear as either voiced or
unvoiced in Tok Pisin in initial and medial position, but always devoiced in final
position:
English Tok Pisin

/b/-/b/ bag bek
/d/-/d/ die (in)dai
/d/-/t/ done tan
/g/-/g/ gun gan
bugger baga
/g/-/k/ big bikpela
Laycock does not produce any examples for English /b/ equivalent to Tok Pisin
/p/, and there are only one or two very low frequency variants in my corpus (Smith
2002) such as panara for banara ‘bow’.
718 Geoff P. Smith
Although the phoneme /v/ is widely used in words such as vilis ‘village’, it may
variably be replaced by /f/ in words such as faif/faiv ‘five’. Similarly, /dZ/, which
appears in initial place in words such as joinin ‘join’ and Jun ‘June’, often becomes
/s/ in medial and final position, for example jasim ‘to judge’ and bris ‘bridge’.
Other English consonants not normally found in Tok Pisin may correspond as
follows:
English Tok Pisin
/T/ > /t/ think ting
something samting
thousand tausen
teeth tit
but:
/T/ > /s/ mouth maus
/D/ > /d/ this dispela
but:
/D/ > /t/ brother brata
/S/ > /s/ shine sain
shoot sut(im)
fish pis
/Z/ > /s/ engine ensin
change senis
/tS/ > /s/ church sios
change senis
/z/ > /s/ cheese sis
razor resa
cousin kasin
The glottal fricative /h/ is variably present on words where /h/ is present in the
English etymon. In what appears to be a case of hypercorrection, /h/ may also be
added where none is present (O) in English:
English Tok Pisin
/h/-/h/ house haus
/h/-O aus
O-O afternoon apinun
O-/h/ hapinun
Of the six pre-nasalised stop clusters described by Laycock, all are equivalent to
their English counterparts, except for the English /nS/ and /nZ/, which are rendered
in Tok Pisin as -is in final position in winis ‘winch’ and senis ‘change’. However,
the cluster is retained with the substitution of /s/ in medial position in ensin ‘en-
gine’.
2.1.2. Vowels
Both Mihalic and Laycock identify a five basic vowel system: /a, e, i, o, u/. As
with Bislama, these appear to be fairly close to cardinal IPA values, although little
research on variation has been carried out. These are treated in turn below, show-
ing some of the English source vowels for each.
English Tok Pisin
TP /a/
/Q/ man man
/A:/ start statim
/Å/ hot hatpela
/√/ lucky laki
/Œ:/ turn tanim
TP /e/
/e/ head het
/Q/ fat fetpela
/e´/ Mary meri
/eI/ plate plet
TP /i/
/I/ give givim
/i:/ steal stilim
TP /o/
/Ú/ hold holim
/ç:/ call kolim
/Å/ belong bilong
/Œ:/ dirty doti
TP /u/
/U/ put putim
/u:/ shoot sutim
It should be noted that although doti ‘dirty’ is the commonly cited form, I found
that most speakers surveyed used deti, more similar to the English pronuncia-
tion.
In addition, a number of diphthongs may be heard in Tok Pisin. While a greater
range may be heard in varieties strongly influenced by bilingualism in English, the
following are generally in common use in typical rural Tok Pisin:
/aI/ sign sain

/I´/ beer bia
/aU/ outside autsait
/çI/ boy boi
720 Geoff P. Smith
The English /aI´/ is also represented (paia ‘fire’), while /au´/ is generally heard
with a semivowel: /au´/ pawa ‘power’.
There is no evidence of contrastive use of vowel length. Standard written Tok
Pisin tends to approximate the phonemic values in most cases, except that <ng>
covers both /N/ and /Ng/, and geminate vowels such as in baim ‘to buy’ are not
indicated (Pawley 1975).
2.2. Variations in the core phoneme inventory

Superimposed on this idealised paradigm is considerable variation. Firstly, since
the majority of the lexicon is derived from English, and Tok Pisin speakers come
into increasing contact with Standard English, the likelihood of influence from
English phonology is great. As Laycock has pointed out (1985: 25), Tok Pisin
speakers familiar with English have potentially the whole of the English phoneme
inventory at their disposal. More will be said about the relationship between the
two languages below.
Another source of variability among speakers of Tok Pisin as a second language
is the influence of the phonologies of other languages spoken. A pioneering study
by Bee (1971) showed that this influence can be considerable. She, however, was
describing a situation where Tok Pisin had been fairly recently introduced and its
use marginal. Influence from substrate phonology is likely to decrease as speakers
become more familiar with mainstream patterns of use.
Nevertheless, Laycock (1985) has shown that there is considerable influence
from phonological patterns of other Papua New Guinea languages. The picture is
undoubtedly very complex, as the 800−900 languages spoken within the country
vary enormously in their phonology, so a consistent pattern of influence is only
likely to be felt where there are widespread regional patterns. For example, inter-
vocalic pre-nasalisation of voiced stops is widespread in many of the languages of
the Sepik and Madang areas so far described, and this feature may appear in the
Tok Pisin spoken of this region. Similarly, unvoiced stops may be realised medi-
ally as fricatives in many Highlands languages, and this feature may be preserved
in the Tok Pisin of some speakers in the Highlands region.
While these variations can be observed among second language speakers, the
situation among first language speakers has received less attention. Romaine
(1990) looks at the variation between /p/ and /f/ in initial position by young people
in Morobe and Madang provinces, including first language speakers. Greater con-
sistency in the correspondence between initial /f/ in Tok Pisin and their English
equivalents is shown to be related to such factors as urban or rural status. In rural
areas, such as Indagen, there was greater variation, and some interesting observa-
tions are made, including instances of hypercorrection where initial /f/ was used
on words derived from English words beginning with /p/. Smith (2002) also ob-
serves that the distinction between /p/ and /f/ is often inconsistently applied, es-
pecially in Highlands speech samples, but also in other areas such as Sepik and
North Solomons, with such items as pik ‘pig’ rendered as fik.
In another study on a single phoneme pair, Romaine (1995) discusses discrimi-
nation of the phonemes /r/ and /l/ in the same corpus of speech from Morobe and
Madang Provinces used for the study of /p/ and /f/. She again relates the use of
this distinction to urban and rural status, but does report that first language urban
speakers are more consistent in distinguishing /r/ from /l/, even though there is
considerable variation. Among the rural speakers, those in Waritsian village were
most likely to confuse the phonemes, which could be due to substrate influence,
as the Adzera language does not distinguish these two sounds. Smith (2002) also
found some first language speakers showing quite marked variability with regard
to this contrast. In the following extract from Eastern Highlands, for example, the
expected forms lized ‘lizard’, long ‘to’, stilim ‘steal’ and lapun ‘old woman’ all
appear with /r/ substituted for /l/, while /l/ replaces /r/ in rere ‘ready’:
(1) em i kam araun ro disa, a kam araun ro disa haus na stirim disa kiau blo
rized na ranawe pinis. Em kukim i stap na leli lo(n)gen. Em stirim na go
pinis na disa rapun meri i kam bek.
‘he came around to this house and stole the lizard’s eggs and ran away.
He cooked them and got them ready. He had stolen them and taken them
away when this old woman came back.’
Smith (2002) also found that the contrast between voiced and unvoiced stops was
often inconsistently made by first language speakers, especially from the High-
lands region, but also in other areas, particularly Manus and West Sepik. This
leads to words such as pik ‘pig’ being heard as fik, antap ‘on top’ and paitim ‘hit’
as andap and paidim and liklik ‘small’ as liglig. In the case of velar stops, such
words as pik ‘pig’ and dok ‘dog’ may thus have a pronunciation closer to the Eng-
lish source as pig or dog. There is also occasionally a tendency to pre-nasalise
medial voiced stops, giving forms such as gondaun in place of godaun ‘go down’.
Also typical of some Highlands speakers is the tendency to voice /s/ to give forms
such as dizla for disla ‘this’. In some areas, the voiceless alveolar stop /t/ and
spirant /s/ may alternate, especially in certain words such as sapos/tapos ‘if’.
While these features serve to give particular accents to speakers of various first
languages, Laycock (1985: 304) notes that there is such internal diversity in all
provinces that distinct regional accents are not likely to emerge. Although such
variation generally is not so marked as to make comprehensibility a problem, he
notes that the lack of a distinction between /t/ and /s/, carried over into Tok Pisin
from many languages in New Ireland, New Britain, the Highlands and South Bou-
gainville is actually “disturbing to communication” Laycock (1985: 302). More
generally, peculiarities of pronunciation provide the basis for many jokes at the
722 Geoff P. Smith
expense of less fluent Tok Pisin speakers, for example the humorous stories fea-
tured in the “Kanage” column of Wantok Niuspepa. This ridiculing of strongly non-
standard features is cited by Laycock (1985: 304) as another reason why distinct
regional accents are unlikely to emerge.

There is little information available on prosodic features in Tok Pisin. Those stud-
ies that have been made point to variability and the need for more detailed study.
Wurm (1985) is the only detailed account of Tok Pisin intonation, and here he also
discusses stress as one determinant of intonation patterns. Faraclas (1989) also
looks at some of the intonation patterns among first language speakers.
2.3.1. Stress
Wurm (1985) gives an account of stress patterns based on his experience of the
rural pidgin spoken in the Eastern Highlands in the late 1950s and 1960s. He notes
that there is considerable variability, with stress patterns more closely resembling
those of English among speakers more familiar with English. In general, he notes
that stress is normally on the first syllable. In some cases, there may be a non-
stressed epenthetic vowel, and occasionally this may be re-interpreted by some
speakers as a phonemic vowel and given stress. Some words do have stress on
other than initial syllables, for example, the following stressed on the second syl-
lable: orait ‘all right, then’, singaut ‘shout, call out’, sekan ‘shake hands’, sanap
‘stand up’ etc. Wurm notes that stress patterns are the basis for the patterns of into-
nation, which is discussed in the next section.
There is the possibility that different stress may disambiguate certain word pairs,
although little work seems to have been done on this. Possible candidates would
be the pairs 'nating ‘nothing’ and na'ting ‘I think, probably’, and 'palai ‘lizard’ and
pa'lai ‘fly’, although I do not have definite evidence to show that this distinction
is consistently made.
In the Tok Pisin of first language speakers and fluent second language speak-
ers who use the language as a primary vehicle of communication, considerable
reduction of stressed syllables can be observed (Smith 2002). Extreme samples of
speech such as the following were encountered among young people:
(2) mi kam na was ken l’sla diwai

= mi kam na was ken long dispela diwai
‘I came and watched again at this tree’
One effect is the cliticisation of certain words such as long ‘in; on; at’ and bilong
(possessive), especially when preceding vowels:
(3) ol meikim kastam bl’ ol (bilong ol)

they make custom-POSS them
‘they were doing their traditional things’
(4) ol salim em go l’aus (long haus)
they send him go to house
‘they sent him home’
Cliticisation of aspect particles save (sa) ‘habitual’ and laik (la) ‘about to’ also
appears to be in progress. Reduction can often be quite drastic, for example, the
three-syllable utterance tso l’ sla taim recorded in the Highlands represents tasol
long dispela taim ‘but at this time’ (maximally of seven syllables).
2.3.2. Intonation
Wurm’s (1985) account is again based on Eastern Highlands rural pidgin from 40
to 50 years ago and, as he concedes, may not be applicable to other varieties. He
describes variability mainly in terms of the rural-urban dimension, with urban
implying greater familiarity with English. Wurm gives no fewer than 20 distinct
intonation patterns as a result of his familiarity with this variety. These include or-
dinary declarative statements, and extra dimensions indicating emphasis or emo-
tion, questions, answers and commands. There are also some special cases involv-
ing words like orait ‘all right’, tru ‘true’ and formulae such as em tasol ‘that’s all’.
He notes that high pitch is the major determinant of stress, and that word stress is
generally retained in declarative utterances.
One interesting observation arising from Wurm’s study is that first language
speakers tend to use intonation patterns acquired from interaction with second
language speakers. Wurm’s data are valuable as very little else is available on
intonation in Tok Pisin. However, although the patterns are quite definitely identi-
fied, there is no quantitative treatment, or indication of how they were recorded. It
is not clear, for example, whether the copious example sentences were contrived
to illustrate these patterns, or were actual examples recorded in use. Thus their ap-
plicability to other varieties is problematic.
Faraclas (1989) looks at stress patterns among Tok Pisin speakers in East Sepik,
mainly concentrating on stress reduction. He takes account of variables such as
sex, first language and degree of education in English, and demonstrates that fe-
males show consistently less stress reduction than males, and that the amount of
English schooling has a significant influence. He supports Wurm’s observations
about the importance of substrate languages and shows, rather surprisingly, that
substrate interference does not appear to be significantly less among first language
speakers than second language speakers. Sex differences also appear to play a
significant role in creolised varieties, with females tending towards English stress
patterns more than males.
724 Geoff P. Smith
Smith (2002) did not look at stress or intonation in detail, but the role of intona-
tion in discourse was commented on. For example, the use of nau to signal stages
in a sequence was a common feature of narratives in the New Guinea Islands
provinces:
(5) Em nau, tupla sutim nau, tupla pasim wanpla diwai nau, na tupla pasim
rop wantaim leg blong em nau na tupla taitim nau na tupla wokabaut i
kam daun.
‘now the two shot it, they fastened a branch, they fastened a rope to its
leg, the two tied it now, the two walked down’
In each case, the word nau is accompanied by a distinctive rising intonation show-
ing that one stage in the sequence is finished and another is about to begin, while
the final kam daun is accompanied by a falling intonation to indicate completion.
Wurm, too, noted the role of intonation in discourse, describing the flat intonation
of orait in similar discourse sequences.
Intonation could possibly also have a role in disambiguating certain syntactic
patterns, for example, the expression yu no laik paitim em would generally mean
‘you do not want to hit him’ or ‘you are not about to hit him’ when spoken with a
falling intonation, but a rising intonation could indicate a meaning ‘you ought to
have hit him’ (Smith 2002: 129). Relative clauses unmarked by relative pronouns
may also depend on intonation for comprehension (Wurm 1971).
2.3.3. Phonotactics
As in English, word final /h/ and word initial /N/ are not permitted. There is some
variation with regard to syllable structure, especially with respect to consonant
clusters. In many Austronesian languages, consonant clusters are not permitted,
and this general pattern may have influenced Tok Pisin in its formative period, and
still affects that used by speakers of Austronesian languages today. Generally, too,
it can be assumed that the more Anglicised the variety, the greater the tendency to
allow clusters of two or three consonants according to English patterns. However,
little research has been done on this. The best source of information is still Pawley
(1975) who looked in detail at the question of epenthetic vowels in the Tok Pisin
of an informant from Rabaul. His analysis is limited to this single informant, but
highlights some of the problems of deciding on whether the underlying representa-
tion is phonemic or not.
A number of possibilities are presented by Pawley’s (1975) data. It may be that
the underlying representation is a consonant cluster, with epenthetic vowels vari-
ably inserted in certain environments. An alternative interpretation would treat
the vowels as phonemic, but elided in certain circumstances. His informant, for
example, inserted considerably fewer epenthetic vowels in rapid speech, so one
factor is simply speed of delivery. Some of the apparent constraints governing
selection of epenthetic vowels are discussed below. Pawley tends towards treating
the vowels as transitional features in consonant clusters, especially as some Papua
New Guinean languages show such features in “loose” consonant cluster systems.
Nevertheless, it appears that some elements which are phonemic vowels in the
English source lexis have been reanalysed as epenthetic in Tok Pisin. A good ex-
ample is the possessive bilong from the English belong which is normally reduced
in speech to blong, blo or even cliticised as bl’ to following words as in bl’em (=
bilong em) ‘his, her’.
3. Morphological processes
There is little evidence of morphophonemic processes in Tok Pisin. Unlike Bis-

lama, the -im suffix appears to be unchanged with differing root vowels. However,
the case of epenthetic vowels separating consonant clusters described above may
be worth investigating further. Pawley (1975) noted that a number of processes
could be considered as possibilities for determining the nature of epenthetic vow-
els. The first is simply echoing an identical form of the stressed vowel, thus pro-
ducing alternations such as the following:
English Tok Pisin
brother brata barata
clean klin kilin
skin skin sikin
twist krukutim kurukutim, etc.
However, in other cases, this could not explain the choice of vowel, as in
stone ston siton
spoon spun sipun
ground graun giraun
Similarly, clusters in final position may insert epenthetic vowels which differ from
than the stressed vowel:
tax taks takis
six siks sikis
dance dans danis
In cases such as these it appears that /i/ is inserted in certain specifically defined
phonetic environments, for example, in final clusters where /s/ is one element, or
vowels other than /a/, unless immediately followed by /i/ or /u/ (Pawley 1975:
224).
726 Geoff P. Smith
4. Tok Pisin and English in contact
Tok Pisin and English are now in fairly intensive contact for many Papua New
Guineans, especially those who are growing up speaking Tok Pisin as a first or
primary language and are receiving education through the medium of English. In
principal, the education system is English-medium in most government education-
al institutions from grade one to the end of tertiary, but in practice, a fair amount of
Tok Pisin may be used. Nevertheless, many young people grow up familiar with
both languages.
In a situation such as this, the question is whether a post-creole continuum is
likely to develop, as has happened in other societies such as Guyana and Jamaica.
A number of researchers have given indications that a post-creole continuum may
be developing or may already be in place, but Siegel (1997), reviewing the avail-
able evidence, shows that the current situation falls far short of an established
continuum. Smith (2002) also reviews the evidence and comes to broadly the
same conclusion. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of mutual influence between
the two languages in Papua New Guinea today. Many young people familiar with
English engage in code-switching, where discrete chunks of English are used in
discourse, and code-mixing, where elements from English are mixed in. Many
English verbs, for example, are incorporated into Tok Pisin and integrated by add-
ing the transitivising marker -im. In some cases the phonology of the English word
is retained intact, while in other cases, there is adaptation to the phonology of Tok
Pisin. The future extent and direction of this contact is not known at present. Much
will depend on language and education policy decisions, but there is the distinct
possibility that the two phonological systems may come to have an increasingly
intimate relationship.
Selected references
ROM.
Bálint, András
1969 English-Pidgin-French Phrase Book and Sports Dictionary. Port Moresby:
Author.
Bee, Darlene
1971 Phonological interference between Usarufa and Pidgin English. Kivung 5:
69−95.
Faraclas, Nicholas
1989 Prosody and creolization in Tok Pisin. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
4: 132−139.
Franklin, Karl J.
1990 On the translation of official notices into Tok Pisin. In: Verhaar (ed.),
323−344.
Grimes, Barbara (ed.)
1992 Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 12th edition Dallas, TX: Summer
Institute of Linguistics.
Holm, John A. and Christopher Kepiou
1993 Tok Pisin i kamap pisin gen? Is Tok Pisin repidginizing? In: Francis Byrne
and John Holm (eds.), Atlantic Meets Pacific: A Global View of Pidginization
and Creolization, 341–353. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Laycock, Donald C.
1970 Materials in New Guinea Pidgin (Coastal and Lowlands). (Pacific Linguistics
D5.) Canberra: Australian National University.
1985 Phonology: substratum elements in Tok Pisin phonology. In: Stephen A. Wurm
and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds.), Handbook of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin),
295−307. (Pacific Linguistics C70.) Canberra: Australian National University.
Litteral, Robert
1970 The phonemes of New Guinea Pidgin. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of
Linguistics. Unpublished manuscript.
Lomax, R. W.
1983 Aspects of cohesion and discourse structure in Tok Pisin (Melanesian Pidgin).
M.A. thesis, University of Leeds.
Mihalic, Frank
1971 The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin. Milton, QLD:
Jacaranda.
1990 Obsolescence in the Tok Pisin vocabulary. In: Verhaar (ed.), 263−273.
1975 Sociolects in New Guinea Pidgin. In: Kenneth A. McElhanon (ed.), Tok
Pisini go we? Kivung special publication, number 1, 59–75. Port Moresby:
Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.
1978 Samoan Plantation Pidgin and the origin of New Guinea Pidgin. Papers in
Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 1: 7−119.
1975 Sociolects in New Guinea Pidgin. In: kenneth A. McElhanon (ed.), Tok
Pisin i go we? Kivung special publication, number 1, 59–75. Port Moresby:
Linguistic Society of Papia new Guinea.
Mundhenk, Norman
1990 Linguistic decisions in the 1987 Tok Pisin bible. In: Verhaar (ed.), 345−373.
Pawley, Andrew K.
1975 On epenthetic vowels in New Guinea Pidgin. In: Kenneth A. McElhanon
(ed.), Tok Pisin i go we? Kivung special publication, number 1, 215–228. Port
Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.
Reesink, Ger P.
1990 Mother Tongue and Tok Pisin. In: Verhaar (ed.), 289−306.
Romaine, Suzanne
1990 Variability and Anglicization in the distinction between p/f in young children’s
Tok Pisin. In: Jerold A. Edmondson, Crawford Feagin and Peter Mühlhäusler
(eds.), Development and Diversity: Language Variation across Time and
728 Geoff P. Smith
Space. A Festschrift for Charles-James N. Bailey, 173−185. Arlington, TX:

Summer Institute of Linguistics.
1992 Language, Education and Development: Urban and Rural Tok Pisin in Papua
New Guinea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1994 On the creation and expansion of registers: sports reporting in Tok Pisin. In:
Douglas Biber, and Edward Finegan (eds.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on
Register, 59−81. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
1995 “Lice he no good”: On [r] and [l] in Tok Pisin. In: Werner Abraham, Talmy
Givón and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Discourse Grammar and Typology:
Papers in Honor of John W.M. Verhaar, 309−318. Amsterdam/Phildelphia:
Benjamins.
Ross, Malcolm
1992 Sources of Austronesian lexical items in Tok Pisin. In: Tom E. Dutton,
Malcolm Ross and Darrel T. Tryon (eds.), The Language Game: Papers in
Memory of Donald Laycock, 361−384. (Pacific linguistics C110.) Canberra:
Australian National University.
Sankoff, Gillian and Suzanne Laberge
1973 On the acquisition of native speakers by a language. Kivung 6: 32−47.
Siegel, Jeff
1997 Pidgin and English in Melanesia: is there a continuum? World Englishes 16:
185−204.
Smith, Geoff P.
2002 Growing up with Tok Pisin: Contact, Creolization and Change in Papua New
Guinea’s National Language. London: Battlebridge.
Verhaar, John W.M. (ed.)
1990 Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Wurm, Stephen A.
1971 New Guinea Highlands Pidgin: Course materials. (Pacific Linguistics D3.)
Canberra: Australian National University.
1985 Phonology: intonation in Tok Pisin. In: Stephen A. Wurm and Peter
Mühlhäusler (eds.), Handbook of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin), 309−334.
(Pacific Linguistics C70.) Canberra: Australian National University.
Hawai‘i Creole: phonology
1. Introduction
Hawai‘i Creole is spoken by an estimated 600,000 people in the US state of

Hawai‘i. In the linguistics literature, it is usually called Hawai‘i (or Hawaiian)
Creole English, but its speakers call it “Pidgin”. While Hawai‘i Creole uses many
words from Hawaiian and other languages, the majority of its vocabulary comes
from English; however, the phonology and semantics are quite different from Eng-
lish. Before describing the phonology of Hawai‘i Creole, this chapter presents
some background information on its historical development, current use, and vo-
cabulary.
1.1. Historical and sociolinguistic background

1.1.1. Contact and immigration
The Hawaiian Islands were populated by Polynesians some time between 200 and
400 AD. The first Europeans to visit the islands were Captain Cook and his crew in
1778. At that time the native Hawaiian population numbered somewhere between
200,000 and a million. Contact with outsiders increased when Hawai‘i became
a stopover in the fur trade between China and the west coast of North America,
and then a centre for the sandalwood trade and the whaling industry. During this
time the foreign population in Hawai‘i increased while the indigenous population
decreased drastically because of introduced disease. In 1848 there were only ap-
proximately 88,000 Hawaiians left.
In 1835, the first sugarcane plantation was established, and the expanding sugar
industry led to the importation of labourers from many countries. About 2,000
Chinese plantation labourers arrived from 1852 to 1876, and more than 37,000
from 1877 to 1897. The majority were speakers of dialects of Cantonese Yue and
Hakka, spoken in southern China. Approximately 2,450 labourers from other Pa-
cific islands were imported from 1877 to 1887 – most from Kiribati (then the
Gilbert Islands) but at least 550 from Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides), and some
from Rotuma (currently part of Fiji), New Ireland and Bougainville (parts of Pap-
ua New Guinea) and Santa Cruz (Solomon Islands).
730 Kent Sakoda and Jeff Siegel
More than 10,000 Portuguese workers were brought in from 1878 to 1887 and
another 13,000 from 1906 to 1913. Nearly all of these were from the Madeira
and Azores islands. Indentured labourers also came from continental Europe: 615
Scandinavians (mostly from Norway) in 1881 and 1,052 Germans between 1882
and 1885.
Steady Japanese indentured migration began in 1884, and by 1924 over 200,000
Japanese had arrived in Hawai‘i. Migration from the Philippines began in 1907,
and by 1930 over 100,000 Filipinos had come to Hawai‘i. Other significant num-
bers of immigrants included 5,203 from Puerto Rico (1900−1901), 7,843 from
Korea (1903−1905), approximately 3,000 from Russia (1906−1912) and about
2,000 from Spain (1907−1913).
1.1.2. The development of Hawai‘i Pidgin English

Texts from the early 1800s provide evidence that a pidginized variety of English
was used to some extent in Hawai‘i ports, most probably brought by sailors. It was
clearly not a stable pidgin, but contained some of the features found in Chinese
Pidgin English and the South Seas Jargon of the time which influenced the de-
velopment of Pacific Pidgin English. Some of these include the use of by and by
meaning ‘later’, no as a preverbal negator, plenty used to mean ‘a lot of’, one used
as an indefinite article, and been as a past tense marker.
Other features of existing stable pidgins were later brought to Hawai‘i by the
early plantation labourers: Chinese Pidgin English by the Chinese, and Pacific
Pidgin English (including early forms of Melanesian Pidgin) by the Gilbertese
and Melanesian labourers. Texts from this time show a still unstable pidginized
form of English with some of the features of these varieties but few of the features
found in later Hawai‘i Creole. The more widespread pidgin that developed on the
plantations of Hawai‘i was Pidgin Hawaiian.
When the plantation era began, the Hawaiians were still in control of their is-
lands, and their language was dominant. It was the language of government and of
education for all non-Euroamerican children, and it naturally became the language
used to run the plantations. However, it was a pidginized form of Hawaiian that
was used for communication between whites, Chinese and Hawaiians on the plan-
tations. When labourers started coming from Portugal and other countries in the
1870s, Pidgin Hawaiian stabilized and remained as the main plantation language
until the 1890s. There is evidence that some Pidgin Hawaiian was still being used
early in the 20th century, especially in rural areas.
The shift in dominance from Hawaiian to English began in 1875 when the Reci-
procity Treaty with the United States was signed. This allowed free trade and a
greater influx of Americans. Also the number of Hawaiians continued to decline
and by 1878, the number had decreased to less than 50,000. In the decade from 1878
to 1888, there was a dramatic increase in the number of English-medium schools
Hawai’i Creole: phonology 731
and a decrease in the number of Hawaiian schools. At the same time, Chinese and
Portuguese families began to arrive, whereas previously most of the labourers had
been single men. This meant that there was an increased number of children being
exposed to English in the now English-medium public schools, including substan-
tial numbers from the first generation of locally born children of immigrants.
During this period, English also began to gradually replace Hawaiian as the
language of the plantations, and an English-lexified pidgin began to develop. At
this stage, Pidgin Hawaiian was still widely used as well, and this led to many
Hawaiian words coming into the English pidgin. By the end of the 19th century,
Hawai‘i Pidgin English (HawPE) had stabilized and had become established as a
new auxiliary language.
At the beginning of the 20th century, HawPE began to be used more widely for
interethnic communication outside the plantations, especially in the mixed urban
areas. An important factor was the emergence of large numbers of the first gen-
eration of locally born Japanese who came into the public schools and learned
HawPE from their classmates. (Another important factor was that most English
speaking Euroamerican children continued to go to private schools.) Children also
began to acquire HawPE from their school age siblings and use it as a second lan-
guage in the home. As children grew older, many of them used HawPE more than
their mother tongue.
1.1.3. The emergence of Hawai‘i Creole

At the turn of the century, the second generation of locally born Chinese and Por-
tuguese began to appear on the scene. By this time, most parents were bilingual in
their traditional language and HawPE, and many used this pidgin as their primary
language. So in many cases, parents spoke to their new-born children in the pidgin,
rather than in Cantonese or Portuguese, for example. The result was that many of
this second generation of immigrants acquired HawPE as their first language.
At the same time, many Hawaiians had intermarried with Chinese and other
immigrants and had children. The census of 1910 gave the figures of 26,041 Ha-
waiians and 12,506 Part-Hawaiians. It is likely that for many of these interethnic
marriages, the language of the home was HawPE, so that many of the Part-Hawai-
ian children also learned the pidgin as their first language.
Since HawPE was now spoken as a first language, it was technically no longer
a pidgin language, but rather a creole. So it was at this time that we can say that
Hawai‘i Creole began to emerge. Most linguists agree that Hawai‘i Creole was
established as a distinct language some time between 1905 and 1920, as more
and more second generation locally born Chinese and Portuguese – later joined
by larger numbers of second generation locally born Japanese – acquired it as
their first language. Some time between 1920 and 1930, the number of locally
born children of immigrants grew to equal the number of foreign born, and it can
be said that this was the time that Hawai‘i Creole became fully established as the
language of the majority of the population of Hawai‘i (see Roberts 2000).
1.1.4. Influence of other languages

We have already mentioned that many words from Hawaiian came into Hawai‘i
Creole through Pidgin Hawaiian and Pidgin English. But the structure of Hawai-
ian has also affected the structure of Hawai‘i Creole, making it different from that
of English. One example is word order. In Hawaiian, there are sentences such
as Nui ka hale. Literally this is ‘Big the house’, which in English would be ‘The
house is big’. Similarly, in Hawai‘i Creole we find sentences such as Big, da house
and Cute, da baby.
Another example is the type of expression from Hawaiian such as Auwe#, ka
nani! which is literally ‘Oh the pretty!’ meaning ‘Oh, how pretty!’. Similarly, in
Hawai‘i Creole we find the same kind of expression – for example, Oh, da pretty!
and Oh, da cute!
Other languages also appear to have influenced the structure of Hawai‘i Cre-
ole more than the vocabulary. One such language is Cantonese. For example, in
Cantonese one word yáuh is used for both possessive and existential sentences,
i.e. meaning both ‘have/has’ and ‘there is/are’, as in these examples below (from
Matthews and Yip 1994):
(1) a. Kéuihdeih yáuh sa#am-go jái.
(they yáuh three sons)
‘They have three sons.’
b. Yáuh go hahksa#ang hóu síng.
(yáuh a student very bright)
‘There’s a student who’s very bright.’
Similarly, in Hawai‘i Creole one word get is used for both possessive and existen-
tial, as in (2):
(2) a. They get three sons.
‘They have three sons.’
b. Get one student he very bright.
‘There’s a student who’s very bright.’
Portuguese appears to have affected the structure of Hawai‘i Creole even more.
For instance, Portuguese uses the word para meaning ‘for’ to introduce infinitival
clauses, where Standard English uses to, as in (3):
(3) Carlos é homem para fazer isso.
(Charles is man for do that.)
‘Charles is the man to do that.’
Similarly, for (or fo) is used in Hawai‘i Creole:

(4) Charles is da man fo do ’um.
‘Charles is the man to do it.’
The Portuguese copula/auxiliary estar (with various conjugations such as está) has
several different functions, including copula with locations and adjectives, auxil-
iary for present progressive, and marker for perfective, as in the examples in (5):
(5) a. O livro está sobre a mesa.
(the book está on the table)
‘The book is on the table.’
b. A água está fria.
(the water está cold)
‘The water is cold.’
c. João está escrevendo uma carta.
(John está writing one letter)
‘John is writing a letter.’
d. A casa está construida.
(the house está constructed)
‘The house is finished.’
In Hawai‘i Creole, the word stay has the same functions:
(6) a. Da book stay on top da table.
‘The book is on the table.’
b. Da water stay cold.
‘The water is cold.’
c. John stay writing one letter.
‘John is writing a letter.’
d. Da house stay pau already.
‘The house is finished.’
The phonology of Hawai‘i Creole also has some similarities to that of Hawaiian,
Cantonese and Portuguese, especially in the vowel system and intonation in ques-
tions, but these connections have not been studied in any detail.
Thus, the ethnic groups whose languages most influenced the structure of
Hawai‘i Creole seem to have been the Hawaiians, Chinese and Portuguese. But
the influence of the Hawaiians declined steadily as their numbers declined and the
numbers of other ethnic groups increased. By 1900, there were more Portuguese
and Chinese than Hawaiians and Part-Hawaiians. Even though the Japanese were
by far the largest immigrant group, their language seems to have had little effect
on the structure of Hawai‘i Creole. One reason for this was first pointed out by the
famous Hawai‘i Creole scholar, John Reinecke, who wrote (1969: 93): “The first
large immigration of Japanese did not occur until 1888 when the Hawaiian, Chi-
nese and Portuguese between them had pretty well fixed the form of the ‘pidgin’
[English] spoken on the plantations.”
Another reason is that, as we have seen, it was the locally born members of im-
migrant groups who first used Pidgin English as their primary language and whose
mother tongues influenced the structure of the language. This structure was then
passed on to their children in the development of Hawai‘i Creole. When the creole
first began to emerge, the locally born population was dominated by the Chinese
and Portuguese. Of these two groups, the Portuguese were the more important. In
1896, they made up over half of the locally born immigrant population. For the
Portuguese, the number of locally born came to equal the number of foreign born
in 1900, whereas this did not happen for the Chinese until just before 1920 and for
the Japanese not until later in the 1920s (see Roberts 2000).
The Portuguese were also the most significant immigrant group in the schools.
They were the first group to bring their families, and their demands for education
for their children in English rather than Hawaiian were partially responsible for
the increase in English-medium public schools. From the critical years of 1881
until 1905, Portuguese children were the largest immigrant group in the schools,
with over 20 percent from 1890 to 1905.
Another factor was that the Portuguese, being white, were given a disproportion-
ate number of influential positions on the plantations as skilled labourers, clerks
and lunas ‘foremen’ who gave orders to other labourers. In fact, the number of
Portuguese lunas was three times larger than that of any other group.
The Portuguese community was also the first to shift from their traditional lan-
guage to Hawai‘i Creole. By the late 1920s, the Portuguese had the lowest level
of traditional language maintenance, and the greatest dominance of English or
Hawai‘i Creole in the homes, followed by the Hawaiians and then the Chinese
(see Siegel 2000).
But that is not to say that Japanese has had no influence on Hawai‘i Creole.
Many Japanese words have come into the language, and several Hawai‘i Cre-
ole expressions, such as chicken skin ‘goose bumps’, are direct translations of
Japanese. Also, the way many discourse particles are used, such as yeah and no
at the end of a sentence, seems to be due to Japanese influence. Furthermore, the
structure of narratives in Hawai‘i Creole is very similar to that of Japanese (see
Masuda 2000).
1.2. Sociolinguistic situation

Since its development, Hawai‘i Creole has been used mostly as the informal lan-
guage of families and friends, and has been considered an important badge of local
identity, i.e. the language of people born and bred in Hawai‘i, especially ethnic
Hawaiians and descendants of plantation labourers. Attitudes towards the lan-
guage have always been ambivalent. While recognized as being important to local
culture, it has at the same time been denigrated as corrupted or “broken” English,
and seen as an obstacle to learning Standard English, the official language of the
schools, government and big business.
In recent years, however, there has been a great deal of advocacy for Hawai‘i
Creole which has resulted in changing attitudes and use in wider contexts. The
turning point may have been in 1987 when the state Board of Education attempted
to implement a policy which allowed only Standard English in the schools. Instead
of being well-received by the community, there was a strong negative reaction
from parents, teachers, university faculty and other community groups. The policy
was seen as discriminatory and as an unfair attack on Hawai‘i Creole and on local
culture in general (Sato 1989, 1991). The debate generated many letters to local
newspapers and much discussion on radio and television, the majority strongly
supporting Hawai‘i Creole. Similar debates have erupted since then (the most re-
cent in 1999 and 2002), as educational administrators and some members of the
public seek to blame Hawai‘i Creole for poor state results in national standardized
tests in reading and writing.
Since 1998, a group of people, mainly from the University of Hawai‘i at Ma#noa,
have been meeting regularly to discuss linguistic, sociolinguistic and educational
issues concerning Hawai‘i Creole. This group is called “Da Pidgin Coup” (all puns
intended). Following the public debate in 1999, the group wrote a position paper,
“Pidgin and Education”, as a basis for discussions with education officials and
teachers, and for public education efforts as well. The aim was to provide infor-
mation, backed up by research, about the complex relationship between Hawai‘i
Creole and English, and about the equally complex issues surrounding the use of
Hawai‘i Creole in education. (The position paper can be accessed at <www.hawaii.
edu/sls/pidgin.html>.)
The expanding domains of Hawai‘i Creole have mainly been in the area of
literature. Over the past decades, the use of the language in short stories, plays
and poetry has increased dramatically. Most notable are the works of Milton Mu-
rayama, Darrell Lum, Ed Sakamoto, Eric Chock, Gary Pak, and Lee Tonouchi (e.g.
2001). The novels of Lois-Ann Yamanaka, with their use of Hawai‘i Creole in
both narration and dialogue, have been successful outside of Hawai‘i as well. The
most remarkable extension of use of the language has been in the translation of
the New Testament (Da Jesus Book), published in 2000. Over 11,000 copies were
sold in the first year it appeared.
Nevertheless, Hawai‘i Creole remains primarily a spoken language. Speakers
range on a continuum from what is called the “heavy Pidgin” or “full-on Pidgin”
(the basilect, or variety furthest from Standard English) to a lighter form of the
creole (the acrolect, closest to Standard English). The majority of speakers speak
varieties in between (the mesolects) and can switch back and forth between lighter
or heavier forms of the creole as required by contextual factors such as interlocu-
tor, topic, setting and formality. A large proportion of speakers are also completely
bilingual and can switch between the creole and a form of Standard English.
There is a widespread belief that this continuum is a result of “decreolization”,
or a gradual change taking place in Hawai‘i Creole which is resulting in it becom-
ing more and more like English. However, evidence exists that such a continuum
of variation existed from the earliest days of the language. Furthermore, the de-
sire to project a separate local identity will most likely ensure that the language
remains distinct from English. Nevertheless, there is no general agreement about
what really constitutes “Pidgin” in Hawai‘i. For some people, it means the basilec-
tal variety, with its grammatical rules that are very different from those of English.
For others, it means using only the local accent and some local vocabulary items.
For the purpose of this chapter, we will focus on the variety that differs most
from Standard English, i.e. the basilect, but we will mention significant variants
in the mesolectal varieties that are closer to English. It must be kept in mind, how-
ever, that with the nature of the creole continuum, there is a great deal of intra- and
inter-speaker variation. Furthermore, with the high degree of bilingualism, the
Hawai‘i Creole of some speakers is affected by English.
2. Vocabulary
The vast majority of words in Hawai‘i Creole are derived from English and have
the same meanings as their English etyma. However, many Hawai‘i Creole words
have changed in meaning or have additional meanings, including the following:
alphabet ‘alphabet, letter of the alphabet’
lawn mower ‘lawn mower, to mow’ (e.g. lawnmower the grass)
package ‘package, sack, paper bag’
pear ‘pear, avocado’
off ‘off, turn off’ (e.g. off the light)
broke ‘broke, broken, break, torn, tear, tore’ (e.g. He broke
my shirt.)
shame ‘shame, shy, bashful, embarrassed’
Other words and expressions are derived from English but have changed in form
and in some cases in meaning as well:
cockaroach ‘cockroach, to steal or sneak away with’

beif ‘bathe’
brah (bla, blala) ‘brother’
boddah ‘bother’
fut ‘fart’
mento ‘mental, insane’
nuff ‘enough’
hybolic ‘using fancy (or standard-sounding) language’
garans ‘guaranteed’
laters ‘see you later’
whatevahs ‘whatever, it doesn’t matter’
There are also many compounds and expressions made up of English-derived

words that are not found in English (or at least not with the same meaning):
buckaloose ‘go out of control’

bulai ‘to tell lies’ (bull + lie)
bolohead ‘bald’ (bald + head)
buddha-head ‘local person of Japanese ancestry’
howzit ‘greeting, how are you?’
cat tongue ‘unable to drink or eat hot things’
catch air ‘breathe’
chicken skin ‘goose bumps’
stink eye ‘dirty look’
talk stink ‘talk badly about someone’
talk story ‘have informal conversation, tell stories’
broke da mouth ‘very delicious!’
In addition, Hawai‘i Creole has many words derived from other languages. The
largest number of such words (over 100) come from the Hawaiian language. Many
of these have come into the English spoken in Hawai‘i as well. Some examples
are:
akamai ‘smart’
haole ‘white person (Euroamerican)’ (Hawaiian haole
‘foreigner’)
hapai ‘carry, pregnant’ (Hawaiian ha#pai)
huhu ‘angry, offended’ (Hawaiian huhu#)
imu ‘earth oven’
kapakahi ‘crooked, inside-out’
keiki ‘child, children’
koa ‘kind of native forest tree’
kokua ‘help’ (Hawaiian ko#kua)
lanai ‘verandah’ (Hawaiian la#nai)
lei ‘flower garland’
lilikoi ‘passionfruit’
lolo ‘stupid, crazy’ (Hawaiian lo#lo#)

mahimahi ‘dolphin fish’
manini ‘stingy, undersized’
ohana ‘extended family’
okole ‘anus, buttocks’ (Hawaiian ‘o#kole)
ono ‘delicious’ (Hawaiian ‘ono)
opala ‘trash, rubbish’ (Hawaiian ‘o#pala)
pau ‘finish, finished’
pilau ‘rotten’
pilikia ‘trouble, bother’
puka ‘hole’
pupu(s) ‘party snacks, finger food’ (Hawaiian pu#pu#)
wahine ‘woman’
Japanese has also provided many words to Hawai‘i Creole (approximately 40, but
some of these are used primarily by people of Japanese ancestry). Some examples
are:
bachi ‘punishment, retribution’

bento ‘Japanese style box lunch’
bocha ‘bath, bathe’
chichi(s) ‘breast(s)’ (Japanese chichi ‘milk’)
daikon ‘kind of turnip’
janken po ‘paper, scissors and stone game’
mochi ‘rice patty’
musubi ‘rice ball’ (western Japanese)
nori ‘dried seaweed’
obake ‘ghost’
shishi ‘urine, urinate’
shoyu ‘soy sauce’
tako ‘octopus’
ume ‘partially dried salted sour plum pickle’
zori(s) ‘rubber thong(s), flip-flops’
In addition, Hawai‘i Creole has words from Portuguese and other languages:
malasada ‘kind of doughnut’ (Portuguese)

babooz ‘idiot’ (Portuguese babosa ‘stupid, simpleton’)
lihing mui ‘dried sour plum’ (Chinese languages)
char siu ‘barbequed pork’ (Chinese languages)
adobo ‘Filipino way of cooking’ (Filipino languages)
bago-ong ‘Filipino fermented fish sauce’ (Tagalog)

kimchee ‘Korean spicy pickled cabbage’ (Korean)
lavalava ‘sarong’ (Samoan)
kaukau ‘food’ (from Chinese Pidgin English chowchow)
Finally, there are some compounds, blends, and expressions made up of words
from English and other languages. Example include:
haolefied ‘become like a white person’ (Hawaiian haole

‘foreigner’)
onolicious ‘delicious’ (Hawaiian ‘ono ‘delicious’)
hanabata ‘snot’ (Japanese hana ‘nose’, bata from English
butter)
hele on ‘move on’ (Hawaiian hele ‘go, come, move’)
hulihuli chicken ‘chicken barbecued on a spit’ (Hawaiian huli ‘to turn’)
kalua pig ‘pig baked in an underground oven’ (Hawaiian kalua
‘bake in ground oven’)
kukui nuts ‘candlenuts’ (Hawaiian kukui ‘candlenut tree’)
poi dog ‘mixed breed dog’ (Hawaiian poi ‘pounded taro’)
chawan cut ‘haircut shaped like an inverted rice bowl’ (Japanese
chawan ‘rice bowl’)
daikon legs ‘white, short and fat legs’ (Japanese daikon ‘a kind of
turnip’)
buta kaukau ‘pig slop’ (Japanese buta ‘pig’, Hawai‘i Creole
kaukau ‘food’)
3. Phonemic contrasts and phonetic realizations
Hawai‘i Creole phonology has been studied in greatest detail by Carol Odo (1975,
1977; Bickerton and Odo 1976), and some of the analyses below are based on her
work.
3.1. Vowels
3.1.1. Basilectal Hawai‘i Creole
The typical vowels of basilectal Hawai‘i Creole are given in Table 1, and those that
differ from General American English are described below. The keywords used
by Wells (1982) are employed here, except when a particular word is not found in
basilectal Hawai‘i Creole. In such cases, an alternative with the same vowel qual-
ity that is found in the language is given (with Wells’ word following in brackets).
Table 1. Typical vowels of basilectal Hawai‘i Creole
FIT [KIT] i FACE eI ~ e SQUARE eA

DRESS Q3 ~ E PALM A START A
TRAP Q3 THOUGHT ç NORTH ç
LOT ç GOAT oU ~ o FORCE ç
STUFF [STRUT] A~√ GOOSE u CURE uA
FOOT u PRICE AI happY i
ASK [BATH] Q3 CHOICE oI ~ çI lettER A
COUGH [CLOTH] ç MOUTH AU horsES e
NURSE Œr NEAR iA commA A
LEAVE [FLEECE] i > ij
FIT [KIT]
What is [I] in English is usually raised and slightly tensed in basilectal Hawai‘i
Creole, especially in monosyllabic words and stressed syllables, so that for basilec-
tal speakers fit and feet have the same pronunciation.
DRESS
[Q3] may be raised to [E] in all environments.
STUFF [STRUT]
Variation between [A] and [√] is context-free and unconditioned. For most basilectal
speakers, but and baht (the unit of Thai currency) would be pronounced the same.
FOOT
What is [U] in English is usually raised and slightly tensed, especially in monosyl-
labic words and stressed syllables, so that for most basilectal speakers look and
Luke have the same pronunciation.
NURSE
The R-coloured vowel [Œr] is found only in monosyllabic words or stressed syl-
lables (see section 3.2.3. below).
LEAVE [FLEECE]
[i] is laxer than in English. Some speakers, especially those affected by English,
may lengthen or diphthongize [i].
FACE
[eI] is usually realized as [e] word internally before a voiceless consonant, as in
[mek] ‘make’, and word-finally, such as [de] ‘day’.
GOAT
[oU] may be realized as [o] especially at the end of a word, such as know [no], or
preceding [m], as in [kHom] ‘comb’ and [homwŒ®k] ‘homework’.
NEAR, SQUARE
What is post-vocalic R in word-final position in varieties of American English is
syllabified as [A] after /i/ and /e/.
START
Basilectal Hawai‘i Creole does not have R-coloured vowels, except for [Œ®] (see
section 3.2.3. below).
NORTH, FORCE
The difference between the vowel in these two items found in General American
English is neutralized in Hawai‘i Creole as [ç] (without the post-vocalic R) in
monosyllabic words and stressed syllables and as [o] in unstressed syllables (see
section 3.2.3.).
CURE
Post-vocalic R is syllabified as [A] after [U] in word-final position.
lettER
What is [´r] (= [‘]) in General American English is [A] in basilectal Hawai‘i
Creole in open unstressed syllables.
horsES
What is schwa [´] in closed syllables in most varieties of English is [e] in basilec-
tal Hawai‘i Creole.
commA
English schwa [´] in open syllables is [A] in basilectal Hawai‘i Creole.
In summary, basilectal Hawai‘i Creole speakers normally have a seven-vowel sys-

tem:
/i/ /u/
/e/ /o/
/Q/ /A/ /ç/
/i/ ranges from a raised relatively tense [I] to a slightly lax [i] and /u/ from a rela-
tively raised and tense [U] to a slightly lax [u]; /A/ ranges from [A] to [√]. The fol-
lowing diphthongs are also present: /eI/, /AU/, /AI/, /oI/ and /oU/. Basilectal Hawai‘i
Creole has only one R-coloured vowel: /Œr/, occurring only in stressed syllables.
3.1.2. Mesolectal Hawai‘i Creole

In mesolectal varieties, the distinctive basilectal vowels vary with the correspond-
ing vowels in General American English. The exceptions are that the raising and
tensing of [I] and [U] is generally avoided (since it is a salient marker of basilectal
speech). Thus, for speakers of mesolectal and acrolectal varieties, /i/, /I/, /u/ and
/U/ are separate phonemes.
The typical mesolectal vowels are shown in Table 2, with further discussion
below.
Table 2. Typical vowels of mesolectal Hawai‘i Creole
FIT [KIT] I FACE eI ~ e SQUARE eA ~ er

DRESS E ~ Q3 PALM A START A ~ Ar
TRAP Q3 ~ Q THOUGHT ç>Å NORTH ç ~ or
LOT ç ~ A > Å≈ GOAT oU ~ o FORCE ç ~ or
STUFF [STRUT] A ~ √ GOOSE u CURE uA ~ ur
FOOT U PRICE AI happY i
ASK [BATH] Q3 ~ Q CHOICE oI ~ çI lettER A ~ ´r = [‘]
COUGH [CLOTH] ç > Å≈ MOUTH AU horsES e~´ ~I
NURSE Œr NEAR iA ~ ir commA A~´
LEAVE [FLEECE] i > ij
Many varieties of American English are spoken in Hawai‘i. For Hawai‘i Creole
speakers who speak varieties with the THOUGHT-LOT merger, the distinctions
in the vowels in LOT, COUGH [CLOTH] and [THOUGHT] are neutralized, and the
vowel is pronounced as [Å] which may vary with [ç]. Because of this factor, there
is some intra- and inter-speaker variation in the pronunciation of certain lexical
items ([A] vs. [Å] or [ç]): for example, in job, stop, dock, problem and model (Odo
1977). Because of the fact that [√] in STUFF [STRUT] is still pronounced as [A] by
some mesolectal speakers, there are some speakers who pronounce cot and caught
the same [kHçt] or [kHÅt] in contrast with cut [kHAt], and others who pronounce
cot and cut the same [kHAt] in contrast with caught [kHçt].
3.2. Consonants
The consonants of both basilectal and mesolectal Hawai‘i Creole are basically the
same as those of General American English. However, there are a few differences,
and these are discussed below.
3.2.1. Stops
The Hawai‘i Creole voiceless stops differ from those of General American English
in some phonetic realizations. First, like English, voiceless stops are aspirated
when they occur at the beginning of a syllable with primary stress, but unlike
English they may be aspirated in other syllables as well, for example [*mAkHet]
‘market’ and [»kHAtHen] ‘carton’ (see section 6.1.).
Second, voiceless stops that occur at the end of a word or at the end of a syllable
followed by a consonant may be unreleased or glottalized, that is, pronounced
with both oral articulation and glottal closure. In rapid speech [t] in this position
may become a glottal stop, e.g. [nA/] ‘not’.
Third, /t/ and /d/ are palatalized before /r/: [tSri] ‘tree’, [dZrAI] ‘dry’.
Finally, /t/ and /d/ are often used in place of what are /T/ and /D/ respectively in
General American English (see below).
Like General American English, /t/ and /d/ are flapped intervocalically in an
unstressed syllable in normal speech, as in [miRiN] ‘meeting’ and [bARi] ‘body’.
However, some flaps occur in Hawai‘i Creole where they are not found in General
American English because of some of the differences in realizations described
above, for example [wIRAUt] ‘without’ (because of /T/ in place of /t/) and [poRogi]
‘Portuguese’ because of /ç/ in place of /çr/.
3.2.2. Fricatives
With regard to TH, General American English /T/ occurs as [T] and [t] or [tH] in
free variation in basilectal Hawai‘i Creole, and /D/ as [D] and [d], for example:
[tHçt] ‘thought’, [wit] ‘with’ and [dQt] ‘that’, [AdA] ‘other’. For two items, [f]
has replaced [D]: [bŒrfde] ‘birthday’ and [beIf] ‘bathe’. In mesolectal varieties,
[T] and [D] are more frequent.
Some speakers lack [Z] in their phonemic inventory and substitute /dZ/ as in
[medZA] ‘measure’. /s/ is often palatalized before both /tS/ and /r/: [StSrit] ‘street’,
[groSri] ‘grocery’.
/v/ may be deleted between voiced sounds: [eritiN] ‘everything’, [neA] ‘never’,
[oA] ‘over’.
3.2.3. Liquids
Post-vocalic R
/r/ as the coda of a syllable is generally not found in basilectal Hawai‘i Cre-
ole. What is /Ar/ in General American English is realized as [A], for example in
[hAd] ‘hard’, [pAkiN] ‘parking’; /Er/ is realized as [e] when followed by another
sound: [sked] ‘scared’; /çr/ and /or/ are realized as [ç] in stressed syllables and
[o] in unstressed syllables, e.g. [»fçtSen] ‘fortune’ vs. [pHo»tSreI] ‘portray’. (The
exceptions are the grammatical morphemes [fo] and [mo] derived from for and
more.)
In word-final position, what is post-vocalic R in other varieties is syllabified
as [A] in basilectal Hawai‘i Creole after /i/, /u/, /o/, /AI/ and /e/. Consider the ex-
amples [diA] ‘deer’, [puA] ‘poor’, [stoA] ‘store’, [fAIA] ‘fire’, [wQlfeA] ‘wel-
fare’.
As mentioned above, the only post-vocalic R or R-coloured vowel in Hawai‘i
Creole is [Œr], and it is found only in stressed syllables: [bŒrd] ‘bird’, [ri»tŒrn]
‘return’. In unstressed syllables, what is [Œr] or [´r] in other varieties is realized
as [e] when followed by another sound and as [A] at the end of a word: [»rAbet]
‘Robert’, [»reked] ‘record (noun)’, [»pHepA] ‘paper’, [»fiNgA] ‘finger’.
L vocalization
/l/ is generally “dark” or velar […], especially in syllable codas. Syllabic /l/ in
English is often replaced by [o] in the basilect, for instance in [tS®Abo] ‘trouble’,
[Qpo] ‘apple’, [pHipo] ‘people’. Preconsonantal /l/ may become [o], [U] or [u]
– for example: [meok] ‘milk’, [hQup] ’help’. In some words, there is variation,
such as [rio] ~ [riu] ~ [ril] ‘real’.
3.2.4. Other consonants

Hawai‘i Creole also has the flap [R] as a separate phoneme, found in Japanese
borrowings, such as [kARAte] ‘karate’ and [kARAoke] ‘karaoke’. The /R/ phoneme
can be shown to contrast with /l/ in two Hawai‘i Creole loanwords: [kARAI] ‘spicy
hot’ (from Japanese) and [kAlAI] ‘hoeing’ (from Hawaiian).
Hawai‘i Creole has the additional affricate /ts/ as well, occurring in word-initial
position, as in [tsunAmi] ‘tidal wave’ and [tsuRu] ‘crane made from folded paper’.
Many speakers of Hawai‘i Creole also use the glottal stop [/] in words
derived from Hawaiian, for example in [kAmA/AInA] ‘person born in Hawai‘i
or long term resident’ and [ni/ihAU] ‘Ni‘ihau’ (an island in the Hawaiian
group).
4. Orthography
There is no standard orthography for Hawai‘i Creole. In both popular literature

and the New Testament translation, various etymological orthographies are used,
based on the conventional spelling of English. An autonomous phonemic orthog-
raphy, designed by Carol Odo (Bickerton and Odo 1976), is normally used by
linguists, and on rare occasions in other contexts, such as in the printed program
of the “Wat, Bada yu?” conference held in 1999 on “Hawai‘i Creole, local identi-
ties and strategies for multicultural learning”. (Also, Lee Tonouchi uses the Odo
orthography in one short story in his book Da Word). The Odo orthography will
also be used for the remainder of this chapter.
In the Odo orthography, the consonants are represented by their IPA equivalents
except for the following:
/N/ ng
/S/ sh
/Z/ zh
/tS/ ch
/dZ/ j
/j/ y
/R/ D
/// ‘
The simple vowels, diphthongs and the R-coloured vowel are represented by the
following orthographic symbols:
/i/ i
/e/ e
/Q/ æ (or ae or Ae)
/A/ a or A
/u/ u
/o/ o
/ç/ aw
/eI/ ei
/AU/ au or Au
/AI/ ai or Ai
/oI/ oi
/oU/ ou
/Œr/ r
5. Phonotactics
Hawai‘i Creole has phonotactics similar to those of English, with the exception of
final consonant clusters.
a) Where the final consonant clusters /pt/, /kt/, /ft/, /st/, /ld/ and /nd/ are found in
English, the final stop (/t/ or /d/) is absent in basilectal Hawai‘i Creole, for ex-
ample: raep /rQp/ ‘wrapped’, aek /Qk/ ‘act’, sawf /sçf/ ‘soft’, laes /lQs/ ‘last’,
kol /kol/ ‘cold’, spen /spen/ ‘spend’.
b) In the final consonant clusters /ts/, /ks/ and /dz/, the stop may be absent: wats
/wAts/ ~ /wAs/ ‘what’s’, foks /foks/ ~ /fos/ ‘folks’, kidz /kidz/ ~ /kiz/ ‘kids’.
c) In the clusters /fr/ and /pr/, the /r/ is deleted if there is an /r/ in the onset of the
next syllable: pograem /pogrQm/ ‘program’, fashchreited /fASchreIted/ ‘frus-
trated’, laibaeri /lAIbQri/ ‘library’.
6.1. Stress
In Hawai‘i Creole, morphologically simple words of two syllables derived from
English usually have primary stress on the same syllable as in English. Howev-
er, there are some exceptions, as illustrated by the following examples (with the
stressed syllable in Hawai‘i Creole and in the English equivalent both shown in
bold): beisbawl /beIs»bçl/ ‘baseball’, chapstik /tSAp»stik/ ‘chopstick’, hedeik /
hed»eIk/ ‘headache’, dedlain /dQd»lAIn/ ‘deadline’ (Odo 1975: 16). Of words
that have more than two syllables, there are many words in Hawai‘i Creole which
have primary stress on a different syllable from that in English. This is especially
true of English words in which the first syllable is stressed, such as words ending
in -ary, -ony or -ory (Bickerton and Odo 1976: 50). Take, for example, dikshan-
aeri /dikSA»nQri/ ‘dictionary’, inventawri /invQn»tçri/ ‘inventory’, saeramoni
/sQrA»moni/ ‘ceremony’. Other examples are: harakein /hArA»keIn/ ‘hurricane’,
aelkahawl /QlkA»hçl/ ‘alcohol’, shchrawbæri /StSrç»bQri/ ‘strawberry’, haspitol
/hAs»pitol/ ‘hospital’, and kaetalawg /kQta»lçg/ ‘catalogue’.
Another way in which Hawai‘i Creole differs from English, at least in the
basilectal and mesolectal varieties, is that syllables that do not have primary stress
receive slightly more stress than in English. A syllable that has tertiary stress in
English may have secondary stress in Hawai‘i Creole. So for example, one may
hear the following pronunciations: /»beI«bi/ ‘baby’, /»bil«diN/ ‘building’ (Odo
1975: 15). Also, as mentioned above, vowels in syllables without primary or sec-
ondary stress are not necessarily reduced to schwa, but rather the full vowel is
used. This also leads to syllables being given secondary stress in Hawai‘i Creole
when they are unstressed or given tertiary stress in English. This secondary stress
may also result in voiceless stops being aspirated where there is no aspiration in
English, e.g. Jæpæniz [«dZQ«pHQ»niz] ‘Japanese’, kiten [»kHi«tHen] ‘kitten’, chikin
[»tSHi«kHin] ‘chicken’.
6.2. Speech rhythm

The combination of full vowels rather than schwa and secondary stress in non-
primary-stressed syllables means that syllables in Hawai‘i Creole tend to have
more equal prominence in terms of loudness and duration than syllables in Eng-
lish. There is also greater stress than in English on function words, such as articles,
prepositions, modals, and preverbal tense and aspect markers. Therefore, Hawai‘i
Creole is usually classified as a syllable-timed language, rather than a stress-timed
language such as English (Vanderslice and Pierson 1967).
At the same time, syllables or words may be extended or drawled for emphasis,
as in (7):
(7) a. E, yu wen go si da gem yestade? Waz ri::l gu:::d, bra.
(Eh, you wen go see da game yesterday? Was re::al goo:::d, brah!)
‘Hey, did you go see the game yesterday? It was really good.’
6.3. Pitch and register

The characteristic range of pitch in Hawai‘i Creole is wider than in English, espe-
cially with regard to higher pitch.
With regard to voice quality, there are two different registers that are common
features of the language. Firstly, the use of raspy voice in drawled syllables or
words (mentioned above) or in short periods of extended speech functions as a
kind of intensifier or as a marker of “heavy” Hawai‘i Creole and is used more
commonly by men than women. Secondly, the use of the upper levels of the range
of Hawai‘i Creole pitch that some researchers have said is a marker of female
speech.
6.4. Intonation
One of the most striking differences between Hawai‘i Creole and varieties of Eng-
lish is in the intonation of yes-no questions. In most varieties of American English,
for example, the pattern is rising, starting with mid pitch and finishing with high
pitch. But in Hawai‘i Creole, the pattern is falling, starting with high pitch and
dropping to low pitch in the last syllable and then a terminal steadying or slight
rise:
3
(8) E, yu wan laif 1gad?1
‘Are you a life guard?’
Tag questions with ye [jQ], e [/E], ha [hA] and no are very common in Hawai‘i
Creole. At the end of a sentence, they usually have high pitch with terminal rise.
Another tag is also used: o wat (‘or what’). This is added to the end of a statement
without pausing, and given low pitch and stress:
2
(9) Yu laik go 3Maui 1o wat?1
‘Do you want to go to Maui or what?’
7. Current issues
The last detailed research into Hawai‘i Creole phonology was carried out in the
1970s (Odo 1975; Bickerton and Odo 1976). While the findings still appear to
apply to modern basilectal speakers, it is obvious that more up-to-date data col-
lection and phonological analysis are a top priority. Such research will also throw
light on some important questions concerning decreolization in the language. It
is generally believed that with more widespread education and bilingualism in
English, Hawai‘i Creole has been changing to become more like English. This
is certainly true in some grammatical constructions – for example, in the more
widespread use of is and was as copulas (rather than zero copula). However, little
is known about the extent to which various aspects of basilectal phonology have
been changing in the direction of English.
Another area for further research is the extent of the influence of other lan-
guages on the phonology of Hawai‘i Creole. Suggestions have been made that the
unreleased final consonants are a result of the influence of Chinese languages, and
that the vowel system of basilectal Hawai‘i Creole and the sentence level intona-
tion in questions are a result of the influence of Hawaiian or Portuguese. But the
validity of these suggestions has yet to be examined.
Selected references
ROM.
Bickerton, Derek and Carol Odo

1976 Change and Variation in Hawaiian English. Volume 1: General Phonology
and Pidgin Syntax. Honolulu: Social Sciences and Linguistics Institute,
University of Hawaii.
Masuda, Hirokuni
2000 The Genesis of Discourse Grammar: Universals and Substrata in Guyanese,
Hawaii Creole, and Japanese. Frankfurt/New York: Lang.
Matthews, Stephen and Virginia Yip
1994 Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar. London/New York: Routledge.
Odo, Carol
1975 Phonological processes in the English dialect of Hawaii. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Hawaii, Honolulu.
1977 Phonological representations in Hawaiian English. University of Hawaii
Working Papers in Linguistics 9: 77−85.
Reinecke, John
1969 Language and Dialect in Hawaii: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press.
Roberts, Sarah J.
2000 Nativization and genesis of Hawaiian creole. In: John H. McWhorter (ed.),
Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles, 257−300.
Sato, Charlene J.
1989 A nonstandard approach to standard English. TESOL Quarterly 23: 259−282.
1991 Sociolinguistic variation and attitudes in Hawaii. In: Cheshire (ed.),
647−663.
Siegel, Jeff
2000 Substrate influence in Hawai‘i Creole English. Language in Society 29:
197−236.
Tonouchi, Lee
2001 Da Word. Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press.
Vanderslice, Ralph and Laura Shun Pierson
1967 Prosodic features of Hawaiian English. Quarterly Journal of Speech 53:
156−166.
Fiji English: phonology*
Jan Tent and France Mugler
1. Introduction
Fiji is a group of over 300 islands in the southern Pacific Ocean, straddling the
International Date Line. The islands were first settled about 3,000 years ago by
speakers of Austronesian languages whose ancestors had come from South-East
Asia, sweeping through Melanesia to the eastern islands of Polynesia. Sporadic
contact with Europeans initiated through exploration was followed by the ar-
rival of marooned sailors and deserters. Towards the beginning of the nineteenth
century came sundry beachcombers, traders in sandalwood and bêche-de-mer (sea-
cucumber). They were followed in the 1830s by missionaries, and in the next three
decades by land-hungry settlers from nearby Australia and New Zealand on whose
plantations worked Pacific island labourers recruited through blackbirding (kid-
napping). In 1874 a group of Fijian chiefs, through a Deed of Cession, signed over
the Fiji islands to the British. The colony had to pay for itself and about 60,000
indentured labourers were brought from India between 1879 and 1916 to work on
plantations, mostly of sugarcane. In 1920 all indenture contracts expired and most
Indians stayed on to farm small land parcels leased from Fijian landowners, or
ventured into trades or small businesses. Fiji became independent in 1970 and has
since suffered two major coups d’état, in 1987 and again in 2000.
Fiji has a population of nearly 800,000, about 51% of whom are indige-
nous Fijians and 44% Indo-Fijians (or ‘Fiji Indians’). The remainder comprise
small groups of other Pacific islanders, Chinese, ‘Europeans’ (i.e. Caucasians
or ‘Whites’) and ‘part-Europeans’ (i.e. people of mixed Fijian and European
descent). In spite of its small population, Fiji has a rich mix of languages and
cultures. Fijian is spoken not only by indigenous Fijians but also by many part-
Europeans, Chinese, Rotumans and other Pacific islanders. The major language
among Indo-Fijians is Fiji Hindi (or Fiji Baat), a koiné (an admixture of related
dialects) which developed during the indenture period from the contact between
the various dialects of Hindi spoken by most of the labourers from North India.
Dravidian languages such as Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam are spoken by small
and ever dwindling numbers of descendants of labourers from South India, while
Gujarati and Punjabi were introduced after indenture by free migrants. There are
also small groups of speakers of Rotuman, Kiribati, Tuvaluan and other Pacific
languages, as well as several Chinese languages and dialects.
Fiji English: phonology 751
The first tokens of presence of English in Fiji were probably borrowings intro-
duced into Fijian by Tongans, who had a long history of trade with Fiji and had
contact with English speakers earlier. Beachcombers and traders, who often became
fluent in Fijian, were another vector for borrowings, while Methodist missionaries
introduced religious terms, although they evangelised in Fijian. After Cession, Eng-
lish became the working language of the colonial administration. Catholic schools
spearheaded the use of English in education and by the 1890s it had spread to all
schools, including those that Indians had to establish themselves for their children.
In the 1930s the promotion of English was spurred by the colonial authorities’ belief
that a “neutral” lingua franca or a “link/bridging” language was needed to allow Fi-
jians and Indo-Fijians to live together in harmony. English was seen as the appropri-
ate, if not the only, language to fulfil that role. The local languages were considered
linguistically deficient and unable to fill this need, as shown by this pronouncement
about Fijian by Cyril Cato, a prominent educator at the time:
In a country where many races and languages mingle as they do in Fiji, a common
language is essential. Fijian can never become this, for its poverty of ideas and
expressions is such that it cannot meet the modern demands upon such a language (cited
in Geraghty 1984: 41).
During this time, Fiji’s education system came under the control of the New Zea-
land education authorities. The influx of New Zealand teachers meant that English
had to be the sole medium of instruction, as few were prepared to learn Fijian or
Hindi. English is now the sole official medium of instruction after the first three
years of primary school, although code switching is frequent both in the classroom
and on the playground.
English is a second language for nearly all Fiji Islanders, with speakers’ profi-
ciency ranging from rudimentary to very high. Only 1% to 3% of the population
speak English as their first language. Nevertheless, English has a high profile
and fairly widespread use, especially in urban areas. Thanks to its colonial past,
English remains an official language, along with Fijian and Hindi. While the 1997
Constitution states that the three languages “have equal status”, English prevails in
most official spheres. In Parliament, for instance, it is the language of debate and
record, although members of both Houses occasionally speak in Fijian or Hindi.
English also predominates in the media, particularly on television and now online,
in print, and to a lesser extent, on the radio. English has also been the major me-
dium of expression in literature so far. Another major role of English in Fiji is as
a lingua franca, particularly between native speakers of Fijian and of Fiji Hindi,
although significant numbers of both groups know each other’s language or a
pidginised variety thereof.
The variety of English that operates as the official reference point in Fiji is an
external standard. Traditionally it was British English, which continues to be seen
by many speakers as the model to aspire to, although the local varieties which ap-
752 Jan Tent and France Mugler
proximate to standard metropolitan varieties of English have incorporated features

from Australian, New Zealand and, increasingly, American English.
English in Fiji is characterised by a great deal of variation, which can be
ascribed to two major factors: differences in exposure through education and the
media, and the speaker’s first language. Someone from a low socio-economic
group or living in a rural area or an outer island will typically hear and read far less
English – and have far less need to use it – than a middle-class urban professional.
As for the first language of English users, the two major groups, native speakers
of Fijian and of Fiji Hindi, are of nearly equal size. The influence of the first lan-
guage is most noticeable in the phonology of Fiji English, particularly in what is
sometimes called the “basilect” (the variety most removed from the norm), where
one can arguably distinguish between “Fijian English” and “Indo-Fijian English”.
Differences in grammar and vocabulary are not nearly as great, and most borrow-
ings from Fijian and Fiji Hindi are common to Fijian and Indo-Fijian speakers of
English. Differences between the two groups shade off at the “acrolectal” (pres-
tige) end of the continuum, but while the speech of many “educated”’ people tends
to approximate a metropolitan standard, the influence of the first language is to
some extent independent of education and exposure.
Siegel (1989, 1991) recognises that ‘Fiji English’ constitutes a continuum, and
notes that it is in the basilect that most of the distinctive features are found. Lynch
and Mugler (1999) observe that within Fiji, the term tends to refer only to the
basilectal end of the spectrum, perhaps because only that lect is recognised as
distinctive. The following citation confirms this:
“Their English [that of pupils at a local primary school] is perfect too. They don’t speak
that Fijian English urban students use: ‘us gang, me ga, trues up.’ I’m very proud of that,”
Mr X [head teacher] said. (Fiji Times, 9/7/1997)
Kelly (1975), who pioneered the study of Fiji English with recordings of school-
girls, refers to this lect as “the dialect”, Moag and Moag (1977) as “Colloquial
Fiji English”, Geraghty (1975, 1977, 1984, 1997) as “Fiji Pidgin English”, and
Siegel (1986, 1987, 1989, 1991) as “Basilectal Fiji English”. Kelly’s “dialect” is
too vague, while Geraghty’s “Fiji Pidgin English” is inaccurate, since the lect ex-
hibits only a few of the lexical and grammatical features of pidgins in general or of
Melanesian Pidgin English in particular. Moreover, there is no historical evidence
that the lect was ever a stable pidgin (Siegel 1987: 237–238). Moag and Moag’s
“Colloquial Fiji English” is too general, as it could be applied to a wide range of
lects within the Fiji English spectrum. Siegel’s “Basilectal Fiji English” is prob-
ably the most accurate but its negative connotation is unfortunate.
Siegel (1987: 238) suggests that the lect can be classified as a “creoloid” (i.e.
a language which exhibits creole-like features although it did not develop from a
pidgin) akin to Colloquial or Basilectal Singapore English, since:
– it displays some creole-like grammatical features;
– it shows “substratum” influences, mostly from Fijian and Fiji Hindi;

– English (which functions as the standard, superordinate language) is one of the
official languages of Fiji; and
– it is used for most (but certainly not all) communication between speakers of
different native languages
Perhaps the most accurate descriptive label for the English of Fiji would be “Fiji
Varieties/Variants of English”. However, for the sake of simplicity, we shall con-
tinue to use the expression “Fiji English” as a cover term, in line with Siegel
(1989). However, instead of his “Basilectal Fiji English”, we have adopted the
term “Pure Fiji English” (after Fox 2003) to refer to the variety most heavily in-
fluenced by the substratum languages, and “Modified Fiji English” for the lects
which most approximate standard metropolitan English (both at the phonological
and morpho-syntactic levels), while still retaining some distinctive local features.
As for variation across speakers of different first languages, the most readily
identifiable and widespread varieties are “Fijian Fiji English” and “Indo-Fijian Fiji
English”. The Pure Fiji English spoken by part-Europeans and Fijians is essen-
tially a single variety. This is not surprising, since part-Europeans usually identify
socially, culturally and ethnically with the Fijian community. Since Independence,
part-Europeans have shifted away from their historical identification with colonial
European heritage and have moved towards reclaiming their Fijian roots. Part-Eu-
ropean speakers of Modified Fiji English, however, still tend to align themselves
with the European community, and linguistic features of their English reflect this
social association, although many are bi-dialectal in the Pure and Modified varieties.
Fiji English is also spoken by Chinese and part-Chinese, Rotumans and other small
Pacific islander groups, with each variety having its distinctive features, although
their Fiji English tends to be closer to the Fijian than the Indo-Fijian variety.
Certain features of Fiji English are heard in the speech of most Fiji Islanders,
regardless of their first language, while others are more specifically characteristic
of Fijian and Indo-Fijian Fiji English. Numerous features are also found in the
colloquial varieties of English spoken in countries where it is the first language of
the majority, while others also exist in other parts of the world where English is a
second language, and still others are characteristic of pidgins or creoles. This last
group may have developed independently, perhaps as a result of universal tenden-
cies in a restricted language environment. They could be remnants of Melanesian
Pidgin English introduced to Fiji by labourers on plantations in the nineteenth
century (see Siegel 1987), or both.
Since English is a second (sometimes a third) language for nearly all Fiji Island-
ers, there is considerable phonological transfer from L1, at both the segmental and
suprasegmental levels. The degree of transfer varies substantially, with speakers
of Pure Fiji English usually exhibiting the highest degree of transfer. Detailed
phonological descriptions of all varieties of Fiji English are beyond our scope,
and we shall concentrate on the key characteristics of Pure Fiji English as spoken
by Fijians and Indo-Fijians. Even though they share a number of phonological
features, these lects are nevertheless still phonologically quite distinct at the Pure
Fiji English end of the spectrum. At the Modified end, however, these differences
are much less pronounced and the two varieties may at times be almost indistin-
guishable. Our descriptions are based on personal observation, over 80 hours of
recorded interviews, written and printed pronunciation spellings (see Tent 2000),
previously published analyses of Fiji English (particularly Kelly 1975), and the
recordings made for this volume. Before each description, brief outlines of the
phonologies of Fijian and Fiji Hindi are provided.
2. Pure Fiji English (Fijian and part-European speakers)
In order to understand the phonology of the Fijian and part-European variety of

Pure Fiji English phonology a brief overview of the phonology of Fijian needs to
be considered. The phonology of Fijian has been described in detail by Geraghty
(1983) and Schütz (1985). The consonant and vowel phonemes of Fijian are pre-
sented in Figures 1 and 2 respectively. Note that:
– Symbols in parentheses are found in English loanwords.
– Vowel length is phonemic.
– The diphthongs are /ai/, /ei/, /oi/, /ao/, /iu/, /eu/, /au/ and /ou/.
Figure 1. The consonant phonemes of Fijian

Figure 2. The vowel phonemes of Fijian
The following are the most common phonological features of the Pure Fiji English
spoken by Fijians and part-Europeans. Many of these may be heard in the accom-
panying recordings on the CD-ROM.
2.1. Consonants
Stops
1. Voiceless stops are unaspirated, e.g. pan > [p=n], talk [t=çk], corner [k=na].
2. Stops in word final position, especially voiceless stops, are often unreleased,
e.g. like that > [laik8 dt8].
3. In word final position, voiced stops often are voiceless, e.g. scared > [sket], rob
> [rÅp], leg > [lek].
4. Most speakers have /t/ in think > [tik], three > [tri], through > [tru], bath >
[bat], etc. and [d] in this > [dis], brother > [brad], breathe > [brid], etc., de-
spite Fijian having //.
5. Sometimes, /d/ is palatalised before [ju], e.g. during > [d9uri].
6. Only in the Purest of Fiji English is /b/ is prenasalised, e.g. bye > [mbai].
Fricatives
1. Some speakers have only one apico-dental fricative, the voiced //, e.g. this >
[is], thanks > [ks].
2. Similarly, while some speakers have /:/ in initial and medial position for very >
[:eri], never > [ne:a], most have /f/ in final position for five > [faif], and cave
> [kef].
3. Fijian has only one sibilant, the voiceless post-alveolar /s/, a sound intermediate
between the /s/ and // of Standard English. Most commonly, the // of Standard
English is realised as /s/ as in: sure > [su] and insure > [insu], pollution
> [pÅlusen], English > [ilis], British > [britis], shock > [sÅk], parachute >
[parsut]. On the other hand, the grooved palato-alveolar fricative [] also often
occurs, particularly in words that contain two or more voiceless sibilants, e.g.
socialising > [olaisin], associate [oit].
4. Standard English words containing the voiced post-alveolar fricative //, such as
measure, confusion and usual, are often realised as [me ~ mez], [kÅnfjuen
~ kÅnfjuzen], [juul ~ juzul] respectively.
5. Syllable final /z/ is nearly always [s], e.g. cruise > [krus], noise > [noes], includ-
ing the plural and third person singular morphemes, e.g. years > [jis], boys >
[boes], cleans > [klins]. This feature, along with the devoicing of voiced stops
described above (3.), suggests that Pure Fiji English may have a general devoic-
ing rule for these consonants in final position.
Affricates
We only find [ts] in Pure Fiji English, e.g. touch > [tats], much [mats], each > [its],
change > [tsents], beach > [bits], lunch > [lants], future > [fjuts], teacher [tits],
etc., and occasionally [t] or [dz], e.g. large > [lat], ginger > [dzindz].
Approximants
1. Post-vocalic /l/ is always ‘clear’ (i.e. non-velarised), e.g. sell > [sel].
2. /r/ is trilled or flapped.
3. /j/ and /w/ are weakly articulated.
Consonant clusters
1. For many speakers, words which include consonant clusters in Standard Eng-
lish are often articulated in Pure Fiji English with epenthetic vowels, after the
Fijian pattern of nativising English loanwords, e.g. sitoa < ‘store’, kirimu <
‘cream’ (both of which have become fully nativised into Fijian, but also occur in
Pure Fiji English), as well as Burns Philp > [filp], film > [film].
2. On the other hand, many words may end with a single consonant, e.g. toast >
[tos], around > [ran], friend > [fren], don’t > [don], Marist High > [maris
hai], district > [distrik]. However, as in other varieties of English, final /-ks/
does occur, particularly in the metathesis of the consonant cluster /-sk-/ as in
ask > [aks].
Figure 3 shows the consonant phonemes of Pure Fijian Fiji English with their most
common phonetic realisations.

At the phonemic level, Pure Fijian English has a five vowel system, based on
Fijian. In addition, the length and quality distinctions of standard varieties of Eng-
lish are neutralised. Most of the monophthongs of Pure Fiji English are tense
but short, as opposed to Standard English tense/long versus lax/short. Examples
include such items as: reach and rich > [rits]; beach and bitch > [bits]; march and
much > [mats]; port and pot > [pÅt], sport and spot > [spÅt], caught/court and cot
> [kÅt] (e.g. basketball court > [basktbÅl kÅt]); fool and full > [ful]; and cloak
and clock > [klÅk].
Figure 3. The consonant phonemes of Pure Fijian Fiji English and their common pho-
netic realisations
Evidence for this neutralisation of length and quality is reflected in frequent

pronunciation spellings in the local tabloids:
(1) a. Situations wanted: Baby seater available [...]. (Fiji Times, 23/2/1995)
b. A wife driving from a back-sit is comparable to a husband cooking
from the dining room table. (Daily Post, 1/6/1999)
c. Naitasiri North’s sensational victory over giant Nadi upset the apple-
cut. (Daily Post, 4/9/1995)
d. His face was a bit swollen and he also spotted a black eye. (Daily
Post, 8/5/1995)
e. The roads of Labasa ... portholes are everywhere. (Fiji Times,
19/5/1999)
f. She [a sex worker] told the Sun that most of her clients were top-class
businessmen and police officers. “It is surprising that most of my
customers are big shorts of our country.” (Fiji Sun, 4/12/1999)
g. Mr T. told prison offices to provide V. with 10 fullscap pages and a
pen [...] (Fiji Times, 9/6/1999)
Fijian has eight diphthongs (/ai/, /ei/, /oi/, /ao/, /iu/, /eu/, /au/, /ou/), five of which
(/ai/, /ei/, /oi/, /au/ and /ou/) are similar to the diphthongs of standard metropolitan
English, and are often realised in Pure Fiji English as such. Nevertheless, they are
sometimes instead realised as monophthongs by many speakers, especially the
FACE, CHOICE and GOAT vowels (see below). Fijian does not have any centring
diphthongs like those in Standard English NEAR, SQUARE and CURE. These are
realised in Pure Fiji English as monophthongs or falling diphthongs (see below).
The following are descriptions of the most common variants of the Pure Fiji
English vowels as articulated by Fijians. As stated above, there is considerable
variation within this lect due to the speaker’s place of residence (largely rural vs.
urban), competence as a speaker of Standard English, educational background
and general exposure to standard metropolitan English. (Note that the lexical
items in parentheses indicate those used in the accompanying recording of the
lexical set. It was found that these words were more appropriate for the Fiji
context.)
KIT (FIT) and FLEECE (REEF)

Phonemically the KIT and FLEECE vowels are not distinguished, however, pho-
netically, they are slightly different. The KIT vowel is short, retracted and lowered
[i], approximating the position of [], but retaining an [i]-like quality. The FLEECE
vowel tends to be a short or for some speakers a half-long [i]. Examples showing
the lack of phonemic distinction between these vowels are often found in Fiji’s
tabloids:
(2) a. [...]the roof and the air-condition [sic] were leaking, water sipped
intothe rooms [...]. (Fiji Times, 25/4/2003)
b. Her family was rudely awaken [sic] from its midday slumber as
floodwaters sipped into the living room and rose to about 1.5 metres.
(Fiji Times, 17/3/2003)
c. One year ago since you took your leave
To our arms of our God your life to give.
The tears we cried, we cried with bliss,
For Jehovah God has called His servant in peace. (Fiji Times,
3/3/2003)
DRESS and TRAP (BACK)
Similarly, there is no phonemic distinction between the DRESS and TRAP vowels.
However, the DRESS vowel is a slightly lowered and short [e], whilst the TRAP
vowel tends to be a slightly raised and short [], e.g. that > [t], Lami > [lmi],
Nadi > [nndi], land > [ln]. Nevertheless, it is difficult to phonetically distin-
guish between the DRESS and TRAP vowels in many speakers.
The realisation of TRAP as [] gives rise to the following common spelling pro-
nunciations:
(3) a. Eight people [...] peddled to safety when a boat they were in ran
aground [...] (Fiji Times, 26/2/1987)
b. We have no injury worries and the players have slowly recovered from
jet-leg. (Daily Post, 29/3/1996)
c. Residents affected by water cuts in a densely-populated area tempered

with water mains. (Fiji Times, 20/1/2003)
d. Top scorer for the Veimataqali Imperial was Elex Konrote. (Fiji Times,
20/1/2003)
The lack of phonemic distinction between these two vowels is further highlighted
by the following example:
(4) Vidiri steps on the paddle and just keeps going, no slowing down. (Daily
Post, 10/6/1998)
LOT (POT), CLOTH (OFF), THOUGHT, NORTH and FORCE
There is no phonemic distinction between the vowels of LOT and CLOTH. Phoneti-
cally, they are nearly identical, i.e. a raised [Å], although LOT is usually extra short.
For some speakers, LOT is realised as an extra short and lowered [ç]. As noted
above, for many speakers of Pure Fiji English, the LOT vowel is also not phonemi-
cally distinct from NORTH and FORCE, thus giving rise to examples such as (1d),
(1e), and (1f) above.
Although there is some slight phonetic variation between these three vowels,
they are virtually identical, and are generally realised as a raised [Å] or a lowered
[ç]. In the case of THOUGHT, the vowel also tends to be extra short and may be
lengthened somewhat in FORCE [Å].
STRUT (CUT), BATH (GRASS), PALM and START

Phonemically these four vowels are the same and are realised as [a]. Phonetically
there is some variation: both STRUT and BATH have retracted [a], with BATH tend-
ing to be extra short, and PALM and START are both realised simply as [a] or an
extra short [a] (especially the PALM vowel).
FOOT and GOOSE (LOOSE)

These two vowels tend not to be phonemically distinguished, hence, full and fool
are not a minimal pair (see example [1g] above). They are phonetically very simi-
lar: the FOOT vowel may be articulated with a raised [o] or lowered [u], whereas
GOOSE varies between a lowered and advanced [u] and at times a slightly length-
ened [u] (see also 4.3. below).
NURSE
This vowel is usually realised as [] or a retracted [], e.g. church > [tsts], girls
> [ls], turn > [tn]. Under certain conditions NURSE may also be realised as [Å].
This seems to occur after /w/ as in work > [wÅk]; however, this could be a spelling
pronunciation.
FACE
Although Fijian has the diphthong /ei/, it is not uncommon to find speakers of Pure
Fiji English using [e], [e] or [ei] (with a weak and short second target) in FACE,
e.g. make > [mek], day > [de], okay > [okei]. The lengthened and diphthongised
targets tend to occur in syllable final position.
GOAT
Similarly, although Fijian has /ou/, the GOAT vowel tends to be realised with a
monophthong – a lowered [o], a lowered and lengthened [o], or [ou] (with a weak
and short second target), e.g. don’t > [don], post > [pos].
PRICE
Speakers of Pure Fiji English usually realise the PRICE vowel as the diphthong [ai],
though the second target tends to be very short.
CHOICE
As with the FACE and GOAT vowels, CHOICE is also generally realised as a monoph-
thong or a diphthong with a weak and short second target: [o], [o] or [oe] where
[o] is lowered and the second target of the diphthong does not go as far as [i].
MOUTH
MOUTH is articulated with a diphthong, resembling the Fijian /au/. The first target,
[a], is always retracted and quite short, whilst the second target varies between a
weakly articulated [o], or a relatively strongly articulated and raised [].
NEAR, SQUARE and CURE

The centring diphthongs found in Standard English NEAR, SQUARE and CURE all
tend to be realised as monophthongs in closed syllables, but falling diphthongs in
open syllables. Thus, years > [jis], tears > [tis], scared > [sket], Mary > [meri],
insurance > [insurns], during > [d9uri]; beer > [bi], swear > [swe], insure
> [insu]. Each diphthong’s second target tends to be an extra short []. There is
a lot of variation in the articulation of the CURE vowel, especially in words like
tour. This is seen in all other varieties of English as well. In many varieties the
diphthong has coalesced into [ç], or is articulated as an [ç
] glide. This extreme
variation, or instability, is perhaps because the vowel of CURE is the least frequent
of vocalic sounds.
happY
The final vowel of happY is an extra short, retracted and lowered [i]. The vowel
still tends to carry a considerably greater degree of stress than in Standard Eng-
lish.
lettER
The final syllable of lettER also receives a considerably greater degree of stress
than in Standard English, and is generally realised as [].
horsES
This vowel, too, receives a considerable amount of stress, more so than in Stan-
dard English, though perhaps not as much as in the lettER and commA vowels. The
final element of horsES is commonly realised with an extra short [].
commA (VISA)
The most usual articulation of the commA vowel is a lowered and advanced [].
Table 1 summarises the most common phonetic realisations of the vowels of Pure
Fiji English as articulated by Fijians.
Table 1. Phonetic realisations of Pure Fiji English vowels (Fijian speakers) – summary
Lexical set Pure Fiji English (Fijian speakers)
KIT (FIT) i
DRESS e
TRAP (BACK)
LOT (POT) Å; ~ ç;
STRUT (CUT) a
FOOT o ~ u
BATH (GRASS) a;
CLOTH (OFF) Å
NURSE ~
FLEECE (REEF) i ~ i
FACE e ~ e ~ ei
PALM a; ~ a
THOUGHT Å; ~ ç;
GOAT o ~ o ~ ou
GOOSE (LOOSE) u ~ u
PRICE ai7
CHOICE o ~ o ~ oe
Table 1. (continued) Phonetic realisations of Pure Fiji English vowels (Fijian speakers)
– summary
Lexical set Pure Fiji English (Fijian speakers)
MOUTH a; o ~ a;

NEAR i ~ i7
SQUARE e ~ e7
START a7 ~ a
NORTH Å ~ ç
FORCE Å ~ Å ~ ç
CURE u ~ ~ u
happY i7
lettER ~ a ~ a7
horsES 7
commA (VISA) ~ a ~ a7
Figure 4 shows the vowel phonemes of Pure Fijian Fiji English with their most
common phonetic realisations.
Figure 4. The vowel phonemes of Pure Fijian Fiji English and their common phonetic
realisations
2.3. Lexical stress

The rules for stress assignment in Fijian are not entirely agreed upon (see Schütz
1999 for a summary). In many cases lexical stress is predictable in that it always
falls on the penultimate mora, i.e. the penultimate syllable, if the vowel in the last
syllable is short, and on the first part of the long vowel in the last syllable if the
vowel is long. However, this appears to be true only for the last stress in the word,
any preceding stress is unpredictable. In words with more than one stress, it is not
always clear which is primary and which secondary.
Since in Standard English lexical stress is unpredictable, lexical stress patterns

do not coincide with those in either Pure, or sometimes even Modified, Fiji Eng-
lish. Syllables which are unstressed in Standard English are often stressed in Fi-
jian English, while Standard English stressed syllables are often realised in Fijian
English with less stress or none. Examples from our data include: cholesterol >
[*kÅle+strÅl], amicable > [+*mikabl]. We found this to be especially the case
with words beginning with unstressed con- in Standard English. This element very
often receives a primary stress in Fijian English, e.g. considerate > [*kÅn+sidret],
continue > [*kÅn+tinu], convinced [*kÅn+vinst].
2.4. Syntactic stress

The most conspicuous characteristic of Fijian Fiji English sentence rhythm is that
each syllable tends to receive an equal amount of stress (i.e. syllable-timed), with
the last syllable (or stress group) being indicated by a fall in pitch. Without having
conducted empirical research on Fijian English or Fijian syntactic stress patterns,
our observations seem to indicate that sentence rhythm in both languages is very
similar if not the same, that is, there tends to be equal stress on each stress group,
with just a fall of pitch at the end of the sentence. In addition to this, it is our
impression that the main verb in unmarked sentences is often given more stress
than any of the other sentence elements. Some examples from Tent’s recordings
include:
(5) a. I háve one brother in Canada.
b. The next door neighbour all the time básh his wife when he cut
[drunk].
c. I am stáying in Samabula.
d. Are you cóming to the meke tonight?
e. Where ís the class?
This seems to be characteristic of not only Pure Fiji English but often also Modi-
fied Fiji English. It is not uncommon to hear newsreaders on Fiji television or
radio news use this syntactic stress pattern.
2.5. Intonation
The most prominent suprasegmental property of Fijian Fiji English is the over-
all higher pitch patterns than in Standard English. This is especially marked in
yes/no-questions, which start at a high pitch and typically end with a very rapid
rise and sudden drop in pitch (which follows the intonation contour of Fijian),
e.g.
3. Pure Fiji English (Indo-Fijian speakers)
In order to understand the phonology of Pure Fiji English as spoken by Fiji’s Indo-
Fijians, a brief overview of the phonology of Fiji Hindi is required. While it does
not vary significantly from that of Standard Hindi (Siegel 1975; Moag 1977, 1979;
Arms 1998), there are a few notable differences. Siegel (1975, 1987: 8) notes that
for many Fiji Hindi speakers [<] and [b], [p=] and [f], [d] and [z], and [] and [s]
occur in free variation or an intermediate sound is used. Furthermore, [>], [?] and
[] are allophones of /n/ when preceding a consonant, and [l] is often replaced
by [r] (Moag 1979), e.g. Fiji Hindi baar for Standard Hindi baal ‘hair’. On the
other hand, Arms (1998: 2) claims that “[f] has completely replaced the primary
[consonant] [p=]” (see also Hobbs 1985). For example, we have [ful] for ‘flower’,
rather than [p=ul]. Arms points out that this is also the case in some dialects of
Hindi in India, while in others, the two sounds are in free variation. He adds that
they are “certainly not in free variation in Fiji, but [f] has in some cases given way
to unaspirated [p]”. He cites as examples [hapta] ‘week’ (rather than [hafta]) and
[fuppa] ‘father’s sister’s husband’ (rather than [fuffa]) and notes that in the latter
the initial [f] is retained while medially it has changed to [p]. He adds that “for
some speakers the change of [f] to [p] takes place optionally in many vocabulary
items.” Thus /f/ has become part of the phonemic inventory of Hindi – including
Fiji Hindi – via three sources: Perso-Arabic loanwords, borrowings from English,
and etymological /p=/. Arms also claims that [] has merged with [s] for many
speakers, especially in rural areas.
The sounds which are used in Standard Hindi for the pronunciation of words of
Perso-Arabic origin are not normally found in Fiji Hindi; neither are they in most
colloquial varieties of Indian Hindi. For example, [z] is realised as [] in Fiji Hindi,
as in Colloquial Hindi (Bhatia 1995: 16), except in some proper nouns. This is
true even among Indo-Fijian Muslims, whose lexicon includes more such words
and who would use such words more often. Other examples include [x], which is
realised as [k=], as in the name Khan, for instance. The same is true of the voiced
counterpart, which is simply pronounced as a velar, rather than uvular, [].
As for vowels, Hindi has a set of five pairs of vowels whose phonetic relation-
ship is reflected in the Devanagari orthography. Three are pairs of short versus long
vowels: /a/ and /a/, /i/ and /i/, and /u/ and /u/. The mid vowels /e/ and /o/ are long
and have not short vowels, but the diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ as their counterpart.
In Fiji Hindi long and short vowels do not always contrast. Siegel (1975: 130)
claims that vowel length is not differentiated (especially [i] vs. [i] and [u] vs. [u]),
and this seems particularly true in final position. Similarly, with the exception of a
few monosyllabic words, the two diphthongs do not occur in word final position. In
any case, they constitute only about 1% of all vocalic occurrences (Arms 1998: 3). It
is unclear whether vowel nasalisation, which occurs phonetically, is ever phonemic.
The consonant and vowel phonemes of Fiji Hindi are presented in Figures 5 and
6 respectively.
Figure 5. The consonant phonemes of Fiji-Hindi (based on Arms 1998)

Figure 6. The vowel phonemes of Fiji Hindi
Although Standard and Fiji Hindi are phonologically similar, Pure Fiji English as
spoken by Indo-Fijians differs from the “typical” Indian English of the sub-conti-
nent in a number of ways. For instance:
– Indo-Fijian English is, as a general rule, non-rhotic.
– Pure Indo-Fijian English has monophthongised diphthongs.
– The realisation of alveolars as retroflexes is much less common in Indo-Fijian
English, though some speakers of Pure Fiji English do exhibit this characteristic.
It is clear that much further empirical study needs to be carried both on the pho-
nology of Fiji Hindi, and on the English spoken by Indo-Fijians. The following
are the most common phonological features of Pure Fiji English as spoken by
Indo-Fijians.
3.1. Consonants
Stops
1. Even though aspiration is present in Fiji Hindi, voiceless stops are unaspirated.
Indeed, in Fiji Hindi, as in varieties of Hindi in general, aspiration is phonemic.
Phonetically, aspiration in Hindi seems to be more strongly articulated than in
English (Bhatia 1995: 14). Perhaps the stops of English are perceived as being
unaspirated rather than merely more weakly aspirated than those of Hindi.
2. In word final position, voiceless stops are normally unreleased.
These two features, then, are identical in the Pure Fiji English of Fijians and of
Indo-Fijians.
Fricatives
1. The dental fricatives // and // are generally realised as dental stops, with the
first being aspirated [t=].
2. Fiji Hindi does not contrast between // and /s/, which have merged as /s/, and
many English words with // have been nativised into Fiji Hindi with /s/, e.g.
masīn < ‘machine’, sabal < ‘shovel’, burūs < ‘brush’ (see Siegel 1991). Pure
Indo-Fijian English does not contrast between // and /s/ either, resulting in
homophonous pairs such as self and shelf. A nice example of this in print is:
(6) Wanted to buy: Old chicken mess wire. (Advertisement from an Indo-
Fijian in Daily Post, 5/9/1998)
3. Final /z/ is often realised as [s] or devoiced [z], e.g. dolls > [dols], shoes > [sus],
please > [plis].
4. The voiced palato-alveolar fricative // is realised as [z], [s] or []: measure >
[mez
] ~ [mes
], confusion > [konfju
n].
These last two features are the same as in Fijian Fiji English.
Approximants
1. Post-vocalic /l/ is “clear”, as in Fijian Fiji English.
2. The approximant /r/ generally only occurs in initial and medial positions and is
normally flapped or trilled, as it is in Fijian Fiji English.
3. Initial /j/ is sometimes realised with an [i] onglide, e.g. year > [ijia ], you >
[iju].
Consonant clusters
1. The Pure Fiji English of Indo-Fijian speakers, like that of Fijians, allows
few consonant clusters, especially in final position e.g. last > [las], although
/ks/ does frequently occur, especially in [aks] for ask, also as in Fijian English.
2. Consonant clusters, both initial and final, quite commonly receive an epenthet-
ic vowel in Pure Indo-Fijian English, e.g. free > [fari], plate > [pilet], film >
[filam], blouse > [bilaus], pliers > [pilaias], etc. Epenthetic vowels are particu-
larly common in older English loans that have been fully nativised in Fiji Hindi,
e.g. farāk < ‘frock’, gilās < ‘glass’, kulubāl < ‘crowbar’ (Siegel 1991); however,
this tendency is not as strong nowadays.
The regular past tense morpheme {-ed} sometimes receives an [d] pronuncia-
tion when in Standard English it is rendered as [d] or [t], e.g. robbed > [rçbd],
asked [askd], learned (verb) > [lnd]. However, this is probably due to a
spelling pronunciation.
3. Word initial /s+C/ clusters typically have a syllable initial prothetic /i/, e.g.
school > [iskul], foolscaps > [fuliskeps], student > [istudent], sport > [ispot],
etc. This is clearly an influence of the first language since Hindi (both standard
and Fiji varieties) does not allow such initial consonant clusters. Fiji Hindi
has also nativised English loans with a prothetic vowel, e.g. astabal < ‘stable’,
isTimā < ‘steamer’ (Siegel 1991).
The consonant phonemes of Pure Indo-Fijian Fiji English and their most common
phonetic realisations are shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7. The consonant phonemes of Pure Indo-Fijian Fiji English and their common
phonetic realisations

The Pure Fiji English of Indo-Fijians is characterised by lack of distinction in
vowel quality, and, for some, vowel quantity. This neutralisation is responsible
for many pronunciation spellings (see below). Phonemically, Pure Fiji English
as spoken by Indo-Fijians is a five vowel system, although phonetically, like Fiji
Hindi, it also has a schwa.
Even though Fiji Hindi has only two diphthongs, /
i/ and /
u/, most diphthongs
of English are realised as diaphones by Indo-Fijian speakers, albeit they are phoneti-
cally somewhat different from those in Standard English. Some diphthongs, howev-
er, can be realised as monophthongs by speakers of Pure Fiji English (see below).
KIT (FIT) and FLEECE (REEF)

The KIT and FLEECE vowels are not phonemically distinguished. This neutralisa-
tion often leads to misspellings such as those illustrated in (3a), (3b) and (3c) in
section 2.2. above. Phonetically, the KIT vowel is retracted and slightly lowered [i],
whilst FLEECE varies between a short and half-long [i].
DRESS and TRAP (BACK)

The TRAP and DRESS vowels are not phonemically distinct and tend also to be
phonetically identical, i.e. a slightly raised [], leading to examples such as those
in (4) above and: than and then > [d=n], sand and send > [snd], gas and guess >
[gs]. Siegel (1991) has also noted that Fiji Hindi also regularly substitutes [] for
[æ] in English loanwords.
LOT (POT), CLOTH (OFF), THOUGHT, NORTH and FORCE

The LOT and CLOTH vowels are commonly realised as a lowered [ç], and in the
case of LOT, some speakers articulate it as an extra short vowel. As with Fijian
speakers of Pure Fiji English, many Indo-Fijian speakers do not make a phonemic
distinction between the LOT/CLOTH vowels and THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE vowels,
giving rise to caught and cot > [kçt], and examples such as those in (1e), (1f) and
(1g) above. THOUGHT, NORTH and FORCE are phonetically very similar; they are
all slight variants of [ç]. THOUGHT is articulated as a lowered and at times extra
short [ç], whilst NORTH and FORCE both vary between simply a raised [ç] and a
half-long raised [ç]. Note also Fiji Hindi’s nativisation of the English loans force
> fos [fçs], sauce > sos [sçs] and torch > Toc ["çt] (Siegel 1991).
STRUT (CUT), BATH (GRASS), PALM and START

There is no phonemic distinction in this set, and the vowels are realised as varia-
tions of [a]: STRUT as a retracted [a], often extra short; BATH as retracted [a], and
sometimes half-long; PALM simply as [a] or half-long [a]; START as retracted [a],
and sometimes extra short. In polysyllabic words containing the STRUT vowel,
this vowel is often realised as schwa (see 3.4. below).
FOOT and GOOSE (LOOSE)

There is no phonemic distinction between these two vowels. They are articulated
as advanced forms of [u], though the FOOT vowel tends to be somewhat lower
than that of GOOSE, which can also have a lengthened form. The lack of phonemic
distinction between these vowels often leads to neutralisations like full and fool >
[ful], pull and pool > [pul], or look and Luke > [luk] for most Indo-Fijian speakers
of Pure Fiji Hindi (see also 4.3. below).
NURSE
This vowel has quite a wide range of realisations. It ranges from [], [], [], [],
[
] to [a], however, [] or [] are the most common realisations. The latter can
be seen by the way English loans containing the NURSE vowel have been nativ-
ised into Fiji Hindi, e.g. keTin [k"in] < ‘curtain’, šet [t] < ‘shirt’ (from Siegel
1991).
FACE
The FACE diphthong is most often realised by Indo-Fijian speakers as a monoph-
thong – a lengthened [e], e.g. day > [de], occupation > [çkupe
n]. Note also
Fiji Hindi’s esTet [

s"et] < estate, kek [kek] < cake, pleT [ple"] < plate (Siegel
1991). For those speakers who articulate FACE as a diphthong, the second target [i]
is generally only weakly articulated.
GOAT
This diphthong is also most generally realised as a monophthong, namely a half
long [o], and when it does have a second target, [u], this is also weakly articulated.
PRICE
Unlike the previous two items, the vocalic target of PRICE is realised by most
Indo-Fijian speakers of Pure Fiji English almost like a diphthong. However, the
lingual glide from its first to second target tends to be more restricted (i.e. shorter)
than what is generally heard in standard metropolitan Englishes. The first target is
largely realised as a retracted and lowered [] which is followed by a lingual glide
which tends not to go much further than a slightly raised [e].
CHOICE
The vowel in this word is also articulated as a diphthong by most speakers; how-
ever, the glide between the two targets tends to be less constrained than for PRICE,
and is strongly articulated. The starting point for CHOICE is a rather advanced [ç],
followed by a glide all the way up to a quite forcefully articulated [i].
MOUTH
As with the PRICE diphthong, MOUTH also has quite a restricted glide to the second
target. The starting point is usually an extra short and considerably retracted [a].
The glide up to the second target remains relatively flat, moving towards quite a
strongly articulated [ç].
NEAR, SQUARE and CURE

The centring diphthongs found in standard metropolitan English NEAR, SQUARE
and CURE are all realised as strongly articulated falling diphthongs. The second
target is generally always an extra short but prominent []. The first target of NEAR
is [], that of SQUARE a retracted [], and that of CURE tends to be a [ ].
happY
Like for Fijian speakers of Pure Fiji English, the final vowel of happY is an extra
short, retracted and lowered [i]. It also receives more stress than in Standard Eng-
lish.
lettER
The final syllable of lettER also receives more stress than in Standard English, and
is most usually realised as an advanced and extra short [].
horsES
For most speakers this vowel tends to be unstressed and is realised as a schwa.
commA (VISA)
The most usual articulation of the commA vowel is a retracted and extra short [a].
Once again, the vowel is given more stress than in Standard English.
Table 2 provides a summary of the most common phonetic realisations of the vow-
els of Pure Fiji English as articulated by Indo-Fijians.
Table 2. Phonetic realisations of Pure Fiji English vowels (Indo-Fijian speakers) – sum-
mary
Lexical set Pure Fiji English

(Indo-Fijian speakers)
KIT (FIT) i
DRESS
TRAP (BACK)
LOT (POT) ç( ~ ç
STRUT (CUT) a( ~ a ~
FOOT u
BATH (GRASS) a( ~ a
CLOTH (OFF) ç
NURSE ~ ~ ~ ~
~ a
FLEECE (REEF) i ~ i
FACE e ~ ei
PALM a ~ a
THOUGHT ç( ~ ç
GOAT o ~ ou
GOOSE (LOOSE) u ~ u
PRICE e
CHOICE çI
MOUTH a(ç
Table 2. (continued) Phonetic realisations of Pure Fiji English vowels (Indo-Fijian

speakers) – summary
Lexical set Pure Fiji English

(Indo-Fijian speakers)
NEAR 7
SQUARE 7
START a( ~ a
NORTH ç ~ ç
FORCE ç ~ ç
CURE 7
happY i7
lettER 7
horsES
commA (VISA) a
The vowel phonemes of Pure Indo-Fijian Fiji English and their most common
phonetic realisations are shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8. The vowel phonemes of Pure Indo-Fijian Fiji English and their common pho-
netic realisations
3.3. Lexical stress

The status and even the existence of stress in Hindi are controversial. Many au-
thors claim that Hindi does not have stress, while most of those who argue that it
does agree that stress is not phonemic and that it is phonetically weaker than in
English. Most of these claims are based on impressions rather than empirical data,
but Ohala’s acoustic study (1986) shows that stress, though not phonemic, does
have phonetic correlates (essentially pitch). Since lexical stress in Hindi normally
seems to fall on the penultimate syllable, placement of lexical stress in English
polysyllabic words is one of the most conspicuous characteristics of Indo-Fijian

English (and also Indian English). Lexical stress patterns include:
1. The assignment of primary stress to the initial syllable of words such as develop >
[*dv
l
p], constrict > [*kçn+strik], event > [*i+vnt], etc., is extremely common.
2. Other polysyllabic words that receive irregular stress assignment may in some
cases be due to a failure to realise the variation in stress of related words, e.g.
necessary > [n
*ss(
)ri], perhaps following the stress pattern of the noun
necéssity.
3. As seen above, the unstressed vowels of Standard English happY, lettER and
commA are usually given more stress than in Standard English, but still less
stress than the first syllable.
3.4. Syntactic stress

Hindi is a so-called syllable-timed language unlike Standard English which is
stress-timed. Hindi (including Fiji Hindi) does not have a strong syntactic stress
pattern, at least not to the extent that unstressed syllables are markedly reduced or
hurried as they are in English. The total duration of the utterance in Hindi is depen-
dent more on the number of syllables it contains than on the number and position
of stressed syllables, as it is in English. In Hindi, the tendency to raise pitch rather
than increase loudness to indicate emphasis also contributes to this quality. Words
that are normally accented in unmarked Standard English sentences are often left
unaccented in the English of Indo-Fijians and vice versa.
3.5. Intonation
The intonation contours of the Pure Fiji English of Indo-Fijians are very different
from those of Indian English. However, the rising terminal intonation of English
‘yes/no’ questions which is reserved for expressions of surprise in Hindi are carried
over into Indo-Fijian English. The characteristic Indo-Fijian interrogative pattern,
in which the end of a ‘yes/no’ question is marked by a rise followed by a fall in
pitch (like that of Pure Fiji English of Fijian speakers), is quite unlike the Standard
English norm. This sometimes leads to misunderstanding between speakers of
Standard English and Pure Fiji English, particularly in polite requests, when the
requestor gives the impression that a positive reply is expected.
4. Some shared phonological features
Apart from the phonological similarities between the Fijian and Indo-Fijian
varieties of Pure Fiji English as outlined above, there are a number of other
shared phonological features. We describe the three most distinct ones here,
all of which are characteristic of L2 English. Although the first two character-
istics are grammatical features (see also Mugler and Tent, other volume) they
seem to have phonological causes. Both involve the absence of inflectional suf-
fixes, which appears to be the result of consonant cluster reduction, also noted
above.
4.1. Absence of {-ed}

The absence of the written and spoken {-ed} suffix, whether articulated as [t], [d]
or [
d], in past tense forms and participial adjectives is very common in all variet-
ies of Pure Fiji English. Some examples from Tent’s (2000) corpus of spoken Fiji
English include:
(7) a. Would you like some ice water?
b. You can buy dry fish at the market.
c. Many people in the Pacific eat tin fish.
d. This hotel doesn’t have aircondition rooms.
e. This office is close for the day.
Some examples of pronunciation spellings are given in (8). Interestingly, many
involve the {-ed} suffix following a voiceless consonant which normally results
in assimilation, with a realisation as [t]. The adjoining of two voiceless consonants
may further make the perception of the suffix more difficult.
(8) a. “He is bleeding internally. Its [sic] most probably a case of an
aggravated ulcer in its advance stage,” he [a doctor] said. (The Daily
Post, 10/4/1996)
b. A few clap down [i.e. ‘clapped out’] diggers barely able to move have
been hired and can be seen digging away at penal rate [sic] working
full swing during the weekends. (Sunday Post, 30/11/1997)
c. Experience Signwriters to start immediately at Vanua Signs Limited.
Phone 381553 for interview. (Positions Vacant column, The Fiji Times,
19/7/1994)
d. River sand, crush metal and garden soil we deliver Phone 362663
Jalil (For Sale column, The Fiji Times, 19/5/1994, 1/6/1994, 6/7/1994,
7/7/1994, 10/9/1994)
e. The case was heard behind close doors (Daily Post, 15/10/1999)
It is worth mentioning that the addition of the {-ed} suffix to adjectives is also
quite common, e.g. I am the mother of three teenaged daughters. It seems only to
be a feature of written English, frequently seen with the adjective mature, often
seen in positions vacant advertisements in the local tabloids:
(9) a. Housegirl required urgently, be matured, to baby sit and do

housework. Have to be good with children. Phone Ferin 386348.
(Positions Vacant column, Fiji Times, 10/9/1994)
b. The police are matured people and we do not expect such an order
against them. (From a Fijian university student’s written answer in a
test, 9/8/1994)
The following example shows both the absence and addition of the {-ed} suffix in
adjoining words:
(10) An Experience matured live in housegirl required. [...] (Positions Vacant
column, The Fiji Times, 2/12/1994).
Cases of {-ed} addition are either malapropisms or instances of hypercorrection
(especially since this addition seems to manifest itself predominantly in writing or
print), a common phenomenon in L2 English. Once again, more research needs to
be conducted to unravel exactly what is going on here.
4.2. Absence of {-s}

The absence of the third person singular present tense verb suffix and the {-s}
plural morpheme (both in writing and speech) are as ubiquitous in Fiji English as
in most other L2 varieties of English. It could be argued that printed examples are
merely misprints, were it not for the fact that the feature is so common in speech
and so regularly seen in writing and print. Some examples include:
(11) a. Price of Used Equipment depend mainly on size, age, hours Used [sic]
and actual condition of the units. (The Daily Post, 10/5/1994)
b. The money in grog keep the wheels of economy [sic] rolling. (Letters
to the Editor, The Daily Post, 8/8/1994)
4.3. Absence of yod in non-primary stressed /Cju/ syllables

The deletion of the palatal glide or approximant [j] (commonly referred to as
“yod”) in primary stressed /Cju/ syllables is found in varying degrees in the “inner
circle” Englishes (Kachru 1985: 12) and is generally the result of various histori-
cal processes. Most of these varieties (e.g. Cockney, Estuary, General American,
Australian, New Zealand, South African English etc.) occupy positions between
that of conservative Received Pronunciation, which has the least amount of yod-
deletion, and East Anglian English, which deletes yod in all phonological environ-
ments (Wells 1982). The most common type of yod-deletion is found after alveo-
lars and dentals, e.g. in General American English (Wells 1982) and in Cockney
(Wells 1982). In these two varieties, the deletion only occurs after alveolars and
dentals – not after labials or velars. Therefore, items such as music and cute are
never realised as *[muzik] or *[kut]. With the exception of East Anglian English,
yod-deletion in non-primary stressed syllables (no matter what the preceding con-
sonant) is not usually found in any “inner circle” variety.
With the exception of those lexical items in which yod has been historically de-
leted in most varieties of English (e.g. rude, blue), another type of yod-deletion
occurs in Fiji English and is probably the most prominent phonological feature
across the whole spectrum of its speakers. It involves the absence of yod in non-
primary stressed syllables, not only after alveolars and dentals (with no evidence of
[tj] > [t] or [dj] > [d] coalescence), but also after labials and velars, e.g. regular >
[*rgula], stimulate > [*stimulet], annual > [*nul], situation > [situ*en], popular
> [*pçpula], educate > [*duket], fabulous > [*fbul
s], occupation > [çku*pen].
Tent (2001) conducted a detailed quantitative analysis of this phenomenon and
found that although it is dynamic and complex, the absence of yod in non-primary
stressed /Cju/ syllables was primarily a characteristic of L2 Fiji English. However,
it had gradually evolved into a phonological shibboleth of many, if not most, L1
Fiji English speakers. The distinct clines in yodless pronunciation in terms of age,
gender and level of education indicate that a change is in progress. The younger
the speaker is, the more yodless is the pronunciation, while the more educated
the speaker is, the more yod is used (or retained) in this particular phonological
environment.
There is also a tendency for females to favour a yod pronunciation, which con-
curs with the findings of most other social dialect studies which report that women
tend to use a more standard or prestige pronunciation. The tendency for males
to favour yodless pronunciations, especially the younger ones, suggests that the
phenomenon is a marker of covert prestige, maleness, and group identity (i.e. be-
ing speakers of Fiji English). The desire to identify with the local community is
strong and is manifested linguistically. The reasons for the retention of yodless
/Cju/ syllables, and indeed its increase among young Fiji English speakers, may
well be because its speakers do not wish to alienate themselves from those within
their own speech community.
Educated speakers in Tent’s study also have yodless /Cju/ syllables, but to a
lesser extent. This suggests that these speakers may be more linguistically sensitive
and aspire to speak Modified Fiji English. More empirically based sociolinguistic
research in this area is required to determine how strongly pressure to conform to
the local norm is felt by the various sub-groups of Fiji English speakers, and to what
degree this depends on how closely enmeshed the speaker is in the community.
On the other hand, some speakers realise blew as [bliu] and flew as [fliu]. For
those speakers, blue and blew, and flu and flew are homophonous. This yod inser-
tion may be more common among Indo-Fijians, but it is also present in the pro-
nunciation of some Fijians. It may be an over-generalisation of the pronunciation
of orthographic <-ew> in general (e.g. few [fju], new [nju]), or more specifically
in the past tense of strong verbs (e.g. knew [nju]). Some informants seem to think
that this is a teacher-induced error. These observations are, however, based on data
from only about thirty informants, and confirmation would require more system-
atic empirical study.
5. Conclusion
The descriptions we have given of Fijian and Indo-Fijian Fiji English, including
the pervasive absence of yod, illustrate the complexity and multifariousness of
Fiji English phonology. Since the variety is overwhelmingly an L2 English, many
of its phonological features are the result of phonological transfer from the first
languages involved. Although this makes it no less interesting than any L1 variety
of English, it does make it rather more difficult to analyse and characterise (at
least from a phonological perspective). Unlike L1 varieties of English, L2 variet-
ies, such as Fiji English, have the added variable of degree of competence: wide
variation in competence in the language results in great differences in pronuncia-
tion.
A description and analysis of the phonology of Fiji English should not merely
focus on the phonology of its L1 speakers, even though this would certainly be
much more straightforward. To do so would present only a very small aspect of the
complete phonological picture. What is needed are careful and detailed descrip-
tions of each speech community’s variety of Fiji English. This has been achieved
by Tent (2001) for a single variable, absence of yod, but the overall task is far
more complex, and the pronunciation of more phonological variables needs to be
empirically investigated.
Apart from the L2 phonological features outlined above, Fiji English has several
features that are also attested in English-based pidgins/creoles and basilectal/ca-
sual register native Englishes, some of which include:
– the common reduction of the {-ing} morpheme to [n],

– the reduction of final consonant clusters, especially with /-Ct/ and /-Cd/ clus-
ters,
– the metathesis of clusters such as [-sk-] as in ask, and
– the insertion of epenthetic vowel in final /-lC/ clusters, e.g. Burns Philp > [filp],
film > [filam], milk > [milik]
We have argued that Fiji English is not a homogeneous variety but a group of
co-existent systems or a series of continua. The phonological sketches we have
presented above bear this out, but also show the need for a greater amount of de-
tailed research and analysis for each system. What we have attempted to do here
is lay the foundation for such studies by presenting an overview of Fiji English
phonology. Future sociolinguistic studies concerning other linguistic features will

also show to what extent our interpretations are well-founded.
* We are much indebted to all our informants, in particular those who kindly agreed to
be recorded, and many of the students enrolled in LL311 (Varieties of English) at the
University of the South Pacific in Semester 1, 2003. We are also grateful to Maraia
Lesuma and Ravi Nair for helping with the recordings, David Blair for helping with the
phonetic transcriptions, and to Paul Geraghty for his valuable comments. Finally, we
would like to thank Kate Burridge and Bernd Kortmann for their suggestions to improve
our two papers. Errors and shortcomings are, of course, our own.
Selected references
ROM.
Arms, Fr. David G.

1998 Tendencies in Fiji Hindi. In: Jan Tent and France Mugler (eds), SICOL:
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics,
Volume I: Language Contact, 1–10. (Pacific Linguistics C 141.) Canberra:
Pacific Linguistics.
Bhatia, Tej
1995 Colloquial Hindi. London/New York: Motilal Banarsidass.
Fox, Julian
2003 English in Fiji: defining the lect: a sketch grammar of Pure Fiji English. M.A.
thesis, Department of Literature and Language, University of the South
Pacific, Suva.
Geraghty, Paul
1975 Fijian and English in schools. Outpost 3: 20−23.
1977 Fiji pidgin and bilingual education. Fiji English Teachers Journal 12: 2−8.
1983 The History of the Fijian Languages. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
1984 Language policy in Fiji and Rotuma. In: George B. Milner, David G. Arms
and Paul Geraghty (eds.), Duivosavosa: Fiji’s Languages: Their Use and
Their Future, 32–84. (Fiji Museum Bulletin No. 8.) Suva: Fiji Museum.
1997 The ethnic basis of society in Fiji. In: Brij V. Lal and Tomasi R. Vakatora
(eds.), Fiji Constitution Review Commission Research Papers, Volume 1: Fiji
in Transition, 1–23. Suva: University of the South Pacific.
Hobbs, Susan
1985 Fiji Hindi – English, English – Fiji Hindi Dictionary. Fiji: Ministry of
Education.
Kachru, Braj B.
1985 Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism in the English language in
the outer circle. In: Randolf Quirk and Henry G. Widdowson (eds.), English
in the World, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kelly, Sr. Francis

1975 The English spoken colloquially by a group of adolescents in Suva. Fiji
English Teachers Journal 11: 19−43.
Moag, Rodney F.
1977 Fiji Hindi: A Basic Course and Reference Grammar. Canberra: Australian
National University Press.
1979 Linguistic adaptations of the Fiji Indians. In: Vijay Mishra (ed.), Rama’s
Banishment, 112–138. Auckland: Heinemann Educational Books.
Moag, Rodney F. and Louisa B. Moag
1977 English in Fiji, some perspectives and the need for language planning. Fiji
English Teachers Journal 13: 2−26.
Ohala, Manjari
1986 A search for the phonetic correlates of Hindi stress. In: Bhadriraju Krishnamurti
(ed.), South Asian Languages: Structure, Convergence and Diglossia, 81–92.
Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Schütz, Albert
1985 The Fijian Language. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
1999 Fijian accent. Oceanic Linguistics 38: 139–151.
Siegel, Jeff
1975 Fiji Hindustani. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 7: 127–
144.
1986 Pidgin English in Fiji: a sociolinguistic history. Pacific Studies 9: 53−106.
1987 Language Contact in a Plantation Environment: A Sociolinguistic History of
Fiji. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1989 English in Fiji. World Englishes 8: 47−58.
1991 Variation in Fiji English. In: Cheshire (ed.), 664−674.
Tent, Jan
2000 The dynamics of Fiji English: a study of its use, users and features. Ph.D.
dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Otago, Dunedin.
2001 Yod deletion in Fiji English: phonological shibboleth or L2 English? Language
Variation and Change 13: 161−191.
Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English: phonetics and
phonology
John Ingram and Peter Mühlhäusler
1. Introduction
1.1. What is Norfuk?
The label ‘Variety of English’, when applied to the ways of speaking of the de-
scendants of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian spouses, is somewhat prob-
lematic, and the relationship of these to other varieties featuring in this volume
is complex. Earlier judgments on the linguistic nature of the language (surveyed
by Mühlhäusler 1998) vary considerably and include characterisations such as
dialect of English, dialect of Beach-la-Mar, mixed language, patois, cant, pidgin
and creole. A similar range of labels is encountered among present-day speakers,
and there is no agreement among them whether the variety spoken on Pitcairn
Island and Norfolk Island are varieties of English, one separate language, or two
separate languages. It appears that the wish to distinguish Pitkern from Norfuk as
two separate named languages is growing and we have conformed to this wish. We
have also opted to concentrate on the varieties spoken on Norfolk Island, as this
is where the vast majority of present-day speakers reside (about 900 as against
50 on Pitcairn) and Norfolk is where Mühlhäusler has conducted fieldwork over
several years. Sociopolitical problems make fieldwork on Pitcairn impractical at
the moment.
The difficulties experienced in obtaining an adequate characterisation of Norfuk
result from a number of factors.
(a) very patchy documentation
(b) Norfuk is not a focused language (see LePage and Tabouret-Keller 1985),
where all community members agree on norms and standards, and what is
called Norfuk ranges from forms that are mutually unintelligible with English,
to others that differ only by a few stereotypical expressions.
(c) Both Pitkern and Norfuk have always been spoken side by side acrolectal
varieties of English (British and Australian on Norfolk, British and American
on Pitcairn). On Norfolk, standard British English until recently served as the
role-model for educated islanders, and “murdering the King” was the local
expression for speaking Norfuk. It is noted that some families spoke English
only, whereas in other families, Norfuk was the preferred language.
Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English: phonetics and phonology 781
(d) Code mixing is pervasive; there are virtually no examples, even from older
conservative speakers, which do not involve code-switching.
(e) Norfuk has been an esoteric language, not readily accessible to outsiders. It
has also been a stigmatised language with a long history of persecution by the
education system.
At present, the Norfolk Islanders are in the process of deciding on questions such
as language name, lexical and grammatical norms, writing system and social role.
To turn a large number of individual ways of speaking into a language in the
sense of a modern standard language is a difficult technical and political process
which leaves much room for conflict. It would seem very unwise for an outsider
to tell people what their language is, or what it should be. We have refrained from
privileging any of the suggested orthographies, word-choices, word-meanings or
grammatical structures. Normalising the data at this point in the history of the lan-
guage could do a great deal of damage and the reader is asked to forgive instances
of inconsistency and vagueness on certain points.
1.2. Geographical information

Pitcairn Island is situated in an isolated part of the Central South Pacific Ocean
(24° 01’S x 130° 06’W), the distance from New Zealand from where it is admin-
istered being greater than that between Sweden and India. Its landmass is less than
five square kilometres and its present population around 50, with a possibility that
it will be abandoned.
Norfolk Island is located 1,575 kilometres east of Australia in the South Pacific
Ocean (24° 05’S x 167° 59E). It occupies an area of 34.6 square kilometres and
has a permanent population of about 2,600. It is visited by about 30,000 tourists
per annum, with projected numbers exceeding 50,000 in the near future.
1.3. Sociohistorical background

What has been written about the social history of the language again comprises
quite a few varying accounts, with certain key factors such as the early presence of
a West-Indian English speaker or the impact of the Melanesian Mission generally
not being discussed (Mühlhäusler 2002). The story of the mutiny on the Bounty
has been popularised by numerous novels, plays and films, and Pitcairn Island,
where the Bounty mutineers settled in 1792, has come to stand as a metaphor
for a South Sea Utopia. When nine British sailors, twelve Tahitian and Tubudian
women and six Tahitian men arrived on Pitcairn, the island was uninhabited.
By 1800, following a period of violence, John Adams was the sole survivor
with 10 women and 23 children. When he died in 1829 the island had become a
model Christian community of about 80. Because of food and water shortages,
782 John Ingram and Peter Mühlhäusler
Pitcairn Islanders were removed to Tahiti in 1821, but returned to the island in the
same year. In 1839 the population had grown to 100, by 1850 it had reached 156.
As fishstocks became scarce and the island degraded, in 1853 the inhabitants so-
licited the aid of the British Government to transfer them to another island which
had become uninhabited, Norfolk. In 1856 all 194 Pitcairn Islanders settled on
Norfolk, but a number of families returned to Pitcairn shortly afterwards.
Norfolk Island was discovered by Captain Cook in 1779 and because of its
ample natural resources and isolated position was made a British Penal Colony
in 1877. The first penal settlement was abandoned in 1814, but a second penal
settlement was built in 1825 at a location for the “extremist punishment short of
death” (Hoare 1982: 35) and “a cesspool of sodomy, massacre and exploitation”
(Christian 1982: 12).
Following much criticism, the settlement was closed down in 1854. The third
settlement is that by the Pitcairners who arrived in 1856 and were given title to
about 1/4 of the total land area rather than the entire island as they had been led
to believe. One reason for this is that the Melanesian mission, operating from
Auckland, also had designs on Norfolk, and they were granted about 400 hectares
of land in 1867. A boarding school catering for about two hundred students from
different parts of Melanesia was set up and remained in operation until 1920.
Both islands thus provide laboratory conditions to study linguistic processes
such as language contact, dialect mixing, and languages in competition. Different
linguists have tended to concentrate on only one of these, as key factor, ignoring
that all of them were important at some point in the history of Pitkern and Norfuk,
plus other factors such as deliberate creation of language.
Ross and Moverley (1964) characterise what they called Pitcairnese as the out-
come of language mixing, and provide numerous details about Tahitian lexicon
and grammar, as well as details on dialect features. They provide details on the
provenance and likely dialect affiliation of the mutineers (1964: 49, 137). As most
men were killed in the first years of settlement, only the following are likely to
have influenced the emerging language: Matthew Quintal (Cornishman), Wil-
liam McKoy (Scotsman), Edward Young (St. Kitts, West Indies), and John Ad-
ams (Cockney). The two principal linguistic socialisers for the first generation of
children born on Pitcairn were Young and Adams. Young contributed a number of
St. Kitts pronunciations and lexemes, [l] for [r] in words such as stole ‘story’, klai
‘cry’, and morga ‘thin’. John Adams created the social conditions in which stan-
dard acrolectal English against all demographic odds could prevail as the domi-
nant language of the community.
There is ample evidence that the Tahitians were not regarded as full human
beings by the white members of the community and that racism was strong. This
is reflected, for instance, in the absence of place-names remembering the non-Eu-
ropean settlers. To date, no Tahitian woman is thus remembered by a place-name
on either Pitcairn or Norfolk Island, though there now is a revaluation and appre-
ciation of the Tahitian contribution and the word formaadha ‘foremother’ is being
used in modern Norfuk.
Tahitian dress, language and eventually diet were gradually suppressed and giv-
en up, and policies put in place that were based on British and American models.
Of particular importance has been the education system, which has tended to be in
the hands of outsiders (Englishmen, American Seventh Day Adventist missionar-
ies, and finally New Zealanders on Pitcairn Island; first British and then Australian
teachers on Norfolk). Evidence from language use and attitudes in the Norfolk
Education System suggests that from about 1900, language became a major issue
and generations of teachers were actively involved in marginalising, suppressing
and ridiculing the Norfuk Language. Children who spoke it were punished, and
a sense of shame remains when older islanders speak the language in front of
outsiders. More positive attitudes towards Norfuk date from the late 1980s, and in
the late 1990s Norfuk language was formally introduced into the school as part of
Norfolk Studies. There are now plans to teach Norfuk Language from Preschool
to Year 10.
The ambivalent attitudes towards Norfuk are reflected in two areas of language
mixing. First, it is remarkable that words of Tahitian origin tend to be predominant
in marked domains of language: taboo words, negative characterisations, undesir-
able and unnatural phenomena and properties. Examples include: eeyulla ‘ado-
lescent, immature, or not dry behind the ears’; gari ‘accumulation of dirt, dust,
grime, grease, etc.’; hoopaye ‘mucous secreted in the nose’; howa-howa ‘to soil
one’s pants from a bowel movement, have diarrhoea’; hullo (1) ‘a person of no
consequence’, (2) ‘having nothing of any value; dirt poor’; iti ‘any of the wasting
diseases but mainly referring to tuberculosis’; iwi ‘stunted, undersized’; laha (also
lu-hu) ‘dandruff’; loosah ‘menses, menstruation’; maioe ‘given to whimpering or
crying a lot, like a child, but not necessarily a child’; nanu ‘jealous’; pontoo ‘un-
kempt, scruffy’; po-o ‘barren or unfertile soil’; tarpou ‘stains on the hands caused
from peeling some fruits and vegetables’; tinai (1) ‘to gaze at with envy’, (2) ‘an
avaricious person’; toohi ‘to curse, blaspheme, or swear’; uuaa ‘sitting ungra-
ciously’; uma-oola ‘awkward, ungainly, clumsy’.
Some of these words may have originated in the nursery context rather than
being indices of negative racial attitudes, but the overwhelming impression is that
Tahitian words are the semantically marked forms: 98% of the forms in the 100-
word standard Swadesh list are of English origin (the exception being aklan ‘we’
and the form lieg which stands for ‘foot’ and ‘leg’) and only about 5% of all words
come from sources other than English (Tahitian, St. Kitts, Melanesian Pidgin Eng-
lish).
A second remarkable property is that words of English, Tahitian and other lan-
guages do not differ, as they do in most contact languages, in their susceptibility to
morphosyntactic rules, suggesting a full integration of the two languages.
(1) progressive marker -en

a. Yu tuhien.
‘You are swearing’.
b.. Mais aanti kuken f kresmes.
‘My aunt is cooking for Christmas’.
(2) stages of comparison

a. agli – aglia – aglies
‘ugly – uglier – ugliest’
b. pili – pilia – pilies
‘sticky – stickier – stickiest’
c. meyameya – mayameyara – meyameyares
‘withered – more withered – most withered’
d. morga – morgara – morgares
‘thin – thinner – thinnest’
The single most important question regarding Pitkern/Norfuk remains its linguis-
tic nature. In spite of considerable interest from dialectologists, creolists and re-
searchers into language contact phenomena, most conclusions have been presented
on the basis of very sketchy evidence and second-hand information, and the task
to provide an observationally adequate account of the development and present-
day use of Pitkern/Norfuk is far from completed. A particular obstacle has been
the assumption that one is dealing with a single monolithic phenomenon, whereas
in fact there is strong evidence for historical discontinuities, extensive idiolectal
variation and a wide range of proficiencies.
For instance, the very few samples of Pitkern from the 1820s bear relatively
little similarity to present-day varieties. Captain Raine (1824: 37) recorded the fol-
lowing observations about the low level of literacy and simplicity of lifestyle:
In their conversation they were always anxious for information on the Scriptures, and
expressed their sorrow that they did not understand all they read. One of them in talking
with the Doctor showed such a knowledge of the Scriptures as is worthy of remark,
particularly as it evinced their simplicity and harmlessness; the subject was a quarrelling,
on which he said, ‘Suppose one man strike me, I no strike again, for the Book says,
suppose one strike you on one side, turn the other to him; suppose he bad man strike me I
no strike him, because no good that; suppose he kill me, he can’t kill the soul – he no can
grasp that, that go to God, much better place than here.’ At another time, pointing to all the
scene around him, and to the Heavens, he said, ‘God make all these, sun, moon, and stars
and’ he added, with surprise, ‘the book say some people live who not know who made
these!’ This appeared to him a great sin. They all of them frequently said, ‘if they no pray
to God they grow wicked, and then God have nothing to do with the wicked, you know’.
Differences with present-day varieties in the areas of word order, use of relativis-
ers and tags are evident. In common with present-day Norfuk are negation, condi-
tional clauses and code mixing.
There probably never was a totally homogeneous speech community in the

sense that every member believed they were speaking a language other than Eng-
lish, or in the sense of sharing the same linguistic role models, and there are still
differences in lexical choice and pronunciation among different families. The lan-
guage emerged in the tension between Tahitians and British, Islanders and Outsid-
ers, Royalists and Independence Supporters. Some of the unique factors in the
history of the language include:
(a) Pitcairn Island was the first English-speaking territory with compulsory litera-
cy (from the 1820s). John Adams, towards the end of his life, invited English
teachers to the island who not only ran the education system, but played a full
part in many aspects of community life and were role models for community
members. Proficiency in British Standard English has been held in high regard
since their arrival. For speakers under the age of 30, Australian English has
become the most widely accepted model.
(b) Literacy, for a significant part of its history, was strongly associated with re-
ligion, the Bible and religious texts being the predominant reading materials,
and Biblical language an important model. Children were exposed to Biblical
English from early childhood and it seems unlikely that any child was allowed
to grow up without a thorough knowledge of this variety. Literate forms of
Tahitian were not employed by the Pitcairners, and Pitkern/Norfuk was never
used for religious writings or discourses.
(c) Pitkern/Norfuk is not a language in which all its speakers’ needs can be ex-
pressed. It has a very limited vocabulary, about 1500 words (Eira, Magdalena
and Mühlhäusler 2002), and it has not been used for public and high functions
until very recently. However, since about 1990 the visibility of Norfuk has
increased significantly. It features on the signage of the National Parks, the
airport and departure forms, the names of businesses e.g. Nuffka Apartments
‘Kingfisher or Norfolker’, Wetls Daun A’Taun ‘victuals down in Kingston
Town’ and house names Dii el duu ‘able to do, make do’, Mais hoem and in
local songs.
(d) The extent to which Pitkern/Norfuk was socially institutionalised appears to
vary with political circumstances and the desire of the population to express a
separate identity. Greater use of Pitkern/Norfuk and concomitant loss of profi-
ciency in English appear to coincide with the wish to distinguish oneself from
outsiders. Laycock (1989) suggested that Pitkern/Norfuk came into being as
a cant, in 1836, when the entire Pitcairn community was briefly resettled in
Tahiti and found themselves at odds with the moral laxness which prevailed
there at the time. However, the deliberate distancing from acrolectal English is
documented even before the mutiny, when sailors mixed Tahitian expressions
with English in order to taunt their unpopular captain.
The wish not to be Australian has been a strong motif in maintaining a separate
form of speech on Norfolk Island, and the current conflict between Pitcairn Island-
ers and Britain (over a matter of police investigation) may trigger off a revival of
the Pitcairn variety. Pitkern/Norfuk thus can be studied as an indicator of changing
perceptions of identity. The situation on Norfolk Island today is reminiscent of
Labov’s observations on Martha’s Vineyard (1972b), where non-standard forms
have become reactivated by members of the younger generation opposed to mass
tourism from the mainland. The tendency of past researchers to regard the Norfolk
Island language from a purely structural perspective must be regarded as problem-
atic, as structural properties cannot easily be separated from sociohistorical forces.
If anything, it is the indexical rather than the structural and referential properties of
Pitkern/Norfuk that lend this language its special character. As regards deviations
from standard English, no single cause or explanation seems sufficient. Unsurpris-
ingly, a number of features from older, eighteenth-century English are retained,
though contemporary varieties of British, New Zealand, Australian and American
English are influencing the language today.
The fact that the language developed on a remote island has led observers to
believe that it developed in isolation. The exact opposite appears to be the case,
however. Apart from a brief period before 1810, outside visitors were a very com-
mon phenomenon on Pitcairn (Pitcairn Island was one of the main ports of call in
the Pacific until the arrival of modern intercontinental air traffic). Outsiders (not
descended from the mutineers) form a significant part of both communities. In-
termarriage is common, and both communities were actively involved in whaling,
mission work and travelled for education and health purposes. Some of the gen-
eralisations about Island Creoles (Chaudenson 1998) apply to Pitkern and Norfuk
as well.
The presence of a number of creole features (Harrison 1972: 223; Romaine
1988: 65) in Pitkern/Norfuk has been a source of confusion as researchers have
failed to distinguish between creolisation in situ and the diffusion of creole fea-
tures from St. Kitts (typologically Pitkern/Norfuk is much closer to the Atlantic
Creoles than the Pacific ones, as demonstrated by Baker 1999: 315–364). Little
work has been done on the influence of Pidgin English, which was widely used in
the whaling industry and also by the Melanesian islanders on Norfolk. There were
two possible time frames which favoured creolisation. One between about 1795
and 1815, on Pitcairn Island, and two in some of the more remote parts of Norfolk
Island where a few families appear to have used predominantly Pitkern/Norfuk.
One of the crucial bits of evidence, informal speech of young children at these
dates, is missing. The children that we have observed on Norfolk Island in recent
years are dominant speakers of English. Flint and Harrison’s data suggest that
there was a change from Norfuk to English being the dominant language of the
young generation in the 1950s.
2. Norfuk speech
Reliable observational evidence on Norfuk speech and its changing characteristics

are scarce. By far and away the best source of evidence – a window on Norfuk ver-
nacular – at a time when the language was more actively used in the community,
is provided by a set of 17 tape-recorded dialogues obtained by Elwyn Flint on a
field trip to Norfolk Island in 1957. Elwyn Flint was a linguist at the University
of Queensland from the 1950s up to the early 1970s. Flint had an abiding inter-
est in peripheral varieties of English and language contact situations. He was a
diligent collector of speech recordings from diverse communities throughout rural
Queensland. Around the time when Flint was conducting his field work, Norfolk
Island was coming under the influence of a second wave of massive external in-
fluence, primarily from Australian and New Zealand English. Subsequent work
by Harrison and Laycock in the 1970s indicates that the stable diglossia that per-
tained up until Flint’s investigations no longer exists. Flint himself noted its loss,
which is apparent from even cursory examination of the 17 recorded dialogues.
The following sketch represents an attempt to isolate some salient phonetic and
phonological characteristics of Norfuk vernacular as it was in 1957, and to docu-
ment some of the changes which have taken place up to the present day. The analy-
sis is based on a finite corpus of data (the 17 dialogues: approximately 40 minutes
of continuous recorded speech), supplemented by keyword lists of seven present-
day speakers of Norfuk vernacular. From this data base, it is possible to: a) convey
in some detail the flavour of Norfuk phonetics, b) to lay a basis for further investi-
gation into the evolution of Pitcairn-Norfuk Creole(s), c) to provide something of
a yardstick for evaluating the current state of sociolinguistic variation on Norfolk
Island today and d) to provide guidelines for those concerned with language revival
as to the properties of ‘authentic’ Norfuk vernacular as it was spoken some two
generations previous to the present time. Clearly, it is not possible on this data base
to reconstruct a comprehensive picture of the phonology of Norfuk. An attempt
to do so for present-day Norfuk would probably be misconceived. Norfuk today
may constitute a collection of individual speech registers that are parasitic upon the
variety of standard Norfolk English which is habitually used in the daily discourse
of Norfolk Islanders, outside of the circumscribed contexts in which they use the
Norfuk register. Norfuk, as described here, represents a prominent feature in the
topography of spoken language variation in Norfolk Island, but its linguistic signifi-
cance needs to be assessed within a broader sociolinguistic context, the outlines of
which are described elsewhere and are the subject of on-going research.
Two sets of speech recordings form the basis of the present analysis: (i) a selec-
tion from the Flint dialogues recorded in 1957 and (ii) an elicitation of a set of
citation forms based on a key word list for comparison of English dialects (Wells
1982; Foulkes and Dougherty 1999) provided by seven regular speakers of Norfuk
recorded in November 2002.
2.1. The Flint recordings

The 17 tape recorded dialogues were obtained under conditions stimulating cus-
tomary Norfuk usage, i.e. two or sometimes more informants, with no interviewer
present, engaged in a semi-spontaneous conversation on topics that would be ex-
pected to elicit Norfuk vernacular usage. The dialogues were partly scripted, but
largely spontaneous. The conversations obtained were, for the most part, natural-
sounding, expressive, and seemingly unselfconscious.
Flint produced two transcriptions of each dialogue with the assistance of the
informants, directly following the recording session: an H(igh register) form, Eng-
lish translation, and a broad phonetic transcription of the actual speech in the
Norfuk L(ow register) form. The phonetic transcription was obviously allophonic,
rather than phonemic, but it was informed by Flint’s extensive knowledge of Nor-
folk Island and Pitcairn vernaculars.
Some analysis of the material had been undertaken and reported previously
(Flint 1961), and we made use of this in selecting the materials on which the pres-
ent paper is based. Flint was interested in the relative impact upon intelligibility, of
phonological, lexical and syntactic features of the Norfuk Vernacular for English
listeners. He employed a linguist, with considerable experience transcribing Eng-
lish contact vernaculars, but not specifically with Pitcairn or Norfuk, to attempt an
utterance-by-utterance English translation, under controlled listening conditions.
In this way an intelligibility score for each of the 17 dialogues was obtained. There
was considerable variation in the intelligibility scores, reflecting a complex of fac-
tors, one of which was the ‘depth’ of Norfuk usage sustained by the participants
in a given dialogue.
For the present analysis, we selected the dialogue with the lowest intelligibility
rating for detailed phonetic analysis, in order to obtain the ‘broadest’ or most au-
thentic samples of Norfuk vernacular, with least contamination by code-switching
or interference from the standard English or H variety. The two speakers were a
60+-year-old male and a 60+ female. The dialogue provided approximately 500
words for each speaker. The dialogue was originally recorded on a reel-to-reel tape
recorder and subsequently dubbed onto a gramophone recording (LP 33rpm) by
Flint. The gramophone recording was digitised for the present analysis (.wav files,
16 bit quantisation, 11.2 KHz sampling rate). The dialogue may be accessed on the
accompanying CD-ROM.
2.2. The keyword recordings

The Keyword list used for eliciting contemporary pronunciation contains a pro-
portion of words that are attested Norfuk forms (indicated in bold on the word list).
Speakers were invited to pronounce those items on the list that they recognised as
words in Norfuk. This resulted in various selections by different speakers.
3. Methodology
A combination of auditory and acoustic analysis was used to describe the

phonetic characteristics of spoken Norfuk and to draw some inferences about
Norfuk phonology. Some preliminary comment on the method of analysis is
required.
3.1. Phonetic transcription

Phonetic transcriptions were made generally in accordance with the conventions
of the IPA, with some slight modifications to the set of vowel symbols used, as
noted below. Phonetic transcriptions were guided primarily by auditory impres-
sion and secondarily by acoustic (spectrographic) observation.
Present day Norfolk Island English falls within the ‘cultivated’−‘broad’ accent
continuum of Australian English (Bernard 1989). The speech of many Norfolk Is-
landers when they are not using Norfuk may be indistinguishable from Australian
English to most ears. Contemporary Norfolk English has probably also come un-
der some influence from New Zealand English. These influences of contemporary
regional Englishes are relevant for the ecology of language use on Norfolk Island
today. However, the predominant formative influence of English on Norfuk, the
traditional vernacular, would have been from the variety of 18th-century English
spoken by the sailor Adams and the other Bounty mutineers, from the original
generation of settlement on Pitcairn Island. Norfuk has its own highly distinctive
accent and prosody, but it is frequently code-mixed with Norfolk English. Conse-
quently, Australian English provides an appropriate phonetic frame of reference
for evaluating Norfuk speech.
In deference to traditions of Australian English phonetics and to the habits of
the transcriber, certain liberties have been taken with the IPA symbols for vowel
quality transcription.
(a) The symbol [a] denotes a low (open) central vowel that is distinctively long
[a˘] or short [a] in Australian English (card - cud) with no significant differ-
ence in vowel quality. (The symbol [√] is traditionally employed, inappro-
priately for the lax vowel in AusE cud. A case may be made for adopting the
symbol [å] for the lax low central vowel of Australian English.) Norfuk [a˘]
sounds identical to the long open [a˘] of AusE (hard) in some speakers and
closer to the more retracted [A˘] of RP in others.
(b) The symbol [ç˘] represents a long rounded back mid-high vowel in AusE
(bought, caught). It is actually closer to cardinal [o] and to the vowel quality of
Australian English [U] (put, could) than it is to the mid-low back and rounded
cardinal [ç]. Habit is my poor excuse for preserving this transcription practice.
There is a small quality difference between these two vowels in Australian
English (aside from their obvious difference in length). The lips are slightly
more protruded for [U] than [ç].
3.2. Context, coarticulation effects and undershoot in vowel transcription

Consistent with the view that vowel sounds are interpreted by the ear as contextu-
ally coherent linguistic targets, the decision was taken to represent familiar-sound-
ing vowels and diphthongs as they were perceived/heard in whole-word citation
forms. The ear always evaluates speech sounds in context and automatically com-
pensates for coarticulation effects and articulatory undershoot, hearing the intend-
ed target, rather than the ‘underachieved’ peak in the attained formant trajectory.
For example, in the Norfuk vowel cluster (describable as a diphthong followed
by a short vowel or as a triphthong) of the word fire, the second element is per-
ceived as a high front vowel [i] or [I]: [faIa]. But if one attends only to the central
region of the vowel cluster, isolated from context, this segment has the auditory
quality of a low or mid-low front or central vowel [æ] - [´]. Clearly, this is a case
of articulatory undershoot of the off-glide target of the diphthong. Our speech per-
ception mechanism automatically compensates for articulatory undershoot when
listening to the vowel in whole-word context. In so doing, tacit phonetic and pho-
nological knowledge of the listener is applied to the perception of the auditory
stimulus. A more stable percept is achieved by judging vowel quality in whole
word contexts, but at the possible cost of undue contamination of phonetic judge-
ments by phonological expectations from the listener’s native language.
4. Vowels
For characterising Norfuk vernacular, the vowel sounds are far more important
than the consonants, which differ minimally from those of Australian or New Zea-
land English. A preliminary analysis of two of the broadest Norfuk speakers from
the Flint dialogues is presented (sections 4.1.−4.3.), followed by an analysis of the
keyword citation forms from seven contemporary Norfuk speakers.
4.1. Single target vowels

To provide an initial characterisation of the Norfolk vowel space, and in order to
reference points for inter-dialect comparisons, the single target, lax (short) vowels,
([I], [a], [E], [U]) and long [a˘], were plotted for each speaker, within the vowel
space of Australian English (see Figure 1). The formant values for the Norfuk
vowels represent average measurements (centroids) obtained from 5−10 tokens
per speaker. The formant values were statistically normalised to take account of
differences in speakers’ vocal tract size and were plotted using the Bark scale
frequency transformation. The Australian English reference vowels represent cen-

troid values of the cultivated, general, and broad varieties reported by Bernard
(1989). The Norfuk formant measurements were made from stressed lexical items,
that occurred in discourse where no vowel reduction was evident. Nevertheless,
some shrinkage of the vowel space in relation to Bernard’s measurements is to be
expected, because his data were obtained from citation forms spoken in isolation
and not culled from connected speech.
The somewhat lower and centralised target positions for Norfuk high vowels [I]
and [U] are likely due to articulatory undershoot in connected speech compared with
the Australian English citation forms. However, the lower target position of Norfuk
[E] compared with its Australian English counterpart is significant. One notable in-
stance of allophonic variation was found among these lax vowels. The short front
vowel [E] lowers to [æ] before /l/. Although sometimes found as a phonetic tendency
among speakers of Australian English, it seems to be more strongly marked in Nor-
folk vernacular, falling clearly within the vowel quality domain of [æ] (see Figure
1). Flint suggests that there is no native contrast between [æ] and [a] in the Norfuk
and that [æ] forms derive from the influence of Australian English through standard
Norfolk English (the H variety). However, the data from our two speakers appear
to suggest otherwise. Both [a] and [æ] forms are found in lexical items of English
origin, but their lexical distribution is different from that of Australian English. In
Table 1, bold print indicates [Q] pronunciation in Australian English.
Table 1. Distribution of [æ] ~ [a] in Norfuk (Flint dialogues)
[a] [æ] [æ ] []
stand matter as catch

that and glad
yam hat bank
than am glad that
dance saddle saddle
laugh catfish thank
hard chapel
start saddle
partner thank
darling fashioned
ma anthem
can’t anniversary
have
granny
Figure 1. Some Norfuk monophthongs relative to Australian vowels (source: Bernard

1989). Mid vowel formant frequencies, F1 and F2, bark scaled.
If the standard account of the historical split of Middle English short /a/ is correct,
these forms may provide a clue to the regional English dialect which had a domi-
nant influence in the formation of the original Norfolk Island contact creole. The
original split took place when ME /a/ lengthened (and in some dialects retracted)
before voiceless anterior fricatives (laugh, path, grass). Subsequently, and incom-
pletely, the change spread to nasal obstruent clusters (dance, grant, demand), re-
sulting in the well-known regional and lexical variability found in these forms
today. Although the data here is limited, it suggests a southern English dialect
influence in the formation of Norfuk vernacular.
4.2. Back vowels

Norfuk may not possess as many phonemic contrasts as Australian English among
its back vowels. Further analysis is needed. However, it is clear that, even if the
number of contrasts is comparable, their distribution among cognate lexical forms
is different, and there are also clear differences in phonetic implementation of the
contrasts. Table 2 shows the phonetic correspondences that were found among
cognate forms for the distinction between [Å] and [ç˘] which is found in Australian
English and other non-rhotic varieties.
Table 2. Correspondences between Norfuk and Australian English [Å] and [ç˘]
Norfuk [] Norfuk [ç˘] Norfuk [ç˘]

Australian Eng. [] Australian Eng. [] Australian Eng. [ç˘]
(be)cause off form ‘person, guy’

what(s) long horse
got along thought
on all
strong Norfolk
sorry morn(ing)
more
It is notable that the short counterpart of [ç˘] is much more restricted in its distri-
bution in Norfuk than in Australian English. The Norfuk short [Å] was limited to
a few closed-class items, leading one to suspect that at least in earlier varieties of
Norfuk there was no productive phonological contrast between long and short (or
tense and lax) non-high back vowels. The short vowel forms may simply represent
phonetically reduced function words. This is supported by acoustic analysis of
vowel quality differences between Norfuk [Å] and [ç], shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Formant plots for Norfuk back vowels: long [ç] and short [Å] (plotted as [å])
shown relative to Australian English monophthongs.
Norfuk [ç˘] occupied a similar position in vowel space to its Australian English
counterpart. The short vowel was quite centralised and more broadly scattered
over vowel space than is indicated by the centroid plots for the multiple tokens of
what and got. Phonetically this short vowel is more appropriately labelled [å].
4.3. Diphthongs
Norfuk /oU/ (home) has its vowel nucleus close to [ç], somewhat fronted, and usu-
ally with a perceptible schwa off-glide (see Table 3). The obvious outlier in this
series (all from our male speaker) is the form y’know, which seems to be a borrow-
ing from Australian or standard Norfolk English.
Table 3. Instances of Norfuk /oU/
know [nç<˘]
y’know [n´¨]
home [hç˘
m]
most [mç<,
st]
go [gç˘
]
road [®ç<,
d]
With the exception of the outlier (y’know), the formant trajectories for the off-glide
in the diphthongs have a forward movement. This diphthong is quite a distinctive
marker of Norfuk accent. However, it does not appear to be phonologically contras-
tive with Norfuk [ç˘].
Norfuk [aU] (down, now, mouth) showed a good deal of phonetic variability.
In general, it shows evidence of incomplete lowering of the nucleus, as in other
conservative regional dialects (Scots English, Canadian English, etc.). The range
of phonetic variation for [aU] can be illustrated with the following tokens from our
male speaker:
Table 4. Phonetic variation in [aU]
down [dAUn]
out [AUt]
down [dÚn]
mouth [mÚT]
now [nÚ]
round [®Únd]
out [aUt]
plough [plaU]
To quantify this variation, we took formant measurements of the nucleus. The

degree of lowering of the nucleus in the F1-F2 space corresponded with impres-
sionistic transcription. Clearly, the word plough seems to be a borrowing from
Australian English.
Norfuk [aI] evinces incomplete lowering of the nucleus, as also found in conserv-
ative regional English dialects. The environment for this incomplete lowering (often
referred to as ‘Canadian Raising’ for its prevalence in Eastern Canadian English) is
before voiceless obstruents in closed syllables. Our impressionistic transcriptions
of [aI] tokens in stressed syllables showed some evidence of this rule in Norfuk.
Table 5. Phonetic variation in Norfuk /aI/
[a] [] [] [e]
I side kinda kinda

my’s ripe like
I ripe outside
ripe china
china sometime
my’s right
I like
pine night
mind like
Irish
my
my’s
Norfuk [e´] (which corresponds to Australian or Standard Norfolk English [eI]) is

either a monophthong or an opening diphthong which is highly recognisable (as it
is in Irish English). The range of variation illustrated in Table 6 is quite large, as
the following tokens suggest. There was no obvious phonological conditioning for
this variation.
Table 6. Phonetic variation in Norfuk /e´/
[e] [e˘] [e] [e] [e]
gate take take late away

potato make take baby baby
anyway make take plain
take way
take make
anyway
same
4.4. Vowel variation in contemporary Norfuk

From the keyword list a number of comparisons were attempted, to try to ascer-
tain vowel shifts or lexical changes in pronunciation that may have taken place in
Norfuk over the period of the late 1950s to the present day. These comparisons
are summarised in Table 7 below. The data sets are too small for any but the most
tentative observations. However, they generate some useful hypotheses to guide
subsequent inquiry.
There is no evidence of substantial change in phonetic realisation of the short
lax vowels [I - E - a - U] between the Flint samples from 1957 and the keyword
sample from 2002. One might look for evidence that Norfuk [E] has raised to-
wards the Australian English equivalent ([e], bed). But this was apparent in only
one token elicitation of dress, a word that is probably not part of Norfuk vocabu-
lary. It is interesting to note that words in Norfuk which have cognate forms in
standard English (e.g. never, head) are not only categorically distinct in length or
vowel quality from the standard Australian or Norfolk English pronunciation, but
are so in ways that represent alternative phoneme categories in standard English.
This is what might be expected if Norfuk speakers were using standard English
phonemic categories to differentiate lexical items of Norfuk from their cognates
in standard English. Early Norfuk probably had no phonemic contrast between [E]
and [æ]. Note the wide variability in [æ ~ a] English-sourced Norfolk words from
the Flint sample in Table 1 above.
Standard English Norfuk

dress /d®es/ ––––
never /nev´/ /næw´/
head /hed/ /heId/
There is possibly a lesson here for teaching Norfuk to English speakers. In certain
cases, an English word may be given ‘Norfuk’ colour simply by substituting one
English vowel phoneme for another. A similar case of phonemic mapping between
standard English and Norfuk arises in cognate forms involving the back vowels
/Ú, ç˘, Å/. These sounds are usually realised in Norfuk as long [ç˘], often with a
centering off-glide, or as short [Å]. English source words containing /Ú/ can flag
their Norfuk status by phonemicising as /ç˘/ or /Å/.
Table 7. Comparisons of Norfuk vowels THEN and NOW in relation to Australian

English vowels
Short or lax vowels

Norfuk Norfuk AusE
1957 2002
I I I No notable differences
dress: Not a Norfuk word?
never [næUw´] (2002)
E e-æ e head: [heId], [heEd], [he˘d] (2002)
a a a No notable differences
happy: [hQpI], [hæpI] (2002)
a- æ - E Q - æ Q wide allophonic variation (1957)
U U U no notable differences
Å - ç˘ ç˘ Å cloth: [kHlç˘T] (2002)
Long vowels and diphthongs
i˘ - Ii Ii meat [mi˘tH], neither, free (2002)

Ie - e˘ eE - e˘ æI - eI fatal [feEt…], face (2002)
home [hç˘´m] (1957)
´
ç˘ Å ´¨ throat [T®ÅtH], goat [gÅtH] (2002)
ç˘ ç˘ ç˘ daughter [dç˘ta], horses [hç˘s], thought [Tç˘tH] (2002)
Ú - AU å¨ a¨ mouth [må¨T] (2002)
In this way, as in the case of /e/ words discussed above, systematic substitutions by
phonetically related sounds may be employed to mark the special status of Norfuk
lexical items. Whether this is what in fact happens is a matter of speculation, but
should be testable through further analysis of the phonetic forms and distributions
of these sounds in the Flint corpus and further elicitation of contemporary speech
samples.
4.5. Norfuk vowel phonemes

Our preliminary analysis of vowels in the speech of two broad Norfuk speakers
gathered in the late 1950s reveals a wide range of phonetic variation, and the
nature of the available data does not permit us to pursue a conventional phone-
mic analysis (eliciting minimal pairs, testing informants for contrasts and in vari-
ous phonological environments etc.). However, it seems that even at the time of
Flint’s survey, the pronunciation of Norfuk words reflected their diverse lexical
origins and grammatical status. It may be useful to adopt a notion from Lexical
Phonology and to distinguish between a core stratum and a peripheral stratum of

phonological contrasts. The core stratum applies to the stock of P-N historical
lexical items (for which 18th-century English was the lexifier) and to the vestiges
of the original creole grammatical forms (such as se ‘copular’ etc.). The peripheral
stratum of phonological contrasts applies to more recent English loan words and
‘code-switchings’, which are parasitic upon the speakers’ knowledge of standard
Norfolk English.
Our tentative proposal for a set of core stratum Norfuk vowels is summarised
in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Core stratum Norfuk vowels and diphthongs
4.6. Norfuk intonation

Traditional Norfuk speech is noted for its highly distinctive and engaging in-
tonation, a characteristic that apparently is in danger of being lost. The Flint
recordings provide a valuable record of this aspect of Norfolk speech. Our for-
mal description of Norfuk intonation is even more partial and preliminary than
that of the segmental phonology. However, the basic problem is the same: sepa-
rating stylistic and idiosyncratic features of individual voices from the systemic
aspects of Norfuk prosody. In the case of intonation, the task is complicated by
the lack of a widely accepted descriptive framework. We have adopted what
might be called a ‘simplified Pierrehumbert-Beckman’ set of descriptive tags,
aiming to annotate the major pitch and temporal features of the intonation con-
tour.
The present system aims to represent local peaks and troughs as well as the
overall shape of the fundamental frequency contour, pause breaks, and regions
of slowed speech delivery. The main features of the annotation are illustrated in
Table 8. Table 9 illustrates the text annotation of several utterances and Figures 4
and 5 illustrate how the tags are applied to the speech signal of selected utterances.
Conversational Norfuk seems to an English ear to employ a wide pitch range with
much expressive highlighting achieved by local changes of pitch and voice tempo.
The use of temporally expanded vowels in accented syllables, or local reductions
in speech tempo, is a distinctive feature of Norfuk prosody, illustrated in the sec-
ond sentence of the text annotation (Table 9) and the speech signal (Figure 4).
Table 8. Prosodic annotation tags
H Major pitch peak in f0 contour

h Minor pitch peak in f0 contour
L Major pitch trough in f0 contour
l Minor pitch trough in f0 contour
ds Downstep: a step down or lowering of accentual pitch range
cre Crescendo: a sequence of rising pitch accents
! A prosodic boundary-marking pitch accent
‘keeeep’ A temporally expanded syllable nucleus, in this case for word ‘keep’
br A junctural break or pause
Table 9. Text annotation of intonation features (see Table 8 for symbol legend)
LHL............................................L!
A01 well darling I sorry I so late as this
Hal...h.L.ds.hl ..H........L!
B02 wha thing bin keeeep you
LH..........................LH!..br....lhl..lhl....lhl!
A03 well when I done a work I hurry home
LH.........................................................hl...hl!
A04 coming round our bend you know gen Ma Deil
L..H..L...H...hl.......H..................................LH!
A05 I see dis big form staanding down gen our gate
l....h.cre h.cre....h...H.....................................lh!.....LH..........HL!
A06 he tell now you get down den or I’ll go up dere baarber hold you!
H...L
B07 oooh!
Figure 4. Prosodic annotation for dialogue utterance B03, aligned to f0 trace
The word keep achieves accentual prominence by the exaggerated length of the
vowel nucleus. The interrogative expression as a whole achieves illocutionary
force by starting close to the top of the speaker’s pitch range, with successive
accented syllables down-stepped to the nuclear accent on the verb. There is sub-
stantial pre-pausal lengthening on you, as part of the phrase-final boundary tone.
But we have not annotated this feature, because it is a ubiquitous prosodic cue to
phrase-final position in English and many other languages.
Down-stepping of accented syllables within the phrase in B03 may simply be
a consequence of starting at the top of the speaker’s pitch range and may have
no particular pragmatic significance. However, the complementary effect on
the pitch contour labelled ‘crescendo’ here, a succession of up-stepping accents
leading to a nuclear ‘hat’ accent on barber hold in utterance A06, does seem to
carry mimetic meaning as direct reported speech, mimicking the agitated state of
speaker, (see Figure 5).
Figure 5. Prosodic annotation for A6, aligned to f0 trace
The translation for this sentence that Flint gives is ‘He said now you get down here
or I’ll go up there and give you a good hiding.’ We guess the expression barber
hold refers to the leather strap that barbers used to sharpen razors.
It is an open question whether mimetic features of intonation observed in reported

speech dialogue should be regarded as part of Norfuk prosody or treated as ‘para-
linguistic’ (i.e. as part of an individual speaker’s capacity for expressive elabora-
tion or embellishment of a narrative). Our analysis of Norfuk prosody is in its
infancy and these kinds of questions require more data analysis.
Selected references
ROM.
Baker, Philip
1999 Investigating the origin and diffusion of shared features among the Atlantic
English Creoles. In: Baker and Bruyn (eds.), 315–364.
Bernard, John R.
1989 Quantitative aspects of the sounds of Australian English. In: Collins and Blair
(eds.), 187–204.
Chaudenson, Robert
1998 Insularité et créolité: de l’usage de quelques métaphores. Plurilinguismes 15:
1–26.
Christian, Glynn
1982 Fragile Paradise. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Co.
Eira, Christine, Melina Magdalena and Peter Mühlhäusler
2002 A Draft Dictionary of the Norfolk Language. Adelaide: Discipline of
Linguistics.
Flint, Elwyn
1961 Bilingual interaction between Norfolk Island Language and English. Paper
presented to the 1st Conference of the Linguistic Circle of Canberra.
Harrison, Shirley
1972 The languages of Norfolk Island. M.A. thesis, Macquarie University, North
Ryde.
Hoare, Merval
1982 Norfolk Island: An Outline of its History 1774–1968. St Lucia: University of
Queensland Press.
Laycock, Donald
1989 The status of Pitcairn-Norfolk: creole dialect, or cant. In: Ulrich Ammon (ed.),
Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties, 608–629. Berlin:
de Gruyter.
1998 How creoloid can you get? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 13: 355–
372.
2002 Pidgin English and the Melanesian Mission. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 17: 237–263.
Raine, Captain
1824 Pitcairn’s island. New York Observer, July 10: 2, 1, 3–5.
Ross, Alan S. and A.W. Moverley
1964 The Pitcairnese Language. London: Andre Deutsch.
Introduction: varieties of English in Africa and South
and Southeast Asia
Rajend Mesthrie
1. Historical spread and geographical coverage
The presence of English (and other European languages) in Africa and South and
Southeast Asia (henceforth Africa-Asia) is due to several historical events: spo-
radic and subsequently sustained trade, the introduction of Christianity, slavery,
formal British colonisation, and influence from the U.S. (in places like Liberia and
the Philippines). Furthermore, after colonisation independent “new nations” were
faced with few options but to adopt English as a working language of government,
administration and higher education. These contacts have seen the development
of several types of English:
ENL (English as a Native language), spoken by British settlers and/or their descendants,
as in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Hong Kong etc. (The variety may be adopted by other
groups within a territory as well).
ESL (English as a Second Language), spoken in territories like India and Nigeria, where
access to English was sufficient to produce a stable second language (L2) used in formal
domains like education and government. The ESL is also used for internal communication
within the territory, especially as a lingua franca amongst educated speakers who do not
share the same mother tongue.
Pidgin English, a variety which arises outside of the educational system and is only
partly derived from English, especially in its lexicon; though structurally it cannot really
be considered an ‘adoption’ of English syntax. An example would be Pidgin English in
Cameroon. A pidgin shows equally significant influence from both local languages and
common or ‘universal’ processes of simplification and creation of grammatical structure.
Some pidgins may turn into a creole (spoken as a first language). In Africa and Asia this
is not common, since speakers frequently retain their home and community languages.
Some scholars are of the opinion that West African varieties of pidgin have expanded
into a creole without necessarily becoming a first language.
These three types are described in the Africa-Asia section of this Handbook. A
fourth type EFL (English as a Foreign Language) is not considered, since it arises
typically for international communication amongst a few bilingual people compe-
tent in English in a territory that had not come under the direct influence of British
settlement and colonial administration. In such a situation English is learnt in the
education system as a “foreign language”, but is not used as a medium of instruc-
tion. This is truer of some territories than others: China is clearly an EFL country;
806 Rajend Mesthrie
Eritrea less so, in terms of the greater use of English by fluent bilinguals in the
domain of education.
British “Protectorates” like Lesotho and Egypt, which were subject to British
influence without being formally colonised, also form an intermediate category
somewhere between ESL and EFL. It would not be surprising if the current era of
globalisation established English more firmly in EFL territories, producing more
focussed varieties which could one day be studied in terms of the concepts and
categories emphasised in ESL studies.
Finally, there are what I term “language shift Englishes” – varieties which start-
ed as ESLs, but which stabilise as an L1. They then develop casual registers often
absent from ESLs (since a local language fulfils ‘vernacular’ functions). However,
they retain a great many L2 features as well. Amongst the varieties of note here
are Indian South African English and, elsewhere, Irish English.
Africa-Asia is distinguishable from the remaining regions covered in this Hand-
book by the preponderance of ESL varieties, rather than the L1 English which
dominates in the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In other
words, indigenous African and Asian languages have survived the impact of colo-
nisation better than their counterparts elsewhere.
Though English is seen as an important resource for international communica-
tion as well as for internal “High” functions (in formal domains like education
and government), its hegemony in Africa-Asia is not complete. There are other
languages of high status which may function as regional lingua francas, for ex-
ample Swahili in East Africa, Hindi in North India and Malay in Singapore and
Malaysia.
At the lower end of the social and educational spectrum it is noteworthy that
Pidgin English is spreading rapidly in West Africa. According to Faraclas (this
Handbook), Nigerian Pidgin is now the most widely spoken language in Nigeria,
with well over half the population being able to converse in it.
Africa’s contacts with English pre-date those of the U.S. and the Caribbean. The
earliest contacts were in the 1530s (Spencer 1971: 8), making early Modern Eng-
lish, with accents slightly older than Shakespeare’s, the initial (if sporadic) input.
In Asia the initial contacts with English go back to 1600 when Queen Elizabeth I
granted a charter to the merchants of London who formed the East India Com-
pany.
The full force of English in Africa-Asia was not felt until formal colonisation
in the nineteenth century (for example Singapore in 1819, India in 1858, Nigeria
1884, Kenya 1886). A representative selection of the varieties spoken in these
territories is given in this Handbook. The geographical coverage is that of West
Africa, East Africa, South Africa, South Asia and South-east Asia. In addition we
have taken on board the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, whose nearest main-
land port is Cape Town.
2. Second language acquisition
Since the focus in the Africa-Asia section is mainly on ESLs, the dialectological
approach has to be supplemented by insights from Second Language Acquisi-
tion (SLA) theory. No ESL variety is uniform; rather it exists as a continuum of
varying features, styles and abilities. The terms basilect, mesolect and acrolect
are borrowed from Creole studies, where they denote first language varieties on
a continuum. The terms basilang, mesolang and acrolang are sometimes used in
connection with interlanguage studies, denoting the individual’s level of compe-
tence in the L2, rather than a relatively focussed group norm (a newcomer in the
L1 English metropolis might learn English as a L2 without being part of a group
of L2 learners).
Most writers in New English studies adopt the Creole-based terms, without seri-
ous misunderstandings. However, in principle, there is a need to distinguish be-
tween basilect and basilang, because there is a difference between the fluent norms
of a basilect and the rudimentary knowledge of an L2 in a basilang. Since the ESL
varieties described in this Handbook are relatively focused and stable the labels
basilect, mesolect, acrolect will continue to be used.
At one end of the New English continuum are varieties characteristic of begin-
ning L2 learners or learners who have fossilised at an early stage and evince no
need or desire to progress further in their interlanguage variety (basilectal speak-
ers). If they are just beginning an acquaintance with the target language, they are
strictly speaking basilang speakers. At the other end are speakers who, by virtue
of their education, motivation, life-styles and contacts with L1 and educated L2
speakers of English may well become so fluent as to be near-native (or acrolectal)
speakers of English.
Situated between these endpoints is the vast majority of ESL users, who speak
fluently but whose norms deviate significantly from those of L1 speakers as well
as acrolectal ESL speakers. These are the mesolectal speakers, whose norms are
the ones most writers in this section have chosen to focus on, since they represent
a kind of average value of the ESL. They are not as strongly denigrated as more
basilang varieties might be in terms of intelligibility and fluency. They also pose
fewer problems about the reliability of data, since a basilang speaker’s command
might not be fluent enough to decide what norms underlie his or her speech.
Mesolectal ESL varieties display a degree of levelling of the target language
(Standard English) in for example tense forms, prepositions, word order and so
on. Moreover, many of these features are carried over into the (unedited) written
language of individuals. Finally, mesolectal varieties are more representative of
the local ethos than acrolectal varieties. The latter are sometimes stigmatised as
being affected or representing outside norms.
Phrases like “speaking through the nose” in Nigeria and Zimbabwe or been tos
(‘people who have been abroad’) in India and Nigeria reflect this disaffection on
808 Rajend Mesthrie
the part of the general populace of the ESL acrolectal elite who might stray too
close to the norms of Received Pronunciation (RP). Just as stigmatised is what is
described in Ghanaian English terminology as LAFA (‘Locally Acquired Foreign
Accent’) – see Huber’s article on Ghanaian English Phonology in this Handbook.
The provisos mentioned by other editors in their introductions regarding the
nature of dialectal description also hold for the present area. Where an item is
described as a feature, it is not claimed to be unique to the variety concerned. Nor
is it necessarily the only variant within the ESL being described. The influence of
the standard in formal communication makes it likely that the equivalent standard
feature is also in use (especially in syntax), and may even be more commonly em-
ployed than the item described as a feature.
Several concepts from Second Language Acquisition Studies are an essential
part of New English studies, especially input, Foreigner Talk and Teacher Talk,
overgeneralization, analogy and transfer. The robustness of the substrate languag-
es in Africa and Asia makes the likelihood of their influence on ESL very great.
Indeed, many researchers take substrate influence to be axiomatic in phonology
and only slightly less so in syntax, pragmatics and lexis.
For syntax, however, there is reason to be cautious. In some areas it is possible
that what is popularly believed to be interference, might be a survival from a non-
standard dialect of British English or even a survival of a form that was once stan-
dard but was later jettisoned in the history of Standard English (see for example
McCormick’s account of Cape Flats English in this Handbook). This issue will be
discussed in more detail in my synopsis at the end of the Handbook
Many contributors use RP and Standard British English as points of comparison.
However, it is important to keep in mind that this is rather a matter of convenience
and that RP and Standard British English function as a kind of metalanguage in
that respect. RP, especially, would have been, and continues to be, rather remote
from the experiences of ESL learners. Especially for the earliest periods in which
English was introduced to what were to become the colonies, several non-standard
varieties were part of the initial input.
The earliest teachers and providers of input were missionaries (frequently EFL
users themselves), sailors, soldiers, hunters, tradesmen, divers and so forth. Teach-
ers with certificates arrived on the scene later. The notion of a target language then
should not be construed too literally: more often it was a varied, vexatious and
moving target (see Mesthrie 2003).
It is necessary to tackle the prejudice against New Englishes, sometimes evident
amongst their own speakers. Although prescriptive-minded critics would prefer to
see many of the features identified in this section as errors to be eradicated, their
presence must be seen within a broader context. An ESL exists within a local
“linguistic ecology”. It must therefore become referentially adequate to describe
local topography, fauna, customs and so forth. It also has to blend in with the local
linguistic ecology by being receptive to favoured turns of phrase, structural pos-
sibilities and habits of pronunciation. That is, for English to function “normally”
in a country like India, it has to become Indian – a fact that the work of Kachru
(e.g. 1983) constantly reminds us of.
3. Resources
It is only recently that the study of ESLs has come to be seen as a productive so-
ciolinguistic enterprise. Studies of individual varieties have often been based on
written sources, both of published writers and of students’ writings at school and
university. Convenient though this means of accessing data is, for psycholinguis-
tic veracity it is preferable to focus on the spoken word. Most authors in the Africa-
Asia section of this Handbook have based their descriptions on speech samples or
a combination of written (especially when summarising previous research) and
spoken data. Corpus Linguistics is beginning to make its presence felt in this area.
The most influential corpora are the ICE Corpora (International Corpus of Eng-
lish) originating at the University of London.
The ICE corpora in East Africa under the directorship of Josef Schmied and
in South Africa under Chris Jeffery have yielded significant data and analyses.
Schmied (this Handbook) describes the potential of the World Wide Web in gath-
ering informal written data in the East African context. In India, the Kolhapur cor-
pus is based on written Indian English. Other smaller-scale corpora are mentioned
by individual authors.
4. The chapters on phonology
Gut’s chapter deals with the phonological features of L2 English in Nigeria. In such
a vast territory with about 500 languages, it is likely that several Englishes coex-
ist: Gut summarizes her own research as well as that of others according to region
and the major regional languages – Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo. She also summarizes
her important investigations into suprasegmental phonology, with the analysis of
tone being a major challenge for any student of English in Africa. Elugbe’s article
focuses on Pidgin English in Nigeria, one of the fastest growing languages in West
Africa. This study offers the opportunity of examining whether the same features
of L2 phonology of Nigerian English co-exist in the pidgin, including features of
stress and tone. Huber describes the phonology of Ghanaian English, affording
opportunities of comparing features of English in a country which prides itself
on its education system and in the teaching of English with that of other West
African varieties. Huber contributes a second chapter on Pidgin English in Ghana.
This chapter again shows the overlap between pidgin and L2 English phonology
in West Africa. Singler’s article on Liberian Settler English phonology introduces
810 Rajend Mesthrie
the sound system of a variety whose origins lie in the speech of slaves who were
returned from the American South in the 19th century to found the state of Libe-
ria. Together with Krio, Liberian Settler English is important for its influence on
pidgins that developed independently in West Africa. It is also important for his-
torical studies of African American English, since the two varieties are so closely
linked. The last two contributions on West Africa are Bobda’s comprehensive
examination of Cameroon English phonology and Menang’s account of the pho-
nology of Kamtok, the name he prefers for Cameroon Pidgin English. His focus is
on the reductions to the English vowel system evident in the pidgin.
East Africa is represented by the article by Schmied, which focuses on the sim-
ilarities between the English varieties spoken in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
South Africa presents special challenges to the descriptive linguist, since several
types of English are encountered: ENL, ESL and language-shift varieties. The pol-
icy of apartheid created relatively rigid boundaries around people, their languages
and dialects. It was accordingly felt that a description of the four major varieties
according to ethnicity was preferable to any other forms of segmentation.
Bowerman describes White South Africa English, tracing its roots in Southern
British dialects and describing subsequent influences arising either spontaneously
or out of contact with Afrikaans. He also briefly points to its relation with other
Southern Hemisphere Englishes in Australia and New Zealand. Van Rooy out-
lines the main phonological features of Black South African English, now a major
player in post-apartheid broadcasting, business etc. The article affords significant
grounds of comparison with other varieties of English in Africa. Mesthrie pro-
vides a description of the phonology of Indian South African English, which had
previously been studied mainly for its syntax. Finn provides a detailed description
of the phonology of Cape Flats English, the variety spoken by people formerly
classified “coloured” in Cape Town and its environs. His paper details the bal-
ance between (a) (British and South African) English dialect features, (b) second
language interlanguage forms adapted, rather than deriving directly, from English-
Afrikaans bilingualism and (c) some spontaneous innovations in the variety.
Wilson provides an overview of the phonology of St Helena English, a variety
showing links to British dialects as well as to English-based Creoles.
Gargesh provides an overview of the phonology of Indian English, stressing
that it has major regional varieties, especially in the North and South, correspond-
ing to the respective Indic and Dravidian phonological systems. Mahboob and
Ahmar describe Pakistani English, which shares many features with the northern
varieties of Indian English.
Ahmar’s contribution is followed by three articles on South-east Asian varieties.
Lionel Wee describes the phonology of Singaporean English, while Baskaran cov-
ers Malaysian English, which has previously been linked with Singapore English
on the basis of their common socio-political history. Tayo describes the phonol-
ogy of Philippines English, which is targeted towards American rather than Brit-
ish English, the only such L2 (non-creole) variety in Africa-Asia.
5. The chapters on morphology and syntax
Each article in the Africa-Asia phonology section has a counterpart in the mor-
phology and syntax section, except for the Philippines. In addition there is an
article on Butler English morphology and syntax, for which no corresponding ac-
count of the phonology exists. It would appear that more research is being done on
the morphology and syntax of New Englishes than on the phonology.
Alo and Mesthrie summarise the existing research on Nigerian English, show-
ing how it is fairly typical of African English (or more properly, sub-Saharan Eng-
lish). Faraclas offers a detailed overview of Nigerian Pidgin English, focussing to
a large extent on its tense-aspect-modality system.
Huber and Dako examine educated Ghanaian English, which has much in com-
mon with other West African varieties, though there are noteworthy differences in
the area of the ordering of subordinate clauses of time and related constructions.
In his chapter on Ghanaian Pidgin English morphology and syntax, Huber ar-
gues that in some respects this variety appears to be a simplified version of other
pidgins in the West African area, for example Nigerian
Pidgin. Singler’s chapter on Liberian Settler English describes the way in which
this variety has retained older features of African American English, and can
therefore be used to contribute significantly to the current debate on the origins of
African American English. He also details the subsequent influence of local (non-
Creole) varieties of English upon Liberian Settler English.
Mbagwana contributes an engaging account of the morphology and syntax of
Cameroon English. Whilst a few features (e.g. invariant tags in tag questions) can
be considered “garden variety” African English (and New English) structures, a
number of the features he describes are not (e.g. an apparent predilection for wh-
words to be retained in situ in main and subordinate clauses.) The reasons for this
innovativeness in the Cameroon have still to be ascertained. Ayafor describes the
morphology and syntax of Kamtok, the pidgin English of Cameroon. Unlike its
ESL counterpart in Cameroon, as described by Mbagwana, Kamtok does appear
to be similar to other varieties of West African Pidgin English. Schmied describes
the syntax of East African English (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania). He outlines
several general tendencies towards the modification of the grammar of Standard
English, often in the direction of simplification.
With respect to the South African varieties, Bowerman outlines the main gram-
matical features of White South African English, pointing to ongoing debates
about the relative significance of retentions from British dialect grammar over
language contact with Afrikaans. Mesthrie’s overview of Black South African
812 Rajend Mesthrie
English shows it to be in most respects similar to the “core” grammar of East and
West African Englishes. Mesthrie also contributes a chapter on Indian South Af-
rican English, showing that whilst the variety has much in common with its ante-
cedent in India, it has innovated a great deal in the process of language shift in the
South African environment. McCormick describes Cape Flats English, a variety
which shows a fair degree of convergence between the grammars of English and
Afrikaans.
Wilson and Mesthrie contribute an overview of St. Helena English, especially
of its verb phrase component, which shows a convergence between a pidgin-like
system and a more superstratal British English system.
Bhatt provides an overview of the grammar of Indian English, from the view-
point of modern generative syntax. Hosali gives an overview of Butler English,
the minimal pidgin (or fossilised early interlanguage) which originated between
domestic servants and their masters in British India. Mahboob covers Pakistani
English morphology and syntax, which again has a lot in common with the North-
ern varieties of Indian English as well as with the New Englishes generally.
Lionel Wee describes the morphology and syntax of Singaporean English, de-
tailing some “positive” innovations, including the addition of new forms of the
relative clause and passive. Baskaran describes Malaysian English and focuses on
the extent to which substrate languages like Malay and Tamil may have played a
role in engendering the typical features of Malayasian English morphology and
syntax.
References
Mesthrie, Rajend
2003 The World Englishes paradigm and contact linguistics – refurbishing the
foundations. World Englishes 22: 449-62.
Nigerian English: phonology
Ulrike B. Gut
1. Linguistic situation and status of English in Nigeria
In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with a surface area of 923,768
km2 and a population of about 130 million, an estimated 505 languages are spo-
ken (Grimes and Grimes 2000). Of the indigenous Nigerian languages, Igbo (spo-
ken in the South-East), Yoruba (spoken in the South-West) and Hausa (spoken in
the North) are the major languages with about 18 million speakers each. Many Ni-
gerians are bilingual or multilingual with a command of several Nigerian and non-
indigenous languages. The non-indigenous languages spoken in Nigeria include
English, spoken throughout the country; Arabic, mainly spoken in the North in
Islamic schools and in inter-ethnic communication; and French. English has often
been called “the official language of the country” although there is no government
statute or decree specifying this. No reliable numbers being available, estimates of
how many Nigerians speak and use English vary from 4% to 20% (Jowitt 1997). It
seems realistic to assume that currently about 20% of the population have at least
some command of English and use it regularly in at least some aspects of their dai-
ly lives and that this number is increasing rapidly. Schaefer and Egbokhare (1999)
found for the Emai speaking region of rural southern Nigeria that, especially in the
younger generations, the use of English is on the increase. Whereas adults report a
multi-language strategy of speaking both Emai and English independent of place
(home, market, church…), teenagers report a single-language strategy with Emai
spoken at home and English used in all other contexts. This is also true for chil-
dren, who, in addition, increasingly speak English to their siblings and parents.
In contrast to any of the indigenous languages, which serve as either native
language or second language in the different regions of Nigeria, English has a
geographical spread throughout the country. One reason why English is often re-
garded as the official language in Nigeria is probably because it is used in pre-
dominantly formal contexts such as government, education, literature, business,
commerce and as a lingua franca in social interaction among the educated élite.
For example, government records, administrative instructions and minutes, legis-
lation, court records and proceedings, most advertisements, business transactions
and political manifestos and other documents are all in English. Furthermore, the
majority of the national newspapers are published in English, as well as most
radio and television programmes. Only a few of the Nigerian languages, mainly
the majority languages, are used in official contexts. For example, the 1999 Con-
814 Ulrike B. Gut
stitution stipulates that “the business of the National Assembly shall be conducted
in English, and in Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba when adequate arrangements have been
made therefore”. Equally, the language of the business of the House of Assembly
in each State is English, “but the House may in addition to English conduct the
business […] in one or more other languages spoken in the State as the House may
by resolution approve”. Some Nigerian languages, mainly the majority languages,
are used in primary education and, to some extent, in official transactions, news-
papers, television broadcasts and advertisements. The main role of the Nigerian
languages is intra-ethnic and occasionally inter-ethnic communication (mainly
Hausa in the North).
Attitudes towards English in Nigeria are mixed: on the one hand, it is seen as
ethnopolitically neutral and therefore preferable over any indigenous language in
the country’s decision-making processes; on the other hand, however, English is
considered the language of the élite (Jowitt 1997). Furthermore it is regarded by
some as the language of colonialism, which alienates Nigerians from their roots,
with only the Nigerian languages being associated with cultural identity. At the
same time, English is valued highly by many Nigerians as a potential for material
and social gain. It is considered a symbol of modernisation and a means of success
and mobility as it is used in international communication and is the language of
science and technology, literature and art.
English was introduced in Nigeria with the establishment of trading contacts
on the West African coast by the British in the sixteenth century. It served as a
language of trade for communication between Englishmen and Nigerians in the
various forts along the Nigerian coast. This contact resulted in a form of Nige-
rian Pidgin, which, in all probability, is the predecessor of present-day Nigerian
English Pidgin (Bamgbose 1997), which developed and stabilized in the period
between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century. Nigerian Pidgin English is most
commonly used for inter-ethnic communication and, to a limited extent, in litera-
ture and art, official transactions and international communication.
The English took over power in Southern Nigeria in the middle of the nineteenth
century. In 1861, Lagos became a British Crown Colony, and in 1900, the area
controlled by the British Niger company was proclaimed a British Protectorate.
In 1842 and 1846 the first missionary stations were established in Badagry (near
Lagos in the Southwest) and Calabar (in the Southeast) respectively. The mission-
aries were mainly interested in spreading Christianity but also taught agriculture,
crafts and hygiene. In order to easily reach the population, the language of instruc-
tion was usually the mother tongue of the natives. English began to be formally
studied in Nigeria from the middle of the nineteenth century on. When the British
government increasingly felt the need for Africans who were literate in English
and would serve British colonial and trade interests (for instance as teachers, in-
terpreters, minor government officials and clerks for local courts and the trading
companies), in the 1880s, the missionary stations were ordered to teach English
Nigerian English: phonology 815
in their schools. Since the missionary schools were increasingly unable to meet
the demands for educated Nigerians, the colonial government began to establish
state schools. The first state school was in fact founded as a result of pressure from
Muslims in Lagos in 1899, who had no access to missionary schools and felt they
were at a disadvantage. Equally, in Northern Nigeria, Christian mission schools
were not allowed in the Muslim areas, and government schools were established.
The first European school opened in the North in Kano in 1909. In 1914, Lagos,
the British Protectorate and the Northern parts of today’s Nigeria was declared the
British “Colony of Nigeria”. Nigeria became independent in 1960 and declared
herself a Republic in 1963.
In Nigerian education today, English plays a key role. The education system
in Nigeria is structured in the 6-3-3-4 model with 6 years primary education, 3
years junior secondary level, 3 years senior secondary level and 4 years tertiary
education at Universities. The 1998 National Policy on Education specifies that
“the medium of instruction in the primary school shall be the language of the en-
vironment for the first three years. During this period, English shall be taught as a
subject. From the fourth year, English shall progressively be used as a medium of
instruction and the language of immediate environment and French shall be taught
as subjects”. Only in a few private schools in some urban areas are children taught
in English from kindergarten. For the majority of Nigerian pupils, all subjects
are taught in English from the fourth year of primary education on. This includes
subjects such as English, mathematics, a major Nigerian language, science sub-
jects, arts subjects and vocational subjects. All higher level textbooks, students’
written assignments and examinations are in English. A good pass in English is
required for transition from primary to Junior Secondary School, to Senior Sec-
ondary School and to University.
Received Pronunciation (RP) was for a long time the model held up in Nigerian
schools and the model for examinations. The majority of the British who resided
in Nigeria for a length of time and who filled the government posts created after
the establishment of British rule in 1900 came from the upper or middle classes
of British society, speaking RP. Their presence helped to ensure that RP had some
predominance and prestige in Nigeria. When, after independence, Nigerians took
over the senior civil service posts from the British, Standard British English, spo-
ken by the former rulers, was retained as the prestigious standard dialect. This
attitude was shared by many politicians, academics, lawyers, journalists and other
members of the élite who had close ties with the British and Britain. Recently,
with increasing numbers of Nigerians returning from studies in the United States
of America, American English is gaining prestige in Nigeria (Jowitt 1991).
There is no uniform accent of English spoken throughout Nigeria. In fact, the
diversity of the different kinds of English in the country is so great that Nigerian
English (NigE) is usually divided into several sub-varieties. Based on the observa-
tion that the native language of Nigerian speakers of English characteristically in-
816 Ulrike B. Gut
fluences their accent in English, NigE sub-varieties corresponding to the different

ethnic groups have been proposed (e.g. Jibril 1986; Jowitt 1991). The three major
Nigerian languages have very different phonological systems: Hausa, for example,
has five vowels which all have phonemic length contrast and a number of realiza-
tions that include centralized vowels. Igbo has eight vowels and a set of vowel
harmony rules, whereas Yoruba has seven vowels with phonemic vowel length
contrast. These differences are claimed to become apparent in the Hausa English,
Igbo English and Yoruba English varieties of NigE (Jowitt 1991).
Since a continuum of degrees of competence in English is a characteristic of any
country where the language functions as a second language, most descriptions of
the sub-varieties of English spoken in Nigeria correlate levels of competence with
the speaker’s educational background. Banjo (1971) proposed four varieties with
distinct linguistic features:
– Variety I is used by those Nigerians who picked up English as a result of the
requirements of their occupation. They are possibly semi-literate people with
only elementary school education. It is characterized by a high transfer-rate of
phonological features from the mother tongue and is unacceptable even nation-
ally.
– Variety II speakers are likely to have had at least primary school education. It
features some transfer from the mother tongue and does not make ‘vital phone-
mic distinctions’. This variety of English is accepted and understood nationally
and internationally.
– Variety III is associated with University education and is recommended as the
model for Nigerian Standard English. It is most widely accepted in Nigeria.
– Variety IV is equal to British English and is less accepted in Nigeria than Vari-
ety III as it sounds affected.
Udofot (2003) claims that Banjo’s Variety IV is not a variety of NigE and that
spoken NigE in the 1990s can be divided into at least three sub-varieties. These
sub-varieties collectively show phonological differences from British Standard
English in both segmental and prosodic terms and, in many cases, the speaker’s
education is correlated with the degree of proficiency.
– The Non-Standard variety has distinct segmental and non-segmental features
such as a lack of fluency, an abundance of pauses, a restricted intonation system,
a distinct speech rhythm and accent placement. It is spoken by primary and
secondary school leavers, holders of NCE (Nigerian Certificate of Education),
OND (Ordinary National Diploma) and some University graduates. It is the
variety used by primary school teachers.
– The Standard variety has a distinct phoneme inventory and characteristic pro-
sodic features in terms of speech rhythm, intonation and accent. It is spoken by
university graduates and lecturers and other professionals as well as final-year
undergraduates of English, secondary school teachers and holders of Higher

National Diplomas.
– The Sophisticated variety is spoken by university lecturers in English and Lin-
guistics, by graduates of English, the Humanities and Mass Communication,
speakers who had some additional training in English phonology and those who
spent some time in English native-speaking areas. It is different from British
English in some phonemes and some aspects of speech rhythm, intonation and
accentuation.
There is also a small minority of Nigerians who speak English with a (mostly
British) native-like accent due to being born in Britain or a long period of resi-
dence there or special speech training, which is given to e.g. news readers. The
native-like accent, however, does not have a high social prestige in Nigeria and
is ridiculed as affected and arrogant. Jibril (1986) claims that the closeness of the
various accents to RP is less correlated with social class or education and ethnicity
than with speech training, as can be found with some newsreaders and journalists.
Equally, Jowitt (1991) points out that education and ethnic background are less
reliable indicators of the proficiency of a speaker than his or her opportunity to
use the language.
Apart from differences in education, many reasons have been put forward for
the varieties of English spoken throughout Nigeria, including historical, geograph-
ical and sociolinguistic ones. According to Awonusi (1986), the different paths of
Western, Eastern and Northern Nigeria in terms of colonization, administration
and education resulted in diverse accents. In Yorubaland in the West, the mission-
aries first employed Englishmen speaking RP as teachers in their schools. When
they left as a result of the World War, Nigerians took over, who had to rely on text
books as a guide for English pronunciation. In Igboland in the East, schools re-
cruited missionaries from Scotland and Ireland, and features of these accents can
be traced in today’s Igbo English. In general, movement between school teachers
in the South was great. In the government schools of the North native speakers
educated at English public schools were employed as teachers, bringing their RP
background to Nigeria. Since there was little interaction between Northern and
Southern Nigerians educated in English before the All-Nigeria Legislative Assem-
bly in 1947, two divergent accents of English developed in those parts. However,
not only through teachers have Nigerians been exposed to a rich variety of English
accents. From the outset, there were traders and businessmen with Cockney, York-
shire, Birmingham accents and hundreds of American Peace Corps volunteers in
the 1960s (Jowitt 1991). Furthermore, various groups of non-native speakers such
as German, Danish, Dutch and French missionaries and Indians, Japanese, Greek,
Lebanese and Chinese businessmen, technicians and doctors lived in Nigeria for
considerable amounts of time.
818 Ulrike B. Gut
Jibril (1986: 51) describes NigE as “a cluster of regional and social varieties
which interact sufficiently in a sociolinguistic continuum to qualify for a common
cover term”. It is undisputed now that a process of indigenisation has made NigE a
recognizable and highly distinctive variety of English (e.g. Bamgbose 1982, 1997;
Jowitt 1997). However, no uniform and universally accepted description of the
NigE Standard exists yet.
The lack of a clear-cut policy on the English language in Nigeria has been wide-
ly criticized, with some critics arguing that an effective language policy in Nigeria
will have as an output the cultivation and use of an endonormative, standard, bilin-
gual-bicultural variety of the English language in Nigeria. This is usually proposed
to be the variety broadly associated with a certain level of education and with all
“Nigerianisms” most Nigerians conform to (e.g. Bamgbose 1997). The problem of
codifying a Standard Nigerian variety of English includes deciding which varia-
tions are deviant and which are acceptable. Systematic divergences from British
English may result from errors and it is difficult to decide which are accepted us-
age and which constitute individual mistakes. One of the questions to be solved is:
When does an erstwhile error become a legitimate variant? Jowitt (1991) proposes
that “Standard NigE” should be the sum of all non-standard English forms occur-
ring in all types of NigE, the stable part which consists of accepted, indigenised
errors and variants and calls this standard “Popular NigE”.
Due to the lack of a well-defined NigE standard, in the following, the phono-
logical properties of the main accents in NigE will be described. These accents
are Hausa English, Yoruba English and Igbo English, which represent the major
varieties and the only ones to have been researched in some detail. The description
will be restricted to the respective educated varieties as the nationally accepted
ones with only occasional reference to less educated varieties.
2. NigE Phonology
To date, notwithstanding some efforts, no representative corpus of spoken NigE is

available. This means that despite a growing number of experimental and instru-
mental studies on various aspects of NigE phonology, most descriptions of NigE
are impressionistic rather than based on empirical findings. Due to this lack of
quantitative data and the great variability of NigE as a second language variety as
described above, in the following only phonological tendencies can be described.
Quantitative corroboration is eagerly awaited.
2.1. Vowels
Compared to the 23 vowels of Southern British English, NigE has a reduced vowel
system, which is especially apparent in the less educated varieties: Basic Hausa
English has 15 vowels, Basic Yoruba English and Basic Igbo English have 11
vowels each (Jibril 1986). As in any L2 variety of English, the vowel system of
NigE reflects the vowel system of the speaker’s native language.
Table 1 lists the vowels of Educated Hausa English and Educated Southern
NigE as described in Jibril (1986) and Jowitt (1991). The major differences be-
tween the Hausa English and the Southern NigE vowel inventories lie in the lack
of phonemic vowel length and the lack of centralized vowels in the latter.
Table 1. The vowels of Educated Hausa English and Educated Southern NigE (Jibril
1986; Jowitt 1991)
Educated Hausa English Educated Southern NigE
Monophthongs /i:/, /I/, /E/, /e:/, /Q/, /U/, /a:/, /a/, /i/, /E/, /e/, /a/, /I/, /o/, /u/
/o/, /o:/, /u:/, /U/, /Œ:/, /´/
Diphthongs /ai/, /aI/, /oi/, /I´/, /E´/, /U´/ /ai/, /aI/, /çi/, /ia/, /ea/
The distribution of these vowels in both Hausa English and Southern NigE is il-
lustrated in Table 2.
Table 2. Vowel realizations in Educated Hausa English and Educated Southern NigE
Hausa South. Hausa South. Hausa South.

English NigE English NigE English NigE
KIT I i FLEECE i: i NEAR ia ia, ija

DRESS ´, a E, e FACE e e, a SQUARE ea ia, ea
TRAP a a PALM a: a START a a
LOT a ç THOUGHT o: ç NORTH ç ç
STRUT A, U ç GOAT o: o, ç FORCE o, oa ç
FOOT U u GOOSE u: u CURE ua ua

BATH a: a PRICE ai, í ai HappY i i
CLOTH ç ç CHOICE çi çi LettER a a
NURSE a: E, ç, a MOUTH au, ú au CommA a a
KIT
In Hausa English, /I/ is closely approximated, in Yoruba English and Igbo English
realized as [i], which leads to a lack of distinction between word pairs such as sit
and seat. Some Igbo speakers realize this vowel as a pharyngealized [i≥].
820 Ulrike B. Gut
DRESS
In Hausa English, a tendency to realize this vowel as [´] or [a], in Yoruba English
and Igbo English free variation between [e] and [E].
TRAP
In all varieties realized as /a/.
LOT
In Yoruba English and Igbo English realized as [ç], in Hausa English sometimes
as [a].
STRUT
In Yoruba English and Igbo English realized as [ç], in Hausa English an allophone
of /a/ close to /√/ is produced, sometimes also [U].
FOOT
In Hausa English very similar to /U/, in Yoruba English it is realized as [u] so that
the distinction between full and fool is neutralized. Some Igbo speakers realize this
vowel as a pharyngealized [u≥].
BATH
In Yoruba English and Igbo English realized as [a] so that word pairs such as march
and match become homophones. In Hausa English the vowel [a:] is produced.
CLOTH
Realized as [ç], see LOT.
NURSE
Hausa English realizes this vowel as [a:], in Yoruba English and Igbo English the
pronunciation is [Œ] or, depending on the spelling, with [ç] in work, [E] in girl, [e]
in dirty, [a] in perch, [a] in Sir.
FLEECE
In Hausa English [i:], but in Yoruba English and Igbo English the vowel is shorter
and the same as in KIT.
FACE
In Hausa English usually realized as [e] so that the distinction between let and late
is neutralized. In Yoruba English the vowel is also realized as [e], whereas in Igbo
English it is usually pronounced [a].
PALM
Realized as [a], see BATH.
THOUGHT
In Yoruba English and Igbo English realized as [ç] so that caught and cut become
homophones. In Hausa English it tends to be realized as [o:] except for words with
the spelling –au- (e.g. daughter) where it is pronounced [aU] or [Ú].
GOAT
Usually realized as [o:] in Hausa English and as [o] or [ç] in Yoruba English and
Igbo English.
GOOSE
In Hausa English it is pronounced [u:], whereas in Yoruba English and Igbo Eng-
lish both /U/ and /u/ are equally long (see FOOT). In Igbo English, the vowel may
be realized as a pharyngealized [u≥].
PRICE
Realized as [ai] in Yoruba English and Igbo English. In Hausa English the first
element may be centralized.
CHOICE
Realized as [çi] in Hausa English and as [çi] in Yoruba English and Igbo English.
MOUTH
In Yoruba English and Igbo English realized as [au], in Hausa English the first
element may be centralized [ú].
NEAR
Realized as [ia] or with an epenthetic [j] as [ija].
SQUARE
Like the NEAR vowel realized as [ia], with only very few speakers realizing it as [ea].
START
Realized as [a].
NORTH
Realized as [ç].
FORCE
In Yoruba English and Igbo English it is realized as [ç], while Hausa English
speakers pronounce it [o], [oa] or [owa].
CURE
Realized as [ua] or [uwa].
happY
Realized as [i]. Other /I/ are realized according to spelling with [e] in greeted.
lettER
Realized as [a].
horsES
Realized as [e] or [E].
commA
Realized as [a].
822 Ulrike B. Gut
In general, in NigE, vowels in unstressed syllables, which are produced as [´] or

[I] or deleted in native varieties of English, can be realized as either [a], [E], [I], [ç]
or [u], usually depending on the spelling (Simo Bobda 1997):
sofa [a]
resentment [E]
visible [i]
police [ç]
consensus [u]
Unlike in native varieties of English, in NigE function words do not have strong
and weak forms. But is always realized as [bçt] and the is realized as [Da] or [da]
in Southern NigE and [za] in Hausa English.
In all triphthongs, glide formation processes apply that change the middle vow-
els into the corresponding semi-vowels (Simo Bobda 1997) as in
fire [faja]
lion [lajçn]
power [pawa] or [pa:]
our [awa]
In Yoruba English, nasalization of vowels preceding nasals occurs, and often also
a dropping of nasals in word-final position can be observed (Jowitt 1991). For ex-
ample, win will be pronounced [wI)]. In Hausa English, sometimes a glottal stop is
produced before a vowel, which can have an emphasising function (Jowitt 1991).
2.2. Consonants
NigE is non-rhotic. The consonant system of NigE shows a lack of the postalveo-
lar fricative /Z/ and the velar nasal /N/, which only exist in the speech of very so-
phisticated speakers with speech training (Jibril 1986). The consonant phonemes
vary in their realisations between Hausa English, Yoruba English and Igbo English
as illustrated in Tables 3 to 5 (cf. Jibril 1986; Jowitt 1991).
Table 3. Hausa realisations of some consonants
/p/ [p], [f], [∏]

/f/ [f], [p], [∏]
/b/ [b], [v]
/v/ [v], [b]
/D/ [D], [z]
/T/ [T], [s]
Table 4. Igbo realizations of some consonants
/T/ [T], [t], [t5]

/D/ [D], [d], [d5]
/hj/ (human) [h]
/pj/ (pupil) [p]
Table 5. Yoruba realizations of some consonants
/v/ [v], [f]

/T/ [T], [t], [t5]
/D/ [D], [d], [d5]
/dZ/ [dZ], [Z]
/tS/ [tS], [S]
/h/ [h], deleted
/z/ [z], [s]
/v/ [v], [f]
One general feature of NigE is the (probable) spelling pronunciation of many

words. This applies to words ending in orthographic -mb, -ng and those with –st
and –bt as in
bomb [bçmb]
plumber [plçmba]
sing [sINg]
hang [haNg]
debt [dEbt]
and also (possibly) to a number of loan words such as
élite [ilait]
plateau [platu] (see Jowitt [1991] for a full list).
Equally, since orthography suggests it, final –ed is often realized as [d] as for ex-
ample in increased. This in turn will trigger prevoicing of the consonant preceding
the –ed so that the pronunciation is [inkrizd]. Voicing of [ks] can be observed in
maximum [magzimçm] and laxity [lagziti], which has been described as an influ-
ence from American English (Görlach [1997]).
On the other hand, devoicing of final consonants is common in NigE (Simo
Bobda 1997), as for example in with, which is often realized as [wiT], robe, which
824 Ulrike B. Gut
is realized as [rop] and leave, which is realized as [lif]. Similarily, the plural /–z/
and third person singular /-z/ is often replaced by [-s] as in roads [rçds], doors
[dçs] and digs [dIgs] (Jibril [1986]).
There are two simplification strategies for consonant clusters in NigE. One is
the reduction of word-final consonant clusters by deletion of the last part as in
hand [han]
post [pçs]
cold [kçl]
The consonant cluster /kw/ is reduced to [k] as in [EkIpmEn(t)] for equipment.
Quantitative support for this comes from an experimental study involving ‘read-
ing passage’ style (Gut 2003). I found that syllable structures that never occur in
NigE speech compared to British English speech are syllables with deleted vow-
els (C, CC, CCC), syllables with three consonants in the onset position (CCCV,
CCCVC, CCCVVC), the syllable type VVC and syllables with three consonants
in the coda position (CVCCC). Furthermore, Nigerians produce significantly
more open syllables (syllables without a final consonant) than British English
speakers reading the same passage, which reflects the high proportion of conso-
nant deletions.
The other consonant cluster simplification strategy is the insertion of the epen-
thetic vowel [u] or [i] between word-final syllabic consonants and the preceding
consonant as e.g. in
bottle [bçtUl]
button [bçtun]
cattle [katul]
silk [silik]
Epenthetic vowels are especially common in Hausa English.
Other phonological processes occurring in NigE include metathesis as in the
pronunciation [aks] for ask and, especially in Hausa English, a tendency to gemi-
nation as in [g√mmńt] for government (Jowitt 1991).
2.3. Prosody
2.3.1. Stress and accent
The terms “stress” and “accent” are used in contradictory ways among researchers.
Here, I will define “stress” as an abstract category that is stored as a feature of a
syllable in the speaker’s mental lexicon and “accent” as its phonetic realization
in speech. Word stress in NigE is in many cases different from that in British or
American English (e.g. Simo Bobda 1997; Jowitt 1991). No systematic studies be-
ing available, a summary of various observations will be presented here.
Simo Bobda (1997) describes a general tendency for stress shifted to the right.
This can be seen in realizations of the words sa»lad, ma»ttress and pe»trol. Espe-
cially with words whose final syllable contains an [n] or an [i], stress is shifted to
the right. Examples are:
plan»tain bap»tist
hy»giene ten»nis
jave»lin bis»cuit
Verbs tend to have stress on the last syllable if
– they have final obstruents (e.g. inter»pret, embar»rass, com»ment, soli»cit)
– or contain the affixes -ate, -ise, -ize, -fy or -ish
Other affixes that tend to attract stress include
-ative -atory/-utory
-ature -cide
-itive/-utive -land
-man -phone
-day
Affixes that tend to bring stress to the preceding syllable are:
-able/-ible -age
-al -ary
-ean -er
-ism -mony
-ous
Equally, strong consonant clusters pull stress to the preceding syllable as in
an»cestor. In compounds, the second element is stressed as for example in fire»wood
and proof»read. In general, however, it must be noted that word stress patterns are
not realized uniformly and that even among educated speakers (and even between
productions of one and the same speaker) there is considerable variation in indi-
vidual words.
Jowitt (1991) suggests that Nigerian speakers of English equate the primary
stress in English with a high tone and the tertiary stress with a low tone. In order
to avoid three consecutive low tones in e.g. interestingly, word stress is shifted to
arrive at the pronunciation 1interes»tingly.
In continuous speech, the stressed syllables of words become potential places
for sentence stress, i.e. accents realized by the speaker, with the number of accents
determined by the speech tempo. In each utterance or sentence the most prominent
accent is called the nucleus and tends to fall on the rightmost stressed syllable of
an utterance, although pragmatic reasons such as emphasis may cause stress shifts.
Sentence stress in NigE is rarely used for emphasis or contrast (Jibril 1986; Jowitt
826 Ulrike B. Gut
1991; Gut 2003). Instead of producing “Mary did it” Nigerians tend to say “It was
Mary who did it”.
Given information is rarely deaccented. For example, consider the sequence: A
tiger and a mouse [..] saw a big lump of cheese lying on the ground. The mouse
said: “[…] You don’t even like cheese”.
Nigerians produce an accent on the given information cheese in the last sen-
tence whereas British speakers accentuate like.
An overall preference for “end-stress”, i.e. the placement of the nucleus, the
most prominent accent, on the last word can been observed in NigE (Eka 1985;
Gut 2003). In the dialogue (1) for example
(1) a. Come on, who’ll volunteer?
b. I will, if you insist.
British English speakers put a nucleus on I in (1b), whereas NigE speakers stress
will most.
In general, in NigE many lexical items can receive stress that do not usually
do so in British English. More stressed syllables are realized as accents in NigE
speech than is the case in British English speech. In reading passage style, nearly
all verbs, adjectives and nouns are accented in NigE (Udofot 2003; Gut 2003). In
spontaneous speech, differences between British English and NigE are most pro-
nounced with a large number of extra accented syllables in NigE (Udofot 2003).
The phonetic realization of accents in NigE seems to be very different from that
of other, especially native speaker varieties of English. In the languages of the
world, the phonetic realization of accents can have different formats: In languages
with “tonal accent” such as Swedish and Norwegian, different types of tones or
pitch patterns are used on accented syllables. In languages with “dynamic accent”
such as English or German, the phonetic parameters pitch, length and loudness
are combined with different relative importance for the phonetic realization of
accents. There seems to be an intricate relationship between accents and tone, not
only because accents are very often produced with a phonetically high pitch. It
has been suggested that in NigE accents are produced primarily by tone. Jowitt
(1991) claims that stressed syllables receive a high tone whereas unstressed syl-
lables receive a low tone. Gut (2003) found that tone in NigE is grammatically
determined with lexical words receiving high tone on the stressed syllable and
non-lexical words receiving low tone. The tonal patterns of some multisyllabic
words are illustrated in Table 6 with L symbolising a low tone and H symbolising
a high tone.
Table 6. Intonation/stress pattern of multisyllabic words (Gut 2003)
something swallow remove enough continued

HH HH LH LH LHH
The stressed syllable of lexical words is produced with a high tone, which then
spreads to the end of the word. Any unstressed syllables preceding the stressed
syllable are produced with a low tone.
2.3.2. Speech rhythm

It has been suggested that NigE has a syllable-timed rather than stress-timed
rhythm. The languages of the world have traditionally been divided into stress-
timed and syllable-timed. Speech rhythm was understood to be a periodic re-
currence of events such as syllables in the case of the so-called “syllable-timed”
languages and feet in the case of the so-called “stress-timed” languages. In syl-
lable-timed languages such as Yoruba, syllables are assumed to be equal in length.
Stress-timed languages such as English, in contrast, are supposed to have regular
recurring stress beats. Since the number of syllables between two stress beats var-
ies, their length is adjusted to fit into the stress interval – syllable length, hence
is very variable in stress-timed languages. No acoustic basis for either isochrony
of feet in stress-timed languages or equal length of syllables in syllable-timed
languages has ever been found. Eka (1985) proposes that NigE speech rhythm
is ‘inelastic’ insofar as the durational adjustment of unstressed syllables does not
occur.
Recent approaches of measuring speech rhythm are based on the assumption
that speech rhythm is a multidimensional concept which includes various phono-
logical properties of languages. Accordingly, languages are not classified into dis-
tinct rhythmic classes anymore but are assumed to be located along a continuum.
Dauer (1983: 55), for example, suggested that “rhythmic differences […] between
languages […] are more a result of phonological, phonetic, lexical, and syntactic
facts about that language than any attempt on the part of the speaker to equalize
interstress or intersyllable intervals”. In Dauer’s view, speech rhythm reflects va-
riety of syllable structures, phonological vowel length distinctions, absence/pres-
ence of vowel reduction and lexical stress. Whereas languages formerly classi-
fied as stress-timed such as English show a variety of different syllable structures,
languages formerly classified as syllable-timed have a majority of CV syllables.
Equally, differences in rhythm between languages reflect whether a language has
vowel reduction or not; those classified as stress-timed usually do. In addition,
languages with a tendency to syllable-timing either do not have lexical stress or
accent is realized by variations in pitch contour. Conversely, languages with a ten-
dency to stress-timing realize word level stress by a combination of length, pitch,
loudness and quality changes, which result in clearly discernible beats.
This approach is reflected in recent measurements of the acoustic correlates of
speech rhythm, which are based on phonetic cues such as successive vowel and
syllable durations. Experimental studies employing these acoustic measurements
of the phonetic correlates of speech rhythm confirmed the impression of a tenden-
828 Ulrike B. Gut
cy to “syllable-timing” in NigE. Vowel reduction does not occur in NigE, which

results in a more equal duration of syllables (Udofot 2003; Gut 2003). Subsequent
syllables in NigE are more similar in length than in British English but less simi-
lar than in West African languages. Compared to other languages classified with
Ramus, Nespor and Mehler’s (1999) measurement of rhythm, NigE groups with
Spanish, Catalan, Italian and French, all of which are presumed to be syllable-
timed, in terms of the vowel percentage, but shows a higher standard deviation of
consonantal intervals than those languages.
In general, the overall speech tempo in NigE is slower than in British English,
and NigE speakers divide their utterances into more and shorter intonation phrases
than British English speakers (Udofot 2003; Gut 2003).
2.3.3. Intonation
Compared to native varieties of English, NigE intonation seems simplified. Most
utterances, both in read and spontaneous speech, have a falling tone. Rising tones
are relatively rare and occur mostly in yes-no questions and tag questions. Com-
plex tones such as fall-rises and rise-falls are even rarer (Eka 1985; Gut 2003).
Gut (2003) investigated the native language influence on NigE intonation. All
Nigerian languages are tone languages, where pitch is lexically significant, con-
trastive and relative. Tone is associated with tone-bearing units such as the syl-
lable or the mora and differences in relative pitch are used to convey lexical and
grammatical distinctions. Hausa and Igbo have two tones H (high) and L (low),
and Yoruba has three tones: H (high), M (mid) and L (low). Gut (2003) tested the
hypothesis that in NigE, like in tone languages, every syllable is associated with
a tone and arrived at a first tentative proposal of NigE intonational phonology:
two tones are sufficient to describe NigE intonation: H and L. There is initial rais-
ing, which causes initial low tones to appear phonetically as a mid tone. Equally,
downstep lowers high tones on the second and subsequent lexical words to a pho-
netic mid tone. NigE has two boundary tones: H% and L%, which may combine
with the level tones to form the contour tones HL and LH. A low boundary tone
can suppress the H of a lexical word. This proposal now needs to be tested with a
wider range of speech types and speakers.
In general, the pitch range in NigE is smaller than in British English (Eka 1985),
but Jowitt (1991) reports an exceptionally wide pitch range in Yoruba English
in some constructions. For example, a relative pronoun introducing a restrictive
clause has a very high tone, as well as a sentence-initial if.
Selected references
ROM.
Awonusi, Victor
1986 Regional accents and internal variability in Nigerian English: a historical
analysis. English Studies 6: 555–560.
Bamgbose, Ayo
1982 Standard Nigerian English: issues of identification. In: Kachru (ed.), 99–111.
1997 English in the Nigerian environment. In: Bamgbose, Banjo and Thomas (eds.),
9–26.
Banjo, Ayo
1971 Towards a definition of standard Nigerian spoken English. Actes du 8th
Congress de la Societé Linguiste de l’Afrique Occidentale, 165–175.
Dauer, R.
1983 Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalysed. Journal of Phonetics 11: 51–
62.
Eka, David
1985 A phonological study of Standard Nigerian English. Ph.D. dissertation,
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Görlach, Manfred
1997 Nigerian English: Broken, Pidgin, Creole and Regional Standards? In: Uwe
Böker and Hans Sauer, Proceedings of the Anglistentag 1996 Dresden, 141–
152. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
Grimes, Barbara and Grimes, Joseph
2000 Ethnologue. Languages of the World. Volume1. Dallas: SIL International
Gut, Ulrike
2003 Nigerian English – a typical West African language? In: Ewald Mengel, Hans-
Jörg Schmid and Michael Steppat (eds.), Proceedings of the Anglistentag
2002 Bayreuth, 461–471. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
Jibril, Munzali
1986 Sociolinguistic variation in Nigerian English. English World-Wide 7: 147–
174.
Jowitt, David
1991 Nigerian English Usage. Lagos: Bencod Press.
1997 Nigeria’s national language question: choices and constraints. In: Bamgbose,
Banjo and Thomas (eds.), 34–56.
Ramus, Franck, Marina Nespor and Jaques Mehler
1999 Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition 73: 265–292.
Schaefer, Ronald and Francis Egbokhare
1999 English and the pace of endangerment in Nigeria. World Englishes 18: 381–
391.
Simo Bobda, Augustin
1997 The Phonologies of Nigerian English and Cameroon English. In: Bamgbose,
Banjo and Thomas (eds.), 248–268.
830 Ulrike B. Gut
Udofot, Inyang
2003 Stress and rhythm in the Nigerian accent of English. English World Wide 24:
201–220.
Nigerian Pidgin English: phonology
Ben Elugbe
1. Introduction
It is generally agreed that Nigerian Pidgin (NigP) is the product of contact be-
tween English and Nigerian languages, especially those of the Niger Delta, and
Benin and Calabar. However, as Ryder points out (1969: 24), the first European
visitors to the coast of Nigeria were not the English but the Portuguese. The ques-
tion therefore arises whether there was no Portuguese Pidgin before the arrival of
the English. Elugbe and Omamor (1991) suggest that a kind of pidgin Portuguese
must indeed have developed between the Portuguese and their Nigerian hosts.
They further point out that the presence of a substantial percentage of words of
Edoid origin in the Portuguese Creole, Saõ Tomense, of Saõ Tomé Island in the
Gulf of Guinea (Hagemeijer 2000), supports the existence of a Portuguese Pidgin
in Nigeria before the coming of the English. More direct evidence of the existence
of a Portuguese Pidgin, which was presumably supplanted by NigP, would be the
existence of relics of Portuguese-origin vocabulary in NigP. These are rare (for ex-
ample sabi ‘know’ and cabin ‘a kind of room’) – see Elugbe and Omamor (1991)
for a detailed examination.
2. Phonology
2.1. Some general comments
Mafeni (1971) must be recognised as the first scientific publication on NigP pho-
nology, whose validity remains today. The dialect of NigP described by Mafeni is
the Bendelian variety – the same as in Elugbe and Omamor (1991). This variety
is spoken in the old Bendel State, now divided into Delta and Edo States. It is
spoken very widely throughout Edo State and in the non-Igboid parts of Delta
State. In the Igboid parts of Delta State, Igbo competes very strongly with NigP. In
the Warri/Sapele parts of the State, NigP has creolised – as Elugbe and Omamor
(1991) point out.
Although I address the Bendel variety here, it is necessary to point out that re-
gional varieties often have minor differences in consonant and vowel systems as
well as in vocabulary. A very easy and self-evident example is in the area of food.
The NigP speaker from Kano may not be familiar with what a speaker from Warri
means by /statS/ starch, a common, cassava-based food in the Delta. On the other
832 Ben Elugbe
hand, the Warri speaker may not know what the Kano speaker means by tuwo, a
kind of pounded or kneaded food which is mainly rice-based. Nevertheless, there
is complete mutual intelligibility between the regional varieties of NigP.
Speakers of NigP are known for the ease with which they use words in an ad
hoc manner to describe specific concepts. However, a phonology of NigP can and
should only describe a sound system based on the core of stable vocabulary that
can be established as characterising NigP all over Nigeria. Today several sub-va-
rieties of NigP can be recognised:
(a) Northern variety, heavily influenced by Hausa;
(b) a South-western variety, newly emerged and often very like the Bendel vari-
ety;
(c) the Bendel variety, also referred to as Bendelian here, which some regard as
standard (for example Elugbe and Omamor 1991);
(d) a Rivers variety with a very noticeable colouration from the Ijoid and other
small languages of the Rivers and Bayelsa States;
(e) a South-eastern variety in the geopolitical zone referred to as the Southeast
with a heavy Igbo colouration; and, finally,
(f) a Cross River variety which is heavily coloured by the Cross River languages,
especially Efik-Ibibio.
In Nigeria, NigP has no official status even though Government and its agents,
like the National Orientation Agency (NOA), now use it as a means of reaching a
wider audience.
2.2. The consonants of NigP

Mafeni (1971) presented 24 consonant phonemes for NigP while Elugbe and Oma-
mor (1991: 79) presented 24 systematic phonetic consonants. However, I now
recognise about 25 at the systematic phonetic level. It is quite possible that some
varieties may have more consonants – especially where local words are drafted
in from time to time. However, it is not necessary to account for such transient
consonants in a phonology of NigP.
Nigerian Pidgin English: phonology 833
The consonants of the Bendelian variety described here are presented in table 1:
Table 1. The consonants of NigP
Labial Alveolar (Alveo)- Velar Labiovelar Glottal

Palatal
Nasal m n ¯ N (Nw)
Plosive p b t d k g kp gb
Affricate (t) d
Fricative f v s z ()
Lateral l
Approximant w r [®] j h
2.2.1. Exemplification of the consonants

The inventory can easily be exemplified as in table 2 below.
Table 2. NigP consonants exemplified
Nasal: mat ‘mat’ taim ‘time’

nao ‘now’ pçnd ‘pond’
ik ‘ink’ tak ‘tank, thank’
Plosive: pipu/pipo ‘people’ tit ‘teeth’
bçe ‘boy’ bçbi ‘breast’
tçl ‘tall’ bçtu ‘bottle’
dae ‘die’ todee ‘today’
kçm ‘come’ kek ‘cake’
o ‘go’ b ‘beg’
Affricates: tit/it ‘cheat’ tit/ti ‘teach’
dçmp ‘jump’ dulae ‘July’
Fricatives: futubçl ‘football’ tçf ‘tough’
va ‘van’ faev ‘five’
sit ‘sit’ fes ‘face’
zip ‘zip’ bizi ‘busy’
ip ‘ship’ fi ‘fish’
mç/mç ‘measure’ plç/plç ‘pleasure’
Lateral: let ‘late’ tl ‘tell’
834 Ben Elugbe
Table 2. (continued) NigP consonants exemplified
Approximant: rd ‘red’ tri ‘tree’

jt ‘yet’ ju ‘you’
wt ‘wet’ wund ‘wound’
hao ‘how’ hçt ‘hot’
2.2.2. Consonants and syllable structure

In NigP, consonants function only at the borders of syllables except that a syllabic
nasal consonant exists which functions as the nucleus of a syllable. Consonant
clusters are allowed at the beginning and at the end of syllables. At the peak or
nucleus of a syllable, vowels and a syllabic nasal are allowed – thus:
Consonants in syllables
sta ‘star’
aks ‘ask’
è-kçè ‘so what?/what if?/what about?, etc.’
krae ‘cry’
ples ‘place’
flç ‘flog, beat a younger person’
There are normally no more than two consonants allowed at the beginning of the
syllable in NigP. A few words contain three in sophisticated, English-influenced,
varieties. Thus the word street may be pronounced /strit/ or /srit/. The clusterless
form /sitiriti/ is possible in totally uneducated varieties. At the end of a syllable,
the maximum number of consonants allowed is two. Again we find, for the Eng-
lish word help for example, the two pronunciations /hlp/ or /hlp/.
2.3. Vowels
Across Nigeria, the majority of the dialects of NigP have a simple seven-qual-
ity vowel system. However, there are also diphthongs, which are double quality
vowels that nonetheless function as single syllable nuclei. A complete inventory of
NigP vowels would therefore be as in table 3:
Table 3. The vowels of NigP
Oral vowels Nasal vowels
Monophthongs
u u
e o
E ç E) ç)
a a
Diphthongs
ae, ao, çe
The three diphthongs listed here correspond to what are normally [a], [a], and [çI]
respectively in Standard British English (StdBrE). In the established numbering
of English vowels, these are numbers 15, 16, and 17 respectively, the rising diph-
thongs. This analysis differs from that of Mafeni (1971), for whom words such as
/praod/ proud and /smael/ smile end in consonant clusters – /prawd/ and /smayl/
respectively. Moreover, in Mafeni’s system, the word /bçe/ boy would be /bçy/,
ending in a consonant. Thus Mafeni recognised no vowel sequences and no diph-
thongs in NigP. By contrast, Elugbe and Omamor (1991) recognised these three
diphthongs as /ai/, /au/, and /çi/ respectively. In fact, the terminal point never goes
as high as /i/ or /u/ – hence /ae/, /ao/, /çe/ here.
In NigP as well as in NigE, another pair of rising diphthongs, English vowel
number 13, /e/, and number 14, /o/ or / / are [e] or [ee] and [o] or [oo] respec-
tively. The double vowel form is found in word-final open syllables while the
single vowel pronunciation occurs in closed syllables. At a recent workshop on
translating the Bible into NigP, the above rule was found to separate words such
as NigP wet ‘wait’ from wee ‘way’. Thus, ‘The way in which it was written by
John’ is rendered as di wee we John (tek) raet am. The relative marker ‘which’ is
we (see below) with a short vowel in NigP, whereas the noun ‘way’, with an open
syllable is wee.
The centring diphthongs of StdBrE are numbers 18, / /, 19, / /, and 20, / /.
In NigP, these may be analysed as sequences of vowels, (Elugbe and Omamor
1991). Thus we find the following correspondences between StdBrE and NigP:
StdBrE centring diphthongs in NigP:
– /
/ ear is NigP /ia/ with a distinct, albeit weak /j/ between the twin qualities of
the diphthong: [ija].
– /
/ air is NigP /a/ or // – in each case they are two distinct vowels.
– / / poor is /puç/ with a weak /w/ between the two vowel qualities of the diph-
thong: /puwç/
836 Ben Elugbe
It should be noted here that the alternative to [ ], which in StdBrE is [ç˘], (for
example /p / or /pç˘/ ‘poor’) does not feature in NigP. The vowels of NigP
were clearly based on a variety of English which did not alternate / / with /ç˘/.
However it did recognise the vowel /ç˘/ which, like /ç/ or /Å/, corresponds to NigP
/ç/. For example, the utterances in (1) and (2) are both said without a distinction
between pot and Port (Port Harcourt):
(1) i de (insae) pçt ‘It’s in the pot’
(2) i de (fç) pçt ‘It’s in Port (Harcourt).’
Without the prepositions, the two utterances sound exactly the same.
It can be seen therefore that the simplification of the English vowel system in
NigP followed very clear lines as shown in table 4.
Table 4. Correspondences between English vowels and those of NigP
StdBrE 1. i NigP i
2.
3.
4. æ a
5.
6. ç
7. ç˘
8. u
9. u
10. ç
11. or , a
12. a, ç
13. e e, ee
14. or o o, oo
15. a ae
16. a ao
17. ç çe
18.
19. vowel sequences, see above
20.
Table 5 below exemplifies the vowels of NigP:
Table 5. NigP vowels exemplified
NigP i it eat
E bEd bed
a bad bad
ç pçt pot
kçt court
o kot coat
u ful full
ful fool
ae hae high
ao nao now
çe bçe boy
2.4. Nasalisation
Any discussion of the vowels of NigP would be incomplete without reference to
nasalisation. Vowels and nasalisation are tied together in NigP; it is with vowels
that we find nasalisation without an adjacent nasal consonant to account for it, as
we see in ‘yes’ and kç‚, kç‚n ‘corn, maize’, and in sentence (3):
(3) na i du am ‘he did it’
Examples such as these raise the question of how to account for nasalisation in
NigP. We may assume (as did Elugbe and Omamor 1991) that every case of na-
salisation arises from the presence of an underlying nasal. Such a position would
be amply supported by the forms of ‘corn’ cited above. Even i in (3) can be traced
to an underlying nasal: [na him du am] contains a common alternative for [i], viz.
[him]. This analysis also allows us to record nasalisation as <n> immediately after
the nasalised vowel. The orthographic form of (3) is therefore na in du am.
There are cases in which vowel nasalisation affects a preceding consonant:
Consonant nasalisation in NigP
yam ‘yam’ becomes [am] or [jam]
yanfuyanfu ‘plentiful(ly)’ [afuafu] or [jafujafu]
wan ‘one’ [a] or [an] [wa] [wan]
when ‘when’ [] or [n] [w] [wn]
ron ‘run’ [ç] or [çn]
hon ‘horn’ [hç] or [hçn]
838 Ben Elugbe
These examples suggest that [] and [w] are not phonemic and exist only at the
systematic phonetic level. Their nasalised approximant alternatives show that
there is a general rule by which approximants become nasal (in the case of /j/ and
/w/) or nasalised counterparts in the environment of nasalised vowels.
Elugbe and Omamor (1991) claim that /l/ is nasalised before nasalised vowels,
but they provide no examples. However, it is a legitimate issue to examine. In ex-
amples such as /lnd/, lend it is probably the case that the surface form is [l], [ln],
[lnd], with no nasalisation of the [l], or [l], [ln], or [lnd], with nasalisation of
the lateral. In other words, the approximant nasalisation rule affects both lateral
and central approximants except that unlike in Yoruba and similar languages, the
nasalised allophone of /l/ is not [n], but [l].
3. Pitch in NigP
The use to which a language puts pitch determines whether it is a tone language or
a non-tonal one. In Pike’s famous definition of a tone language (1948), we are told
that a tone language is one that makes significant use of pitch on every syllable.
By this definition, it is to be expected that pitch differences in individual syllables
may be lexically or even grammatically significant. Lexical use of pitch is seen
in Yoruba:
Lexical pitch in Yoruba
igba (LL) ‘time’
igba (LH) ‘garden egg’
i gba (MH) ‘gourd’
i gba (MM) ‘800’
igba (LM) ‘fence’
These examples show that a variation on a syllable can cause a change in lexi-
cal meaning. In (4) and (5) from Ghotuo, a North-central Edoid language of the
Benue-Congo family in Edo State of Nigeria, we find that a similar change in the
pitch of a syllable results in a change of grammatical meaning:
Grammatical pitch in Ghotuo
(4) mha
d o
be (MHML) ‘We bought a book’
(5) mha d o
be (LHML) ‘We did not buy a book’
It should be noted that the case for the significance of pitch on every syllable is
still valid even where these minimal pairs or sets do not exist – provided a change
of pitch leads to some kind of change, including to an unacceptable (i.e. mean-
ingless) utterance. Mafeni (1971) subjected NigP to this test and concluded that
it is a tone language with two tones (low and high) because of lexical examples
cited below:
Mafeni’s examples of so-called lexical tone in NigP

fada ‘father’
fada ‘a Roman Catholic father’
sisi ‘young maid’
sisi ‘six pence’ (= 5 Kobo)
baba ‘father’
baba ‘a Roman Catholic priest’
Mafeni also suggested what might be called a tone rule by which monosyllabic
high-tone words are realized on a falling pitch pre-pausally. Sentences (6) and (7)
exemplify such falling pitch:
(6) i o pe ma mçni ‘He will pay my fee’
(7) i o pe ‘He will pay’
However, the way NigP uses pitch does not fit that of a tone language. In languages
such as English, pitch variations cover whole phrases, clauses or sentences. More-
over, pitch variations do not alter the basic lexical composition of an utterance. Thus
the word ‘Yes’, said with a variety of pitch variations, remains ‘Yes’. This type of
language is called an intonation language. English, from which NigP is derived (it
is NigP’s superstrate), also operates a stress system and there is some evidence that
NigP equates stress with high pitch. For example, tense and aspect markers are not
normally stressed in English: similarly in NigP, such markers are not said on a high
pitch whereas full verbs are (compare 8a and c, as well as 8b and d):
High and low pitch words in NigP
(8) a. i o pe ma mçni ‘He will pay my fee’
b. i o pe ‘He will pay’
c. i o pe ma mçni ‘He went and paid my fee’
d. i o pe ‘He went and paid’
There seems little doubt that NigP employs pitch for intonation along lines similar
to what English does (see Mafeni 1971). For example in sentences 8(a)–(d) above
intonation differences can change a statement into a question:
(9) a. i o pe ma mçni ‘He will pay my fee’
b. i o pe ‘He will pay’
c. i o pe ma mçn ? ‘Will he pay my fee?’
d. i o pe ? ‘Will he pay?’
Note that the high of (9a) is even higher or still rising in (9c) while the falling high
of (9b) now lacks a fall and is even higher and rising.
Elugbe and Omamor (1991: 85) suggest that NigP is something of a pitch-accent
language in which, given a word there may be only one high tone, or one sequence
thereof in opposition to one low sequence:
840 Ben Elugbe
High pitch accent in NigP (see Elugbe and Omamor 1991)

sisi ‘six pence’ (now = 5 Kobo)
sisi ‘young maid’
hvun ‘heaven’
wayo ‘trickery’
wakawaka ‘layabout’
yana ‘vanity’
konosa ‘gossip’
çtçriti ‘authority’
miraku ‘miracle’
Exceptions to the above pattern are words taken directly from local languages and
not adapted into the NigP sound system. Elements of a similar analysis are to be
found in Mafeni’s suggestion that high-tone syllables in NigP are normally more
heavily stressed than low-tone ones. In other words, the high tone may be cor-
related with (strong) stress while the low tone is correlated with weak stress (or a
lack of it?). However, in a word such as miraku for example there are three pitch
levels of which the first is the highest and the last is the lowest. The same applies
to the word çtçriti in which the pitch descends from the high of tç through the mid
of ri to the low of ti. Such examples show that after the accented syllable, a kind
of ‘downdrift’, such as characterises statement intonation in English, occurs also
in NigP. That is the reason that Mafeni claimed that the intonation of NigP is very
similar to that of English.
Another issue raised by Mafeni is of rhythm. He describes NigP as a “syllable-
timed” language in which “The syllables constituting a stretch of utterance occur
isochronously and tend to be of equal duration” (1971: 109). In this respect as in
Nigerian languages which form the substrate for NigP, every syllable is as promi-
nent as the other and the weakening of syllables as we see in a stress language such
as English does not occur.
4. Conclusion
In sum, then, NigP has a phonology which incorporates elements from English as
well as from the local languages of Nigeria. It lacks //and //, it contains labial-
velar stops, and it has nasal vowels, and it is syllable-timed – all of which make
it look like a typical indigenous Nigerian language. But, unlike a typical Nigerian
language, it is not a tone language. It employs pitch lexically as in a pitch-accent
language, but employs it for intonation as in English.
Selected references
ROM.
Elugbe Ben O. and A. P. Omamor
1991 Nigerian Pidgin: Background and Prospects. Ibadan: Heinemann Educational
Books.
Hagemeijer, Tjerk
2000 Serial verb constructions in Saõ-Tomense. MA dissertation, University of
Lisbon, Portugal.
Mafeni, Bernard
1971 Nigerian Pidgin. In: Spencer (ed.), 95-112.
Pike, Kenneth L.
1948 Tone Languages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Ryder, A. F. C.
1969 Benin and the Europeans. London: Longman.
Ghanaian English: phonology
Magnus Huber
Ghana is a coastal West African country with a population of about 19 million

(2000 census). The majority is concentrated in the southern, more fertile and de-
veloped part of the country, with Ashanti Region, Greater Accra, and Eastern Re-
gion the most populous administrative units. Population density is quite high in
the southern urbanized centres, especially around the capital Accra, which is the
major focus of Ghana’s internal migration.
Direct contact with Europeans goes back to 1471, when the Portuguese made
their first landfall on what soon came to be known as the Gold Coast of Africa,
at the mouth of the Pra river. In their progress along the West African coast, the
primary objective of the Portuguese had been to find a trade route to India, but
the availability of gold, ivory and slaves made trade with West Africa very lucra-
tive and soon attracted other European powers as well. Afro-European contact on
the Gold Coast can conveniently be divided into three major phases: early trad-
ing contacts (1471–1844), colonization (1844–1957), and independence and after
(1957–).
The trading phase was characterized by growing European competition. The
Portuguese hegemony was broken by the Dutch in the first half of the 17th cen-
tury, and other European powers followed in their wake: French, English, Swedish,
Danish, and Brandenburger merchants all claimed their share of the Guinea trade.
English traders had arrived as early as 1553, and their ships regularly visited the
Gold Coast up to the 1570s, when they temporarily seemed to have lost inter-
est in that part of West Africa. In 1632, the Company of Merchants Trading on
Guinea established the first English trading post on land, at Kormantin. More trad-
ing posts, fortified and unfortified, followed in the second half of the century. The
biggest among them was Cape Coast Castle, which from 1665 to 1877, that is well
into the colonial period, would remain the English headquarters. This early phase
of Afro-European contact was characterized by trade between equal partners. No
territorial claims were made by the Europeans, who either traded from shipboard
or kept to their trading posts. In fact, it was not uncommon for the merchants to
pay ground rent and taxes to the local chiefs.
The early phase of British colonization began in 1844, when the chiefs of the
south-western Gold Coast signed an agreement with Governor George Maclean
at Cape Coast Castle. It had long been the custom that legal cases in the villages
Ghanaian English: phonology 843
surrounding larger European trading posts were tried before the commanders of
these forts or castles. But in the Bond of 1844, the chiefs for the first time formally
yielded some of their juridical power to the British crown. Christian missionary
societies had become active on the Gold Coast in the 1830s, so these decades saw
an increasing involvement of Europeans in local affairs and a territorial expansion
Map 1. Ghana, political

844 Magnus Huber
of European influence. After the withdrawal of the Dutch, the only remaining
competitors, the British, proclaimed the coastal strip a colony in 1874. Three years
later, the capital was moved from Cape Coast to Accra. During the first decades
of the Gold Coast Colony, Britain waged several wars against the Ashanti, the
powerful Akan state in the hinterland. The British suffered several losses but in
1901 proclaimed Ashantiland and the Northern Territories protectorates, and in
1922 incorporated British Togoland in the colony as a League of Nations mandate.
These territories together constitute the modern Republic of Ghana. As the first
state in colonial Africa, Ghana achieved independence in 1957.
From as early as the 17th century, Africans received English instruction in
schools set up in or around the trading posts, but since the number of pupils was
small and schools were often discontinued, the role of English on the coast re-
mained insignificant. Cape Coast advanced to become the main centre of Brit-
ish education early in the 19th century and produced African teachers that staffed
schools elsewhere on the Gold Coast. However, the absolute number of literate
users of English remained very low. The increasing number of missionary schools
did not much change this situation, since many of these schools taught in African
languages.
Not before the 1880s did the colonial administration start to set up English me-
dium government schools. The 1882 Education Ordinance encouraged missionary
schools to teach in English and a dual language policy was pursued until 1925: the
Wesleyan and the government schools used English as a medium of instruction
whereas the Basel and Bremen mission schools used the local language, Twi and
Ewe respectively. The 1925 Education Ordinance made the use of the local lan-
guage as the medium of instruction compulsory at the Primary level P1–P3 while
English was to be taught as a subject. From P4 to P6, English was the medium
of instruction, whereas the local language was taught as a subject. On the whole,
Ghanaian language policy has ever since vacillated between the basic tenets of the
1925 Education Ordinance and the wish to push English as a medium of instruction
from P1. The 1951 Accelerated Development Plan for Education led to the rapid
increase of primary schools throughout the country. The resulting shortage of staff
meant that primary school leavers had to be employed as teachers. Coupled with
the fact that the Plan provided for an early transition from African languages to
English as the medium of instruction, this had serious consequences for the qual-
ity of English. Nevertheless, colonial rule established English as the language of
higher-level education, government, administration, and jurisdiction.
Since 1970 the policy has been to use the local languages in the first three
years of schooling and to teach in English thereafter. Actual practice varies widely,
though, with schools in multilingual urban areas switching to English much earlier
than schools in linguistically less complex rural areas. In 2001 the latest language
policy was issued. English is now to be the only medium of instruction from P1
and throughout the educational system. The general opinion among linguists and
language pedagogues in Ghana is that this does not favour a good standard of
English.
Since almost all Ghanaians acquire their English in school, literacy can serve
as a rough indicator of the spread and quality of English. It has increased steadily
from a mere fifth of Ghanaians aged 15+ in 1962 to two thirds at the turn of the
millennium, but its quality varies widely, from native-like fluency to broken va-
rieties.
1.1. Current sociolinguistic situation

Linguistically, Ghana is highly heterogeneous, with nearly 50 indigenous languag-
es. All of these belong to the Niger-Kordofanian family, in particular two branches
of the Central Niger-Congo phylum: Gur languages are spoken in northern Ghana
by ca. 24% of the total population, and Kwa languages in the south (ca. 75%).
There are also two very small pockets of Mande languages (< 1%). The following
table lists the major languages of Ghana and gives a rough estimate of the number
and percent of their speakers:
Table 1. The major Ghanaian languages
Languages No. of speakers (ca.) Percent (ca.)
Kwa (south)
Akan 7.000.000 (1995) 43%
Ewe 1.615.700 (1991) 10%
Ga-Dangme 1.125.900 (1991-93) 7%
Gur (north)
Dagaari 950.000 (1998) 6%
Dagbani 540.000 (1995) 3%
Akan (Twi and Fante) is the biggest Ghanaian language. It is the L1 of about 43%
of Ghanaians. The latest census figures (2000, but not yet publicly available) show
a strong increase in L2 speakers of Akan, which is now spoken by over 70% of
the population and thus the most important lingua franca in the country. This, to-
gether with the fact that in colonial times, but also afterwards, the vast majority of
teachers came from the south accounts for the strong Kwa influence (Akan, Ewe,
Ga-Dangme) in Ghanaian English (GhE).
There is a sociolinguistic north-south divide in Ghana that roughly coincides
with the distribution of Gur and Kwa languages. The former are spoken in the rural
and generally poorer north, the latter in the more urbanized and richer south. Orig-
inally introduced by Nigerian migrants several generations ago, Hausa, a Chadic
846 Magnus Huber
Map 2. The languages of Ghana

language of the Afro-Asiatic family, was used along the so-called Hausa Diagonal,
the old trade route through Bawku via Tamale, Kintampo or Salaga to Kumasi.
Hausa has thus gained some currency as a lingua franca in parts of Ghana’s north
but is still felt to be a foreign language by the majority of Ghanaians. For about
a century, unequal economic opportunities have resulted in massive migration to
the southern cities, where many northerners settle in so-called Zongos (Hausa for
‘foreigners’ quarters’, poor and often slummy suburbs of towns and cities, inhab-
ited by migrants from northern Ghana and the Sahel, and generally associated with
Islam). Hausa was thus transplanted to the south and is today widely used in the
southern Zongos, in some major urban markets, and to some extent in the military
and the police.
The Bureau of Ghana Languages officially sponsors nine indigenous languages,
which thus have ‘national’ status and are used for purposes of public information
and education: Akan, Ewe, Dangme, Ga, Nzema, Dagaare, Gonja, Kasem, and
Dagbani. Although English is universally called the official language of Ghana,
it was never so declared on a constitutional level. The first constitution of Ghana
(1957) accepted English as a de facto official language when stipulating that mem-
bers of parliament had to be proficient in spoken and written English (Article
24). In the latest constitution (1992) one notices a move away from this implicit
endorsement of English to a mere acceptance of its expediency. English is no lon-
ger mentioned, and indigenous languages, reference to which was conspicuously
absent in the 1957 constitution, are now given prominence: Article 39, for ex-
ample, states that “The State shall foster the development of Ghanaian languages
and pride in Ghanaian culture” (even though the latest language policy gives an
alibi for non-implementation of these lofty ideals). This reflects the general feel-
ing among Ghanaians that English is a borrowed, foreign language and a residue
of colonialism. Because of this, there has been an ongoing debate on the ques-
tion of the official language since the earliest days of independence. Akan is the
most popular but by no means undisputed alternative to English, which has the
advantage of ethnic neutrality and of being an important link to the international
community.
In spite of the official sanction of indigenous languages, English continues to
function as a sociolinguistic High language. It has a prominent place in the nation-
al news media, it is used in parliament and public speeches, and it is the language
of secondary and tertiary education. However, in none of these domains is it used
to the exclusion of indigenous languages, which perform both High and Low func-
tions, particularly in rural and more traditional areas. English, on the other hand, is
more deeply rooted on the formal end of the communicative continuum, in more
urban and multilingual settings. However, indigenous languages (especially Akan)
are currently encroaching on the domains of English. This is shown e.g. by the
success of monolingual African FM stations like Peace and Adom (Akan), which
seem to be more popular than the predominantly anglophone Joy and Choice.
848 Magnus Huber
Since the vast majority of Ghanaians learns English in school, there is as yet no
substantial native speaker community, though some middle class children acquire
English along with Ghanaian languages or, less frequently, as their sole L1 in
the home and English-medium nursery schools and kindergartens. There is also
a small group of younger people of the upper-middle-class, the children of the
professional elite, often with one foreign parent, who have been raised in homes
where only English was spoken and who attended English-medium schools abroad
and thus never acquired a Ghanaian language. For the majority of “anglophone”
Ghanaians, English, however, coexists with one or more indigenous L1s. The re-
sult is a lot of code-switching and borrowing, particularly in the more informal
registers of GhE.
Because of Ghana’s colonial past, GhE is oriented towards BrE, but the glob-
al influence of AmE in the media has also been noticeable in Ghana in recent
years. This has not yet affected the news on TV or the radio, but an American or
Americanized accent can be heard in less formal broadcasts like host shows and
commercials by big companies such as Guinness (this accent has been given the
acronym LAFA ‘locally acquired foreign accent’). A large number of middle-class
Ghanaians live in the US and Canada and the accents they acquire while working
there are associated with economic success just like the electronic gadgets they
bring back on their return. On the other hand, the highly educated Ghanaian who
has trained abroad does not acquire this accent – thus none of the senior members
of the University of Ghana with PhDs from the US or Canada exhibit this through
their accent. This might possibly be associated with an attitude that assumed po-
litical significance in the 1950s – that Nkrumah had studied at a Black College in
the US and hence the general perception that Busia and Danquah – both British
trained – had enjoyed a superior form of education.
2. Phonological features of Ghanaian English
It should be kept in mind that on all descriptive levels, GhE is a system of tenden-
cies rather than categorical differences from the British standard, depending on
various factors such as the speaker’s linguistic competence and L1, the level of L2
command of English (roughly correlating with the level of education), the formal-
ity of the situation, the wish of the speaker to project Ghanaianness, etc. There
is thus a lot of intra- and interindividual variation in GhE and unless otherwise
mentioned, the following sections describe the most “Ghanaian” features in pro-
nunciation, grammar, and the lexicon, i.e. the variety referred to as Conversational
GhE in section 3.
2.1. Vowels
Table 2. GhE vowels – summary
KIT i> FACE e ~ ei > ei NEAR i > ia

DRESS ~ i > i SQUARE > a
TRAP a PALM a() START a
LOT ç THOUGHT ç > ç˘ NORTH ç
u
STRUT a~ç> GOAT, GOAL o ~ o > ou FORCE ç
u
FOOT u> ç ~ ç > çu CURE u ~ uç ~ ç
BATH a() GOOSE u > u happY i~
CLOTH ç PRICE ai > ai > a lettER a
NURSE () CHOICE çI horsES i>~
FLEECE i > i MOUTH au > au ~ a commA a
2.1.1. Monophthongs
The 12 RP monophthongal vowels are reduced to 5 in the system of the most
“Ghanaian” speakers, i.e. those whose English shows all possible mergers or sub-
stitutions of the BrE monophthong system. These vowels are /i, , a, ç, u/. To these
are added the half-close /e/ and /o/, which result from the monophthongization of
the BrE diphthongs /eI/ and /ou/, so that in total there are 7 GhE monophthongs, a
system shared with the other West African Englishes:
i u
e o
ç
a
Some of the simplifications of the monophthong system result from the tendency
in GhE to neutralize length distinctions present in RP, resulting in homophony of
RP minimal pairs. There are three such mergers of RP vowel oppositions:
850 Magnus Huber
Table 3. FLEECE-KIT, GOOSE-FOOT and THOUGHT-CLOTH mergers
RP Example GhE
i ip sit sheep seat
i ip sit
p st ship sit
u ful pul fool pool
u ful pul
fl pl full pull
ç˘ nç˘ti kç˘k naughty cork
ç nçti kçk
n ti k k knotty cock
This process, a pan-African feature of English (Simo Bobda 2000a: 254), tends
to occur in the GhE renderings of the RP pairs /i-/, /u-/, and /ç˘- /, i.e. pairs
whose second members show a more open (and laxer) realization than the first.
That vowel length tends not to be distinctive in such GhE pairs is interesting, since
length is a phonological feature in some indigenous languages like the large Akan
group or Hausa, which has some currency in the country.
There are two other vowel mergers that often result in GhE homophony. These
result from a fusion of RP //-// and //-/æ/-//, vowels not primarily distin-
guished by degree of openness (laxness). However, RP length differences are
more regularly – though not categorically – maintained here:
Table 4. NURSE-DRESS and BATH-TRAP-STRUT mergers
RP Example GhE
tn bnt turn burnt () t()n b()nt

tn bnt ten bent tn bnt
kt ht cart heart a() ka()t ha()t
æ kæt hæt cat hat a kat hat
kt ht cut hut a kat hat
Most West African languages do not have central vowel phonemes. Speakers of
West African English accordingly replace RP / , , / by front or back vowels.
On the other hand, // – very close to the English low back vowel – is found in
many languages and heard in the names Ga, Akan, Dagaari, Dagbani, but does
not surface in GhE.
The almost categorical substitution of the front vowel // for RP // in all con-
texts is one of the main characteristics that sets GhE apart from other West African
Englishes. The latter mainly replace the central vowel by /a/ and /ç/ and only in
a limited and predictable number of cases by // (Simo Bobda 2000b: 190). The
cause of the substitution of RP // by GhE // is often attributed to L1 influence.
Like the other West African languages, the majority of Ghanaian languages lack
the central vowel //: in my estimate, based on an examination of the vowel sys-
tems of 29 indigenous Ghanaian languages, representing about 87% of Ghana's
population, some 14% of Ghanaians are familiar with central vowels. This in-
cludes speakers of Ewe, spoken by about 10% of the population – by far the largest
Ghanaian language with a central vowel (i.e. [ ]). Note, however, that in all except
a couple of very small languages (spoken by a total of about 1% of the popula-
tion), central vowels are either allophonic variants of front or back vowels, or are
heavily restricted in their occurrence. The largest Ghanaian languages, Akan and
the Ga-Dangme cluster (the mother tongues of 50% of Ghanaians), do not have
central vowels, which may be the reason why RP / , , / are largely avoided in
GhE. While central vowels are absent from the majority of indigenous languages,
most have //. Sey (1973: 147) maintains that for the Ghanaian speaker of English
"the two vowels [ and ] are sufficiently alike to be confused with each other".
Although I cannot at present offer a better explanation for the phenomenon, Sey's
scenario does not account for the whole story, since it leaves unanswered the ques-
tion why in the English of countries like Nigeria, whose indigenous languages
similarly lack central vowels but have // (observation based on an analysis of 28
Nigerian languages), // is mostly replaced by /a/ and /ç/ – not by //. Colonial
input varieties of English may have played a role in the establishment of different
correspondences of RP // in the various West African Englishes.
The /-æ-/ merger seems to be due to L1 transfer, since none of the main Gha-
naian languages has all three vowels. Ghana shares the lowering of the TRAP vow-
el with most other West African Englishes except Liberian English (Simo Bobda
2003: 21). In fact, the replacement of /æ/ by /a/ is a feature found in all African
Englishes, east, west, and south (Simo Bobda 2000a: 254). However, it is in the
substitution of RP // that contemporary GhE clearly distinguishes itself from oth-
er West African Englishes. While the latter render RP // as /ç/, today's GhE varies
between /ç/ and (perhaps more often) /a/. In some cases, // is replaced by //.
To start with //, Sey (1973: 147) notes that "the // > /()/ pronunciation is
common in the Cape Coast area". This is the region of Ghana that first saw British
territorial colonization (territorial expansion going back to the early 19th century),
that has had the longest tradition of English-medium schools, and that was the
capital until 1877. The indigenous language in and around Cape Coast is Fante (an
Akan dialect), and Gyasi (1991: 27) accordingly associates the // pronunciation
with Fantes. That RP // > GhE // has long been firmly established in the Cape
852 Magnus Huber
Coast area is illustrated by a remark by the missionary Dennis Kemp, who worked
in Cape Coast from 1887 to 1896:
A somewhat amusing little accident occurred at the annual school examination. Our
scholars, for some inexplicable reason, invariably pronounce the letter “u” as “e,” and will
insist, for example, in calling “butter” “better.” The senior scholars were asked to name
the principal seaports of England. One little lad thought of “Hull.” But in consequence
of the difficulty just mentioned the examiner did not recognise the name, and somewhat
absent-mindedly asked in which part of England “Hell” was. (Kemp 1898: 179)
Simo Bobda (2000b: 189) says that today // > // cuts "across all ethnic groups
in Ghana" and that its occurrence is lexically or idiolectally conditioned. My own
recordings of GhE corroborate this: there is a lot of variation, but // seems indeed
to be lexically conditioned. It occurs most regularly in function words like but, us,
just, such, and much, but also in a small number of high-frequency lexical items
such as month. However, it seems that even in the speech of non-Fantes, // >
// replacement is not a particularly new phenomenon: even the oldest speakers,
born in the early 1900s and from different ethnic backgrounds, show this charac-
teristic. It must already have been established and widespread in pre-WW I GhE.
This does not mean that // > // replacement did not originate with the Fantes:
from the earliest colonial days, Cape Coast was the educational centre of the Gold
Coast and continues to be an important school and university city today. It was an
important teacher training centre and Fante teachers may well have carried the //
pronunciation to other parts of the colony in the late 1800s.
As mentioned above, the much more frequent substitution of RP // today is
/ç/ or /a/, the latter distinguishing GhE from most of the other WafEs. GhE shares
// > /a/ with the Hausa English of Northern Nigeria, but the latter appears to be
changing towards the dominant Yoruba pronunciation /ç/ (Simo Bobda 2000b:
188). Today, /ç/ and /a/ are in free variation in GhE. One and the same individual
may pronounce the tonic vowels in e.g. country, culture, or much as [ç] or [a].
Personal observation suggests that with some speakers, this variability is simply
due to linguistic insecurity since both forms are current in GhE today. Simo Bobda
(2000b: 187–188) proposes that /ç/ may occur only if certain conditions concern-
ing spelling, assimilation, ethnicity of the speaker, and age are met. However, my
data suggests that these factors only partially account for the occurrence of /ç/ or
/a/. I will illustrate this by speakers A and B in the conversation accompanying
this article:
(a) Spelling
Simo Bobda (2000b: 188) observes that an <o> spelling may trigger /ç/ in words
like love, cover, ton, or honey. This is also illustrated by Speakers A and B’s /ç/
pronunciation of some and its compounds – the GhE convention. But at the same
time there are also instances where the pronunciation does clearly not follow the
spelling, such as done, nothing, or other, all /a/ in the recording. As such, these
do not invalidate Simo Bobda’s theory since it allows for /a ~ ç/ variability when
there is an <o> spelling. Note however, that a number of words, such as come,
are never pronounced with an /a/ in GhE but always with an /a/ even though they
are spelt <o>. A psychological factor may explain the /a/ in cases of these high
frequency words: it has repeatedly been observed that Ghanaians believe their
English to be nearer to the British standard and thus “better” than other West Af-
rican varieties. In Ghana, /kçm/ is stereotypically associated with Nigeria and is
frequently pointed out as one of the differences between Ghanaian and Nigerian
English. The categorical /a/ in words of the come type may thus be an attempt by
Ghanaian speakers to dissociate themselves from the “bad” Nigerian accent. In
addition, Speakers A and B’s /ç/ in drug, understand, results cannot be explained
by spelling pronunciation. These observations certainly weaken the usefulness of
the factor orthography.
(b) Assimilation
According to Simo Bobda (2000b: 188), a following rounded vowel and possibly
also a rounded consonant favour /ç/ rather than /a/. However, this is dubious for
two reasons: first, Simo Bobda's examples of assimilation to a following rounded
vowel, suppose and conduct, do not really illustrate the phenomenon since in RP
the nucleus of the initial syllables of these words is / /, not //. These words do not
therefore meet the input requirements for the / > ç/ substitution process. Second,
Simo Bobda's argument that following “rounded consonants” (/b/ is described as
+ROUNDED) tend to trigger /ç/ is doubtful, since roundedness is not an intrinsic,
distinctive feature of English consonants but is determined by the phonetic con-
text. Possibly, roundedness is confused with labial place of articulation, but even
in that case the proposed assimilation rule does not work: cf. drug (Speaker B)
and result (A), which both have /ç/ without the following consonant being labial
or intrinsically rounded. But note the different vowels in the otherwise phonologi-
cally quite similar drug /ç/ and blood /a/ (Speaker B; both voiced throughout, both
plosive+liquid+vowel+plosive), which demonstrates that /a/ and /ç/ are used in
very similar contexts, in this case before // and /d/, whose roundedness is subpho-
nemic and depends on the preceding vowel and not vice versa.
(c) Ga ethnicity
Simo Bobda (2000b: 188) maintains that while a generation ago /ç/ was still as-
sociated with the Gas, today “the prevalence of /a/ approximates 100% across all
ethnic groups”. Judging from my data, this somewhat overstates the case. First,
even my oldest non-Ga speakers, born in the early years of the 20th century, show a
high rate of /ç/ for RP // (cf. also Schachter's 1962: 18 observation on Twi-speak-
ers around 1960 to the same effect). It is doubtful, therefore, whether /ç/ had ever
been an exclusively Ga characteristic. As to the rate of /ç/ in today's GhE, I concur
that /a/ has been gaining ground, but it is still far from categorical. This is also
exemplified by the recording. Both speakers use 12 tokens each of the STRUT set.
854 Magnus Huber
Speaker A, whose L1 is Hausa, realizes 10 of these with an /a/ (83%), and Speaker
B, whose L1 is Twi, 8 (67%).
(d) Older age
This is the crucial factor accounting for the distribution of /a/ and /ç/. Simo Bobda
(2000b: 188) observes that /a/ must have started to replace /ç/ during the last 40
years or so and is today associated mostly with the older generation. I agree that /a/
is the more modern GhE realization, but apparent time evidence in my recordings
suggests that it must have started to replace /ç/ earlier than the 1960s. Apart from
the few instances of RP // > GhE // mentioned before, speakers born in the first
decades of the 20th century almost exclusively replace RP // by /ç/, regardless of
their linguistic background and educational attainment. Up to about 1930, this ap-
pears to have been the norm, but then /a/ began to replace earlier /ç/.
Exactly why and how this /ç > a/ replacement has been taking place is unclear,
but there are indications that we are dealing with lexical diffusion here: although
there is general /a ~ ç/ variation today, the occurrence of these phonemes is already
strictly lexicalized in some words. The GhE pronunciation of e.g. some is always
/sçm/, while come is /kam/, across the board and regardless of the sociolinguistic
parameters of the speaker. Note that it is not the phonetic/phonological context
that determines the occurrence of /ç/ in some and /a/ in come, since both end in a
bilabial nasal and assimilation to the place of articulation of the preceding conso-
nant would yield /a/ in some (alveolar /s/ imaginably favouring a front vowel) and
/ç/ in come (velar /k/ triggering a back vowel). In fact, the pronunciation /kçm/
come is frequently pointed out by Ghanaians as one of the characteristics of Ni-
gerian English and one of the most salient differences between GhE and NigE. It
therefore seems that, at least with some high-frequency words, the replacement of
RP // appears to be primarily lexically conditioned.
RP / / in unstressed syllables is generally substituted by front and back vowels,
depending mainly on orthography and the phonological context:
(a) in post-tonic syllables involving <er, re, or, ur, ure> spellings, RP / / is ren-
dered as /a/ in open syllables and as // in closed syllables. Compare paper
/pepa/ but papers /peps/, and in the accompanying conversation torture /tçta/
but tortured /tçtd/, doctor /dokta/ (both in speakers A and B) but investiga-
tors /‚ nvstiets/ (speaker B). Post-tonic syllables of the type <our, ous, um,
us> favour /ç/, as in honour, dangerous, column, or focus (contra Simo Bobda
2000b: 191–192, who predicts /a/ for <our>, and // for <ous, um, us>), though
sometimes /a/ can also be heard. /ç/ in open post-tonic syllables, e.g. rumour
/rumç/ (speaker A), has been associated with the older generation (Simo Bobda
2000b: 191), but my recordings show that younger speakers use it just as often.
(b) RP /- n/, tends to be realized as /-in/ rather than /- n/. This affects -ed and -en
participle forms, for example taken /tekin/ or spoken /spokin/, but also other
words, like e.g. even /ivin/ (speaker B).
(c) in other non-tonic syllables, RP / / usually triggers spelling pronunciation.
This is illustrated by speakers A and B's about /abaut/, official /ofiia/ and
speaker C's submit /sabmit/. There are a few exceptions to this, though, such
as alone /lon/.
(d) weak forms: Simo Bobda (2000b: 193) reports GhE /a/ for the indefinite ar-
ticle a, but this is decidedly a minority form in my recordings, // being by
far the more common realization. The prevocalic form an is pronounced /an/.
The distribution of the variants of the definite article the, / ~ d ~ d/ and
/i ~ di ~ di/, usually follows that in BrE: /d/ is preconsonantal and /di/ pre-
cedes a vowel. There is some degree of variation, though, with the occasional
preconsonantal /di/ (the forty women /di fçti wumn/) and /d/ before vowels
(the eight women /d eit wumn/) – both speaker A. Vowels in other function
words are generally modelled on the RP citation form, that is the RP schwa
is replaced by spelling pronunciations, except in and, which is usually /n(d)/
and only sometimes /an(d)/.
2.1.2. Diphthongs
(a) RP closing diphthongs
GhE tends to monophthongize most of the RP closing diphthongs. This is not cat-
egorical, however: one and the same speaker may vary between a monophthong,
slight diphthongization (marked by a superscript i or u in the table below), or may
retain the RP diphthong. In the case of diphthongization, the RP offglides /-/ and
/-/ are usually replaced by /-i/ and /-u/.
Table 5. RP closing diphthongs and their GhE equivalents
RP GhE
e e ~ ei > ei or ~ i > i
a ai > ai > a
çI çi
a au > au ~ a
o ~ ou > ou or ç ~ çu > çu
As the table shows, all RP closing diphthongs except /çI/ can be monophthongized
in GhE, /e/ and /a/ more frequently than /a/ and /a/. The realization of the first
segment of RP /e/ and / / varies between /e ~ / and /o ~ ç/, respectively. The
856 Magnus Huber
RP diphthong+monophthong /a / (e.g. desire) and /a / (our) are often smoothed
to [a] in acrolectal GhE, often with a falling tone, [a]. Smoothing can often be
observed in Ghanaian news speakers (the news on the hour [d nius çn di a])
but is not restricted to this group. Since this phenomenon is also observable in
advanced RP, including the spoken media, it is not unlikely that British news lan-
guage serves as a model here.
(b) RP centring diphthongs
Like RP, GhE pronunciation is non-rhotic (see below, consonants). In words con-
taining a final orthographic r GhE retains the diphthongization of RP word-final
/ / and / /, while /e / is mostly monophthongized to []. The latter is often real-
ized with a falling tone [], which to ears not accustomed to tone languages makes
it sound like a diphthong.
Table 6. RP centring diphthongs and their GhE equivalents
RP GhE
i > ia
e > a
u ~ uç ~ ç
One particularity of GhE is that RP /u/ is rendered as [iu] rather than [u] in

words with orthographic u, ue, eu, or ew, e.g. blew [bliu] (hypercorrect forms
such as two /tiu/ and do /diu/ are also heard). This cuts across all age groups
and ethnicities, but there is also intra-speaker variability. Roughly, /iu/ occurs
about twice as often as /u/. There are a number of possible sources of GhE [iu]:
it may result from an analogy to other ew spellings such as in new, or sewage,
whose RP /ju/ is rendered as /iu/ in GhE and/or an attempt to approximate the
slightly centralized and diphthongized realization of /u/ in advanced RP, in the
region of [¨]. Another not unlikely source of GhE /iu/ is the historical Scottish
influence through missionaries or the good number of Scotsmen in the Colonial
Service.
2.1.3. Factors contributing to variation

As mentioned above, the GhE vowel system is characterized by a lot of inter- and
intra-individual variation. One source of the latter may be advanced tongue root
(ATR) vowel harmony, which is found in a number of Ghanaian languages includ-
ing Ahanta and the Akan group in the south, and Dagaare and Kasem in the north.
The vowels of these languages can be grouped in two sets, advanced and unad-
vanced, as illustrated here for Akan:
– advanced vowels i e a o u
– unadvanced vowels e a ç o
As a general rule, only vowels of one set occur in polysyllabic words. Some
speakers carry ATR vowel harmony over to English, so that the advanced and
unadvanced members of the two sets become free variants in GhE: [i-e], [e-],
[a -a], etc. This accounts for a lot of the vowel height variation observable in
GhE and explains pronunciations like agencies [dnses] instead of the ex-
pected [ednsis]. It may also account for some unexpected vowels: it was said
above that RP /i/ and // merge to /i/ in GhE, so that we would expect three [tri]
and six [siks]. Instead, many Ghanaians realize these words as [tre] and [sks],
respectively, thereby maintaining the /i – / opposition in RP by replacing the
tense-lax opposition by an advanced-unadvanced vowel pair. RP // > GhE //
is the more frequent substitution, found in the pronunciation of e.g. it, killed,
people, or things.
Another area of variability is vowel nasalization. Nasalization is distinctive in
many Ghanaian languages and there is a strong tendency for GhE speakers to na-
salize vowels before /n/ (much less so before the other nasals). In many cases this
is accompanied by the reduction (indicated by a superscript n) or complete loss of
/n/, so that we find the following pronunciations of twenty and nine:
twenty [twnti ~ twnti ~ twti]
nine [nain ~ nan ~ na]
In some cases, the loss of final /-n/ leads to near-homophony of pairs like can
– car, been – bee, coffin – coffee, etc. These words are then only distinguished by
the presence or absence of nasalization in the final vowel: [ka - ka], [b - bi], [kçf
- kçfi]. As far as such pairs are concerned, nasalization could be said to be dis-
tinctive in GhE. However, since individual speakers use full, reduced, and elided
forms side by side (e.g. kçfin - kçf n - kçf), it appears that the nasal is part of
the underlying phonological representation of such words and that its reduction or
loss are surface co-articulation effects.
Vowel ellipsis in polysyllabic words is rather common in Ghanaian Radio
and TV English, even more so than in BrE: forms like police [plis], necessary
[nssri], operational [çpreinal], etc. have some currency in the spoken media
but also among very acrolectal or language-aware speakers.
On the phonetic level, GhE syllable-initial vowels, especially those at the begin-
ning of words, are characterized by glottal reinforcement [V], e.g. hour [aua], all
[çl], auditorium [çditçriçm], office [çfis], east [ist]. Other than in BrE, glottal
reinforcement does not signal special emphasis but is an intrinsic, sub-phonemic
property of vowels in initial positions.
858 Magnus Huber
2.2. Consonants
As with vowels, there is a lot of variation in the realization of consonants in GhE.
In the following, I will discuss GhE consonants grouped according to their manner
of articulation in RP under the headings of plosives, nasals, fricatives, affricates,
and approximants.
(a) Plosives
Like in colloquial BrE, T-glottalization and T-deletion have some currency in GhE.
Syllable-final /t/ can be replaced by a fully or only weakly realized glottal stop
( or ) or it may be dropped altogether in word-final position. The following ex-
amples illustrate instances of T-glottalization and T-deletion:
– got [çt ~ ç/ ~ ç/ ~ ç]
– whatever [watva ~ wava ~ wava]
Glottalization and deletion sometimes also affect /d/, as in should [u/], but this is
possibly due to the fact that word-final obstruents are frequently devoiced in GhE,
so that /-d/ becomes [-t] and is then glottalized (see also below, fricatives).
In the Fante dialect of Akan, /t/ has two allophones: [t] before back vowels and
affricated [ts] before front vowels. Speakers of the dialect sometimes transfer this
allophony to English and, for example, pronounce the name Martin [matsin].
RP word-initial /kw-/ is reduced to [k] in a number of words, like quota, quote,
quarter. However, other words, like quality, remain largely unaffected by this, so
it seems that we are dealing with a lexicalized rather than productive phenomenon
here.
(b) Nasals
The loss of syllable-final /n/ and compensatory nasalization of the preceding vow-
el has been discussed in the section on vowels, above.
RP /-/ in progressives or deverbal nouns is more often than not replaced by
[-n], cf. morning [mçnin], leading [lidin], the meeting [d mitin]. However, since
[-] forms are current too, the GhE underlying representations seem to be /-/.
RP does not allow [mb] or [] sequences in the coda, but GhE has almost regu-
lar spelling pronunciations like bomb [bçmb], thumb [tamb], climb [klaimb] or
sing a song [si sç], among [amç], and bring [bri]. Spelling pronuncia-
tions are not restricted to the colloquial level but are common even in very formal
and conservative GhE. Concerning []-sequences: even if certain speakers tend
to pronounce specific words without the final [-], they may insert a kind of link-
ing g before a vowel, e.g. do I have to hang it? [du ai haf tu ha it].
(c) Fricatives
As in many other varieties of English, RP /, / are often replaced by the dental or
alveolar plosives [t, t, d, d] or they are dropped altogether in word-final position.
Some speakers also produce affricated versions, [t, d] as in nothing [nati]
or they [dei]. Replacement or deletion of the dental fricatives are especially fre-
quent in more informal and mesolectal/basilectal varieties, but they are not al-
together unknown even in very formal GhE, particularly the affricated variants.
Again, one and the same speaker may vary between [, ] and the corresponding
GhE plosives or affricates, so that at least for acrolectal speakers an underlying
/, / can be assumed in words like thousand [ausn ~ tausn ~ tausn] or
gathering [arin ~ adrin ~ adrin]. In her study of the use of dental frica-
tives among students at the University of Ghana, Dako (forthcoming) found that
women are more likely than men to retain RP dental fricatives (87% of the women
were classed as //-retainers and 65% as retainers of //, as opposed to 53% and
37%, respectively, of the men).
Word-final /-/ is sometimes replaced by [-f] in words like bath, cloth, mouth,
with, eighth. Again, Dako (forthcoming) showed that women prefer the standard
form: only 16% of the female informants used word-final [-f], in contrast to 54%
of the males.
Akan does not have the postalveolar fricatives // and //, but the rather similar
voiceless palato-alveolar fricative [] occurs as an allophone of /h/ before front
vowels. Furthermore, speakers of Akan are familiar with its voiced counterpart
[!] from its occurrence in an allophone of // (see below, affricates). Ghanaians
regularly use [, !] as substitutes for BrE /, /, e.g. in official [çfiia], issue [iiu],
sure [iu]. Note that in contrast to the RP version of these words – / fl, ju,
/ – GhE inserts an epenthetic [i] between [] and a following back vowel, in
keeping with the allophonic distribution of this fricative in Akan (which occurs
only before front vowels).
Interestingly, the substitution of [, !] for /, / is not only restricted to speak-
ers whose L1 is Akan but can also be observed in the English of speakers of other
Ghanaian languages, the majority of which does not have /, / or phonetically
near-identical substitutes (although in some languages these sounds have allo-
phonic status). Therefore, a good number of non-Akans have adopted [, !] as
substitutes for RP [, ]. It seems that this phonetic detail has become a truly na-
tional, if subconscious, feature of GhE, transcending mother tongue boundaries.
However, it has to be pointed out that educated speakers vary between [, !] and
[, ], depending on their level of education and phonetic competence. Still others
replace RP // by [s], for example in machine [masin]. These are predominantly
speakers whose L1 does not have // (like Frafra) and who have had little school-
ing and/or little exposure to educated GhE. Probably as a reaction to this stigma-
tized // > [s] variant, hypercorrect forms like nursery [nri] or bursary [bri] are
not uncommon, even among educated Ghanaians.
As indicated in the section on plosives, there is a tendency in GhE to devoice
final obstruents: end [nt], Lord [lçt], news [nius], world [wlt], etc. On the other
860 Magnus Huber
hand, obstruents often get voiced in voiced environments – in intervocalic posi-

tion (pieces [piziz], taxable [tazabu]), but also if voiced consonants are involved
(bursary [bzri], pencils [pnzils]). Such voicing can also be observed across
word boundaries, cf. what about [hwad abaut] or first degree [fz diri] or if Gha-
naians [iv anens]. As these examples show, it seems that the sibilants /s/ and //
are particularly, though not exclusively, affected by this process.
At the same time, hypercorrection with regard to final devoicing can lead to
pronunciations like dance [daz] or process [prosz]. Such voicing is possibly sup-
ported by the fact that final obstruents may become voiced when the following
word starts with a voiced sound. Similarly, overgeneralized reversal of voicing
leads to hypercorrect vision [viin] etc.
(d) Affricates
Of the major Ghanaian Kwa languages Akan, Ga-Dangme, and Ewe (all located
in the southern half of Ghana) only Dangme (spoken by ca. 4.5% of Ghana’s
population) has the affricates /t, d/. These sounds have greater currency in the
Gur and Mande languages of Ghana's north, but population density is much lower
there. Thus, at least half of Ghana's population is not familiar with /t, d/ from
their mother tongues, but since English is much more widespread in the urbanized
south, the proportion of GhE speakers whose L1 lacks these phonemes is probably
in the region of three quarters.
Before high front vowels, Akan /k/ and // are realized by the allophones [t]
and [d!] (orthographically ky and gy), as in kyi ‘dislike’, kye ‘catch’, ky 'share
out'. These are sufficiently similar to RP's more fronted /t, d/ to be employed by
GhE speakers as substitutes for these phonemes. Examples are church [tt] or
larger [lad!a]. The plosives in these affricates are often reduced, so that forms like
major [med!a] are widely used. Similarly to what has been said with regard to the
fricatives /, / above, Akan [t] and [d!] have been adopted by other Ghanaians,
so that they are used widely among speakers with a Kwa language background,
but also by others. Again, there is [t ~ t, d ~ d!] variability.
(e) Approximants
GhE is non-rhotic (i.e. non-prevocalic R is usually not pronounced) since its his-
torical model is the British standard. However, in contrast to RP, GhE does not
have linking or intrusive R’s.
The phonetic quality of GhE /r/ is usually ["] (retroflex approximant as in RP),
with which Ghanaians are familiar from some dialects of Akan. A large number of
Ghanaians lives and works abroad, in Europe but especially in the United States
and Canada. During their absence from Africa, a good number acquires some
measure of an American accent and such a pronunciation is regarded by many
Ghanaians as a sign of material success, characterizing someone who has made a
small fortune abroad. Thus, some features of American English, like rhoticity or
intervocalic flapping of /t/, are present in the speech of some been-tos ‘returnees
from overseas’. Americanisms in pronunciation are also strongly present in radio
and TV advertizing and in the speech of radio moderators hosting music programs
or other informal broadcasts. It seems, however, that Americanisms are largely re-
stricted to the informal sector in the media; the news, for example, is always read
by speakers with a non-rhotic accent.
L-reduction and/or vocalization can be observed especially where RP has a syl-
labic L: available [avelabul], circle [skçl], apple [apç], example [zampu]. In
these reduction processes, the vowel preceding L is velarized to [ç ~ u]. These
processes also occur in environments where colloquial BrE does not show L-vo-
calization: will [wçl ~ wul], fiscal [fiska], shall [a]. Ghanaian languages differ as
to the phonological status of /l, r/: in the majority of the Kwa languages, including
most of the Akan dialects, Ewe, and Ga-Dangme, [l, r] are in allophonic distribu-
tion. Some northern languages like Dagaare, Dagbani, and Kasem have /l/, but
[r] occurs only as an allophone of /d/. Other Gur languages, including Frafra and
Kusal, have two separate phonemes /l/ and /r/, as does the Kwa language Gonja.
Because of this [l ~ r] alternation, especially in the south of Ghana but to some ex-
tent also in the north, pronunciations like bless [brs], block [brçk], play [pre], or
properly [prçpr] can be heard particularly among less educated, older speakers.
The reverse, i.e. [l] for /r/, appears to be less frequent, but one example is problem
[plçblm].
GhE pronunciation differs from RP in that orthographic wh- is often rendered
as [hw], so that the question words what, where, which, or why are pronounced
[hwçt], [hw], [hwit], and [hwai], respectively. This is another feature that could
have its historical origin in Scottish influence in the Gold Coast, reinforced by
spelling pronunciation. As with many other features, there is again variability,
with speakers alternating between [hw-] and [w-].
Another difference from RP is that in GhE we find variable yod-dropping (RP
/ju/ > GhE /u/), e.g. in annual [anual], continuing [kçntinuiN], duress [durs] or
during [durin].

Cluster reduction is a phenomenon that GhE shares with other West African Eng-
lishes. It will therefore only be mentioned briefly here. There are two basic strate-
gies to reduce consonant clusters. The first, elision of one or more consonants,
is the most common strategy in acrolectal speech. It is illustrated in words like
hundreds [handrs] (/dz/ > [z] + final devoicing), artists [atis] (/sts/ > [s]), or texts
[tks] (/ksts/ > [ks]). It also operates across syllable boundaries, e.g. in elec.tricity
[eltrisiti]. It frequently happens that consonants are not elided but only weakened
in their realization, cf. access [akss] or sleeps [slips]. The second strategy is the
862 Magnus Huber
insertion of epenthetic vowels in the consonant cluster. This is more common

with less educated speakers. The principle here is that the tone-bearing vowel of
the syllable containing the cluster is copied and inserted between the consonants,
resulting in forms like strange [seterend!] and skin [sikin].
2.2.2. Spelling pronunciations

Spelling pronunciations of the NASAL + HOMORGANIC PLOSIVE (lamb, tong)
and the wh- type (where, which) have already been mentioned in the sections on
nasals and approximants, above. Consider also Wednesday /wdnsd/, with a
PLOSIVE + HOMORGANIC NASAL sequence. Other near-regular spelling pronun-
ciations are based on st letter sequences, as in castle /kastl/. In the area of vowels,
we find ia pronounced in e.g. Parliament [paliamnt] or official [çfiia](but see
also 2.2.[c]), and the unsystematic occasional women [wumn]. Another example
is country /kauntri/, which can be traced to ex-president Rawlings – he speaks
LAFA (see above, 1.1) and established this pronunciation of the word, which is
only used by younger speakers.
Like other West African Englishes, GhE is syllable-timed, resulting in the charac-
teristic up and down of sentence intonation. A corollary of syllable-timing is that,
unlike BrE, GhE does not show vowel reduction in unaccented syllables. Thus,
unaccented vowels generally retain their full quality and schwa is hardly ever
heard (see also the section on monophthongs in the phonology chapter).
The majority of Ghanaians speak a tone language as their L1. In contrast to
accent languages like English, these languages show prominence of an individual
syllable by realizing it at a higher pitch than neighbouring, non-prominent, syl-
lables. They are also characterized by downdrift, a general lowering of absolute
pitch as the utterance proceeds. At the end of a sentence, the tonal register is usual-
ly reset (upstepped) and the downdrift starts again. There is a tendency, especially
with less educated speakers, to carry these features over to GhE.
Accent (or tone) shift can be observed in a number of polysyllabic words. Many
Ghanaians move the main word stress forward in words like facilitate, investigate,
category, or telecommunication. Backward shift can also be observed, as in
Europeans, association, and exchange.
Vowel lengthening for emphasis is much more common than in BrE and seems
to mirror usage in Ghanaian languages, as in the ubiquitous at aaaaall ‘not at
all’. Another common paralinguistic expression of emphasis is the use of creaky
voice, often accompanied by voicing of voiceless consonants, cf. speaker B’s
did hi se h#wat hi did?
In that-subordination, informal GhE often places a noticeable pause after, not

before, the conjunction: I saw that || they had stolen it. This is possibly a carry-over
from Akan, whose complementizer s derives from the verb se ‘say’ and has retained
some of the verb’s quotative characteristics (cf. I said || “They had stolen it”).
3. Conclusion: Major issues in current GhE research
Descriptive accounts of GhE are comparatively few and not always easily available
outside Ghana. Since the first studies from around 1950, Ghanaian scholarship has
often taken a more practical, pedagogical approach to GhE, discussing its quality
and intelligibility to Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians alike and proposing ways in
which language teaching can be improved. A good number of these studies show
a decidedly prescriptive attitude and deplore deteriorating standards of English in
Ghana, echoing public opinion that things “used to be much better” a couple of
decades ago. However, to put such claims into perspective it should be noted that
concerns about falling standards are not a recent phenomenon – they go way back
to the colonial period, as the title of Brown and Scragg’s 1948 Common Errors in
Gold Coast English shows, and probably have always been around. Adherents of
this prescriptive-pedagogical camp feel that Ghana as a developing country has
more immediate needs than identifying (or conjuring up, as they see it) and promot-
ing a local standard of English, as is made poignantly clear by Gyasi (1990: 26):
What we need in Ghana to rescue English from atrophy and death is not algebra
masquerading as grammar, or the linguistic anarchism preaching the ‘nasty little
orthodoxy’ (…) that any variety of English is as good as the other. We need the scholarly
but humane and relevant approaches of those distinguished standard-bearers of Standard
English, Professor Sir Randolph Quirk and his colleagues, Professors Sidney Greenbaum,
Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik.
Whether or not the existence of a distinct GhE is acknowledged very much de-
pends on one’s theoretical standpoint in this debate. The prescriptivists deny the
reality of GhE as an autonomous variety and maintain that it essentially is (or
ought to be) BrE. Anything else is simply labelled wrong English. In his seminal
Ghanaian English Sey lists phonological, grammatical, and lexical “deviances” of
GhE but says that “the educated Ghanaian would not ‘accept’ anything other than
educated British Standard English” (1973: 7). This is also confirmed by the results
of a language-attitude study of 30 educated Ghanaians (Dako 1991), which shows
that to this group (a) GhE is an accent but has also some distinct lexical features;
(b) British Standard English is considered the target language and therefore the
norm in Ghana; (c) anything short of this target is felt to be substandard; but cru-
cially also (d) that RP or any other native accent is not the target in spoken English.
That is, it is in pronunciation more than any other area that speakers express their
Ghanaianness, and an accent that sounds too British is usually frowned upon or
864 Magnus Huber
even ridiculed. There is thus a double target of GhE: except maybe for the use of
some lexical Ghanaianisms, standard written GhE in newspapers, magazines, etc.
approximates to an exocentric norm, standard British written English. This is the
professed (though not always attained) target in the educational sector and the
variety modelled on it is spoken in formal settings by a small number of highly
educated Ghanaians and is here tentatively called Cultivated GhE. The target of
pronunciation, by contrast, is certainly endocentric, even for most speakers of Cul-
tivated GhE. Many anglophone Ghanaians, however, speak a variety that is further
removed from British standard grammar than Cultivated GhE and which could be
called Conversational GhE, to emphasize its more informal character.
What is urgently needed are (preferably corpus-based, quantitative) descriptive
studies of Conversational GhE and of informal and formal writing. These should
be complemented by a study of the cline between broken and native-like varieties
of GhE, as well as the various and complex interfaces between indigenous lan-
guages, Ghanaian Pidgin English and GhE.
Though a number of investigations have been based on privately compiled cor-
pora, no text collections documenting GhE are currently publicly available. Ghana
is listed as one of the West Africa components of the International Corpus of Eng-
lish, but compilation and computerization of the texts has not neared completion
at the time of writing.
Selected references
ROM.
Brown, P. P. and J. Scragg
1948 Common Errors in Gold Coast English. 3rd edition. London: Macmillan.
Dako, Kari
1991 Some reflections on English in Ghana. Terminology and Classification.
In: Emmanuel Quarcoo (ed.), Proceedings of the Ghana English Studies
Association. September 1991, 42-56. Legon: (no publisher).
forthcoming Some thoughts about the use of dental fricatives by students at the
University of Ghana. Exploration: Journal of the University of Ghana
1(2).
Gyasi, Ibrahim K.
1990 The state of English in Ghana. English Today 23: 24–26.
1991 Aspects of English in Ghana. English Today 26: 26–31.
Kemp, Dennis
1898 Nine years at the Gold Coast. London: Macmillan and Co.
Schachter, Paul
1962 Teaching English pronunciation to the Twi-speaking student. Legon: Ghana
University Press.
Sey, Kofi A.
1973 Ghanaian English. An Exploratory Survey. London: Macmillan.
2000a Comparing some phonological features across African accents of English.
English Studies 81: 249–266.
2000b The uniqueness of Ghanaian English pronunciation in West Africa. Studies in
the Linguistic Sciences 30: 185–198.
2003 The formation of regional and national features in African English pronuncia-
tion. An exploration of some non-interference factors. English World-Wide
24: 17–42.
Ghanaian Pidgin English: phonology
Magnus Huber
1. Introduction
Ghanaian Pidgin English (henceforth GhP) is part of a wider West African Pidgin
English (WAP), and accordingly needs to be studied in close comparison with
similar varieties in Nigeria and Cameroon. As shown in the history section of the
article on Ghanaian English, Afro-European contacts on the Gold Coast evolved
in three stages: early trading contacts (1471–1844), colonization (1844–1957),
and independence and after (1957–).
During the phase of early trading contacts, several Pidgins lexified by the lan-
guages of the European merchants developed. Pidginized Portuguese was the ear-
liest, falling out of use only in the second half of the 18th century, some 150 years
after the Portuguese lost their supremacy on the Gold Coast. A Pidgin English
came into being with the establishment of English traders on the coast from the
middle of the 17th century onwards. Structurally, this was considerably simpler
and more variable than today’s GhP.
The origin of GhP as current today took place in the colonization period. From
the 1840s onwards, Africans liberated from slave ships and freed on the Sierra
Leone peninsula went back to their respective places of origin, thus spreading an
early form of Krio along the West African coast, Nigeria in particular. Historical
and linguistic evidence indicates that in the 1920s the Nigerian variety of Krio was
introduced to Ghana by migrant workers. This decade can therefore be seen as the
birthdate of GhP. For more detailed information on the history of GhP see Huber
(1999a, 1999b).
1.1. Current sociolinguistic situation and varieties of GhP

The multilingual setting in Ghana is outlined in the article on English in Gha-
na. Huber (1995, 1999a) describes in detail the current sociolinguistic situation
with special emphasis on GhP. The following is a summary of the most important
facts.
GhP, locally known as ‘Pidgin (English)’, ‘Broken (English)’, and formerly as
‘Kru English’, or ‘kroo brofo’ (the Akan term), is a predominantly urban phenom-
enon. It is spoken in the southern towns, especially in the capital Accra. As will
become apparent in the following sections, GhP is confined to a smaller (though
growing) section of society than Pidgin in other anglophone West African coun-
Ghanaian Pidgin English: phonology 867
tries. Also, its functional domain is more restricted and the language is more stig-
matized.
There are two varieties of GhP that form a continuum. Basilectal varieties are
associated with the less educated sections of society and more mesolectal/acrolec-
tal forms are usually spoken by speakers who have at least progressed to the upper
forms of secondary school. I call these the ‘uneducated’ and the ‘educated/student’
varieties of GhP.
The difference between the two GhP varieties lies not so much in their linguistic
structure (there are some differences but the two are mutually intelligible) as in the
functions they serve: uneducated GhP is used as a lingua franca in highly multilin-
gual contexts, whereas the more educated, or acrolectal, varieties are better char-
acterized as in-group languages whose main function is to express group solidarity.
There is a high rate of illiteracy in the linguistically heterogeneous immigrant
quarters in southern Ghanaian cities where the uneducated variety has some cur-
rency. It is for this reason that Ghanaians usually equate Pidgin with a low level of
education. On the other hand, GhP is also used by speakers with a high educational
attainment, as among students at the Ghanaian universities. In these contexts, GhP
does not fulfil basic communication needs – English is available to all parties in
these settings and could be resorted to if no common indigenous language were at
hand. Rather, Pidgin is used as a group-binder, to signal group identity and solidar-
ity. Of course, interference from StGhE is much stronger with this last group than
it is with uneducated speakers. However, the main differences between the two
GhP varieties are lexical, not structural: by its very nature the variety used by the
students is characterized by a high number of short-lived slang words, which may
only be current on one campus or among one sub-group of students.
1.2. Uneducated Pidgin

The traditional indigenous language in the capital Accra area is Ga, but there is
a high number of immigrants from both inside and outside Ghana. In 1970, over
50% of the population in the Greater Accra Region were immigrants, and the per-
centage in immigrant quarters (called zongos, from Hausa zango ‘camp, caravan-
serai’) of Accra, like Nima, Kanda, or Mamobi, was and is much higher. These
quarters are characterized by linguistic heterogeneity, overpopulation, slum condi-
tions, and a high level of unemployment. Personal observation suggests that the
rate of illiteracy is far higher than the Ghanaian average. There are no reliable
data on the ethnic composition of the zongos but one inhabitant enumerated no
less than 15 tribes that form distinct communities in Nima, many of them immi-
grants from northern Ghana, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, besides speak-
ers of Akan, Ewe, and Ga-Dangme. While Hausa, spoken in various forms from
pidginized to Standard Nigerian Hausa, is the dominant lingua franca in Accra’s
multilingual immigrant quarters, Pidgin English also fulfils this function. Hausa
868 Magnus Huber
seems to derive its ethnic neutrality from the fact that many do not consider it a
genuinely Ghanaian language. It also carries some prestige through its association
with Islam, the dominant religion in the zongos. Pidgin English draws its neutrality
from the fact that it has no native speakers.
The label ‘uneducated Pidgin’ does not imply that its speakers necessarily had
no or little formal education, but rather that this variety is transmitted and used
in non-educational contexts. This is why Ghanaians most readily associate it with
unskilled labourers, lorry and taxi drivers, watchmen, household servants, and the
like. This type of Pidgin is typically used in multilingual settings characterized by
low educational attainment of the speakers – in other words, settings which dimin-
ish (but do not necessarily exclude) the usefulness of an areal Ghanaian lingua
franca such as Twi (or Hausa) and at the same time preclude StGhE as a language
of interethnic communication. Places where this uneducated Pidgin can be heard
are lorry stations (taxi or bus ranks), places of trans-shipment where the so-called
truck boys load or unload lorries, or workers’ bars.
1.3. Educated Pidgin: secondary schools and universities

Speakers of the educated variety of GhP had at least some years of secondary edu-
cation. One variety of educated GhP is spoken in secondary schools, especially by
boys in the upper three forms (Senior Secondary School). Schools strongly dis-
courage the use of Pidgin, but boys freely resort to it when unobserved by teach-
ers. This variety of GhP serves as a social register, as an in-group language, being
used not so much out of communicative necessity but as a means of expressing
solidarity and intimacy with peers. Girls use Pidgin English more seldom than
boys, possibly because they are much more susceptible to social norms. Educa-
tion is an highly esteemed asset and Pidgin is still very much associated with the
uneducated section of society. In this context it is understandable that girls should
choose to speak StGhE rather than a non-standard variety that bears the stigma
of illiteracy. Many of the female pupils do, however, have a passive command of
Pidgin.
From the schools, Pidgin has been carried into the homes, where it is now used
among brothers with secondary education, often to the exclusion of the vernacular.
Although it used to be considered offensive to speak Pidgin to girls, I happened to
observe a schoolboy courting a girl in Pidgin, which indicates that its function to
signal intimacy is apparently being extended to inter-gender relationships.
The rise and spread of Pidgin in Ghanaian secondary schools started in the
mid-1960s. From the secondary schools Pidgin was soon carried into the universi-
ties, where it established itself as the main informal code of male students. It is
today heard on campus, in students’ bars, and in the halls of residence. As in the
schools, female students rarely speak Pidgin, although independent women may
be observed to use it.
From the schools and universities Pidgin has also been carried into non-educa-
tional domains and is frequently heard among male peers in informal situations.
Today, educated urban males under 45 years of age can be expected to switch to
Pidgin in informal settings. The educated variety is currently spreading fast and
is being used in more and more contexts. For one thing, secondary schoolboys or
male students increasingly resort to Pidgin rather than StGhE or another Ghana-
ian language when female peers are present. Moreover, schoolgirls and female
students are starting to use Pidgin actively more frequently than just a couple of
years ago. In addition, pre-school children of middle class families appear to pick
up GhP from their fathers.
1.4. Pidgin in the police and army

Today, Pidgin has wide currency in the armed forces. Amoako (1992: 44) was in-
formed by a police officer at a training depot that police recruits are taught Pidgin.
Ghanaians readily associate Pidgin English with the police and army.
1.5. Uses, function, and stigmatization of Pidgin in Ghana

The function of GhP is rather restricted in comparison with other WAPs. For ex-
ample, in contrast to e.g. Nigeria and Cameroon, Pidgin is rarely used in the me-
dia. Ghanaian newspapers are almost exclusively in StGhE or Ghanaian languages
and even their cartoons, where (quasi-)Pidgin often features in other West African
newspapers, are surprisingly standard-like. A kind of mock pidgin is used in satire
in some of the political magazines. In these publications Pidgin is attributed to un-
educated speakers, policemen, or soldiers. Films are usually in StGhE. There are a
few productions in which uneducated characters use Pidgin, but its use on screen
is the exception rather than the rule. Pidgin used to be rarely heard on the radio, al-
though Pidgin commercials seem to have come into fashion in recent times. Again
it is uneducated characters who speak GhP. The function of Pidgin here is more to
amuse and to create an authentic atmosphere than to reach a wider public.
Pidgin in Ghana is more stigmatized and less widespread in terms of area and
number of speakers than it is in other anglophone West African countries. Espe-
cially among the educated section of Ghanaian society (but this is also true for
less educated Ghanaians) Pidgin is still frowned upon as a mark of illiteracy and
unpolished manners. GhP does, however, enjoy covert prestige: it is one of the
preferred codes that a growing number of educated adult males use in an urban,
informal, and unmonitored setting: in ‘drinking spots’, discos, among friends, etc.
But in formal and traditional situations Pidgin is felt to be inadequate, rude, or
disrespectful and a Ghanaian language or Standard English is preferred.
As new generations of scholars enter teaching positions at the universities, it is
only a matter of time before Pidgin English will be heard in informal conversa-
870 Magnus Huber
tions between university lecturers. This is because unlike their senior and linguis-
tically more conservative colleagues, young male Ghanaian lecturers did speak
Pidgin at the time they were students.
The considerable stigmatization of GhP in some sections of Ghanaian society
contributes to the widespread conviction that there is no true Ghanaian Pidgin and
the belief that Pidgin is not a home-grown phenomenon but was introduced from
other West African countries, especially Liberia and Nigeria.
2. Phonology
The sound system of GhP is similar to that of GhE, with a tendency of GhP speak-
ers to use the more basilectal variants. For an overview of GhP phonetics and
phonology, the reader is therefore referred to the respective section in the article
on GhE. In the following, I will mainly point out those features where GhP differs
from GhE.
2.1. Vowels
As an overview of the GhP vowels, table 1 reproduces the summary table from the
article on GhE, which should be consulted for further comments.
Table 1. GhP vowels – summary
KIT i> FACE e ~ ei > ei NEAR i > ia

i
DRESS ~ > i SQUARE > a
TRAP a PALM a() START a
LOT ç THOUGHT ç > ç NORTH ç
STRUT a~ç> GOAT, GOAL o ~ ou > ou FORCE ç
FOOT u> ç ~ çu > çu CURE u ~ uç ~ ç
BATH a() GOOSE u > u happY i~
i
CLOTH ç PRICE ai > a > a lettER a
NURSE () CHOICE çi horsES i>~
u
FLEECE i > i MOUTH au > a ~ a commA a
2.2. Consonants
Plosives
(e.g. got [ç]) is less frequent in GhP than in GhE. The reason for
T-glottalization
this may be that even in its colloquial registers GhE is still very much oriented to-
wards the exocentric norm of BrE (whose informal varieties show glottalization).
By contrast, in terms of its target GhP is a truly endocentric phenomenon and is
therefore less likely to adopt such mechanisms from outside. The notion of degree
of endocentricity also explains why T-glottalization is more common in educated
than in uneducated GhP. The good command of StGhE of educated GhP speakers
frequently results in the carry-over into their GhP of characteristics of the standard
variety.
Fricatives
// and // are virtually absent from uneducated GhP, where they are replaced by
/t/ and /d/. As with T-glottalization, educated GhP shows a higher rate of /, /,
caused by StGhE interference.
GhP, especially in its more basilectal, uneducated variety, shows some measure
of replacement of /v/ by /b/ or /f/: seven /sbn/ and shovel /sçful/. This is most
frequent with speakers whose L1 is Akan or Hausa, since the phoneme inventories
of these languages do not include /v/.
Approximants
Whether or not the lexifier [] is realized as an approximant or a trill depends on
the quality of the r-sound in the speaker’s first language and his phonetic com-
petence. Most of the Akan dialects have an r-sound similar to English [], while
other languages spoken in Ghana, e.g. Hausa, have trills or fricatives instead. The
trills and the approximant may be used interchangeably or in stylistically different
registers (e.g. [r] = basilectal and [] = more mesolectal/acrolectal), but they are
not phonologically distinctive. Uneducated GhP, especially the variety spoken by
northern immigrants in the zongos, prefers the trill, while the educated variety pre-
fers the more BrE realization. Intervocalic flapping of /t/, acquired by some GhE
speakers in the US and Canada, is uncommon in GhP.
There is allophonic distribution or free variation of [l] and [r] in the major
Ghanaian substrate languages, e.g. in Akan, Dangme, Ewe, Ga, but also in Gur
languages like Dagbani and Dagarti. As a consequence, the two sounds may be
used interchangeably on the lower end of the GhP continuum. This phenomenon
is most common with older speakers who had little formal education, but it is at
times also found in other speakers. Examples of /l ~ r/ alternation are broke /blok/
and bottle /bçtru/.
2.3. Syllable complexity

Consonant cluster reduction, as described in the contribution on GhE, also operates
in GhP. However, it has to be pointed out here that GhP – contrary to what is often
said about other WAPs – allows complex onsets and codas, mirroring the phono-
logical structure of the words in BrE. Examples of such clusters can be found in
872 Magnus Huber
plant /plant/ (CCVCC), struggle /strç.çl/ (CCCV), street /strit/ (CCCVC), and
strange /stend/ (CCCVCC). Again, complex clusters are less frequent in the un-
educated variety.
2.4. Major issues in current research on GhP

So far, little has been published on GhP. Up until very recently, studies on Ghanaian
English only mentioned the existence of Pidgin in passing. In his investigation of
“Education and the role of English in Ghana” Boadi (1971: 51-2) says that Pidgin
is widely used in the larger towns, but is not current among educated Ghanaians.
Sey (1973: 3) states that apart from a continuum of more or less educated English
there is Broken English and Pidgin, the latter usually associated with uneducated
labourers from Northern Ghana or other West African countries. Criper’s (1971:
13-4) “Classification of types of English in Ghana” similarly acknowledges the
existence of Pidgin.
Since at least the 1980s, there has been an ongoing debate in Ghanaian universi-
ties about the supposedly harmful effects that the students’ use of Pidgin has on
their academic performance, but most of the articles relating to this question have
remained unpublished. The two positions in this controversy are (a) that Pidgin
presents a serious threat to literacy and the standard of education in a country
that has traditionally prided itself on the high quality of its educational system;
and (b) that Pidgin is just one code in the linguistic repertoire of young educated
Ghanaians and that it is a useful means of horizontal communication with other
anglophone West African countries and of vertical communication (literates-il-
literates) in Ghana.
The debate about the spread of Pidgin in secondary schools and universities
has mainly centred on the measures to be taken to prevent its supposedly harm-
ful effects on the standard of education. The only studies known to me that also
seriously investigate the structure of the student variety are Hyde (1995), who de-
scribes some lexical aspects and word-formation processes, whereas Ahulu (1995)
provides a short sketch of the lexicon and grammar of what he calls “hybridized
English”. Kari Dako of the Department of English at the University of Ghana has
been researching the variety used on Ghanaian campuses.
The stigma Pidgin carries in educated circles may also explain why so few
structural or sociolinguistic descriptions of the variety have been published. For
some linguists, describing GhE would declare it an object worth serious study and
would be tantamount to giving official sanction. Only in recent years has Pidgin
started to attract the interest of Ghanaian scholars, who now begin to study the
variety spoken on campus.
Descriptions of the off-campus (‘uneducated’) variety of GhP are even fewer
and again mostly unpublished – see the longer reference list on the CD-ROM ac-
companying this text.
Selected references
ROM.
Ahulu, Samuel
1995 Hybridized English in Ghana. English Today 11: 31–36.
Amoako, Joe K. Y. B.
1992 Ghanaian Pidgin English: in search of synchronic, diachronic, and sociolin-
guistic evidence. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida at Gainsville.
Boadi, Lorence A.
1971 Education and the role of English in Ghana. In: Spencer (ed.), 49–65.
Criper, Lindsay
1971 A classification of types of English in Ghana. Journal of West African
Languages 10: 6–17.
Huber, Magnus
1995 Ghanaian Pidgin English: An overview. English World-Wide 16: 215–249.
1999a Ghanaian Pidgin English in its West African Context. A Sociohistorical and
Structural Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
1999b Atlantic English Creoles and the Lower Guinea Coast: a case against
Afrogenesis. In: Huber and Parkvall (eds.), 81–110.
Hyde, Faustina
1995 On pidginization of English in Ghana. Unpublished typescript.
Sey, Kofi A.
1973 Ghanaian English. An Exploratory Survey. London: Macmillan.
Liberian Settler English: phonology
John Victor Singler*
1. Introduction
English is Liberia’s official language. There is a Liberian variety of International

English; it is the language of Liberia’s media and institutions of higher learning,
and it is the target of language instruction in Liberian schools.
The focus of the present article is Liberian Settler English (LibSE), the language
of the Settler ethnic group. The Settlers are the descendants of the 16,000 African
Americans who immigrated to Liberia in the nineteenth century. The modern Li-
berian state began with their arrival. In Liberia, formal education has performed an
integrative function. The more education a Liberian has had, the more her/his Eng-
lish will correspond to the English of other Liberians of comparable educational
achievement, regardless of one’s ancestry and upbringing. Conversely, within the
Settler group, those with the least extensive formal education are the ones who
speak in the most distinctly Settler way.
Even as the Settlers have reclaimed their African heritage, it can be argued that
their language – at least the language of the Settlers who have lived in the greatest
isolation and who have had the least amount of formal education – has remained
North American. Accordingly, the article that follows, while it acknowledges lo-
cal influence on Settler speech, will be North American in orientation.
1.1. Other varieties of English in Liberia: Pidgins

The earliest references to “English” along the coast of what is now Liberia date
from the very beginning of the eighteenth century. Over the next century the use of
“English” grew so much that, in the 1820’s when the Settlers landed and founded
their city of Monrovia, the missionary Jehudi Ashmun reported that “very many
in all the maritime tribes, speak a corruption of the English language” (African
Repository, Nov. 1827: 263). The “corruption” was undoubtedly pidgin English,
the ancestor of today’s Vernacular Liberian English (VLibE). (This term, with a
slightly different reference, comes from Hancock 1971.) The following quotation
illustrates this early pidgin. Attributed to King Jo Harris, a Bassa chief, it appeared
in an 1834 article in the Monrovia newspaper, the Liberia Herald:
I savey: you man for governor, tell governor, him send one punch rum for dash we
(meaning kings)[;] top, tell him send two punch, one for me King Jo Harris, me one, and
tother for dash all country gentleman. (Liberia Herald, quoted in the African Repository
1834, 10:123–124; parenthetical assistance in the original)
Liberian Settler English: phonology 875
The Settlers quickly came to dominate the region and established the independent
nation of Liberia in 1847. While the new Liberian government claimed large areas
of the interior, it initially took no steps to enforce the claim, and the Settlers them-
selves remained near the coast. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century did
the government send its troops – the Liberian Frontier Force – into the interior to
establish control. VLE was the language of the Frontier Force and of the labourers
at the Firestone rubber plantation (begun in 1926); the alternative terms ‘Soldier
English’ and ‘Firestone English’ for the VLE of the interior reflect the role that
these two groups of men played in the pidgin’s dissemination.
As noted, the Settlers themselves remained on the coast. The linguistic conse-
quences of the interaction that took place between them and the indigenous people
on the coast were overwhelmingly unidirectional, with the language of the power-
ful – LibSE – influencing the language of the dominated – VLE – but not itself
being profoundly influenced in turn. Thus, while the pidgin had at first been a lo-
cal variety of the pidginized English that developed along the West African coast
more generally, the influence of LibSE upon it caused it to diverge sharply from
pidgin English in the rest of West Africa.
Today VLE is the language of most English-speaking Liberians. It is unique
among West African Englishes in that it fits the creole continuum model (DeCamp
1971; Singler 1984, 1997). The massive displacement of Liberians from 1989 on-
ward as a consequence of civil war has thrown together people with no Niger-
Congo language in common; the circumstances have promoted the use of VLE not
only inside Liberia but also outside it, in refugee camps and communities.
In addition to VLE, there is or, more accurately, was a second pidgin English.
Kru Pidgin English (KPE) was the language of “Kru sailors,” the Klao and Grebo
men who worked on board European vessels along the African coast from at least
the beginning of the nineteenth century onward. By the latter part of the nineteenth
century, “Krumen” also held low-status jobs in British colonies, most numerously
on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) but also Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The pat-
tern quickly emerged whereby males who had grown up in monolingual villages
would, at the age of fifteen or so, join a work group headed by an older individual
from the village. The group would then travel to its working place and remain for
a growing season (in the case of cocoa plantations in the Gold Coast), a year, or
a few years before returning home, where they would remain for a comparable
period of time. An individual would repeat this pattern on a regular basis until
he was 45 or so, at which time he would cease making such trips. Research car-
ried out in a Klao village shows that, for the most part, the Krumen had had little
contact with Settlers, and there is little evidence of Settler influence upon KPE, or
vice versa (cf. Singler 1990). Changes in maritime practice and, especially, the re-
moval of the British colonial presence have eliminated a role for Krumen in Ghana
and elsewhere. As a result, as old Krumen die, their pidgin is dying out. VLE has
made inroads into the Klao and Grebo villages that had provided the British with
876 John Victor Singler
Krumen; thus, if the children and grandchildren of the old Krumen are acquiring a
pidgin, it is VLE, not KPE.
1.2. The history of LibSE

LibSE is a direct descendant of the nineteenth-century African American English
(AAE) that the immigrants brought with them. While the existence of features in
LibSE has been used to show that putative innovations in modern African Ameri-
can Vernacular English (AAVE) have in fact been around for a long time (cf. the
chapter on LibSE syntax and Singler 1998), LibSE is not itself nineteenth-century
AAE; it has had 175 years in which to undergo change from that “starting point.”
The political state of Liberia represents the legacy of an early nineteenth-centu-
ry American attempt to solve an American problem by, quite literally, getting the
problem to go away. The “problem” involved the status of free African Americans.
They were American citizens, yet the discrimination against them everywhere in
the US was so pervasive that many people held that they would always be subject
to an inferior status. In 1816 white clergymen founded the American Colonization
Society (ACS) in Washington, DC, and in 1822 the Society placed its first group
of African American colonists in what was to become Liberia. The ACS had as its
goal the founding of a colony in Africa where free people of color could enjoy the
full privileges of freedom. Setting up such a colony – Liberia – proved extremely
costly, and most of the funding actually came from Southern slaveholders who
saw the presence in the US of free African Americans as a threat to the status quo.
The connection between slaveholders and the ACS served to discredit the ACS
among the free African Americans whom it most sought to recruit. The mortality
rate among colonists during the Liberian scheme’s first two decades was “shock-
ingly high” (Shick 1980: 27); news of this further dissuaded those with a choice
from immigrating there. In the decades prior to the American Civil war, a majority
of those who immigrated to Liberia had been slaves emancipated on condition that
they immigrate.
Over the first 25 years of immigration to Liberia, the largest number of African
Americans came from Virginia followed by Maryland and North Carolina. Sub-
sequently, Georgia sent large numbers of immigrants and South Carolina as well
(cf. Singler 1989). While the Settlers established communities along a 250-mile
stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, from Robertsport in the northwest to Harper in the
southeast, most of the colonists settled in Monrovia or in nearby communities
along the banks of the St. Paul River. From the outset Settler politics and society
were dominated by those who had emigrated from Virginia and states north of it.
A second population also arrived in Liberia in the nineteenth century, Recap-
tured Africans. They were individuals who had been on slave ships headed to the
Western Hemisphere when these ships were intercepted by the US Navy. Almost
all of them came from the Congo River; the Liberian term for Recaptured Africans
is “Congo.” (This is the Liberian spelling, as illustrated by the name of a Monro-

via neighborhood, “Oldest Congotown,” but the pronunciation is [kçgç].) In all,
more than 5700 Recaptured Africans were delivered to Monrovia, 4700 of them in
or around 1860. The one numerically significant group of Recaptured Africans not
from the Congo River region was a boatload of Yorùbá people from the Nigerian
coast; upon arrival in Liberia, they were placed in Sinoe County.
Like the Settlers, the Recaptured Africans had no pre-existing ties to the in-
digenous population. They entered into the lower echelons of Settler society and
became part of that group. Ultimately the term “Congo” came to be used to refer
to the Settlers as a whole. While it carries a somewhat pejorative connotation, it is
also by far the most common term used today to refer to the Settlers. In the same
way, “Congo English” is the most common designation for what I term “Liberian
Settler English.” As for specific Bantu elements or, representing a smaller pres-
ence, Yorùbá elements, I have never been able to identify any in Settler speech.
That is not to say they don’t exist, only that my search has not uncovered them. In
the discussion that follows of Settlers today and their language, the term “Settler”
is meant to encompass Recaptured Africans as well.
The fundamental demographic divide in Liberia from 1822 onward has been
that between Settlers and indigenous people. The Settlers perceived themselves
as superior. They held that their westernness, with its Christianity and English
literacy, endowed them with the right to rule.
In an 1860 Liberian Independence Day oration, the Cambridge-educated Epis-
copal priest the Rev. Alexander Crummell proclaimed:
Here, on this coast ... is an organized community, republican in form and name; a people
possessed of Christian institutions and civilized habits, with this one marked peculiarity,
that is, that in color, race, and origin, they are identical with the masses around them; and
yet speak the refined and cultivated English language (1862: 9).
In his speech Crummell recalled that in an oration two years earlier he had
… pointed out among other providential events the fact, that the exile of our fathers
from their African homes to America, had given us, their children, at least one item of
compensation, namely, the possession of the Anglo-Saxon tongue; that this language put
us in a position which none other on the globe could give us; and that it was impossible
to estimate too highly, the prerogatives and the elevation the Almighty has bestowed
upon us, in our having as our own, the speech of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of Milton and
Wordsworth, or [sic] Bacon and Burke, of Franklin and Webster ... (1862: 9)
Crummell’s rhetoric embodies the Settlers’ assertion that their literacy in English
endowed them with the right to dominate the non-English-speaking population.
In modern times members of indigenous ethnic groups have asserted their right to
participate in Liberian government, but they have never challenged the primacy
of English.
From the arrival of the earlier Settlers to the present day, a discrepancy has
endured between the Settlers’ language about language, specifically about writ-
ten standard English, and their own command of English literacy and standard
English. For, even by the most rudimentary criteria, only a minority of the early
Settlers were actually literate. Not one of the colonists who arrived in the first few
years of settlement had had even a “plain English education” (Family Visitory,
quoted in the African Repository 1825: 236). A remark a generation later showed
that there had been little change over the years: a Settler complained that among
those who were newly arrived “[m]en of means … [are] exceptions … to the
common rule, that is the no money, no A.B.C. men, that come directly from the
plantation &c.&c.” (Liberia Herald August 2, 1854). Certainly Liberia in its early
days featured a Settler intelligentsia, a handful of highly educated immigrants (cf.
Singler 1976–1977). They were, however, so few in number that from the outset
the Settlers found it difficult to establish and maintain schools for their children.
Because their own children were not being well-educated, Settler leaders objected
to missionary efforts to educate indigenous children. Nonetheless, the Settlers’
limited literacy and their difficulties in maintaining schools do not gainsay the
central role of the book in such key Settler institutions as government, religion,
formal schooling, and the Masonic lodge.
The Settlers, occasionally with the timely support of a US gunboat, established
their hegemony along the coast. As noted, they extended their control into the
interior early in the twentieth century. Never more than 3% of Liberia’s popula-
tion, the Settlers ruled Liberia until a military coup in 1980 placed Samuel Kanyon
Doe, an indigenous Liberian, in power. Even though the 1989–1997 civil war and
subsequent rebellions have not been simply or even primarily about the Settler-
indigenous divide, that division remains a defining feature of Liberian politics and
society.
The discussion of LibSE phonetics and phonology below, like most of my re-
search on LibSE, focuses on the LibSE of Sinoe County, 150 miles down the coast
from Monrovia. Founded by the Mississippi Colonization Society to be Missis-
sippi in Africa, the Sinoe Settlers differed from other Settlers both in their prov-
enance and in their post-immigration history. Far more than was true of other Set-
tler communities, a significant number of people who immigrated to Sinoe came
from large plantations (rather than small agricultural holdings or cities), and a far
greater proportion came from the Deep South, particularly Mississippi and Geor-
gia. Abandoned by the Mississippi Colonization Society almost immediately, the
Sinoe settlements received far less support from the central government in Mon-
rovia than did the other Settler communities. Moreover, Sinoe was the one cluster
of Settler communities without a significant missionary presence in the nineteenth
century. Taken together, the lack of government resources and the absence of mis-
sionaries mean that standardizing forces would have been weaker in Sinoe than
elsewhere. Finally, except possibly for Maryland-in-Africa, nowhere else was Set-
tler-indigene hostility so intense and so protracted. All of these factors appear to

make Sinoe the likeliest stronghold in Liberia and possibly in the entire African
American diaspora for the ongoing retention and transmission of the vernacular
features that African American émigres had brought with them from the US.
In evaluating the speech of Sinoe Settlers, the impact of formal education upon
an individual’s speech must be considered. In Sinoe as elsewhere in Liberia, the
more schooling someone has, the less distinctively Settler the person’s speech
will be, particularly in a formal setting such as a recorded interview. (Among
the elders whose interviews form the Sinoe Settler corpus, five had at least begun
secondary school, six had completed fourth, fifth, or sixth grade, and three had
had no formal education to speak of.) Strictly speaking, within the Sinoe corpus,
a speaker’s occupation was a more consistent indicator of a speaker’s style in an
interview, with teachers least likely to use distinctively vernacular Settler features,
that is, even less likely than non-teachers who had had more extensive formal
education. For all speakers, but for teachers most of all, the question arises as to
the extent to which they controlled and used two varieties, one the in-group Settler
English, the other a variety that was less distinctively Settler.
Within Sinoe, there is a political – and linguistic – distinction between the coun-
ty seat, Greenville, and settlements up the Sinoe River. In modern times Greenville
is perceived as everyone’s county capital, but upriver settlements like Lexington,
Louisiana, and Bluntsville are recognized as “belonging” to the Settlers. Thus, the
speech of the upriver Settlers shows much less accommodation to the speech of
non-Settler Liberians. A further point in considering the LibSE of Sinoe County
is its relationship to the LibSE of the rest of the coast. The rest of Liberia’s Settler
English has been studied very little; however, what seems to show up is that the
difference between Sinoenians and non-Sinoenians is more quantitative than qual-
itative. On limited evidence, then, it is usually the case not that Sinoe Settlers use a
greater number of distinctive features (here, distinctively American, and, usually,
distinctively African American) than other Settlers, but rather that they use them
more often. At the same time, there may be some instances in which non-Sinoe
Settlers use standard-like features that Sinoe Settlers do not. For example, because
Sinoe Settler speech shows a strong preference for CV syllables, the grammar
blocks contracted forms of will, e.g. I’ll; non-Sinoe Settlers, on the other hand, do
use I’ll and the other ’ll contractions.
2. Phonetics and phonology

2.1. Phonemic inventory
2.1.1. Vowels
Table 1. The vowels of LibSE according to Wells’s lexical set
KIT >e FLEECE i NEAR i , > e

DRESS FACE e i, > e
TRAP æ PALM >æ SQUARE > e, æ
LOT THOUGHT ç START
STRUT GOAT o NORTH o, ç3
FOOT u> GOOSE u FORCE o, ç3
BATH æ PRICE a > a$, ai CURE o
CLOTH CHOICE $, i > happY i
NURSE > $ MOUTH u, au lettER
DANCE æ horSES >
BED e commA >
(DANCE and BED are not part of the lexical set, but they have been included here to
distinguish their vowels from those in TRAP and DRESS, respectively.)
LibSE can be said to have ten or eleven monophthongs, depending on whether
// and / / are considered to be distinct. While there is a contrast between high
front vowels between /i/ and //, there is no consistent corresponding contrast in
the back. Instead, a word like foot is ordinarily realized as [fu] or [fut].
LibSE has five front vowels, illustrated by the minimal quintuple beat, bit, bait,
bet, and bat. When occurring before a nasal consonant, the /æ/ and // are raised,
but the contrast with other vowels is preserved. Before voiced stops, what was his-
torically // has undergone raising to [e]. Thus, head is pronounced [he] or [hed].
The infrequency with which the following voiced stop is realized on the surface
in such words has led to the re-analysis of American English bed when it has the
meaning ‘an area of ground where flowers or plants are grown’ as LibSE bay.
Further acoustic work is needed to determine the basis of the following con-
trasts: /i/ vs. //, /e/ vs. //, and /o/ vs. /ç/. The question is the extent to which the
contrasts are based on differences in length, height, and/or peripherality. It is also
possible that a tense/lax distinction forms the basis for the contrasts; if that is so,
it would be necessary to address the relationship of the tense/lax distinction to the
other distinctions, an ongoing issue in the study of English vowels. The American
English generalization that lax vowels other than / / can only occur in closed syl-
lables does not hold on the surface in LibSE: [t] is a common pronunciation of
tell, and [s] of sit. In the case of /e/ vs. // and /o/ vs. /ç/, there seems to be a clear
height difference, with the first of the two vowels the higher of the two.
Diphthongs are frequently monophthongized, particularly the diphthong in

PRICE. The diphthongs in PRICE and CHOICE are nearly homophonous, with the
nucleus of the vowel in PRICE slightly lower than the nucleus of the vowel in
CHOICE.
The greatest range of variation among speakers involves the vowels in NURSE,
NEAR and SQUARE. In the case of NURSE, the nucleus tends to be mid and central,
but there is variation both in height (from mid-low to mid-high) and backness
(from central to somewhat front). For some speakers at least, the vowel sometimes
ends with a high, central upglide. The vowel in NEAR is always front, but speak-
ers vary not only in their realization of the vowel (i, , or e) but also as to whether it
is followed by / /. Thus, /i/, /i /, //, / /, /e/, and /e / are all possible realizations.
The range and number of vowels in LibSE place it in contrast with VLE and
with other Liberian languages. For most speakers of VLE, there is an eight-vowel
system, a basic seven-vowel system plus / /. Most of Liberia’s Niger-Congo lan-
guages have the basic seven-vowel system, though Klao and Grebo have nine
owing to an ATR contrast.
2.1.2. Consonants
(a) Obstruents
The consonant inventory in LibSE is the same as that for American dialects of
English except that LibSE does not have the voiced interdental fricative //; /d/
shows up instead, as in they [de]. Its voiceless counterpart, //, does occur, but
only in syllable-initial position and only variably. Thus, thatch is pronounced both
[æ] and [tæ]. In syllable-final position, /t/ or /f/ is used, e.g. both [bof], teeth
[tit]. Loanwords from Niger-Congo languages and VLE with labiovelar conso-
nants are extremely rare in LibSE, and many speakers convert the labiovelar to a
bilabial, so that Kpanyan, a district in Sinoe County, is realized as [paya] rather
than [kpaya].
The affricates /t/ and /d/ occur in syllable-initial position, as in child and jail.
In other environments, the corresponding fricative occurs, e.g. teach [ti], age
[e].
Obstruents in LibSE are sometimes subject to syllable-final devoicing .
(b) Sonorants
In LibSE, the sequence VN syllable-internally is frequently realized as V) i.e. with
the nasality transferred to the preceding vowel and the nasal consonant not real-
ized, e.g. /time/ [ta]; however, when the sequence is VNV, the consonant is resyl-
labified rather than deleted, e.g. timer, [ta.m ]. Also, /l/ is often not present in
coda position. Thus, small is realized as [sm], tell as [t]. That /l/ is present un-
derlyingly is readily demonstrated by the addition of a vowel-initial suffix, which
triggers resyllabification of the lateral, i.e. telling [t.le]. The other liquid, /r/, has
disappeared entirely from final and preconsonantal environments. In a few cases

where /r/ occurs after a stressed vowel, /r/ and the unstressed vowel that follows
it have dropped out. Accordingly, carry is realized as [k], Merican ‘Settler’ as
[mk]. Despite its absence in these environments, /r/ usually does show up in
onset clusters, e.g. tree [tri], priest [pris]. However, in words where the syllable
preceding the onset cluster is stressed, then the /r/ often goes unrealized on the
surface, e.g. secretary [sk tri], cartridge [kt].
One of the speakers whose interview forms part of the Sinoe corpus had a dis-
tinctive velar /r/ like that found in Sierra Leonean Krio. It is not clear whether the
speaker’s velar /r/ was idiosyncratic or was instead a relic of a pattern that was
more common in the past. In the Sinoe Settler speech community as a whole, the
word shrimp has changed to swimp [swm], a sound change consistent with a velar
/r/. An elderly Settler teacher in an upriver settlement in Sinoe, asked if there was
any other name for "crawfish," answered, "Yes, swimp [swm], s-w-i-m-p.”
2.2.1. Syllable structure: the status of the coda
LibSE’s treatment of coda consonants distinguishes it from North American va-
rieties of English. Specifically, it is the frequency with which coda consonants
are absent on the surface that sets LibSE apart from its North American cohort.
The difference is not absolute: all dialects of English are given to dropping the /d/
and /t/ in phrases like sand castle and fast car. However, the surface absence of
coda consonants is far more frequent in LibSE than in North American dialects.
Moreover, this statement applies not only to the simplification of coda clusters as
in sand castle and fast car (simplification by the omission of one of the consonants
in the cluster) but also to the absence of single coda consonants, e.g. what [w],
place [ple].
There are no morphemes in LibSE that contain coda clusters. When the first
element of a cluster is a nasal consonant, the nasalization shifts to the preceding
vowel, and the nasal consonant drops out, e.g. think [tek], camp [kæp]. In all
other cases, i.e. in all the instances where the consonants in the coda cluster are
both oral, a segment simply drops out. Thus, lC clusters have lost the l, e.g. false
[fs]. When a cluster consists of a fricative plus a stop, the stop has dropped out,
e.g. desk [ds] and raft [ræf]. When the cluster consists of two stops, the second
one (which is always alveolar) drops out, e.g. act [æk], except [sp]. The only
time when a word (as opposed to a morpheme) displays a coda cluster on the
surface is when the plural is added, e.g. jobs [dbz], face caps [feskæps] ‘base-
ball caps’. Surface clusters like this are relatively rare; usually, when a plural
marker is added, the preceding consonant drops out, e.g. jobs [dz], face caps
[feskæs].
As indicated, individual coda consonants are variably absent on the surface, e.g.
God bless [g bl]. Stops are more likely to be absent on the surface than fricatives
(and /l/ more likely than stops). A third alternative, arguably intermediate between
presence and absence of a coda consonant, is the consonant’s replacement by a
glottal stop, e.g. all right [çra]. While a glottal stop is most likely to stand in for
a voiceless stop, it can take the place of any obstruent.
At the same time that LibSE speakers show far fewer individual coda conso-
nants than do speakers of AAVE or other dialects in North America, they show
vastly more individual coda consonants than do speakers of VLE, the latter having
transferred to VLE the prohibition in Liberia’s Niger-Congo languages against
coda consonants (categorical in Kru and Mande languages, widespread but not
categorical in the Atlantic languages Gola and Kisi).
2.2.2. Prosody
(a) Stress-timing
The prosody of LibSE sets it apart from all other Liberian varieties of English
and, indeed, all other Liberian languages. All of the languages other than LibSE
- including VLE at its most acrolectal – are strict syllable-timed languages. Essen-
tially, every syllable gets equal weight and, consequently, vowel reduction rarely
occurs. In contrast, LibSE is far less syllable-timed, hence more stress-timed. It
seems appropriate to position the syllable-timed languages of Liberia at one pole,
white northern American dialects of English at the opposite pole, and LibSE some-
where in between (cf. Thomas and Carter 2003). Certainly, there is far less vowel
reduction in LibSE than in the white dialects of American English.
(b) Rate of speech
A characteristic of some Settler men is an extremely rapid rate of speech. In the
Sinoe corpus, some men speak very, very fast; no women do. My awareness of a
sex difference in this regard was brought to my attention in a Settler community
in Grand Bassa County. I commented to a Settler friend that I had sometimes
been unable to understand his uncle because of the uncle’s rapidity of speech. My
friend’s answer was that this was how some men talked. My friend’s uncle and
also the fastest talker among the Sinoe Settlers were both members of the clergy.
It is possible that fast speech is intended to signal erudition and formal education,
but only among men.
3. Conclusion
The phonology of LibSE is an understudied topic. I have tried to show that it is,
nevertheless, an important one in its own right and in the comparative study of
AAE in the diaspora.
* A National Science Foundation grant and a National Endowment for the Humanities
summer stipend made possible my research on the Liberian Settler English of Sinoe. I
am grateful to the Rev. D. Hosea Ellis for his assistance throughout. I wish to thank the
older heads of the Settler community in Sinoe County for allowing Hosea and me to
carry out sociolinguistic interviews with them. Peter Roberts Toe and Comfort Swen Toe
facilitated my research in Sinoe. I thank Paul DeDecker for his assistance in mapping
Settler vowels.
Selected references
ROM.
Ashmun, Jehudi
1827 in: African Repository 1: 261.
Crummell, Alexander
1862 The Future of Africa, Being Addresses, Sermons, etc., Delivered in Liberia.
New York: Scribner.
DeCamp, David
1971 Toward a generative analysis of a post-creole speech community. In: Hymes
(ed.), 349–370.
Hancock, Ian F.
1971 Some aspects of English in Liberia. Liberian Studies Journal 3: 207–213.
Shick, Tom W.
1980 Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in
Nineteenth-century Liberia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Singler, John Victor
1976–77 Language in Liberia in the nineteenth century: The Settlers’ perspective.
Liberian Studies Journal 7: 73–85.
1984 Variation in tense-aspect-modality in Liberian English. Ph.D. dissertation,
UCLA.
1989 Plural marking in Liberian Settler English, 1820–1980. American Speech 64:
40–64.
1990 The impact of decreolization upon TMA: Tenselessness, mood, and aspect in
Kru Pidgin English. In: Singler (ed.), 203–230.
1997 The configuration of Liberia’s Englishes. World Englishes 16: 205–231.
1998 What’s not new in AAVE. American Speech 73: 227–256.
Thomas, Erik R., and Philip M. Carter
2003 A first look at rhythm in Southern African American and European American
English. Paper presented at NWAVE 33, University of Pennsylvania.
Cameroon English: phonology
Augustin Simo Bobda
1. Introduction
Cameroon English (CamE) will be understood in the present study as the English
of the educated Anglophone Cameroonian. Although the notion of education is
vague and elusive, the data for the analyses are generally taken from the speech
production of university graduates and professionals of all walks of life. CamE is
meant to be clearly distinct from Cameroon Pidgin English, and from the speech
of the typical Francophone which can be considered a performance variety, even
though it is largely influenced by the English of the Anglophone compatriots. By
the turn of the century, CamE has been shown by various authors, starting with
Todd (1982), to have a high degree of stability (see also Simo Bobda 1994). De-
spite some predictable ethnic and educational variations, CamE is fairly homo-
geneous, due partly to the relatively small size of the Anglophone population on
which it is basically modelled; the two Anglophone provinces cover 9% of the
national territory with 42,210 square km, and have about three million inhabitants,
which represents about 20% of the country’s population.
2. The sounds of CamE

2.1. The vowels
Seen through the realisation of the standard lexical sets (Wells 1982), the vowels
of CamE appear as follows:
KIT
The most common realisation of the KIT vowel in CamE is a tense and relatively
short /i/ as in sit, bit, pity, myth, English [sit, bit, piti, mit, ili]. The KIT vowel
thus clearly merges with the FLEECE vowel. When the KIT vowel in Wells’ para-
digm results from vowel reduction, its realisation in CamE is generally suggested
by the underlying strong vowel, usually reflecting the spelling. Thus, words with
post-tonic <-ace, -age, -ain, -ate> have /e/ (the restructured form of the FACE
vowel), as in popul[e]ce, vill[e]ge, mount[e]n, liter[e]te; women and words in
<-ed, -less, -ness> have //: wom[]n, paint[]d, usel[]ss, happin[]s. Note the
particular behaviour of the vowels of horsES words and words with past tense
-ed. There is no special provision for them in Wells’ (1982: 128) list. But Foulkes
and Docherty (1999) set them apart as showing variations in the Sheffield accent
886 Augustin Simo Bobda
different from the other KIT vowels. CamE also presents a different picture: while
horsES words have /i/ (hors[i]s, clash[i]s, judg[i]s, -ed words have //, as shown
above.
The other realisations are suggested by the spelling (e.g. [skuit, sekuit] cir-
cuit, [bjuzi] busy), or analogy with some existing pattern. Thus coward[ai]ce and
jaund[ai]ce are induced by the analogy with dice, d[ai]vorce, and b[ai]gamy
by the analogy with the pronunciation of the prefixes di-, and bi-, respectively,
in many words; imp[ai]ous by the analogy with pious; [ai]diosyncracy, -atic
by the analogy with idea and its derivatives; h[ai]deous by the analogy with
hide; h[ai]biscus, h[ai]pocritical by the analogy with other words with [hai-]
(hibernate, hypertension, hypercritical); v[ai]neyard by the analogy with vine;
Cather[ai]ne, femin[ai]ne, mascul[ai]ne, favour[ai]te, gran[ai]te, infin[ai]te,
later[ai]te, (less commonly fam[ai]ne, genu[ai]ne, defin[ai]te) by the analogy
with the many English words in –ine and –ite which have /ai/.
Note finally the dropping of the KIT vowel represented by final e in some words
of foreign origin, like [apçkçp, fçt, haipbçl, sikçp] i.e. apocope, forte, hyper-
bole, syncope.
DRESS
The main splits in the KIT set, as seen above, warrant the establishment of at least
two other sets which I will call the paintEd and villAge sets. The paintEd set
would comprise words in -ess (actress, princess), -less, -ness, -men. The villAge
set would comprise words in –ace, -ain, -ate, -ein.
RP has only one mid-front vowel, which many authors situate slightly above
cardinal vowel No 3. It is represented in many systems of transcription, including
the one used by Wells’ UCL Department of Phonetics, with the symbol /e/ which,
in strict phonetic terms, is the symbol for cardinal vowel No 2 which does not
represent the exact quality of the DRESS vowel. Since RP has only one mid-front
vowel, the use of /e/ poses no major problem. But the situation is different in
CamE, which offers an interesting split of the DRESS vowel. The regular realisa-
tions of the DRESS vowel are // and /e/, which are in complementary distribution
in some cases: // occurs in final syllables as in pen, rest, breast, while /e/ occurs
before one and only one medial consonant, and before Cj, Cw and Cr sequences
as in element, medical, special, educate, equity, equalize, metric, retrograde. The
tensing of // to /e/ in this context is known in the literature (Simo Bobda 1994:
181f) as the E-Tensing Rule. /e/ further occurs frequently before the sequences mC
and nC as in embassy, emperor, member, centre, mention. /e/ finally occurs with
the common word says, as a result of the local restructuring of the FACE vowel
induced by the analogy with say and other words in orthographic ay.
Other realisations of the DRESS vowel are induced by some analogy with an
existing pattern. S[i]nate is thus due presumably to the influence of seen, scene;
Gr[i]nwich is induced by the pronunciation of green; m[i]dow, p[i]sant, z[i]lous,
Cameroon English: phonology 887
cleanly (adjective) are induced by the majority of the words in ea pronounced

with /i/; and /i/ in de-, pre-, and re- words like d[i]claration, pr[i]paration,
r[i]servation is induced by the pronunciation of declare, prepare, reserve, etc.
Loose resemblance with words beginning with –in, -inter, etc. can be held respon-
sible for [i]nter, [i]ntrance, while English, England can be seen as the source of
confusion for CamE [i]ngine, [i]ngineer.
Finally, the non-application of the RP rule of Trisyllabic Tensing is responsible
for /i/ in ser[i]nity, supr[i]macy, obsc[i]nity, and /i, i /, the CamE version of the
NEAR vowel as shown below, in aust[i, i]rity, sinc[i, i]rity, sever[i, i]rity,
which correspond to the pronunciation of the bases austere, sincere, severe, re-
spectively.
TRAP
The TRAP vowel is generally realised as /a/, the primary cardinal vowel No 4 (e.g.
in man, tap, hand, thank, arrow, saddle). The other realisations are due to the
analogy with some existing pattern. For example, [plet] plait is due to the analogy
with other words with ai (maid, plain, trail) where the FACE vowel is locally re-
structured to /e/. /e/ further occurs in a sizable number of words where the RP Tri-
syllabic Laxing rule does not apply, and the vowel of the base is maintained; e.g.
s[e]nity, prof[e]nity, (quite often) n[e]tional and decl[e]rative. The occurrence of
/e/ in [rieliti] reality is difficult to account for. Finally, the /ç/ of [ç]lgiers,[ç]lgeria
is presumably due to the analogy with other words with al like chalk, salt, talk.
LOT
The LOT vowel is generally realised as /ç/, roughly in the position for cardinal
vowel No 6, and merges with the THOUGHT and FORCE vowels. A spelling-de-
rived /a/ occurs in a number of words, after w(h) and qu as in wander [wanda],
want, warrant, watch, swallow, swamp, swan, what, squad, squalid, squash, swal-
low.
STRUT
The STRUT vowel is characteristically rendered as /ç/ (e.g. in number, son, tough,
blood, does), and thus merges with the LOT, THOUGHT and FORCE vowels. One
often hears [wan, kam] one, come which can historically be ascribed to the influ-
ence of the pronunciation of the Cameroon Pidgin English of these words, which
indeed have /a/. // is further heard for but and, by some speech-conscious speak-
ers, in words like cut and discuss. The influence of spelling yields /u/ in words like
Brussels, buffalo, buttock, buttress, lumbago, culprit, and occasionally supplement
and its derivatives. Finally, many Cameroonians have /au/ in southern (under the
influence of south) and in country under the influence of other words with <oun>
like count, county, round, sound, and for pronunciation whose spelling is often
changed to *pronounciation.
FOOT
The FOOT vowel is almost systematically realised as a tense and relatively short
/u/ (e.g. in good, cook, put, full, pudding). Miscellaneous realisations include // in
acrolectal speech in the unique word pus, and the spelling-derived /ç/ in bosom.
BATH
The BATH vowel is systematically realised as /a/, like the TRAP vowel.
CLOTH
The CLOTH vowel is almost systematically rendered as /ç/. A spelling-derived /a/
occurs after w and qu in words like warrant, warren, quarry.
NURSE
In CamE, there is a radical split of the NURSE lexical set, a split mostly condi-
tioned by the spelling. /ç/ occurs for orthographic or, our, ur as in work, journey,
purpose; in acrolectal speech, /ç/ alternates with // in words like work, burn, turn,
church; interestingly, the word nurse itself seems to be realised more often as //
than as /ç/; it is therefore not a good representative of the set, in terms of CamE.
The second syllable of incur rhymes with cure and is pronounced like CURE vowel
([inkjç]), a pronunciation that changes the spelling of the word to *incure. // is
the common realisation of the NURSE vowel for words with orthographic er, ear,
ir, yr like term, learn, thirty, myrrh. /a/ occurs in mesolectal and basilectal speech
in Sir. /a/ is even more common in her. Finally, the occurrence of /a/ in maternity,
(verb) transfer, and often in servant [mataniti, transfa, savant] is presumably due
to the influence of /a/ in the neighbouring syllable, and can be considered as a case
of vowel assimilation or harmony.
Given the major splits observed above with clear orthographic conditioning, it
seems more convenient in CamE to establish another set, which I will call the
TERM set. Leaving the NURSE set for words with <ur, or, our>, the TERM set will
comprise words with <er, ere> as in were, and words with <ear, ir, yr>.
FLEECE
The FLEECE vowel is realised as /i/, tense like Wells’ FLEECE, but definitely much
shorter. A spelling-derived //, which may be converted by the E-Tensing rule
to [e] (see the discussion under the DRESS vowel), occurs in a large number of
words including cohesion, comedian, Egypt, intervene, legal, mete (mete out a
sanction), amnesia, Armenia, encyclopaedia, collegial, Cornelius, media, Nico-
demus, penal, recent, Slovenia, species, strategic, trapezium, vehicle. Note that
the occurrence of /e/ in words like cohesion, comedian, Slovenia, trapezium and
many others is due to the non-application of the rule of CiV Tensing (see Simo
Bobda 1994: 179-182) which applies in many mother-tongue accents, including
RP. Analogical realisations include the pronunciation of quay as [kwe] where /e/
is due to the analogy with other words in ay, and the pronunciations of elite and
trio as el[ai]te and tr[ai]o where /ai/ is due to the analogy with other words in
iCe, and tri-, respectively.
FACE
The FACE vowel is generally monophthongised to /e/, and is occasionally rendered
as a more open // in words like labour, later on. The spelling-derived /a/ occurs
in a large number of cases, including adjacent, Barbados, blatant, Donatus, fatal,
Graham, nasal, naval, papal, radar, Romanus, sadism and its derivatives, Satan,
savour. The non-application of the RP CiV Tensing rule in some words further
yields /a/ in words like Arabian, Athanasius, aviation, gymnasium, Ignatius, inter
alia, radiation, spatial, salient. /ai/ occurs as a spelling pronunciation in Haiti and
Jamaica.
When the FACE vowel is followed by a vocalic segment, the underlying /i/ is
converted to [j], in keeping with a Gliding Rule which, in CamE, changes the
intervocalic high vowels /i, u/ into the corresponding glides [j, w] (Simo Bobda
1994: 201-206). The phenomenon produces data like [leja, pleja, pçtreja] layer,
player, portrayer.
PALM
The PALM vowel is systematically realised as /a/, merging with TRAP and START.
THOUGHT
The THOUGHT vowel is rendered as /ç/, merging with LOT, CLOTH and FORCE. A
spelling-derived /a/ occurs in bald, Balkan, malt, Malta and /au/, another spelling
pronunciation, is very common in some words with orthographic au like laud and
its derivatives, gaunt and haunt.
GOAT
The GOAT vowel is rendered as /o/ (primary cardinal vowel No 7) typically in
word-final position (e.g. go, no, so, know), before final consonants (e.g. coat,
comb, don’t, mould, control, joke, note). It generally becomes a more open /ç/ in
the environment ____CV, as in f[ç]cus, m[ç]ment, n[ç]tice. A notable dialectal
variation, /u/, for both of the above environments, is worth noting here: it is char-
acteristic of Banso speakers in the North West Province; it is very well known and
much talked about.
When the GOAT vowel is followed by a vowel, the underlying /u/ may be con-
verted to the corresponding glide [w] by the Glide Formation rule (see under FACE),
yielding pronunciations like [lowa, mowa, towa] lower, mower, tower (from the
verb tow), which alternate with [loa, moa, toa].
Foulkes and Docherty’s (1999) GOAL set behaves like the GOAT vowel dis-
cussed here.
GOOSE
The GOOSE vowel is generally rendered as /u/, like FOOT. Spelling-derived realiza-
tions include the /ç/ of tomb and less often movement and manoeuvre, and the /ui/
of juice, juicy, nuisance. Note the unique occurrence of /ç/ in pseudo-: [sçdç-].
PRICE
The common realisation of the PRICE vowel is /ai/. A spelling-induced /i/ occurs
in a number of words including Elias [eli»as], indict [indikt], hybrid, Mathias
[ma»tias], primordial, siren, (less often) prior. When the PRICE vowel is followed
by a vowel, /i/ is converted to /j/ by the Glide Formation rule, which yields [trajal]
trial, [baja] buyer, [admaja] admire, [pajçs] Pius, [lajçn] lion, [ba»jas] biased.
CHOICE
The CHOICE vowel is generally rendered as /çi/. When it is followed by another
vowel, the Glide Formation rule converts /i/ to /j/, yielding pronunciations like
[lçjal] loyal, [ançjans] annoyance, [dZçjçs] joyous.
MOUTH
The MOUTH vowel is generally rendered as /au/, and less often /aç/. /o/ occurs in
some MOUTH words like shower, towel, vowel [oa, tol, vol], having merged
with the GOAT set. Devour merges with the FORCE set and is pronounced [di'vç]
by a large number of educated speakers. When the MOUTH vowel is followed by
another vowel, /u/ is converted to [w] by the Glide Formation rule, yielding pro-
nunciations like [alawans] allowance, [kawat] coward, [pawa] power.
NEAR
The realisation of the NEAR vowel alternates between /i/ and /i /; [fi, fi ] fear,
[i, i ] gear, [spi, spi ] spear; /i / seems to be more characteristic of acrolectal
speakers. A spelling-derived // is common in interfere, atmosphere, sphere, mere
which thus merge with the SQUARE set. Clear [kli] also merges with SQUARE.
/i/ is very common in the sequence erV as in Algeria, hero, Liberia, Nigeria,
period, series, serious, serum, zero. A spelling-derived /e/, which may be seen as
the tensing of an underlying // through the E-Tensing rule, occurs in other erV
words like cafet[e]ria, crit[e]ria, [e]ra, imp[e]rial, minist[e]rial, Presbyt[e]rian.
Another spelling-derived realization, /ea/, occurs in words like [erea] area,
[kçrea] Korea.
When the second member of the NEAR diphthong is the agentive or comparative
-er, the diphthong is rendered in CamE as /ia/. We thus have [kaia, karia] cashier,
carrier, and [elia, pritia, silia] earlier, prettier, sillier. And when the second mem-
ber in Wells’ set results from Vowel Reduction, it is restructured in CamE to a
vowel suggested by the strong form or the spelling; e.g. gymnas[iu]m, nutr[i]nt,
per[iO]d, illustr[iO]s, mater[ia]l.
The above realizations of the NEAR vowel in CamE warrant the re-arrangement
of Wells’ set into several sets. The label NEAR will be maintained for words in
orthographic ear and eer, pronounced /i, i / in CamE. The label SPHERE will be
used for words with orthographic ere, pronounced /, i, i /. zEro will be adopted
for words in erV, pronounced /i, e/. carrIER will be chosen for agentives and com-
paratives in ier, pronounced /ia/. And cordIAl will be chosen for words where the
second member of Wells’ NEAR diphthong results from vowel reduction, and the
sequence may be pronounced /ia, i, iç, iu/ depending on the spelling.
SQUARE
The most common realisation of the SQUARE vowel is //; [d, f, k] dare/there,
fair/fare, care. // often tenses to [e] by the E-Tensing rule, yielding pronunciations
like [e]ria, mal[e]ria, p[e]rent, parliament[e]rian, S[e]rah, secret[e]riat; inter-
estingly, this pattern of restructuring has caused in CamE some fossilized spell-
ings like *maleria (malaria) and, more systematically, *Serah (Sarah). A spelling-
derived /a/ occurs in words like Aaron, fanfare, Hilarious, Hungarian, nefarious,
precarious, vary and its derivatives. The following words of Wells’ SQUARE set
merge with NEAR to be pronounced with /i, i /: chair, share and borrowings in
-aire like millionaire, questionnaire. Their (but not there which maintains the regu-
lar pronunciation) has as many as four diphthongal realizations: [i, ia, e, ea].
Finally, note the pronunciation of mayor and prayer (request made to God) as
[mejç] and [preja], respectively, which results from the merging of these words
with FACE, and the gliding of the underlying /i/ to [j].
START
The START vowel is almost systematically realised as /a/, thus merging with the
TRAP vowel. The few words in er where RP has the START vowel merge with the
NURSE vowel: we thus have D[]rby / d[]rby, H[]rtford, s[]rgeant.
NORTH
The common realisation of the NORTH vowel is /ç/, like LOT and THOUGHT. A
spelling-derived /a/ occurs after w and qu, as in swarm, warp, quarter, quartz.
FORCE
The FORCE vowel is almost systematically rendered as /ç/, like LOT, THOUGHT
and NORTH. A spelling-derived /ça/ occurs in the unique word roar, pronounced
[rça]. Finally, note that pour merges with CURE and becomes homophonous with
poor.
CURE
When orthographically represented by ure and our, the CURE vowel is realised
as /(j)ç/, as in [kjç, pjç, lç, ç, ma»tç, tç, çd/çt] cure, pure, lure, sure, mature,
tour, gourd. There is an interesting split with words having the orthographic se-
quence urV: /ç/ occurs when V is preceded by a free base as in [açrans] assur-
ance (assure + ance), surety, security, maturity; and a spelling-derived /u/ occurs
when V is followed by a bound base, as in curious [kjuriçs], jury [duri], mural,
plural, rural. When the second member of the CURE diphthong is the agentive
or comparative er, the diphthong is rendered in CamE as /ua/; e.g. [njua, trua,
skrua, sua] newer, truer, screwer, suer. Finally, when the second member results
from Vowel Reduction, the pronunciation of this second member in CamE cor-
responds to the underlying strong form, or to the vowel suggested by the spelling;
e.g. [anual, flunt, kçntinuçs] annual, fluent, continuous.
Note the following miscellaneous realisations: your [jua, ja]; yours [juçs], poor
[puç], Europe [%&uçrçp].
As with NEAR above, the splits observed above warrant the re-arrangement of
the CURE set altogether into several sets. CURE will be maintained for words in
ure, our, and urV when V is preceded by a free base, pronounced /ç/. cUrious will
be the convention for words in urV where V is preceded by a bound base, pro-
nounced /u/. TRUER will be the label for agentives and comparatives in uer, pro-
nounced /ua/. And TRUANT will be adopted for cases where the second member
of RP / / results from vowel reduction; TRUANT words in CamE are pronounced
/ua, u, uç/ depending on the spelling.
HappY
The happY vowel is rendered as /i/. Note that words in -day (holiday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday), which fluctuate between /e/ and // in British English, sys-
tematically have /e/ in CamE, merging with FACE.
LettER
The lettER vowel is very often conditioned orthographically in CamE. When
it is represented by er/re, it is systematically represented by /a/; e.g. memb[a],
teach[a], cent[a]. When it is represented by ure and o(u)r, it is rendered as /ç/; e.g.
[fiç, meç, tkstç, stupç, kandç, lebç] figure, measure, texture, stupor, candour,
labour. Miscellaneous pronunciations include martyr and satyr which, under the
influence of tire (CamE [taja], are pronounced [mataja] and [sataja]).
CommA
The spelling-induced /a/ is the most common realisation of the commA vowel in
CamE. When the vowel is represented by o, it is realised as /ç/; e.g. abb[ç]t, big[ç]t,
Lenn[ç]n. CamE has a predilection for /i/ before final /n/ irrespective of the graph-
eme, as in Samps[i]n, Wils[i]n. /i/ is even more systematic in words which have an
/i/ in the preceding syllable, as in hidd[i]n, Hilt[i]n, kitch[i]n, pris[i]n. This can be
considered as a case of vowel assimilation or harmony. This phenomenon yields
other vowels in other contexts, like [ç] in Rob[ç]rt and Thom[ç]s.
Seen through Wells’ lexical sets, and accommodating both Foulkes and
Docherty’s (1999) addition as well as the modifications suggested by the split
observed in CamE phonology, the vowels of CamE can be summarized as in

Table 1.
Table 1. The vowels of CamE, seen through the standard lexical sets
Key word Pronunciation Key word Pronunciation
CHOICE çi > çj KIT i > ai

MOUTH au > aw > aç paintEd
NEAR i ~ i villAge e
SPHERE > i ~ i DRESS > e > i > i ~ i
Zero e>i> TRAP a>e
CarrIER ia LOT ç>a
CordIAL ia ~ i ~ iç ~ iu STRUT ç>u~a
SQUARE > e > i ~ i FOOT u
START a> BATH a
NORTH ç>a CLOTH ç
FORCE ç NURSE ç>>e
CURE ç > ua TERM >e>a
cUrious u FLEECE i>>e
TruER ua FACE e > a > ej
TRUANT ua ~ u ~ uç PALM a
officEs i THOUGHT ç > au
happY i>e GOAT o>ç>u
LettER a~~ç GOAL o>ç>u
CommA a~~ç>u GOOSE u
PRICE a > i > aj
From the above picture, a seven-vowel system ([i, e, , a, ç, o, u]), plus a mar-
ginal schwa, appears. The marginal nature of the schwa is due to its extremely low
frequency. It normally occurs only as the second member of the NEAR diphthong in
acrolectal speech, and in epenthetic environments like [eb l, ri m, kapitaliz m]
able, rhythm, capitalism. The low frequency of the schwa is mostly due to the fact
that CamE generally does not apply the Vowel Reduction rule.
Of particular interest in the discussion of the patterns of realisation of the stan-
dard lexical sets has been the phenomenon of splits (e.g. of the NURSE and CURE
vowels) and mergers (e.g. of the LOT, THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE and STRUT vow-
els). The splits are responsible for the splitting of some pairs which are homopho-
nous in RP, like dollar/dolour [dçla, dçlç], fisher/fissure [fia, fiç], word/
whirred [wçd/wçt, wd/wt], swab/swob [swab/swap, swçb/swçp], kernel/colo-

nel [knl, kçlçnl]. The mergers create new homophones in CamE, like match,
march [mat], talk, thug [tçk], circular/secular [sekula], fodder, further [fçda],
hod, hud, hoard [hçd/hçt]. A more comprehensive list of such splits and mergers
can be found in Simo Bobda (1994: 157–161).
The discussion has also highlighted, beyond mere cases of segment restructur-
ing, some vocalic processes like E-Tensing, Glide Formation, i-Assimilation, as
well as the behaviour of CamE with regard to some RP rules like Vowel Reduction,
CiV Tensing and Trisyllabic Laxing.
2.2. The consonants

In terms of the mere inventory of the consonant system, CamE exhibits very
few differences from RP, for example. The marked peculiarity resides in the TH
sounds, which are generally pronounced /t/ and /d/, // and // in fact not being
uncommon in educated speech. But consonant substitution is only the tip of the
iceberg. Although RP and CamE have basically the same consonant system, there
are tremendous differences in the environments in which these consonants occur
in the two accents. The consonantal peculiarities of CamE are best examined in
terms of phonological processes. Using RP as a point of reference, the analysis
below will highlight some rules which do not apply in CamE, those which apply
differently or partially, and those which can be considered specific, that is, do not
apply in RP.
There is a large common core of features which CamE shares with RP and other
accents, and that is what ensures and guarantees resemblance and intelligibility,
to a large extent. But some RP rules do not apply in CamE. These rules include
several linking processes. CamE keeps orthographic words separate in connected
speech, leaving clear junctures between them. This picture radically contrasts with
what obtains in all native accents of English, where speech appears in chunks of
units linked with each other. The radical separation of words, predictably, does
not create a propitious environment for assimilation and other linking processes
to apply. Examples of features illustrating the non-application of assimilation can
be found in Simo Bobda (1994: 254–255). But the conspicuous absence of link-
ing /r/ can be considered more important, as seen in the following data from Simo
Bobda (1994: 255): [di »çpçnnts] their opponents, [awa an»sstçs] our ances-
tors, [fçda amaunt] further amount, [jua »advais] your advice, [fç e piriçt] for a
period. The absence of linking /r/ in these data leaves two adjacent vowels across
the word boundary, which breaks the requirement of euphony in RP.
The RP rules which apply differently or partially include the voicing or devoic-
ing of the alveolar fricative in word-medial position, Ks-Voicing, Yod Deletion,
Non-coronal Deletion, and Spirantisation in -stion words. Concerning the voicing
and devoicing of the alveolar fricative the first peculiarity of CamE is found in
intervocalic position, where CamE has /s/ for RP /z/ as in words like acqui[s]ition,
compo[s]ition, phy[s]ical, po[s]ition, vi[s]ible and /z/ for RP /s/ in words like
di[z]agree, di[z]appear, ba[z]ic, ba[z]in, compari[z]on, garri[z]on, pro[z]ody,
uni[z]on. There is even the interesting case of De[z]ember and de[z]eased where
CamE has /z/ for orthographic c, an unknown phenomenon in RP; CamE equal-
ly has /z/ in the environment /r/______V as in nur[z]ery and /l/_____V as in
compul[z]ory, another oddity in terms of RP. Even more frequently, /z/ occurs in
the environment con#____V, as in con[z]ume, and con[z]erve and its derivatives.
In RP, Ks-voicing applies mostly before stressed vowels, as in exam, execu-
tive, exhaust, exonerate. But in CamE it tends to apply before all vowels, as in
e[gz]ecute, fle[gz]ible, ma[gz]imum, e[gz]odus.
In RP yod is absent mostly after palatals (e.g. sugar, chew, jew), /r/ (e.g. ru-
mour, rural, drew) and /Cl/ (e.g. clue, flu, glue); but CamE speakers also delete
it in many other words (e.g. dubious, duplicate, education, numerous, Portugal,
situation, student) and more systematically before /ul/ (e.g. ambulance, modulate,
population), and before /uV/ (e.g. annual, conspicuous, genuine).
The two non-coronals involved in Non-coronal Deletion are /b/ and /g/. RP
speakers delete /b/ after nasals as in bomb, comb, lamb, hand and between /m/ and
a following neutral suffix as in bombing, singer, hanger, but CamE does not apply
this rule, since it has bom[b]ing, sin[g]er, han[g]er.
The occurrence of [t] (rather than [] as for other words in -ion) is due to
the non-application of spirantisation blocked before /s/ (which converts the un-
derlying /t/ to [s] which in turn interacts with gliding and palatalisation (Rubach
1984) in -tion words. But in CamE, spirantisation applies also after /s/, yielding
combus[]ion, ques[]ion, exhaus[]ion, sugges[]ion (instead of RP [t].)
Phonological processes specific to CamE include several cases of consonant
cluster simplification, Pre-ion Devoicing, Final Devoicing and Pre-Yod Deletion.
Although cluster simplification occurs in onset position, the most frequent cases
of simplification are found in coda position. Cluster simplification in coda posi-
tion, according to Simo Bobda (1994: 249–253), is subject to a number of vari-
ables including the following:
(i) with the exception of data like [fit] fifth, [hp] help, [fim] film, it is generally
the final member of the cluster that is deleted and not an earlier segment;
(ii) plosives, like /t, d, p, k/, are particularly prone to deletion, as in past, missed,
cold, end, grasp, jump, task, dust;
(iii) deletion is more prevalent in the environment of a following consonant
than in that of a following vowel, as in past#C vs past#V, and passed#C vs
passed#V;
(iv) a final stop which agrees in voicing with the preceding segment is more prone
to deletion than one which does not; e.g. cold vs colt, hand vs grant, send vs
sent, veld vs belt;
(v) a final stop which agrees in place of articulation with the preceding segment
lends itself to deletion more readily than one which does not; e.g. planned vs
programmed, stump vs grasp, sunk vs sulk;
(vi) a final stop not preceded by a morpheme boundary is more resistant to dele-
tion than one which is; e.g. find vs fined, mind vs mined, left vs laughed, lost
vs tossed, act vs cracked.
Pre-ion Devoicing devoices the underlying /d/ and /z/, respectively, in words like
conclude+ion and revise+ion to /t/ and /s/; /t/ and /s/ then interact with the other
rules (spirantisation for /t/, which yields /s/ and palatalisation for both cases) to
yield [] instead of RP [] (see Simo Bobda 1994: 226–228, and Simo Bobda and
Chumbow 1999 for details).
Final Devoicing devoices final obstruents and obstruents before consonantal
inflectional suffixes, as in [lap, bat, dçt, stif] lab, bad, George, Steve; [staps,
lifs, rçpt, lçft] stabs, leaves, robbed, loved.
Pre-yod Deletion deleted /h/ before /j/ as in [juman, jumit, jut] human, humid,
huge.
2.3. Word stress

Word stress is clearly the aspect of suprasegmental phonology of CamE which
has received the greatest scholarly attention, and about which we know most.
Research shows that CamE has truly revolutionised the stress pattern of
English. Indeed, thousands of words are stressed differently from the patterns
in native Englishes, and the frequency of occurrence of new (local) forms very
often reach 100% (see, for example Simo Bobda 1994). In fact, studies have
shown that even teachers and university professors of English, in the most
careful speaking style, find it almost impossible to change to im »possible,
pro »fessor, a »cute, suc »cess, dis »tribute, lieu »tenant, pre »paratory, se »mester
(from their usual »impossible, »professor, »acute, »success, distri »bute, »lieu-
tenant, prepa »ratory, »semester).
Taking the RP pattern as the point of reference, the following data show some
stress peculiarities in CamE, illustrating the movement of stress to a later syllable,
and to an earlier syllable.
(a) Movement of stress to a later syllable:
From the first to the second syllable in dissyllabic words:
chal »lenge, col »league, hi »jack, mat »tress, pe »trol, spe »cies, ty »pist.
From the penultimate syllable to the ultimate syllable in trisyllabic words:
attri »bute, contri »bute, embar »rass, inter »pret, prohi »bit, tar »paulin.
From the initial syllable to the penultimate syllable in trisyllabic words:
A »gatha, a »morous, A »rabic, ca »lendar, co »vetous, Do »rothy, Jo »nathan,

main »tenance, ma »rital, moun »tainous, pas »toral, spi »ritual, ten »tative.
From the antepenult to the penultimate syllable in words of four syllables:
infor »mative, mono »gamous, peri »pheral, pheno »menal, poly »gamist,
steno »grapher.
From the antepenult to the penultimate syllable in words of five syllables:
argumen »tative, represen »tative.
From the first to the ultimate syllable in words of three syllables:
Cathe »rine, cele »brate, classi »fy, Emi »ly, gentle »man, mara »thon,
recog »nise.
From the antepenult to the ultimate syllable in words of four syllables:
articu »late, compute »rise, diversi »fy, insinu »ate, negoti »ate.
From the initial syllable to the antepenult in words of four syllables:
a »limony, jour »nalism, ma »gistracy, ne »gligible, pe »dagogy, sta »tutory,
tri »balism.
From the pre-antepenultimate syllable to the antepenultimate syllable in
words of five syllables:
admo »nitory, empi »ricism, expla »natory, fana »ticism, prepa »ratory.
From the first to the penultimate syllable in words of four syllables:
cumu »lative, gene »rative, quanti »tative, specu »lative.
From the pre-antepenultimate to the penultimate syllable in words of five
syllables:
adminis »trative, authori »tative, coope »rative.
From the initial to the antepenultimate syllable in words of five syllables:
capi »talism, natio »nalism, regio »nalism.
Other patterns can be found in Simo Bobda (1994: 266–269).
(b) Movement of stress to an earlier syllable:

From the ultimate syllable to the initial syllable in words of two syllables:
»acute, »despite, »extent, »July, »record (verb), »success, »suspense,
»towards, »unlike.
From the ultimate syllable to the penultimate syllable in words of three
syllables:
Ca »ribbean, Eu »ropean, Tan »zania.
From the penultimate syllable to the initial syllable in words of three

syllables:
»agenda, »agreement, »associate (adj/noun), »attorney, »deposit (noun),
»diploma, »insurance, »opponent, »phonetics, »umbrella.
From the penultimate syllable to the antepenultimate syllable in words of
four syllables:
a »dolesence, a »postolic, con »valescence, con »valescent, scientific
[sa »jantifik].
From the last syllable to the initial syllable in words of three syllables:
»expertise, »cigarette, »referee.
From the antepenultimate syllable to the pre-antepenultimate (initial)
syllable in words of four syllables:
»appropriate (adj), »impossible, »incredible, »irrelevant, »irregular.
For more patterns, see Simo Bobda (1994: 269ff).
Stress placement in CamE is not random: it is predictable from a number of pa-

rameters which include the phonetic factor, the morphological factor, the word
class, whether a noun is a common noun or a forename; several factors can also
combine to generate a stress pattern.
One illustration of the phonetic factor is that words ending with rhyme /i (C)/
tend to be stressed on the final syllable as in aun »tie, cur »ry, Ira »qui, Israe »li,
Pakista »ni, pet »ty, se »mi - (semi-final), Soma »li, sure »ty; Bap »tist, bis »cuit,
spe »cies, ten »nis, ty »pist. Words ending with a final /n/ also tend to be stressed fi-
nally, as in cara »van, harmat »tan, plan »tain, cello »phane, hurri »cane, Ama »zon,
car »ton, cou »pon, mara »thon, mo »ron, cy »clone, hor »mone, o »zone, bari »tone;
and there is an even greater predilection for final stress in words ending in /in/,
e.g. aspi »rin, bulle »tin, gan »grene, hy »giene, jave »lin, para »fin, penicil »lin,
tarpau »lin. A further illustration of the phonetic factor in stress placement is that
consonant clusters tend to attract stress to a later syllable, as in ancestor, calendar,
comment (verb), cy »linder, or »chestra, Pro »testant.
The morphological factor refers to the fact that a large number of affixes have
predictable and stable stress patterns. For example, the negative prefix is almost
systematically self-stressed; e.g. »illegal, »impossible, »immature, »irrelevant.
The following suffixes are self-stressed -ative, (e.g. cumu »lative, ten »tative), -
atory (expla »natory, prepa »ratory), -ature (candi »dature, legis »lature), -cide
(homi »cide, pesti »cide), -itive (compe »titive, repe »titive), -land (Nether »lands,
New-Zea »land, Switzer »land), -man (fire »man, gentle »man), -oir(e) (me »moire,
reser »voir), -phone (Anglo »phone, tele »phone). The following suffixes at-
tract stress to the preceding syllable (they are referred to in Simo Bobda (1994,
1997) as pre-stressed One (PS1) suffixes): -age (pa »rentage, vaga »bondage), -
an (cosmopo »litan, dio »cesan), -ary (le »gendary, pla »netary), -al (elec »trical,
pas »toral), -ism (bilingu »alism, tri »balism), -ist (dra »matist, poly »gamist), -ous
(moun »tainous, volu »minous). A more comprehensive analysis of the stress prop-
erty of affixes can be found in Simo Bobda (1994).
The word class factor can be illustrated by the fact that in nouns, rather than
in verbs for example, stress tends to be established earlier in the word, as in »ad-
vice (contrast ad »vise), »applause (contrast ap »plaud), »exchange (n) (contrast
ex »change (verb)), »constraint (noun) (contrast cons »traint (verb)); further exam-
ples of backward nominal stress are »abyss, »canoe ([»kenu]), »acumen, »arena,
» assassin, »diploma »lumbago, »umbrella.
English forenames have a greater predilection for forward stress than common
nouns. The multitude of forenames with forward stress in CamE include A »gatha,
Chris »topher, Jes »sica, Jo »nathan, Pa »mela, Fer »dinand. Further evidence for
the predilection of forenames to have forward stress is provided by the fact that
words like comfort and prudence which can be both a common noun and a fore-
name have backward stress (as in RP) in their common noun form ( »comfort,
»prudence) and forward stress in their forename form (Com »fort, Pru »dence).
Illustrations of the combination of factors for stress placement include the fact
that verbs ending in obstruents are almost systematically stressed on the final syl-
lable, as in chal »lenge, eli »cit, embar »rass, exhi »bit, hi »jack, inter »pret, kid »nap,
ran »sack (combination of the phonetic and word class factors). Another illustra-
tion is the fact that the final rhyme /i (C)/ and the fact that the following items
are forenames both combine to yield final stress: Be »cky, Jes »sie, Lu »cy, Nel »ly,
Sam »my; A »lice, Do »ris, Sal »ly. Final stress is even more systematic when /C/ is
a nasal, as in Cathe »rine, Jacque »line, Jose »phine.
2.4. The autonomy of CamE phonology and the concept of Trilateral Process
The CamE accent, though still intelligible to mother tongue accents to a large
extent, is markedly different from several points of views. In fact it has reached
a very high degree of autonomy. This autonomy, as amply demonstrated and ex-
emplified notably in Simo Bobda (1994), is seen in the restructuring of the sound
system of mother tongue English. This restructuring results in the numerous and
major splits and mergers of Wells’ (1982) lexical sets. Autonomy is also seen in
the way CamE applies existing phonological rules and, above all, in the applica-
tion of its own sui generis rules.
The concept of “Trilateral Process”, proposed by Simo Bobda (1994) and dis-
cussed further by Simo Bobda and Chumbow (1999), best illustrates the autonomy
of Cameroon English. According to this concept, the underlying representations of
mother tongue segments A are restructured to new CamE underlying representa-
tions B; while the underlying representations A undergo mother tongue English
phonological rules to yield the surface representation A», the CamE underlying
representations B may undergo their own independent phonological rules or sur-
face unchanged as B». For example, RP s[]cceed is restructured to CamE under-
lying representation s[O]cceed. While RP s[]cceed undergoes Vowel Reduction
to become s[]cceed, the CamE underlying representation surfaces unchanged
as s[O]cceed. A second example is RP underlying representation veg[]tate, re-
structured to CamE underlying representation veg[]tate; while RP veg[]tate
undergoes Vowel Reduction to surface as veg[]tate, the CamE underlying repre-
sentation veg[]tate does not undergo Vowel Reduction; in contrast, it undergoes
E-Tensing and surfaces as veg[e]tate.
One example with consonants is the occurrence of [] (for RP []) in words like
conclu[]ion, divi[]ion, inva[]ion, revi[]ion, as seen above. Seen through the
Trilateral Process, [] can be traced from an underlying /d/ or /z/ changing to /s/
through autonomous CamE rules, before becoming [] through the application of
existing rules of English phonology.
Tracing thus the peculiarities of CamE phonology to their underlying representa-
tions seems more rewarding than previous analyses based solely on surface forms;
indeed, in the above examples, surface analysis would have limited itself to show-
ing that RP / /, // and // are replaced in s[ ]cceed, veg[]tate and conclu[]ion by
[ç], [e] and [], respectively.
3. Conclusion
The particular phonology of CamE is an exciting topic. At the same time I have
tried to give an overview of the constructs (like trilateral process) which I believe
are useful for the comparative phonologies of sub-Saharan varieties of English. I
have undertaken some comparisons in my own research, but there is ample scope
for further work in the area.
Selected references
ROM.
Rubach, J.
1984 Segmental rules of English and Cyclic phonology. Language 60: 21–54.
1994 Aspects of Cameroon English Phonology. Bern: Peter Lang.
1997 Further demystifying word stress. English Today 52: October 1997: 48–55.
2000 Explicating the features of African English Pronunciation: Some steps further.
Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Afrikanistik (ZAA) 2: 123–136.
Simo Bobda, A. and B. S. Chumbow
1999 The trilateral process in Cameroon English phonology: underlying representa-
tions and phonological processes in non-native English. English World-Wide
20: 35–65.
Todd, Loreto
1982 The English language in West Africa. In: Bailey and Görlach (eds.), 281–305.
Cameroon Pidgin English (Kamtok): phonology
Thaddeus Menang
1. Introduction
“Kamtok” is one of the labels used to refer to a pidginized variety of English used
in parts of Cameroon. It is also referred to as “Cameroon Pidgin English” or sim-
ply as “Pidgin English”. Earlier studies (Dwyer, 1966; Schneider, 1966) have used
the label “West African Pidgin English” to include other pidginized varieties of
English spoken along the west coast of Africa, particularly in Nigeria, Sierra Le-
one and Liberia. “Kamtok” is mutually intelligible with these other varieties to a
large extent but has developed its own characteristic features over the years.
The history of Kamtok is closely linked to that of contacts between Europe
and the coasts of West and Central Africa. Contact between Europe and West and
Central Africa was first made in the fifteenth century when the Portuguese, under
Henry the Navigator, decided to explore this part of the African continent. Contact
with the coast of Cameroon was made shortly after 1472 when a Portuguese expe-
dition, led by a certain Fernando Gomes, reached Fernando Pô, an island off the
coast of Cameroon which is part of Equatorial Guinea today. It is reported (Sch-
neider 1966) that this contact with the coastal regions of West and Central Africa
first gave rise to various Portuguese-based pidgins and creoles that spread from
Sâo Tomê, off the coast of Central Africa, to the Cape Verde islands in the west.
Bouchaud (1952) confirms the use, along the coast of Cameroon in the sixteenth
century, of a Portuguese-based language for commercial transactions between
Portuguese traders and natives of the area.
The exact manner in which an English-based Pidgin first came about in this re-
gion remains uncertain. What is known is that Portuguese influence in the region
started dwindling by the end of the sixteenth century. The Dutch began to replace
the Portuguese at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Dutch influence was
relatively short-lived, however, and made no real impact on the linguistic situation
left behind by the Portuguese. The Dutch were soon replaced by the British, whose
influence in the region began to be felt as early as 1618 when a trade monopoly
was granted to a British firm ‘the Governor and Company of Adventures of Lon-
don Trading to Gynney and Binney’. Later, in 1672, the Royal African Company
succeeded to the monopoly and traded till 1712 (Mbassi-Manga 1973). British
influence is thus seen to have spread to many locations along the coast of West
and Central Africa in the eighteenth century. Closer contact between the British
and inhabitants of the area was enhanced by the introduction of the “factory” and
Cameroon Pidgin English (Kamtok): phonology 903
“trust” systems of trade and by the active part taken by the British in the slave trade
(Dike 1956).
The spread of British influence and the establishment of closer contact between
the British and the inhabitants of these coastal regions led to the formation of an
English-based pidgin, which eventually replaced the Pidgin Portuguese that had
been used in the area for over two centuries. The exact manner in which the shift
from Pidgin Portuguese to Pidgin English took place is a matter of debate. Relexi-
fication has been suggested, but it is more likely that Pidgin Portuguese existed
side by side with a more recently formed Pidgin English until the latter gradually
replaced the former. In support of the second hypothesis, Schneider (1966), citing
early Dutch accounts and other scattered pieces of historical information, places
the beginning of the development of an English–based pidgin in the seventeenth
century.
One thing seems fairly certain: by the end of the eighteenth century, Pidgin Eng-
lish was firmly established throughout the West African coast. Schneider (1966)
cites sources which confirm that an Efik slave-trading chief of the coastal region
of what is today Nigeria kept a diary in Pidgin English which was described as “a
jargon which was mainly English in vocabulary although the constructions were
often modelled on those of Ibibio” (a local language). A series of historical events
led to the further development of what has come to be known today in Cameroon
as Pidgin English or Kamtok. First, the abolition of the slave trade led to the reset-
tlement, early in the nineteenth century, of freed slaves in three communities along
the coast of West Africa: in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Fernando Pô. Within each of
these communities, Pidgin English was the principal medium of communication,
as this was the only language the slaves had in common. Meanwhile, contacts
between British explorers and merchants and inhabitants of the coastal region of
Cameroon continued to intensify. Bouchaud (1952) mentions regular visits to the
area in 1800 by vessels of the Congo District Association, a British explorers’ as-
sociation. He also mentions an earlier individual initiative by a British merchant,
Henry King, whose boats also visited Cameroon regularly. His sons, Richard and
William King, were later to found a firm that continues to prosper today and bears
the name R. and W. King. Missionaries soon followed the explorers and merchants
and helped to spread the new language further.
Missionaries from the Baptist Missionary Society of London and the Jericho
Baptist Mission in Jamaica arrived and settled in Clarence, Fernando Pô in 1841
(Keller, Schnellback and Brütsch 1961). After making contacts with the Cameroon
mainland, they succeeded in founding Christian communities at Bimbia in 1844
and Douala in 1854. In 1845, meanwhile, Alfred Saker arrived in Fernando Pô and
when, in 1858, the Spanish authorities there declared the Protestant religion illegal
on the island, Saker and his group moved to the Cameroon mainland and founded
a mission station in Victoria. Freed slaves were among the first lay members of
these early Christian communities. They spoke Pidgin English. From Victoria, to-
904 Thaddeus Menang
day renamed “Limbe”, and Douala, the new language was going to spread gradu-
ally to parts of the Cameroon hinterland, aided by commerce, missionary activity
and colonial rule.
Taking advantage of British procrastination, the Germans annexed Cameroon in
1884. But German rule over Cameroon was quite short-lived. It ended by the end
of World War I when under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919,
Cameroon was placed by the League of Nations under the trusteeship of France
and Britain. Under German rule, Pidgin English continued to thrive in spite of
German hostility. The creation of plantations along the coastal area by the Ger-
mans drew workers from various parts of the territory where different languages
were spoken. Brought together in these plantations, the workers who did not share
an indigenous language quickly learned Pidgin English, which they used while on
the plantations and eventually took back to their areas of origin in the hinterland.
Thus the language continued to develop and spread.
After World War II, Cameroon was maintained as a trust territory under the
French and the British. Each colonial power set up a system of administration and
opened schools in which the colonial language was the medium of communica-
tion and instruction. But Pidgin English was already so firmly implanted that it
continued to be used even in parts of the territory that had come under French
colonial rule. In the part of the country under British trusteeship, Pidgin English
developed rapidly alongside English with which it shared close ties which, over
the years, have come to influence its phonology and vocabulary. Where French
was the colonial language, Pidgin English spread was slowed down, but the lan-
guage largely survived, borrowing occasionally from French to complement its
vocabulary and cope with new situations. This historical and linguistic divide at
the level of the colonial language has today given rise to two broad varieties of
Kamtok: one that clearly leans towards English and borrows freely from it and one
that is more conservative and borrows rather cautiously from French. These two
broad varieties have been otherwise referred to as “Anglophone Pidgin English”
and “Francophone Pidgin English” (Mbassi-Manga 1973).
Since the two territories re-unified in 1961 to form the Federal Republic of
Cameroon, the situation of Kamtok has not changed very much as far as the influ-
ence of English or French is concerned. But there are clear indications that the
language continues to spread in spite of occasional hostility from people who think
that it stands in the way of a rapid mastery of ‘standard’ English by school pupils
and other learners. As one of Cameroon’s languages of wider communication, Ka-
mtok today bridges the linguistic gap among an estimated one quarter to one third
of the country’s rural and particularly urban populations. The language is used
intensively among the inhabitants of the so-called English-speaking provinces of
the North West and South West which account for at least one fifth of Cameroon’s
total population of about 15 million inhabitants. It is also fairly frequently used
in most parts of the French-speaking Littoral and the West Provinces which are
adjacent to the two English-speaking provinces. Outside these four (out of ten)
provinces, Kamtok is found in varying extents in urban centres.
A survey conducted in the early 1980s by the Department of English at the Uni-
versity of Yaounde sought to describe the linguistic profile of Cameroon’s urban
centres. The survey revealed the spread of Kamtok in the country. According to
its findings (published in Koenig, Chia and Povey [1983]), Kamtok has spread
throughout the southern half of the country. In the urban centres surveyed in the
southern half of Francophone Cameroon, 30% to 60% of the people consulted
claimed they knew and used the language. The number of people who claimed
to know and use Kamtok in the six urban areas studied in the English-speaking
provinces of the country hardly dropped below 80%.
From a fairly marginal language that grew out of contacts between European
explorers, merchants and missionaries and the coastal inhabitants of Cameroon
some three hundred years ago or so, Kamtok has grown to become a fully-fledged
language that is put to a wide range of uses. It remains the language of buying
and selling in most local markets of the regions where it is used. The sociolin-
guistic survey of Cameroon’s urban centres revealed for example that in Douala,
Cameroon’s economic capital that is located in the French-speaking part of the
country, 83% of the people interviewed used Kamtok in buying or selling in the
local markets.
Kamtok also continues to be used by Christian missionaries in evangelisation
and liturgical services. It occurs in numerous translations of biblical texts, cat-
echisms and Christian liturgies which constitute most of the written texts available
in the language so far. These texts come in varying orthographies but each one
clearly serves the purpose of its author. Kamtok occupies a prominent place in
many homes in Cameroon where it shares functions with the mother tongue. The
survey of urban centres revealed that in the English-speaking part of the country,
up to 97% of school-age children already use Kamtok at the time they enter school.
It is also the preferred language among these children when they communicate
among themselves. Because it happens to be the shared language that is best mas-
tered by school-age children, nursery school teachers tend to use it as a medium of
communication and instruction until such a time that the children have acquired
some mastery of English.
Kamtok’s role as a medium of interethnic communication has already been em-
phasized. On the basis of the linguistic survey data, it was found that Cameroon
could be divided into four lingua franca zones: a Kamtok zone, a French zone, a
Fulfude zone and possibly a Fang-Beti zone. The Kamtok zone was found to be
matched only by the French zone in the size of its population.
Kamtok is also a language of science and technology. It is widely used by local
craftsmen and technicians such as mechanics, masons, carpenters, hairdressers,
seamstresses and tailors, all of whom acquire their skills thanks to the language.
It is widely used for technology transfer in domains such as health, agriculture,
906 Thaddeus Menang
animal husbandry and conservation. This explains why many Western volunteers
who offer to serve in Cameroon have to spend time learning some rudiments of
Kamtok before proceeding to meet the people among whom they intend to work.
Further, Kamtok is the language of an urban mass or popular culture in Cameroon.
It is widely used in popular music, theatre shows, special radio broadcasts and
newspaper columns, for socialisation in general and for in-group identification
and differentiation in particular. The latter function is giving rise to interesting
varieties of the language which remain largely unexplored.
Apart from French and English which are Cameroon’s official languages, Ka-
mtok enters into frequent contact with several of Cameroon’s more than two hun-
dred indigenous languages. Users bring into their Kamtok idiolects various fea-
tures that derive from both the official and indigenous languages that they use in
different circumstances. This has given rise to an impressive number of Kamtok
accents that challenge the researcher. These horizontal forms of variation have
resulted in slightly differing varieties of Kamtok that are being described after
analyses conducted mostly at the phonological and lexical levels. The distinction
between “Anglophone” and “ Francophone” Kamtok has been established on this
basis. Other regionally more restricted varieties have been identified within these
two broad varieties.
The nature and extent of variation in Kamtok is also determined by the extent
of the speakers’ formal education in English and exposure to situations in which
English is used. Such considerations have led to the identification of so-called
“educated” and “uneducated” varieties of Kamtok. The “educated” variety is said
to be more elaborate in its form and richer in its choice of words many of which
are borrowed directly from English in both their form, meaning and pronunciation.
The “uneducated” variety is less elaborate in form and contains fewer occasional
borrowings from English.
Contextual variation arises mostly from the uses to which Kamtok is put. Vari-
ous uses of Kamtok have been discussed earlier but the nature and frequency of
forms of variation arising from function still have to be thoroughly investigated.
Some functional varieties of Kamtok have however been suggested: ecclesiastical,
commercial, technical, and in-group. One such variety with an in-group function
that has caught recent scholarly attention is “Camfranglais”. It is popular among
school-age youth and school leavers, and, as the name suggests, comprises an
intricately woven combination of expressions from indigenous languages, from
French and from English. It is an evolving linguistic phenomenon that deserves to
be carefully studied.
What makes variation in Kamtok so difficult to track is the fact that it remains
largely unstandardized. There have been attempts to describe it by various re-
searchers, who have focused on its grammatical and lexical features. No formal
grammar or dictionary has yet come to be accepted by users as a guide that lays out
norms that are worth respecting. Kamtok thus remains everybody’s language and
each person uses it to the best of his/her ability and almost at leisure. This makes
the task of description quite onerous. The present descriptive survey focuses on
those features that are found in the speech of a cross-section of Kamtok users. As
most of these users are found within or near the English-speaking provinces of
Cameroon, examples will be drawn from the broad variety that tilts towards what
has been termed “Anglophone” Kamtok. Care has been taken however to rid the
description of features that are considered random borrowings from English, par-
ticularly those that may pose problems of intelligibility to less ‘educated’ users.
Nevertheless the survey points to features that augur new trends in the develop-
ment of the language.
2. Phonology
The present survey of Kamtok phonological features is far from exhaustive. It

focuses particularly on Kamtok sounds, the distribution of these sounds in speech
and on certain prosodic features such as stress and tone.
Although the language is treated here as an autonomous system, the description
nevertheless relates its distinctive sound features to those of English and its other
source languages, whenever possible, in an effort to show how Kamtok has come
to achieve its autonomy.
2.1. Kamtok sounds

Initial studies of Kamtok phonology reveal that the language has 6 vowel sounds
and 21 consonant phonemes. Kamtok thus makes use of almost as many conso-
nants as English, although Kamtok and English consonants are quite not the same.
As for vowels sounds, Kamtok has barely half the number used in English. This
apparent economy of vowel sounds at the phonemic level hides a certain complex-
ity that becomes visible when one examines their concrete realizations. Cases of
sounds in complementary distribution will require more careful study. Kamtok’s
phonemes are presented in tables 1 and 2 and figures 1 and 2.
The first column contains the symbol used to represent the sound. The second
contains a brief description of the sound, while the third provides an example of a
Kamtok word or form in which the sound is found. This word is also presented in
contrast with another word with which it constitutes a minimal pair.
908 Thaddeus Menang
2.1.1. Kamtok vowels
Table 1. Description of the vowel phonemes of Kamtok
Sound symbol Description Examples
High unrounded front Compare /si/ ‘see’ and

vowel /so/ ‘so’
e Mid unrounded front vowel Compare /tek/ ‘take’ and
/tçk/ ‘talk’
a Central low unrounded vowel Compare /man/ ‘man’ and
/mun/ ‘moon’
u High rounded back vowel Compare /put/ ‘put’ and
/pçt/ ‘pot’
o Mid-high rounded back vowel Compare /lo/ ‘low’ and
/lç/ ‘law’
ç Mid-low rounded back vowel Compare /lçk/ ‘lock’ and
/luk/ ‘look’
Although the vowels presented in the preceding section are generally said to be
the only clearly distinctive ones in Kamtok, recent usage includes certain vowel
combinations that resemble some English diphthongs in a manner that suggests
that they may have a phonemic status. Four such vowel combinations have been
identified:
/ai/ as in /bai/ ‘buy’, as opposed to /ba/ ‘bar’;
/au/ as in /kau/ ‘cow’, as opposed to /ka/ ‘car’;
/çi/ as in /nçis/ ‘noise’, as opposed to /nçs/ ‘nurse’;
/ia/ as in /bia/ ‘beer’, as opposed to /bi/ ‘bee’.
Further research is needed on such vowel combinations.
2.1.2. Kamtok consonants
Table 2. Description of the consonant phonemes of Kamtok
p Voiceless bilabial stop Compare /put/ ‘put’ and

/fut/ ‘foot’
b Voiced bilabial stop Compare /big/ ‘big’ and
/dig/ ‘dig’
t Voiceless alveolar stop Compare /ti/ ‘tea’ and
/bi/ ‘bee’
Table 2. (continued) Description of the consonant phonemes of Kamtok
d Voiced alveolar stop Compare /dig/ ‘dig’ and

/big/ ‘big’
k Voiceless velar stop Compare /kuk/ ‘cook’ and
/buk/ ‘book’
g Voiced velar stop Compare /gçn/ ‘gun’ and
/sçn/ ‘sun’
m Bilabial nasal Compare /man/ ‘man’ and
/pan/ ‘pan’
n Alveolar nasal Compare /nek/ ‘neck’ and
/tek/ ‘take ‘
Velar nasal Compare /ti/ ‘thing’ and
/tin/ ‘tin’
n Palatal nasal Compare /nus/ ‘news’ and
/tus/ ‘choose’
f Voiceless labiodental fricative Compare /fam/ ‘farm’ and
/lam/ ‘lamp’
v Voiced labiodental fricative Compare /vot/ ‘vote’ and
/got/ ‘goat’
s Voiceless alveolar fricative Compare /si/ ‘see’ and
/ti/ ‘tea’
z Voiced alveolar fricative Compare /zip/ ‘zip’ and
/kip/ ‘keep’
Voiceless pre-palatal affricate Compare /em/ ‘shame’ and
/sem/ ‘same’
h Voiceless glottal fricative Compare /hama/ ‘hammer’ and
/fama/ ‘farmer’
t Voiceless pre-palatal affricate Compare /tuk/ ‘pierce’ and
/buk/ ‘book’
d Voiced pre-palatal affricate Compare /dam/ ‘scarcity’ and
/fam/ ‘farm’
r Alveolar trill Compare /riva/ ‘river’ and
/liva/ ‘liver’
l Dental alveolar liquid Compare /lç/ ‘long’ and
/rç/ ‘wrong’
j Palatal glide Compare /jam/ ‘yam’ and
/lam/ ‘lamp’
w Bilabial glide Compare /wan/ ‘one’ and
/man/ ‘man’
910 Thaddeus Menang
Table 3 provides a classification of these consonants.
Table 3. Classification of Kamtok consonants
Bilabial Labio- Alveolar Palato- Palatal Velar Glottal

dental alveolar
PLOSIVE p b t d k g
AFFRICATE t d
FRICATIVE f v s z h
NASAL m n n
LATERAL l
GLIDE/ w r j
APPROXIMANT
2.2. Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters do exist in Kamtok. Dwyer and Smith (1966) report that in
some forms of Kamtok speech, /s/ can precede /p, k, t, m, n, l/ in words such as:
/spun/ ‘spoon’, /skul/ ‘school’, /stik/ ‘stick’, /smçl/ ‘small’, /snek/ ‘snake’ and
/slak/ ‘weak’.
Consonant clusters are also formed by /p, b, f, k, g, d, s/ preceding /l/ and /r/.
Here are some examples:
/pleja/ ‘player’ /preja/ ‘prayer’
/bred/ ‘bread’ /blak/ ‘black’
/flai/ ‘fly’ /frai/ ‘fry’
/klin/ ‘clean’ /krai/ ‘cry’
/glad/ ‘glad’ /gras/ ‘grass’
/draiva/ ‘driver’ /slip/ ‘sleep’
Dwyer and Smith (1966) note that, in addition to occurring by themselves in Ka-
mtok, nasals are often homorganic with other consonants. But they do not seem
to consider such nasal + consonant combinations as forming clusters because
the preceding vowels are nasalised. Some examples, however, appear to involve
genuine clusters:
/mb/, /g/ in /mbaga/ ‘palm-kernel’
/g/, /nd/ in /gçndere/ ‘young woman’
/nj/, /mb/ in /njumba/ ‘girl or boy friend’
/ns/ in /nsç/ ‘Nso’ (place name)
/nc/, /nd/ in /ncinda/ ‘attendant’
/k/, /nd/ in /kanda/ ‘skin’
Such nasal + consonant combinations are not limited to words taken from Camer-
oonian languages, as the /nj/ in /jinja/ ‘ginger’ shows.
2.3. Realization and distribution of some Kamtok vowels.

A number of processes have contributed to the building of an autonomous sound
system in Kamtok. Similar processes have been discussed by Simo Bobda in
his study of aspects of Cameroon English phonology (see his article in this
volume). As far as Kamtok vowel sounds are concerned, these processes entail
the following: (a) the restructuring of the vowel system; (b) the non-reduction
of vowels in unstressed position; (c) restrictions in the distribution of certain
vowel sounds.
2.3.1. Restructuring of the vowel system.

In the process of building a new system, Kamtok has drastically reduced the num-
ber of vowels it uses. Whereas English makes use of a dozen vowels, Kamtok
vowels stand at six. This reduction in the number of vowels has been achieved
partly through “mergers”.
A merger can occur within a language when, over the years, several sounds
gradually become one. A number of similar or closely related English sounds are
merged in Kamtok as one sound with which users are more familiar. Such a sound
is usually one that is found in both English and most Cameroonian languages or
only in the local languages. Some mergers are listed below:
English /æ, , / merge to form Kamtok /a/:
English /mæn/ > Kamtok /man/ ‘man’
English /f / > Kamtok /fada/ ‘priest’
English / ri:/ > Kamtok /agri/ ‘agree’
English /, / merge to form Kamtok /e/:
English /hd/ > Kamtok /het/ ‘head’
English /bd/ > Kamtok /bet/ ‘bird’
English /i, / merge to form Kamtok /i/:
English /f/ > Kamtok /fi/ ‘fish’
English /O, / merge to form Kamtok /O/:
English /gçd/ > Kamtok /gçd/ ‘god’
English /kt/ > Kamtok /kçt/ ‘cut’
English /u, / merge to form Kamtok /u/:
English /pt/ > Kamtok /put/ ‘put’
English /mun/ > Kamtok /mun/ ‘moon’
912 Thaddeus Menang
A second aspect of vowel restructuring is a strong tendency to produce simple

vowels in the place of certain English diphthongs, with the second element of the
diphthong usually being dropped:
English /e/ becomes Kamtok /e/:
English /mek/ > Kamtok /mek/ ‘make’
English // becomes Kamtok /o/:
English /g / > Kamtok /go/ ‘go’
English /s / > Kamtok /so/ ‘so’
English // becomes Kamtok /e/ or //:
English / / > Kamtok /de/ ‘there’
English / / > Kamtok /ke/ or / k/ ‘care’
The pronoun ‘I’ /a/ is usually produced in Kamtok as /a/.
Other centring diphthongs of English are restructured to produce new sound com-
binations, which accord with Kamtok phonology:
English // becomes Kamtok /ia/, /iO/ or /i/:
English /f / > Kamtok /fia/ ‘fear’
English /s r s/ > Kamtok /siriçs/ ‘serious’
English // becomes Kamtok /ua/, /uO/ or /O/:
English /j / > Kamtok /jua/ ‘your’
English /p / > Kamtok /puç/ ‘poor’
English / / > Kamtok /ç/ ‘sure’
English triphthongs are restructured through glide formation. This process in-
volves the transformation of the central element of the triphthong: // becomes /j/
and // becomes /w/. This splits the vowel sequence into two syllables as in the
following examples:
English /a/ becomes Kamtok /aja/:
English /fa / > Kamtok /faja/ ‘fire’
English /a/ becomes Kamtok /awa/:
English /pa / > Kamtok /pawa/ ‘power’
2.3.2. Non-reduction of Kamtok vowels

Although Kamtok makes use of many words of English origin and continues to
borrow heavily from that source, it hardly makes use of stress such as is found in
English. All the syllables in Kamtok words tend to be stressed to some degree. This
feature has considerably affected the manner in which words of English origin are
produced in Kamtok. Thus the vowel sounds which would normally be reduced
in English whenever they occur in unstressed position do not undergo reduction.

The presence of unreduced vowels in every syllable often completely modifies the
pronunciation of English words when these are used in Kamtok. Some examples
follow:
English /aft / > Kamtok /afta/ ‘after’
English /k mplen/ > Kamtok /kçmplen/ ‘complain’
English /fiv / > Kamtok /fiva/ ‘fever’
English /ns/ >Kamtok /inis/ ‘Guinness’
English /çd / > Kamtok /çda/ ‘order’
English /tebl'/ > Kamtok /tebul/ ‘table’
2.3.3. Vowel sounds with restricted distribution.

Some of the mergers and restructuring of vowels and diphthongs reported above
are not generally found in the Kamtok of English-Kamtok bilinguals. The resur-
facing of these sounds in regular Kamtok speech arises from the very close con-
tact that exists between the two languages in the English-speaking provinces of
Cameroon which are home to mainstream Kamtok. The presence of such sounds
in Kamtok speech constitute a kind of linguistic interference, though some of the
sounds have also been found in the Kamtok of those whose knowledge and use
of English are not confirmed. Thus, the close contact that exists between English
and Kamtok may be leaving more permanent marks on the latter. On the one hand,
diphthong-like combinations of vowels such as /ai/, /çi/, /au/ and /ia/ are seen to
occur in the same word positions as the English diphthongs /a/, /ç/, /a/ and /i /
respectively:
English /bç/ > Kamtok /bçi/ ‘boy’
English /kra/ > Kamtok /krai/ ‘cry’
English /has/ > Kamtok /haus/ ‘house’
English /fi / > Kamtok /fia/ ‘fear’
On the other hand, the Kamtok vowel /e/ is being “split” to produce // and / /
which had earlier been merged to produce it. Hence, instead of having a word like
/bet/ stand for both English bed and bird, some Kamtok users regularly distinguish
between /bd/ and /b d/, leaving the vowel /e/ to occur mostly in place of English
/e/. These trends certainly deserve more attention from future researchers.
2.4. Some phonological processes

2.4.1. Consonant devoicing
Words of English origin undergo certain changes when they are adopted into Ka-
mtok. One of these changes is the devoicing of final consonants such as /d, g, v, z/
914 Thaddeus Menang
to produce [t, k, f, s]. When pronounced in isolation, words like /gud/ ‘good’, /big/
‘big’, /bad/ ‘bad’ and /bed/ ‘bed’ sometimes retain voice on the final consonant, but
when they are followed by a word with a voiceless consonant at initial position,
the devoicing is obligatory. Consider these examples:
/het pan/ ‘headpan’
/gut tçk/ ‘good talk’
/bik cçp/ ‘big chop’
/bat ti/ ‘bad thing’
/bet pan/ ‘bed pan’
Final consonant devoicing has also been observed to occur systematically in words
such as:
/muf/ from English /muv/ ‘move’
/tus/ from English /kskjuz/ ‘excuse’
/twef/ from English /twlv/ ‘twelve’
2.4.2. Cluster simplification

Consonant clusters in English can occur at the initial position, in the middle or at
the end of the word. Kamtok words hardly have consonant clusters at final posi-
tion. As a result, when Kamtok adopts English words, their final consonant clus-
ters are usually simplified through the deletion of one or more consonants. The
following examples illustrate final consonant deletion:
English /grand/ > Kamtok /graun/ ‘ground’
English /hænd/ > Kamtok /han/ ‘hand’
English /læmp/ > Kamtok /lam/ ‘lamp’
English /snd/ > Kamtok /sen/ ‘send’
English /fst/ > Kamtok /fes/ ‘first’
English /mst/ > Kamtok /mçs/ ‘must’
English /ænd/ > Kamtok /an/ ‘and’
English /k r kt/ > Kamtok /kçrek/ ‘correct’
One rare example of consonant deletion at initial position is seen in the Kamtok
word /trç/ from English /strç/ ‘strong’. A more common process in Kamtok is
to reduce clusters at initial, and sometimes at final, position through vowel epen-
thesis, i.e. the insertion of a vowel between the two consonants forming the cluster
as shown in the following examples:
English /slip/ > Kamtok /silip/ ‘sleep’
English /spi / > Kamtok /sipia/ ‘spear’
English /tebl'/ > Kamtok /tebul/ ‘table’
English /snek/ > Kamtok /sinek/ ‘snake’
2.4.3. Resurfacing of // and //

These are two English consonants which are usually replaced in Kamtok by /d/
and /t/ respectively. Like some diphthong-like sounds discussed above, these
sounds are increasingly resurfacing in the speech of English-Kamtok bilinguals,
particularly in recent loans from English. If the trend persists, // and /d/ and //
and /t/ will come to be considered as being in free variation in words such as /is/
and /dis/ “this” and /b/ and /bt/ “birth”.
2.5. Prosodic features in Kamtok

Most discussions of prosodic features in Kamtok tend to focus on whether Kamtok
is a tone language or not. There is indeed an on-going debate on this issue, one
that has been going on for decades. Research findings at this stage unfortunately
do not permit one to provide a conclusive answer to the question. The aim of this
section is thus to simply provide a summary of the characteristic prosodic features
that existing studies have identified.
2.5.1. Tone as a significant feature in Kamtok

Most studies – e.g. Dwyer and Smith (1966), Mbassi-Manga (1976), Bellama, Nk-
welle and Yudom (1983) – agree that tone is a feature of Kamtok speech, in that it
distinguishes differences in meaning between words and utterances. Hence tone is
used in Kamtok to bring out differences in meaning between the following:
/bábà/ ‘barber’ and /bàbá/ ‘father’
/pç(pç)/ ‘proper’ or ‘real’ and /pç)pç(/ ‘pawpaw’
/gó/ ‘go’ and /gò/ future tense marker
/na)so)/ ‘It is so’ and /na)so(/ ‘Is it so?’
Most studies acknowledge at least two tones: a rising or high (´) and a falling or
low (`) tone. Dwyer and Smith (1966) talk of three tones: a strong high tone (´),
a weak high tone (unmarked) and a low tone (`). Because the weak high tone is
generally unmarked some researchers tend to ignore it.
Dwyer and Smith (1966) also suggest that the high and low pitches of tone in
Kamtok operate in registers. Within the register, all high pitches are at the same
level just as are all low pitches. The strong high pitch usually terminates the reg-
ister of which it is a member, as in /dát nà búk/ ‘that is a book’. Mbassi-Manga
(1976) considers the minimal tone unit in Kamtok to correspond to a syllable or
word, the maximal unit being the polysyllabic sense group.
916 Thaddeus Menang
2.5.2. The link between pitch and stress.

Most discussions of tone in Kamtok suggest an obvious link between pitch and
stress. Dwyer (1966) state that Kamtok tone involves two separate but related
features that are pitch and stress. The high pitch is usually accompanied by stress
while the low pitch is usually unstressed. Mbassi-Manga (1976) goes further to
point out that Kamtok does not have unstressed syllables as one finds in Eng-
lish. Except for emphatic stress, each syllable is uttered with the same amount of
strength, except the last syllable which receives slightly more energy. Thus instead
of talking about stressed and unstressed syllables, he suggests the notions of pri-
mary and secondary stress. Consider the following examples:
/ 'kç) *mç(t/ (secondary + primary stress)

/ 'a) sa) *lu(t/ (secondary + secondary + primary)
Mbassi-Manga (1976) argues that in casual speech stress occurs on the final syl-
lable of each word taken in isolation and of the sense group in connected speech.
Thus pitch and stress combine in Kamtok to give its speech a characteristic melody
that distinguishes it very clearly from English. Most researchers agree on the sig-
nificance of tone in Kamtok and on the fact that although it exhibits stress, the
language is syllable-timed. Those who accept the significance of tone in Kamtok
but hesitate to conclude that it is a tone language argue that similar tone differ-
entiations exist in the local variety of (standard) English, without leading to the
conclusion that English is a tone language. Clearly developments in the area of
tone are worthy of longitudinal studies.
Selected references
ROM
Bellama, David, Solomon Nkwelle and Joseph Yudom
1983 An Introduction to Cameroonian Pidgin. Revised Edition, Peace Corps.
Cameroon.
Bouchaud, Joseph
1952 La côte du Cameroun dans l’histoire et la cartographie: des origins à
l’annexion allemande.
Dike, K. Onwuka
1956 Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885. Oxford: Clarendon.
Dwyer, David
1966 An Introduction to West African Pidgin English, African Studies Center,
Michigan State University.
Keller, Werner, J. Schnellback and J.R. Brütsch

1969 The History of the Presbyterian Church in West Cameroon. Victoria: Press
Books.
Koenig, Edna, Emmanuel Chia and John Povey (eds.)
1983 A Sociolinguistic Profile of Urban Centers in Cameroon. Los Angeles:
Crossroads Press.
Mbassi-Manga, Francis
1973 English in Cameroon: a study of historical contacts, patterns of usage and
common trends. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Leeds.
1976 Pidgin English is not a Tone Language. Annals of the Faculty of Arts and
Social Science (Yaounde), 6: 5–16.
Schneider, Gilbert
1974 Masa Troki Tok Sey: A Compilation of Pidgin English Materials, Ohio
University
1966 West African Pidgin English: A Descriptive Linguistic Analysis with Texts and
Glossary form the Cameroon Area. Ohio University Center for International
Studies, Ohio.
1992 Aspects of Cameroon English Phonology. Ph.D. disseration, University of
Yaounde.
East African English (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania):
phonology
Josef Schmied
1. Introduction
The geographical limits of East Africa are not always clearly defined. Sometimes
it ranges from the Red Sea down to the end of the Rift Valley somewhere in Mo-
zambique. More usually the northern part (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibuti and
occasionally Sudan) is treated separately as North East Africa and the southern
part with Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe is referred to as Central Africa, or with
Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and the Republic of South Africa as
Southern Africa (cf. also Schmied 1991). This contribution will concentrate on
the “heartland” of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania since they share a common “an-
glophone” background, despite some interesting differences in colonial heritage.
These three countries are also characterised by a complex pattern of African first
languages (mainly from the Bantu and Nilosaharan language families), a common
lingua franca (Kiswahili) and an equally complex mixture of Christian, Islamic
and native African religious and cultural beliefs. The revived East African Com-
munity (1967–1976 and from 1997) is a sociopolitical expression of this common
heritage.
Although many sociolinguistic (like code-switching and borrowing) and lin-
guistic features (like vowel mergers and syllable-timed rhythm in pronunciation or
overgeneralization in grammar and a formal tendency in style) can also be found
in other parts of Africa, East African English (EAfE) can be distinguished clearly
enough from other varieties to justify a coherent descriptive entity. Today such
a description can only be based on authentic data from three types of empirical
sources: exemplary quotations from individual recorded utterances, a quantified
and stratified pattern retrieved from a corpus of EAfE, like ICE-East Africa (de-
scribed in the volume on morphology and syntax), or quantitative results from
internet search engines or tools using the www as a corpus.
The following description tries to give a coherent picture by emphasising rea-
sons and patterns, rules or rather tendencies, since no reason is unique and no rule
applies to 100%. These patterns are illustrated by short examples and finally set
into a larger co- and context by examples from real English. As in most dialectal
and sociolinguistic research one isolated marker may indicate a characteristic us-
age clearly, but usually only a cluster of features gives us the authentic flavour of
East African English (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania): phonology 919
EAfE. In this sense it is a descriptive abstraction, not necessarily an established,

recognised norm, which should become clear from the following survey.
1.1. Historical background

English came late to East Africa, since for a long time the colonialists were not re-
ally interested in Africa. Instead the Swahili towns on the coast (Kilwa, Zanzibar,
Mombasa, Malindi, etc.) were used as stepping stones to the jewel of the imperial
crown, India. The last decades of the 19th century saw the establishment of Brit-
ish and German colonial power, mainly through Zanzibar. The most famous East
African explorers Livingstone and Stanley (who met at Ujiji in 1871) were accom-
panied by other explorers and missionaries. The German missionaries Krapf, who
founded Rabai near Mombasa in 1846, and Rebmann were the first Europeans to
see the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya – but were not believed in
Europe. Methodists opened a mission near Mombasa in 1862, Anglicans in Zanzi-
bar in 1863 and Catholics in Bagamoyo in 1868. Ten years later they moved along
the traditional trading route inland through Morogoro and Tabora to Ujiji on Lake
Tanganyika. This shows that European intrusion followed the established Swahili
trade routes – and used their language, Kiswahili, as a lingua franca.
The brief German interlude (from Carl Peter’s first “treaties” in 1884 to World
War I) established not German but Kiswahili in the colony, and laid the foundation
for its success as a truly national language in Tanzania later.
After the war some differences in colonial administration between Kenya,
Uganda and Tanganyika/Zanzibar can be attributed to the role of the white settlers
in Kenya, but a lot of similarities remain, although Tanganyika was only held by
the British as a Mandate from the League of Nations. The system of “indirect rule”
through African leaders (developed by Lord Luggard in Nigeria) was introduced
everywhere. In contrast to Rhodesia (esp. present-day Zimbabwe), where the set-
tlers were given self-governance, the primacy of “African interests” was decided
in 1923. This is documented in the Land Ordinance Act, which secured land rights
for Africans and not only Europeans, over 2000 of whom had spread particularly
in the “White Highlands” north of Mount Kenya and east of Mount Elgon. In reali-
ty, British rule established a three-class system with the white colonial officers and
settlers at the top, the Indian in the middle and the Black Africans at the bottom.
The system of communication developed along the railway and highway lines
with a few ethnic nuclei in fertile areas like Buganda, Kikuyuland/Mount Kenya
or Chaggaland/Mount Kilimanjaro. The Indians had come to East Africa partly via
the Swahili trade in Zanzibar, but mainly for the construction of the railways. They
stayed not only in the (railway) administration but also as traders with their small
dukas in the centres, often as “middleman”, who could be accused of exploitation
by the European settlers and even more by the Africans. This made them easy
920 Josef Schmied
targets for dictator Idi Amin, who caused their exodus from Uganda in 1972, and
also for Africanisation policies in the other new nations.
1.2. Colonial language policies

Despite British colonial rule, colonial language policy was not simply pro-English
and more complex than is often assumed (cf. Spencer 1971). Of course, the vari-
ous colonial administrations tried to regulate official language use in their terri-
tories. But this involved usually three types of language, the local “tribal” mother
tongues and the African lingua franca (usually Kiswahili, only occasionally Lu-
ganda) besides English, for local, “intraterritorial” and international communica-
tion respectively. Other agents played a role as well, like the churches, who had
enormous influence not only on church language but also on school language. Even
the three British mission societies (the Universities Mission to Central African, the
Church Mission Society and the London Mission Society) did not use English for
evangelisation. The German missionary Krapf (in the services of the Church Mis-
sion Society) propagated a Latin spelling system for Kiswahili, which had been
written in Arabic traditionally and maintained many Islamic connections, since
he saw Kiswahili as “the most cultivated of dialects” and as a key to the inland
languages. Protestant missions in general favoured (in Martin Luther’s tradition)
“the language of the people”, i.e. the ethnic languages, but also the African lingua
franca, Kiswahili. The Catholic church was usually more orthodox, supporting not
only Latin in its services but also Kiswahili in their preaching.
Even the British administration in Tanzania did not introduce English wholesale
after taking over the former German colony. Rather, they admired the efficient
German system, which according to a report from 1921 “made it possible to com-
municate in writing with every akida and village headman, and in turn to receive
from him reports written in Kiswahili”.
Thus English was established only in élitist circles when the colonial powers
tried to regulate communication within the administrative, legal and education
system. The considerations summarised in a report by the Phelps-Stokes Fund (cf.
Schmied 1991: 15) led to a basically trilingual language policy with the ethnic
“vernacular” for local communication and basic education, Kiswahili in ethnically
mixed centres and English for the highest functions in administration, law and
education. This led to the foundation of the Interterritorial Language Committee in
1929, which developed into the East African Swahili Committee later, responsible
for standardisation, orthography reform and expansion on the basis of the Zanzibar
variety KiUnguja (and not the KiMvita of Mombasa). English was the language of
instruction mainly in the few prestigious secondary schools, e.g. in King’s College,
Budo, Uganda, the school for chiefs’ sons in Tabora or Alliance High in Nairobi,
and of course in the first East African university, Makerere (founded as a Techni-
cal School in 1922 and as a University College in 1949).
It is important to remember that colonial language policies did not favour Eng-
lish, or other European languages, wholesale, but established a “trifocal” or tri-
lingual system with (a) English as the elite and international language, (b) the re-
gional lingua franca and (c) the “tribal” languages or “vernaculars” for local com-
munication. The expansion of English down the social hierarchy began mainly at
the end of colonial rule with the democratisation and expansion of education that
was to prepare Africans for independence (cf. Schmied 1991: 18). After indepen-
dence, surprisingly few changes occurred; although lip-service was usually paid
to African languages. Only Tanzania made great progress towards expanding the
functions of Kiswahili at the expense of English and local African languages.
1.3. Sociolinguistic background
1.3.1. The range of variation in English in Africa
One of the broadest categorisations of the English used in Africa is suggested by
Angogo and Hancock (1980: 71), who distinguish the following types according
to speakers:
(a) native English of African-born whites and expatriates;
(b) native English of locally-born Africans;
(c) non-native English spoken fluently as a second language (…);
(d) non-native English spoken imperfectly as a foreign language (…).
The first category, White African English, is relatively insignificant in East Africa
today, although the influence of the early British and South African settlers may
have been considerable. The other three categories of (Black) African English
constitute a continuum of English forms, which ranges from ‘native’ to ‘second-
language’ to ‘international’ varieties. It is worth noting, however, that these cat-
egories were used to illustrate differences between entire nations, especially in the
process of developing (hypothetical) national varieties of English. When it comes
to analysing language forms which are actually used in Africa, intranational and
intrapersonal variation, the individual speaker’s sociolinguistic background and
the actual speech-act situation must be taken into consideration. At the individual
level, the type of English spoken by Africans depends largely (i.e. if we ignore
special exposure to English either through personal acquaintances or the mod-
ern mass media) on two factors: (a) their education, i.e. the length and degree of
formal education in English, and (b) their occupation, i.e. the necessity for and
amount of English used in everyday life.
The second category is also less important than in Southern or West Africa, al-
though English may be used as the primary language even in the home in mixed
marriages of highly educated partners.
The last category reflects, of course, less the colonial heritage than the role
of English as the international language of science and technology, international
development and communication today. But “broken” English, “school” English
922 Josef Schmied
or “bad” English is usually looked down upon as a sign of little education and
ridiculed, especially in Kenya, in literature or political campaigns (e.g. in cartoons
in the daily newspapers).
Thus the varieties of EAfE show the characteristic features of New Englishes
(cf. Platt, Weber and Ho 1984 or Hickey 2004), background, genesis and func-
tion. In particular they are not transmitted directly through native-speaker set-
tlers; usage is formed mainly through its use as media of instruction in school and
reinforced outside school; and they are used in public functions in the national
educational, legal and administration system. Interestingly enough, the term New
English is rarely used in East Africa, probably because Standard English even with
EAfE pronunciation or as an (hypothetical) independent East African Standard is
considered more appropriate.
1.3.2. The sociolinguistic situation today

The common cultural background of the three countries makes the sociolinguistic
situation rather similar. The major difference is the status of Kiswahili: in Tan-
zania, it is the true national language, since it is spoken nation-wide as a lingua
franca, learnt in a relatively homogeneous form (sometimes called “Government
Swahili”) in all primary schools and used in most national functions including
education in most secondary schools; in Kenya it is just losing its associations
with the coast or with lower social positions; in Uganda it is unfortunately still
associated with the military and the “troubled” times in the 1970s and 1980s. This
leaves more room for English and the other East African languages in Uganda and
Kenya.
The official status of English in government, parliament or jurisdiction is not
always easy to establish, as conflicting laws, regulations and proclamations since
independence 40 years ago may contradict each other. Whereas it is clearly the
language of nation-wide politics in Uganda, it is rarely used in those functions in
Tanzania. Kenya occupies a middle position in this regard.
English is not really associated with white settlers any more. Although distinct
accents can still be heard in this group, they range outside the general national
norm. The multilingual educated African elite invests large sums of money in
“good education”, which is usually based on “good English”. The Asians in East
Africa are usually equally multilingual, speaking not only their native languages,
mainly Gujarati or Panjabi, but also their own versions of Kiswahili and English.
Knowledge and actual use of English are based on very rough estimates, since
no nation-wide census data are available and the last language survey was spon-
sored by the Ford Foundation more than 30 years ago. Thus to say, for instance,
that English is “spoken” by 30% in Uganda, 20% in Kenya and only 5% in Tan-
zania may give an indication of the (historical) differences in education, urbanisa-
tion, modernisation or internationalisation. However, this must be taken with great
caution. Since English gives prestige, informants’ self-evaluations are unreliable,

and nation-wide proficiency tests for national certificates of education often disap-
pointing. The fact that even universities have started extensive course programmes
in “Communication Skills” or even explicitly “Remedial English” reveals some
of the problems at the highest level. The discussions can be followed even on the
internet today in various contributions including numerous letters-to-the-editor to
major national newspapers (e.g. “MUK enforces English for all” in The New Vi-
sion, Uganda’s leading daily 13/01/02). The key problem is that English is used
as the language of instruction from upper primary school onward (in Uganda) and
is thus the basis for all further education. The discussion is less about teaching
English properly than teaching (other subjects) in English properly.
In all countries English is still (in Tanzania again?) a result and a symbol of
good education and, directly or indirectly, a prerequisite for well-paid jobs with
international links in trade and tourism. This is often reflected in popular debates
on language attitudes in East Africa.
1.3.3. Language attitudes today

Attitudes towards languages in Africa can be heard in many debates, but system-
atic studies are rare and difficult. At least three types of attitudes have to be distin-
guished as far as English in East Africa are concerned.
The stereotyped notions on English are usually extremely positive. It is seen as
“sophisticated” and “superior” (but also as “difficult” and “formal”). Such notions
may however have little effect on attitudes towards practical language use and
usage in East Africa. Usually East Africans do not really subscribe to language-
inherent properties (like English is “cool and impersonal”, “colonial” or “Euro-
pean”), although it may be considered more appropriate for formal and official use
than other African languages.
Language is mainly viewed in extremely practical terms, since it is too obvious
that English is the international language of science and technology and world-wide
communication. Thus international arguments in favour of English are also uncon-
troversial. Even the great supporter and translator of Kiswahili, President Nyerere
of Tanzania, emphasised the importance of English calling it “the Kiswahili of the
world”. The real issue is the use (and usage) of English in intranational communi-
cation, especially in African schools. Although the first-language principle (based
on UNESCO recommendations since the 1950s) is normally accepted by African
educationalists, nationally minded Tanzanians support the use of Kiswahili from
the first day at school, whereas internationally minded parents in Uganda advocate
a “fast track” to English, which had been common at independence. The stage of
switching to English is usually after lower primary (four school years) in Uganda
and after secondary school in Tanzania, whereas in Kenya it is at the beginning of
the four years of secondary school at the latest. The debate is most heated in Tan-
924 Josef Schmied
zania, where on the one hand in recent years many new private secondary schools
have advertised English as a medium of instruction, while on the other hand even
some universities have proposed teaching in Kiswahili. The same arguments pro
and con have been used for decades (cf. Schmied 1991: chap. 7) and they can be
detected again in most recent newspaper debates (e.g. in www.ippmedia.com).
In contrast to these debates on practical language issues, attitudes towards Af-
rican varieties of English are rarely discussed outside scholarly circles. Accepting
African forms is hardly openly admitted except in pronunciation, where “aping
the British” is seen as highly unnatural. Grammar and syntax in particular are
considered the glue that holds the diverging varieties of English together; and
international intelligibility is deemed absolutely essential as the major asset of the
international language cannot be jeopardised. Thus Standard English with African
pronunciation may be accepted as an intranational norm, but Ugandan, Kenyan
or Tanzanian English will not be tolerated at least in the near future. On the other
hand the theoretical British norm is only upheld in books and rarely experienced
in use in present-day Africa.
1.4. Reasons for East African forms of English
The reasons for the occurrence of African forms different from Standard English
are manifold and can basically be attributed to at least four factors as far as their
origin is concerned. For EAfE today the role of distinctly different native speaker
English (e.g. Scottish English or even Scots) may be neglected, hence the impor-
tance of three major factor groups or reasons.
(a) Influence of the learners’ mother tongue and other African languages
Since English is learnt as a second language in East Africa, it is likely that features
and strategies from first language acquisition are transferred; negative transfer is
usually called interference. This has long been seen as the basic cause for Afri-
can variation in English, because it obviously influences the pronunciation, of-
ten distinctly. Since non-African mother-tongue speakers as role-models are rare
nowadays, common deviations become institutionalised and give a specific stamp
to African English in its various forms. The great fear in Africa is that when one
generation of poorly-trained African teachers passes on their English to the next
generation, mother-tongue interference could be cumulative so that, with time,
English could deviate more and more from accepted norms (like the minimal five-
vowel system in EAfE below).
From today’s perspective, mother-tongue influence on African English seems
to have been overestimated. Because English is for many Africans only one pos-
sible choice in their verbal repertoire, which will include more than one African
language, it may be safer to assume the influence of a common substratum of the
African languages known by the English user. Interestingly enough, some speak-
ers of African English exhibit “interference features” although they do not derive
from their mother tongues but from other languages used in the area. Furthermore,
often several factors may converge
(b) General language learning strategies

The influence of general psycholinguistic processes on a second language is very
difficult to assess; it is only possible to compare input and output of the human
brain and draw conclusions on cognitive processing. There is some evidence that
language learners in general use simplification strategies at an early stage (it seem_
that …, where morphological simplification may be supported by pronunciation
simplification of an alveolar in front of a dental fricative). Later they try to repro-
duce memorised phrases from the target language, irrespective of the linguistic
and pragmatic context (his/her level best seems to occur more often in African
than in European English). From a certain stage onwards learners enjoy compli-
cating their language and even tend to exaggerate typically English features (he is
living in Eldoret is an overgeneralization when temporary meaning is not implied;
she ran fastly is a hypercorrect form, as unmarked adverbs are associated with
broken English). When the learning process does not progress normally, certain
developmental errors, which occur regularly in first and second language acquisi-
tion, become fossilised, i.e. they become permanent features (like the plural of
non-count nouns like informations or discontents). This includes overgeneralisa-
tions like neglecting restrictions or differences between gerunds and infinitives
in complementation (such as I wouldn’t mind to give instead of giving). All these
creative strategies of language learners must have played a certain role in the de-
velopment of African varieties of English.
(c) Exposure to the written language

The fact that in many societies, including African ones, the written word has an
authority exceeding that of the spoken form has far-reaching consequences for
English language learners, particularly in a situation where languages other than
English dominate in oral communication. Thus African speakers of English tend
to reproduce characteristics of written English even in the spoken form. Gram-
matical constructions and lexical items from relatively formal registers or spell-
ing pronunciations, like [saId] or [dZuIs] for said and juice, will often be used.
This explains the articulations of /h/ in heir or of /b/ in debt and generally the
tendency of the central NURSE vowel to assume the sound value “suggested” by
the orthographic symbol that represents it (e.g. [adZ] for urge vs. [he:d] for heard).
As Shakespeare and the Bible have until recently – when they were replaced by
modern African classics like Achebe and Meja Mwangi – been most commonly
used for teaching the target language, African varieties have tended to have an
archaic flavour.
926 Josef Schmied
2. Phonology
The phonology of EAfE is of particular importance because (non-standard) pro-

nunciation features seem to be the most persistent in African varieties, i.e. they are
retained even in the speech of the most educated speakers. This may be because in
many languages pronunciation seems to be the most flexible element, which can
be used (subconsciously) to express subtle sociolinguistic messages of speaker
identity and of distance from or solidarity with the listener. English appears to be
particularly fluid at this level. Even the supposed norms in Britain have moved so
far away from the institutionalised written form that the graphemic system can-
not symbolise the diverging phonemic systems any more. Mistakes in the form of
phonetic spellings do, however, allow conclusions on the pronunciation even from
written texts. The features characterising African pronunciations of English can be
found at subphonemic, phonemic and supraphonemic levels.
Differences at the phonemic level are important because here differences of
lexical meaning are maintained. This can be illustrated (and elicited) in minimal
pairs like ram and lamb; beat and bit; or show and so. Many Africans would not
distinguish clearly in pronunciation between the elements of such pairs tending
towards the same pronunciation (homophony).
2.1. Consonants
Among the consonants, /r/ and /l/ are a particularly infamous pair for many Bantu
speakers, both rendered as one and the same, often intermediate sound between
/loli/ and /rori/ instead of /lori/, for instance. In Kenya, the pair is a clear sub-
national identifier, since even educated Gikuyu clearly tend towards /r/ and the
neighbouring Embu towards /l/. Occasionally the sets /tS/, /S/ and /s/, and /dZ/, /Z/
and /z/ are not distinguished clearly either. Other problematic consonants are /T/
and /D/, which often deviate in the direction of /d/ and /t/ or, sometimes, /z/ and
/s/, rarely /v/ and /f/. Most of these deviations are registered by East Africans as
subnational peculiarities. However, even though phoneme mergers are clearly no-
ticeable, they do not endanger the consonant system as a whole. These examples
show three general tendencies for consonants:
(a) The merger of /r/ and /l/ is wide-spread, but still stigmatized.
(b) Intrusive or deleted (as a hypercorrect tendency) nasals, especially /n/ in front
of plosives, are common, since some languages like Gikuyu have homorganic
nasal consonants.
(c) English fricatives are generally difficult but particular deviations are often
restricted to certain ethnic groups
At the subphonemic level, which is not important for differences in meaning but
gives the English spoken a particular colouring, an interesting consonant is /r/. As
in most English varieties, /r/ is usually only articulated in pre-vocalic positions

(i.e. EAfE is non-rhotic) and its pronunciation varies considerably (whether it is
rolled or flapped).
2.2. Vowels
A comparison of the English phoneme system with that of most African languages
shows that the major difference are not the consonants but the few vowel contrasts
compared to the extensive English vowel system. Thus the vowel system of EAfE
deviates systematically, vowels tend to merge, because the extreme range of the
English vowel continuum is not covered by the underlying African systems of, for
instance, the Bantu languages. On the whole three basic generalisations may be
made for English vowels:
(a) Length differences in vowels are levelled and not used phonemically; thus
FLEECE and KIT, GOOSE and FOOT, THOUGHT and NORTH, and BATH, STRUT
and TRAP tend to merge. This is not only a quantitative, but also a qualitative
shift, as usually short vowels in EAfE are longer and more peripheral than in
RP, especially /I/ tends towards /i>/, /U/ towards /u>/, /ç/ towards /o>/ and /√/ and
/Q/ towards /a>/.
(b) The central vowels of STRUT, NURSE and lettER, are avoided and tend towards
half-open or open positions of BATH and, less often, DRESS. This conforms
to the tendency towards more extreme articulatory positions of the tongue
in general. It leads (together with the syllable-timing, cf. 2.2.3. below) to the
phenomenon that, whereas vowels in full syllables tend to be underdifferenti-
ated, those in unstressed ones may be overdifferentiated. Hence the difference
between policeman and policemen or between the suffixes -ance and -ence
may be clearer than in Standard English.
(c) Diphthongs tend to have only marginal status and to be monophthongized. In
the short closing diphthongs MOUTH and particularly FACE the second ele-
ment is hardly heard in many African varieties (as in Scotland; thus coinciding
almost with the DRESS vowel). Diphthongs with a longer glide are preserved,
but they are not really pronounced as falling diphthongs, i.e. with less empha-
sis on the second element than on the first, but rather as double monophthongs
(e.g. [oI], [aU]). All the centring diphthongs (NEAR, SQUARE, CURE) tend to
be pronounced as opening diphthongs or double monophthongs ([Ia, ea, ua];
cf. tendency (b) above).
These general observations on vowel pronunciation seem to hold for so many Af-
rican varieties that this cannot be interpreted merely as a product of mother-tongue
interference. In fact, some of these features of “Africanization” have already been
predicted by Gimson (1980: 306) in very general terms, i.e. without any refer-
928 Josef Schmied
ence to Africa, because of the particularly complex structure of the English vowel
system:
… the full systems [20 vowels and 24 consonants] must be regarded as complex
compared with the systems of many other languages. In particular, the opposition of the
close vowels /i:/-/i/, /u:/-/u/, the existence of a central long vowel /Œ:/ and the delicately
differentiated front vowel set of /i:/-/i/-/e/-/Q/ + /√/, together with the significant or
conditioned variations of vowel length, will pose problems to many foreign learners.
Finally, it is worth considering the vowel system as a whole (in terms of Wells
1982). In contrast to West African varieties, which tend towards a basic seven-
vowel system, East African varieties tend towards a basic five-vowel system (Ta-
ble 1).
Table 1. The vowels of East African English (mesolectal tendencies)

KIT i FLEECE i PRICE aI
FOOT u GOOSE u CHOICE oI
TRAP a DRESS e SQUARE ea
NURSE a THOUGHT o NEAR Ia
LOT o FORCE o GOAT o
CLOTH o NORTH o CURE Ua
STRUT a START a FACE e
COMMA a BATH a MOUTH aU
lettER a PALM a ABOUT a
happY I horsES I
An interesting single parameter in this respect is the deviation of the RP long

central NURSE vowel: it tends toward a back vowel /ç/ in West African varieties,
towards a front vowel /a/ in Eastern and towards /e/ Southern African varieties,
but these tendencies are not uniform in a region, neither across all ethnic groups,
nor across the lexicon, as in Tanzania girl tends towards front (DRESS) and turn
towards back pronunciation (START) because of spelling pronunciation – cf. 1.4
(c) above.
2.3. Suprasegmental patterns

Other important features of African English are supraphonemic, i.e. related to
phoneme sequences, word stress, intonation and general rhythmic patterns. Many
of these phenomena are difficult to describe, so that some examples from three
particularly striking aspects may suffice: the avoidance of consonant clusters, the
more regular word stress and the special rhythm.
2.3.1. Phonotactic patterns

Consonant clusters are a major phonotactic problem in EAfE, as many African lan-
guages have a relatively strict consonant-vowel syllable structure (often CV-CV-
CV). This explains African English tendencies with regard to consonant clusters
and final consonants. Consonant clusters tend to be dissolved, either by dropping
one/some of the consonants involved or by splitting them through the insertion of
vowels.
Final consonants are dropped when there are two or more in a sequence, e.g. in
[neks] for next and [hen] or [han] for hand. But this tendency also occurs in native-
speaker English and its frequency seems to vary a lot. The general rule appears
to be that if plosives are preceded by fricatives, they are dropped in word-final
position; if they are preceded by other plosives or occur in non-final position they
are split by vowels inserted between the consonants. A similar phenomenon oc-
curs when final vowels are added to closed syllables, i.e. syllables ending in con-
sonants. The vowels inserted or added are normally [I] or [U], depending on the
occurrence of palatal or velar consonants in the environment ( e.g. [hosIpItalI] for
hospital or [spIrInI] for spring) or on vowel harmony (e.g. in [bUkU] for book).
2.3.2. Word stress

A particularly striking feature is the African tendency towards more regular stress
rhythms. Again, the problem lies often within the English tendencies to maintain
partly the Romance principle of word stress on the penultimate syllable in contrast
to the general Germanic principle of stressing the stem. This leads to differences
in word stress between etymologically obviously related words when prefixes and
suffixes are added, thus ad»mire is not stressed on the same syllable as admiration
and »admirable; here East Africans are tempted to stress [ad»maIrabl] and some-
times even [ad»maIre»Sen] just like [ad»maIa]. Of course, the problem of a whole
series of unstressed syllables is intrinsic to British Standard English; even Ameri-
can English has secondary stress regularly in words like secretary. Thus the final
word stress on suffixes like -»ize and particularly -»ate may not be that surprising
in theory, but it may be in practice. The tendency is not systematic, since in most
cases the frequency and familiarity of words supports the “correct” British Eng-
lish pronunciation. In other cases better known, etymologically related or similar
words may serve as models. This tendency faces the problem that Standard Eng-
lish uses stress to indicate word class. In EAfE the distinction between the verbs
pro»test, alter»nate, at»tribute and the nouns »protest, »alternate, »attribute through
stress is not always maintained.
930 Josef Schmied
2.3.3. Syllable-timed rhythm

The most striking feature of African Englishes is the tendency towards a syllable-
timed rather than a stress-timed rhythm. Thus an EAfE speaker tends to give all
syllables more or less equal stress and does not “cram” up to three unstressed
syllables together into one stress unit to form so-called “weak” forms as speakers
of British English do. This underlying pattern accounts for most suprasegmental
patterns in EAfE mentioned above (e.g. to give too much weight to unstressed
syllables), and its sometimes unfamiliar rhythm. It may also cause misunderstand-
ings in intercultural communication, when EAfE may be misjudged as “unfriendly
machine-gun fire” or “childish song-song”. The interesting question is whether
this helps communication with francophone Africans, whose speech is also syl-
lable-timed.
Selected references
ROM.
Angogo, Rachel and Hancock, Ian

1980 English in Africa: emerging standards or diverging regionalisms? English
Gimson, Alfred Charles
1980 An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. London: Arnold. (3rd ed.)
White South African English: phonology
Sean Bowerman
1. Introduction
The term ‘White South African English’ is applied to the first language varieties
of English spoken by White South Africans, with the L1 English variety spoken
by Zimbabweans and Namibians, mainly of British descent, being recognised as
offshoots. There is some social and regional variation within the variety. Social
variation within White South African English (henceforth WSAfE) has been clas-
sified into three groupings (termed ‘The Great Trichotomy’ by Lass (2002: 109ff)):
Cultivated, closely approximating RP and associated with upper class; General,
a social indicator of the middle class, and Broad, associated with the working
class and/or Afrikaans descent, and closely approximating the second-language
Afrikaans English variety.
An historical overview of the origins of English in South Africa will place these
variations into perspective.
1.1. The origins and propagation of English in South Africa
1.1.1. The Cape Colony
British ships en route to the East in the 18th century were frequent visitors to the
Cape, which was then an invaluable trading and refreshment station under Dutch
control. After the French Revolution of 1789–1791, republican France overran
the territories of the royalist Netherlands and laid claim to all its colonies and
territories, including the strategically positioned Cape colony. Britain perceived
this as a threat to (their interests at) the Cape, and in 1795 a British fleet landed
at the Cape, having driven back the Dutch defenders, and laid claim to the terri-
tory. The Netherlands briefly re-established sovereignty as the Batavian Republic,
upon which the Cape was returned; but in 1806 the Napoleonic Wars again saw the
Netherlands subjugated to France, and Britain once more launched a successful
assault on the Cape, this time proclaiming a colony and installing a governor. The
Cape was formally surrendered to Britain in 1814.
Seeking to establish the Cape as a viable colony, Britain launched a settlement
programme in which approximately 4500 Britons were landed at Algoa Bay in
the eastern Cape in 1820 and 1821. The 1820 Settlers, as they came to be known,
were mainly working class people drawn from all over Britain. While their speech
was homogenously L1 English, they spoke a large variety of regional dialects,
rather than RP. The Settlers were given land for farming, and came to live in close
932 Sean Bowerman
contact with their Dutch neighbours. Within two generations, the regional dialect
distinctions had been levelled (Lanham 1982: 325).
In 1822, English was proclaimed as the sole official language of the Cape Col-
ony, supplanting Dutch in almost all public spheres. The British colony expanded
rapidly, and Settlers were dogged by conflict with indigenous peoples, into whose
territory the colony was now intruding. Moreover, political tensions between Dutch
and English settlers continued to mount, leading to the Great Trek of 1834–1836,
in which Dutch settlers left the Cape Colony in large numbers to escape British rule
and seek autonomy elsewhere. The ‘Trekkers’ pushed northwards and eastwards,
establishing three territories: the ‘South African Republic’, which later became
known as Transvaal; the Orange River Sovereignty, later Orange Free State, and
Natalia. While Dutch became the official language of these territories, a compe-
tency in English remained a hallmark of good education (Lanham 1982: 325).
1.1.2. Natal
The autonomy of Natalia (which occupies most of present-day KwaZulu-Natal)
was short-lived. After a brief period of war, Britain annexed Natalia to the Cape
Colony, and shortly thereafter proclaimed it a crown colony (Natal) in its own
right. This led to an influx of English speaking settlers, and large numbers of
English settlers arrived in Natal under an organised British settlement programme
between 1848 and 1862. Lanham (1982: 325) reports that a higher proportion of
settlers to Natal were middle or higher class, and that there was very little contact
with Dutch settlers, and no conflicts with indigenous peoples in which civilian
colonists were involved. While social distinctions based on position and rank were
levelled in the Cape Colony, they tended to be maintained in Natal. Moreover, the
origins of the settlers to Natal were less diverse than those to the Cape, and the
population more urbanised. Thus, the English of the first generation settlers in
Natal differed from that of the Cape settlers in that there was much less social and
regional differentiation, but also much less social levelling (Lanham 1982 : 325f).
1.1.3. South African Republic (Transvaal) and Orange Free State

Until the 1870s, South Africa (as it is currently known) comprised four major ter-
ritories: the British-administered and English speaking Cape and Natal colonies,
and the independent, Dutch-speaking Voortrekker (or ‘Boer’) republics: the South
African Republic/Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
The discovery of gold and diamonds in the Voortrekker republics in the 1870s
brought a rush of fortune seekers from all over the world, as well as from the Brit-
ish colonies. This significantly swelled the English-speaking population of the
Voortrekker republics, and led to increased contact between the two groups. The
‘mineral revolution’ (Lanham 1982: 327) in southern Africa coincided with the
White South African English: phonology 933
Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States, and industrialisation began
in South Africa. Meanwhile, all four of the (main) settler territories battled con-
tinuously with the indigenous peoples for land, and the indigenous peoples were
finding themselves overrun as settler populations expanded.
The pursuit of fortune in the mining centres led to social stratification (Lanham
1982: 327), as some were successful and others weren’t. The relatively sophisti-
cated, urbanite Natalians were better-placed, being used to this lifestyle; but the
more rural frontiersmen, both English and Dutch-speaking, from the Cape, and
the Dutch settlers of the Voortrekker republics found themselves at the lower end
of the social strata. Lanham (1982: 328) reports on the fortunate position of the
Natalian, whose better education, slightly dubious higher-class status and speech
in the colonies could not be faulted by the lower-placed colonials from the Cape
(‘whose sensitivities to the fine detail of British behaviour had faded’) and others,
who had had no contact with Britain and things British.
1.1.4. English in ‘unitary’ South Africa: 1870s to 1994

By the late 1800s, social stratification in the White communities could be catego-
rised as follows: British (immigrant), colonial, Dutch and European Jew (Lanham
1982: 327). British immigrants and Natal colonials occupied the upper ends of
the hierarchy, with British and Natal accents being perceived as having the high-
est status. Cape colonial English and second language varieties had much lower
status; indeed, the first language Cape colonial variety and the Afrikaans English
variety were ‘not differentiated … in the ears of the majority in the mining city’
(Lanham 1982: 327).
British interests in the mineral and other industries in Southern Africa,
and the desire to expand the British empire, saw the occupation of the Boer repub-
lics from the late 1870s. This culminated in the South African War of 1899–1902,
in which the British prevailed. The Boer republics were annexed to the British
crown, and given the status of Crown Colonies. This led to a further influx of Eng-
lish first language speakers to the former Boer republics, and increased status for
English. The four crown colonies—the Cape, Natal, Orange Free State and Trans-
vaal—formed the Union of South Africa, under British rule, in 1910. British colo-
nials, and English, dominated the political scene until after World War II. Mining,
a chiefly British interest, was the dominant industry, with the home-born, success-
ful, upper-class Englishman setting the standard to aspire to (Lanham 1982: 329).
Locally, the prestigious Natal variety of English set the standard for South African
English, while Cape colonial English and the second language Afrikaans-English
variety remained stigmatised, relatively low status varieties.
South African Dutch, which became known as Afrikaans in 1924, retained offi-
cial language status and remained a significant home language, but was dominated
in the cities and in all public spheres by English (Watermeyer 1996: 103). Resis-
934 Sean Bowerman
tance to British rule and English increased, giving rise to Afrikaner nationalism,
which openly promoted loyalty to Afrikaans and hostility to English. In White
society, English and Afrikaans speakers became more and more divided, and dur-
ing World War II the Afrikaner Nationalist Party aligned itself with Nazi Germany,
making the rift even deeper (Lanham 1996: 25).
In 1948, the Afrikaner Nationalist Party triumphed over the English United Par-
ty in national (‘Whites only’) elections, and set about increasing the status of Af-
rikaans in public spheres. The Nationalist Party dominated South African politics
until 1994, imposing Afrikaans as the de facto first official language of the country,
and limiting the influence of English, particularly in African education (Lanham
1996: 26). However, the English first language community remained significant,
English remained legally equal to Afrikaans, and continued to dominate in com-
merce, higher education and industry (Mesthrie 2002: 22). All White pupils had to
learn both official languages as school subjects: the usual pattern was for the home
language to be learnt as ‘first language’, and the ‘other official language’ was to
be learnt as second language. This meant that most Afrikaans L1 speakers gained
some competency in English.
The apartheid policies of the National Party government had disastrous conse-
quences in all areas of life. It was the attempted imposition of Afrikaans as a joint
medium of instruction with English in Black secondary schools that led to the tragic
Soweto riots of 1976, and resistance to Afrikaans was greatly increased. In terms of
language status, English benefited from this. English was the lingua franca of the
struggle (strengthening its position for the role it was later to play in the country),
and became the sole medium of instruction in nearly all Black secondary schools.
Thus, English played a dominant role in the education sector, with each province
setting its own standards for the teaching of English – the variety associated with
middle to upper class in each region was accepted as the provincial standard.
1.1.5. English in post-apartheid South Africa

In 1994, the National Party was ousted by the African National Congress in the
country’s first democratic elections, and Afrikaans was deposed from its role as
first official language. Along with English, Afrikaans was given legal status as
one of eleven official languages. In reality, the decline of Afrikaans in public roles
has been drastic, while the dominance of English is almost total, particularly in
education, where it is by far the dominant medium of instruction of secondary and
higher education. English is the language to aspire to in the New South Africa,
even though it is the L1 of only 8.2% of the population (Census 2001 results). It is
likely to retain this role for the foreseeable future.
Since 1994, English has only marginally increased as a home language among
Black people, though an increase in this statistic among middle-class Black people
residing in formerly ‘whites only’ suburbs is likely in the near future.
It is important to note that labels such as ‘White South African English’, ‘Black
South African English’, etc. are not intended to reflect the apartheid classifica-
tions; however, owing to South Africa’s legacy, the correlations between ethnic
affiliation and dialect of English remains significant. The old label, ‘South African
English’, used to refer only to WSAfE as the source variety, and L2 varieties were
given an additional descriptor: Black SAfE, Indian SAfE, etc. As these varieties
become or show the potential of becoming first language varieties, SAfE is held
over as a cover term (following de Klerk 1996), and all varieties of South African
English are given a descriptor. WSAfE continues to be the standard, and, follow-
ing the collapse of apartheid, children from ‘non-white’ communities who attend
(prestigious) schools which uphold WSAfE norms are increasingly adopting these
norms into their own speech. At the less prestigious end of the spectrum, WSAfE
varieties tend to merge with the second language Afrikaans English (generally
the norm of White Afrikaans – English bilinguals, or, in the Cape, so-called Cape
Flats English, mainly associated with ‘Coloured’ people. These labels reflect gen-
eralities, though, and are not in fact confined to apartheid-style ethnic groupings.
Regional variation in WSAfE is naturally associated with the strongest concen-
trations of White English speaking communities. These can broadly be divided
into (Western) Cape, Natal and Transvaal (Gauteng) English, and recognisable
Namibian and Zimbabwean varieties.
2. Phonology
2.1. Overview
The two main phonological indicators of White South African English are the be-
haviour of the vowels in KIT and BATH. The KIT vowel tends to ‘split’, so that there
is a clear allophonic variation between the close, front [I] and a somewhat more
central [ї]. The BATH vowel is characteristically open and back in the General and
Broad varieties of WSAfE. The tendency to monophthongise both MOUTH and
PRICE to [a˘] are also typical features of General and Broad WSAfE.
Consonantal indicators include the tendency for voiceless plosives to be un-
aspirated in stressed word-initial environments; [tj] tune and [dj] dune tend to be
realised as [tS] and [dZ] respectively; and I have noticed a strong tendency for /h/
to be voiced initially.
936 Sean Bowerman
2.2. The vowel system
Table 1. The Wells’ lexical sets for WSAfE
KIT [I] ~ [I_], [´]; [i]

TRAP [Q] > [E]
DRESS [e]
LOT [Å_] > [ç], [√]
STRUT [a_] > [å]
FOOT [U] > [¨]
FLEECE [i˘]
NURSE [Œ˘], [ø˘]
GOOSE [u˘], [¨˘] > [y˘]
THOUGHT [ç˘], [ø˘]
BATH [A_˘], [A˘]
FACE [eI] > [QI], [√I]
PRICE [aI], [a˘]
MOUTH [aU], [a˘]
CHOICE [çi]
[EU] > [«U] ,
GOAT [ø¨] > [øF_]
SQUARE [E˘], [e˘]
NEAR [I´]
CURE [u´]
HAPPY [I], [i]
LETTER [´]
COMMA [å], [´]
2.2.1. The short monophthongs

KIT
KIT is ‘split’ (see Lass 2002: 113f) between the realisations [I] and [I_] in General,
and [i] and [I_] to [´] in Broad. The split is an allophonic variation, with the fronter
realisation occurring in velar and palatal environments, and the more central one
occurring elsewhere. Cultivated WSAfE lacks this split, but KIT is a reliable socio-
linguistic marker for White South African English in general. Before […], the vowel
may be as far back as [µ_].
DRESS
This vowel is usually realised as [e], though it is lowered to [E] in Broad, some-
times approaching [Q], especially before […]. Some varieties of Broad and General
WSAfE place this vowel higher, around raised [e] or lowered [I].
TRAP
A slightly raised [Q] is the usual realisation for this vowel in Cultivated and Gen-
eral. In Broad varieties, it is often raised to [E], so that TRAP encroaches on DRESS
for some speakers. (Lanham 1967: 9)
LOT
The range of this vowel is between [Å_] and [ç]. Lass (2002: 115) noted a tendency
towards [√_] in younger Cape Town and Natal speakers of General WSAfE.
STRUT
This is typically a low to mid, centralised vowel ([a_] to [å]) in WSAfE.
FOOT
Generally realised as high, back centralised [U]. There is little variation, except
that there is very little lip rounding relative to other L1 varieties of English world-
wide. The pronunciation [U7] (with added lip-rounding) is associated with Broad,
but is more a feature of Afrikaans English.
2.2.2. The long monophthongs

FLEECE
In all varieties, a long close front unround vowel, [i˘].
NURSE
In Cultivated varieties, a somewhat central vowel approximating the RP [Œ˘]. In
General and Broad, it is more rounded, and fronter: [O˘] – [O˘_], as in French peu.
GOOSE
This vowel is usually high central [¨˘] or fronter, significantly more forward than
its RP equivalent [u˘]. Cultivated speakers, however, produce a vowel closer to
[u˘]. Lass (2002: 116) notes a tendency towards [y˘] in younger, and especially
female, General speakers.
BATH
Except in the Cultivated variety, this vowel is low and fully back, [A˘]. In Broad
varieties, there is a tendency to shorten, round and raise the vowel, so that it be-
comes [Å] – [ç] (Lass 2002: 117; Lanham 1967: 14). Cultivated speakers realise a
more central version, [A˘].
THOUGHT
938 Sean Bowerman
In Cultivated speech, the vowel is quite open, like RP [ç˘]. In General and Broad,
it is higher, [o˘]. Broad varieties also have THOUGHT in words like cloth and loss,
where LOT is more typical (Lass 2002: 116).
2.2.3. The diphthongs

FACE
The norm for Cultivated and General WSAfE varieties is [eI]. Lass notes a tenden-
cy for the onset to be opener the further one deviates from the standard (2002: 117),
even to [QI]. Broad White South African English is characterised by the onset be-
ing both open and back, [√I].
PRICE
The Cultivated WSAfE realisation is close to RP [aI]. In General and Broad, the
articulation of the first element is often monophthongised to [a˘]. In Broad, the
first element is somewhat back, but more forward and higher than in BATH, and
the offglide is often retained: [A_I]. See also MOUTH, below.
MOUTH
Cultivated usually has [A_U], while General again follows the tendency to monoph-
thongise diphthongs, and often has [A˘]. Broad has a much fronter onset, and re-
tains the offglide: [QU].
CHOICE
In all varieties, the realisation is usually [çI]; the onset can be as low as LOT in
older Cultivated WSAfE speakers (Lass 2002: 118).
GOAT
There is a tendency among some Cultivated speakers not to round the onset of this
diphthong, so that a Cultivated realisation ranges around [EU] or [øU]. The onset
is always rounded in General varieties, usually mid-low; but the offglide is more
central, sometimes unrounded, and there is once again a tendency to monophthon-
gise. Thus, ‘normal’ General pronunciations of GOAT would be [ø¨], [øF_] or [ø˘].
In Broad, the onset is much further back, and unrounded: [√U].
SQUARE
In Cultivated, square is pronounced [E´], as it is in RP. General speakers follow
the tendency to monophthongise, and usually realise the long vowel [E˘]. Broad
speakers monophthongise and raise, to [e˘].
NEAR
This is usually [I´] in all varieties, with a tendency to monophthongisation in
Broad, particularly after [j]. E.g. [njI˘] ‘near’.
CURE
This is usually realised as diphthongal [U´] in Cultivated and General; but there is
a growing trend, especially when the vowel does not occur after /j/ (sure), in Gen-
eral toward Broad’s monophthongal [o˘], perhaps slightly lower than THOUGHT.
This probably accounts for the spelling of you’re as your in everything from stu-
dent essays to newspaper advertisements.
HAPPY
The unstressed (or secondarily stressed – see Lass 2002: 119) vowel is usually
/i˘/, but half-long [i>]. Lanham marks this as an indicator of White South African
English (1968: 8).
LETTER
[´] in all varieties; very often omitted before another consonant: [kItn2] kitten.
COMMA
Usually [´], but may be as open as [å] in Cultivated WSAfE; and also in Broad
varieties close to Afrikaans English.
2.3. The Consonant System

2.3.1. Plosives
/p, b, t, d, k, g/
The ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless’ plosives are distinctive in White South African English,
and voiceless plosives are generally unaspirated in all positions in Broad White
South African English, serving as a marker for this subvariety (Lass 2002: 120).
Other varieties aspirate a voiceless plosive before a stressed syllable. The contrast
is neutralised in Broad.
Broad speakers tend to pronounce /t, d/ with some dentition.
2.3.2. Fricatives and affricates

/f, v, T, D, s, z, S, Z, x, h/
White South African English is one of very few varieties to have a velar fricative
phoneme /x/, (see Lass 2002: 120) but this is only in words borrowed from Af-
rikaans (e.g. gogga [xox´] = bug, insect) and Khoisan [x]amtoos (the name of a
river). Many speakers use the Afrikaans uvular fricative [X] rather than the velar.
The tendency for [T] to be realised as [f] is a stereotypical Broad feature, but is
more accurately associated with Afrikaans English (AfkE).
As in many varieties of English, word-final /v, D, z, Z/ are usually voiceless, and
are distinguished only by the length of the preceding vowel.
In Broad varieties close to AfkE, /h/ is realised as voiced [˙] before a stressed
vowel.
940 Sean Bowerman
2.3.3. Nasals
/m, n, N/
The nasals are not distinctive markers for any variety of White South African Eng-
lish; though /n/ may be dental [n5] before dental consonants.
2.3.4. Liquids
/j, w, r, l/
In Broad and some General WSAfE varieties, /j/ strengthens to /ƒ/ before a high
front vowel: yield [ƒI˘…d].
/r/ is usually postalveolar or retroflex [®] in Cultivated and General WSAfE,
while Broad varieties have [R] or sometimes even trilled [r]. The latter is more as-
sociated with the L2 Afrikaans English variety, though it is sometimes stigmatised
as a marker of Broad (Lass 2002: 121). WSAfE is non-rhotic, losing postvocalic
/r/, except (in some speakers) as a liaison between two words, when the /r/ is un-
derlying in the first (for a while, here and there etc.) However, intrusive /r/ is not
represented in other contexts: (law and order) [lo˘no˘d´]. The intervocalic hiatus
that is created by the absence of linking /r/ can be broken by vowel deletion, as
in the example just given; by a corresponding glide [lo˘Wńo˘d´], or by the inser-
tion of a glottal stop: [lo˘/ńo˘d´]. The latter is typical of Broad WSAfE. There
is some evidence of postvocalic /r/ in some Broad Cape varieties, typically in –er
suffixes (e.g. writer). This could be under the influence of Afrikaans (and it is a
feature of Afrikaans English); or perhaps a remnant of (non-RP) British English
from the Settlers. Postvocalic /r/ appears to be entering younger people’s speech
under the influence of American dialects. This is a development to be monitored;
as yet it is not vernacular.
/l/ is clear [l] syllable initially, and dark (velarised) […] syllable finally. When /l/
occurs at the end of a word, but before another word beginning with a vowel, it
tends to be realised as clear in Cultivated WSAfE (Lass 2002: 121).
Some (particularly older) Cultivated speakers retain the [w] ~ [w6] distinction
(as in witch ~ which, but this distinction is absent from General and Broad, which
have only [w].
3. Conclusion
The most salient feature of WSAfE is perhaps the behaviour of KIT, DRESS, TRAP:
TRAP and DRESS are raised (relative to RP and most other L1 varieties of Eng-
lish), and KIT is centralised. This has often been attributed to the influence of the
Afrikaans vowel system (see e.g. Lanham 1968: 7ff). Lass and Wright proposed
an alternative and more feasible alternative: that these three vowels are in fact in-
volved in a chain shift. Raising of British/RP TRAP in (early) WSAfE encroached

on DRESS, which itself raised (to keep the distinction), encroaching on KIT, which
was pushed across towards [I]. This can be illustrated as follows: the RP or input
vowel is shown in miniscules, and the WSAfE innovation in capitals:
kit → KIT
↑
DRESS
↑
dress
↑
BAT
↑
bat
Figure 1. The short front vowel chain shift in WSAfE
The diagram is taken from Lass (2002: 113); for a full elucidation of the chain
shift, see Lass and Wright (1986: 207ff).
This identifies WSAfE as a Southern Hemisphere English, as Australian Eng-
lish and New Zealand English also show raising in the high front vowels; though
neither have yet achieved the push from [I] to more centralised [I_], realising low-
ered [i] instead. AusE and NZE also share /i/ in happy with WSAfE. WSAfE and
NZE share /A˘/ in dance, glass, etc. (Trudgill and Hannah 1994:30). Some marked
distinctions between WSAfE and AusE and NZE are:
– the behaviour of FLEECE, which is diphthongal [Ii] ~ [Ii] in the latter varieties
(Lass 2002: 116)
– the backness of BATH: fully back [A˘] in WSAfE, contrasting with the fully
frontal [a] in AusE and NZE (Trudgill and Hannah 1994: 30).
The expansion of WSAfE to younger middle class members of other ethnic groups
who have been exposed to different varieties of SAfE is a recent development,
which is bound to have an impact on the variety in the future. The changes and
conservations evoked by this development will be monitored with keen interest.
Selected references
ROM.
942 Sean Bowerman
Lanham, Leonard W.
1967 The Way We Speak. Pretoria, Van Schaik.
1982 English in South Africa. In: Bailey and Görlach (eds.), 324–352.
1996 A history of English in South Africa. In: de Klerk (ed.), 19–34.
Lass, Roger
2002 South African English. In: Mesthrie (ed.), 104–126.
Lass, Roger and Susan Wright
1986 Endogeny vs contact: “Afrikaans influence” on South African English. English
Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah
1994 International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English. London:
Edward Arnold. (3rd ed.)
Watermeyer, Susan
1996 Afrikaans English. In: de Klerk (ed.), 99–124.
Black South African English: phonology*
Bertus van Rooy
1. Introduction
There is little doubt that an African variety of English is very much part of the
communicative economy of the new South Africa (for which I shall use the label
Black South African English, in short BlSAfE). Since 1994, the year that ush-
ered in a new democratic order, this variety has become prominent in parliament,
administration, the media and so forth. Whereas the segregative and oppressive
practices of apartheid had led to the development of a relatively homogenous
second language variety, BlSAfE is today becoming slightly more diffuse. This
reflects a new diversity of lifestyles, educational and cultural mixing, which sees
English not only as the main language of a multilingual Black elite, but even mak-
ing inroads into some homes. For some children English has become the first
language. The hope persists in some quarters of South Africa that Black students
should ideally have command over their first language and a variety of English
that was more-or-less standard in grammar and not too deviant in accent/intona-
tion from the southern British norms that have hitherto prevailed in broadcasting.
Where the ideal fails (and it does for almost all but those educated in latter-day
multi-racial or private schools in which Black pupils are in a minority), the educa-
tional system is held to blame (rightly in some instances). From studies of English
elsewhere, however, we are also aware that even where the educational system is
reasonably sound and on the side of the pupil (which was seldom the case in the
Bantu education system of apartheid South Africa) an indigenised (or nativised)
form of English is likely to develop. Whilst such a variety may not have a fully
acknowledged status in its country of origin, it is more or less acceptable even in
informal educational contexts.
Research on BlSAfE has understandably had a predominantly pedagogical bias.
One approach involves an older prescriptivism which sought to pinpoint the dis-
tortions that English teachers ‘suffered’ in their L2 pupils, often attributing it to
‘interference’ from the mother tongues. Another trend which was motivated by
developmental perspectives aimed at producing educational materials for different
levels of schooling, focused more on written discourse than an already existing
grammar of Black English. A third trend that has become prominent is one that
aims at describing the grammar of Black English, partly by presenting its depar-
tures from standard English and by exploring the historical and cultural influences
on the development of this new variety.
944 Bertus van Rooy
With the exception of work by Hundleby (1963) in the Eastern Cape, the pho-
nology of BlSAfE has not been studied in any depth until recently. There have
been a few publications examining aspects of BlSAfE pronunciation in the 1980s
and 1990s (see bibliography on CD). A systematic attempt to study this variety
has been initiated by Daan Wissing with a workshop on BlSAfE in January 2000
(proceedings circulated among the about 70 participants at the workshop), and
subsequent publication of a volume of articles in Supplement 38 of the South
African Journal of Linguistics, with five papers examining aspects of the pronun-
ciation of BlSAfE (including Van Rooy 2000; Van Rooy and Van Huyssteen 2000;
Van der Pas, Wissing and Zonneveld 2000). Subsequent work includes Van Rooy
(2002) on stress placement, and Wissing (2002) who examined vowel perception
and evaluated claims about differences in the pronunciation of speakers with dif-
ferent native languages.
The research on BlSAfE offers a picture that is very similar to work done on va-
rieties of African English elsewhere on the continent. Vowel contrasts characteris-
tic of the native varieties of English are reduced by neutralisation of the tense/lax
contrast and the avoidance of central vowels, particularly schwa. Consonants are
realised largely similar to native varieties, although consonant cluster simplifica-
tion is observed in some cases. Stress placement is different from native varieties,
the speech is syllable-timed rather than stress-timed and other prosodic aspects are
also different, particularly in the more frequent occurrence of pragmatic emphasis,
leading to a different intonation structure of spoken BlSAfE.
One important caveat must be stated before examining the phonology of Bl-
SAfE. In work within the World/New Englishes paradigm, it is customary to
distinguish different varieties of outer circle Englishes. These different varieties
are often labelled as basilect, mesolect and acrolect, although these constitute a
continuum. In previous work, I have already adopted this classification system
and will continue to use it here, focussing on the mesolectal form of BlSAfE, but
contrasting it where possible with the acrolectal variety. The basilectal variety has
not been researched sufficiently to allow any claims made about it. The mesolectal
variety described in this article is spoken fluently by educated speakers, but be-
cause of salient features of pronunciation (like vowel mergers) and certain features
of grammar it would not be judged as overtly prestigious by speakers of the variety
or other South Africans.
This chapter offers a survey of the phonological features of BlSAfE that have
been established with some degree of certainty. In addition, to the extent that it
is possible to distinguish between a mesolectal and acrolectal variety of BlSAfE,
the different features of these two lects are outlined. Vowels are considered first,
followed by consonants and selected suprasegmental features. I draw largely on
my own previous research and that of my colleague Daan Wissing. In addition, I
rely in a few cases on on-going, as yet unpublished data analyses of the speech of
about forty speakers from the African Speech Technology database (www.ast.sun.
Black South African English: phonology 945
ac.za) and detailed phonetic transcriptions, based on acoustic criteria, of informal

spoken conversation of seven speakers from diverse mother tongue backgrounds,
age groups and on different positions on the lectal continuum. The contribution of
other researchers is reflected in the extended bibliography on the CD.
2. Vowels
Like most other African varieties of English, BlSAfE is characterised by the ab-
sence of the tense/lax contrast and central vowels in the mesolectal variety. The
typical realisations of vowels are represented in Table 1 below. The basis for the
presentation in this table is the work of Van Rooy and Van Huyssteen (2000), but
subsequent analyses were undertaken of data within the African Speech Technol-
ogy project, particularly to refine the transcriptions of diphthongs.
Table 1. The vowels of Black South African English (mesolect) – summary
KIT i FLEECE i PRICE √I

FOOT u GOOSE u CHOICE çI
TRAP E DRESS E SQUARE E
NURSE E THOUGHT ç NEAR e
LOT ç FORCE ç GOAT ç > çU
CLOTH ç NORTH ç CURE o
STRUT A_ START A_ FACE EI ~ eI > E
commA A_ BATH A_ MOUTH çU > o
lettER A_ PALM A_
happY I horsES i About E~´
The phonetic quality of the monophthongs, transcribed as tense vowels through-

out, is in actual fact somewhat variable, and often a realisation that is intermediate
between a tense and lax vowel is found. For instance, it is not uncommon to find
that the vowel in both FLEECE and KIT are realised with a first formant value of
350Hz and second formant of just below 2000Hz by male speakers. Vowel length
is variable. In terms of our current understanding, there is no systematic use of
vowel length to distinguish between pairs like FLEECE and KIT, but lengthening
may take place as cue for stress placement. Thus, length may perform a supraseg-
mental function, but it is not distinctive at phonemic level.
Central vowels are realised as mid front vowels or as central low vowels. Typi-
cally, the tense vowel in NURSE is realised as [E]. A schwa in the final syllable of
native varieties of SAfE, particularly if the syllable is open, is usually realised as a
946 Bertus van Rooy
low vowel in BlSAfE, transcribed as [A_] in Table 1 above, but its phonetic quality
ranges from slightly backed to slightly fronted. In the majority of all cases, the
second formant value of this vowel is below 1500Hz for male voices, but seldom
below 1300Hz.
More variability is observed with the realisation of the vowel in the first syl-
lable of About, and other unstressed vowels that do not occur in final syllables.
Previous research (particularly Van Rooy and Van Huyssteen 2000, also see refer-
ences there) suggests that in syllables other than open final syllables, the domi-
nant allophone for native varieties’ schwa is [E], while the allophone [´] is also
observed but with less frequency. An analysis of further data from the African
Speech Technology databases suggests that the frequency of schwa might actu-
ally be higher, although distributed slightly differently than in native varieties of
English, because of differences in stress placement between mesolect BlSAfE and
other varieties, but the main finding remains that the forms [E] and [´] are the two
variants in perhaps roughly equal distribution and by far the two most frequent
forms in unstressed syllables. There also appears to be a preference for letter
pronunciation, selecting the allophone [ç], in the case of items spelled with the
letter ‘o’ in unstressed syllables, such as the second syllable of the word ‘oppor-
tunity’. Finally, while the examples analysed are not sufficient to allow a definite
statement, there appears to be a tendency (80% or more of the analysed cases, but
type frequency low in the corpus) to pronounce a lax [U] in final closed syllables
between a labial obstruent in onset position and a final lateral [l], for example in
the words ‘double’ or ‘careful’.
In summary, there are essentially five contrastive vowel phonemes in mesolec-
tal BlSAfE: /i/, /E/, /a/, /ç/ and /u/. Perception studies by Wissing (2002) confirm
this phonemic structure of mesolect BlSAfE, and also indicate that there is very
little difference between BlSAfE speakers with different native languages.
The diphthongs are very often realised as monophthongs. Van Rooy and Van
Huyssteen (2000) claim that more centralised acoustic values are used, but main-
tain that too little tongue movement (as judged by an analysis of movement in
the first and second formant values) takes place to warrant transcription of these
phones as diphthongs. Subsequent analysis of diphthongs in the African Speech
Technology speech corpus reveals that a number of diphthongs are found, particu-
larly in PRICE, CHOICE, FACE and MOUTH, and sometimes also in GOAT. These
diphthongs are all rising diphthongs, and are realised as diphthongs in most variet-
ies of English. The remainder of the diphthongs of SAfE, the centring diphthongs
that occur in the words SQUARE, NEAR and CURE, are almost always realised as
monophthongs in BlSAfE, but this happens in other varieties of English as well,
notably many American English varieties. Since mesolectal forms of BlSAfE
avoid central vowels otherwise, it is not surprising that these diphthong phonemes
that have a central vowel as their offset target are realised by monophthong phones.
One can conclude that there are six contrastive phonemes, additional to the five
used for monophthongs, which are mainly used for the diphthongs of native variet-
ies of SAfE: /√I/, /çI/, /aU/, /eI/, /e/ and /o/. Hundleby (1963) and others after him
have claimed to observe the occurrence of vowel-glide-vowel sequences as reali-
sations of the diphthongs in the speech of BlSAfE. While a small number of such
cases were observed in the data, they account for less than 1% of the realisations
of all the vowel types represented by diphthongs in SAfE, and less than 10% for
any one of the separate vowel types. Also, there is no indication of a systematic
use of vowel length to realise the diphthong phonemes, with no single diphthong
having a long vowel allophone in more than 20% of all observed cases.
As pointed out earlier, it is important to consider differences between the pro-
nunciation of the acrolect and mesolect varieties of BlSAfE. Apart from Hundleby
(1963), such differences have not received serious consideration. In the discus-
sion to follow, I rely on results of my own on-going research into this variety.
Table 2. The vowels of Black South African English (acrolect) – summary
KIT I>i FLEECE i>I PRICE √I > √

FOOT U>u GOOSE U>u CHOICE çI
TRAP E~Q DRESS E SQUARE E~e
NURSE Œ~´>E THOUGHT ç NEAR e
LOT ç~Å FORCE ç GOAT o ~ ç > Ú
CLOTH ç~Å NORTH ç CURE /
STRUT √ > A_ START A_ ~ √ FACE e ~ EI
commA ´ BATH A_ ~ √ MOUTH aU > ç
lettER ´ PALM A_ ~ √
happY I>i horsES I~´ About ´
A comparison between the mesolect and acrolect data suggests that the acrolect
is closer to native varieties of SAfE in many respects, but at the same time, it is
characterised by more variability rather than less. A particularly noteworthy prop-
erty of the acrolect is the use of both tense and lax monophthong phonemes. In
some cases, there is a degree of contrast between pairs such as KIT x FLEECE, LOT
x NORTH and STRUT x START, but many exceptions are also observed. In the case
of the pair FOOT x GOOSE, the lax allophone occurs far more frequently than the
tense allophone, but no consistent contrast/opposition is maintained.
Related to the use of lax vowels in the acrolect form is the use of central vowels,
and most significantly, the schwa. Reduced vowels occur in the acrolect form of
BlSAfE in ways very similar to native varieties of SAfE, and the low vowel phone
as realisation of a native schwa has disappeared almost completely.
948 Bertus van Rooy
In comparison to the five phonemes of the mesolect, /i/, /E/, /a/, /ç/ and /u/,
the acrolect also uses /I/, /Œ/ and /√/ as phonemes, with /Q/ and /Å/ emerging as
phonemes, although not with enough consistency to regard them as established
phonemes yet.
The diphthongs are perhaps the area where the acrolect and mesolect are more
similar than other aspects of the vowel system. Lots of variation is observed in
the speakers’ rendition of the phonemes represented by the words in Table 2. In
general, variants of the same five diphthongs, the rising diphthongs, occur that
also occur in the mesolect, while the centring diphthongs are realised as monoph-
thongs in the acrolect as well. At the time of writing, I have insufficient evidence
about the realisation of the vowel in cure to make any strong claims, but suspect
that it will be realised as monophthong [o], similar to the mesolect. There are no
further diphthong phonemes in the speech of the acrolect speakers, as compared
to the mesolect speakers.
One last comment must be made about the vowel pronunciation of BlSAfE. In
white native varieties of SAfE, there is a unique vowel contrast, usually repre-
sented by the pair KIT vs. SIT. KIT is pronounced similar to major British varieties,
but SIT is realised with a vowel quality closer to schwa, or at least a much more
centralised variant of [I]. In the mesolectal variety of BlSAfE, both these words
are realised by a high front vowel, but in the acrolect form, the contrast is some-
times maintained, with the allophones [I] and [´] both observed with roughly equal
frequency. Thus, while not with the same consistency of native varieties of SAfE,
acrolect BlSAfE has an emerging contrast between KIT and SIT too.
3. Consonants
Hundleby (1963: 101) already claimed that the consonants of BlSAfE are more
similar to native varieties of SAfE than the vowels, a claimed confirmed by most
subsequent publications. The most important phonemes and allophones of me-
solect and acrolect BlSAfE are presented in Table 3.
Table 3. The consonants of Black South African English
Phoneme Mesolect allophones Acrolect allophones
/p/ [p, ph] [p, ph]

/t/ [t, th] [t, th]
/k/ [k, kh] [k, kh]
/b/ [b, b8] [b, b8]
/d/ [d, d8] [d, d8]
Table 3. (continued) The consonants of Black South African English
Phoneme Mesolect allophones Acrolect allophones
/g/ [g,] [, ]

/f/ [f] [f]
/T/ [t] > [T] [T]
/s/ [s] [s]
/S/ [S] ~ [s] [S]
/v/ [v] [v]
/D/ [d] [D] > [d]
/z/ [z] [z]
// [s] > [z] []
/tS/ [S] [S] ~ [tS]
/d/ [d] ~ [] [d] > [S] ~ []
/m/ [m] [m]
/n/ [n] [n]
// [] []
/l/ [l] [l]
/r/ [r] [r] ~ [®]
/h/ [˙] [h] > [˙]
/w/ [w] [w]
/j/ [j] [j]
Plosives in BlSAfE are similar to native varieties of SAfE in respect of manner

and place of articulation. Final devoicing takes place very consistently, while re-
gressive voicing assimilation is observed in the speech of Tswana speakers, but it
is not certain if this is true for all BlSAfE speakers and has not been researched yet.
A slightly more widespread distribution of word initial devoicing of [] has been
reported and observed in some of my data, but it is not a consistent phenomenon,
and there is no suggestion of the neutralisation of the voicing contrast between the
phonemes /k/ and /g/. In the acrolect form, most of these features are maintained,
so there is little difference between the two varieties of BlSAfE in this respect.
Aspiration occurs regularly, and is phonemic in all the Southern Bantu lan-
guages. In the mesolect, aspiration is present in slightly more than half of the
syllable-initial plosive onsets (excluding those followed by sonorants before the
nucleus vowel), while this increases to about three quarters in the acrolect. Some
950 Bertus van Rooy
aspiration is also observed in other positions, but usually in less than a quarter of
all cases (see Van Rooy 2000 on the mesolect).
The dental fricatives /T, D/ in mesolectal BlSAfE are usually realised as plo-
sives, with both dental and alveolar articulations observed, but nothing further
back towards the post-alveolar place of articulation, whereas in the acrolect two
thirds or more of these phonemes are realised as fricatives, with some inter-speak-
er variation. The palatal fricatives /S, / tend to become alveolar [s, z], particularly
in the case of the voiced //, while the acrolectal speakers again approximate the
phonetic quality of the native varieties of SAfE more closely. In the case of all
these fricatives, the voiceless /T/ and /S/ are more likely to be realised as fricatives,
while the voiced /D/ and // are more likely realised as plosives. Final devoicing
also affects fricatives consistently in the acrolect and mesolect.
The affricates /tS, d/ show lots of variation in the mesolect and the acrolect. In
the mesolect, the voiceless /tS/ is realised as fricative [S] in most cases, while /d/
is realised by at least five different allophones, including [d] and [S] each occur-
ring in about one third of the observed cases. In the acrolect, the allophones [tS]
and [d] occur in about half of all cases, with the fricative variants [S] and [] be-
ing observed in most other cases.
The sonorants are generally very similar to native varieties of SAfE. The nasals
show little if any difference, while the liquid /l/ has some co-articulatory velarisa-
tion in the environment of back vowels, but perhaps less so than in native varieties
of SAfE. The rhotic /r/ is generally realised by a trilled [r] in the mesolect, and
this remains the case in just more than half of all observed cases in the acrolect,
although the approximant [®] is observed in the remainder of the cases. The glot-
tal sound /h/ is usually realised as a voiced [˙] in the mesolect, but the acrolect
is characterised by a voiceless [h] in the majority of cases. The other two glides,
/j/ and /w/ are very similar in BlSAfE and native varieties of SAfE (cf. Van Rooy
2000).
4. Suprasegmental structure
Two aspects of suprasegmental structure have been examined in some detail. Van
Rooy (2000) presents an analysis of syllable structure restrictions in the mesolect,
and Van der Pas, Wissing and Zonneveld (2000), and Van Rooy (2002) analyse
stress placement in the mesolect. Very little is known about the acrolect, and it
will therefore not be discussed here.
The Bantu languages generally do not allow consonant clusters in the onsets of
syllables, and do not allow syllable codas. BlSAfE is clearly not bound by the
syllable structure constraints of the Bantu languages. Van Rooy (2000) indicates
that onset clusters in BlSAfE are generally no different from other varieties of
SAfE. More recent data analysis suggests that the rhotic phoneme /r/ is under
pressure to delete in onset clusters, particularly in spontaneous speech as opposed

to read speech. Some simplification occurs in the codas, particularly where more
than one obstruent is present in the same coda. In cases such as perfect or eats, a
plosive is likely to be deleted. Faithful realisation of two underlying obstruents
in syllable codas occurs in less than a third of all observed cases, but it is uncer-
tain if other varieties of English in South Africa are not perhaps subject to similar
simplification – the relevant comparative data have not been examined to the best
of my knowledge.
Previous work on stress in BlSAfE offers very little conclusive analysis or in-
terpretation. Generally, researchers claim that stress in BlSAfE is different from
native varieties of SAfE and present examples of such differences. Interpretation
is often restricted to the claim that the penultimate lengthening phenomenon of
the Bantu languages is transferred to BlSAfE. Van Rooy (2002) examines a small
corpus of data from mesolect speakers and concludes that there is indeed a highly
systematic system for stress placement in the mesolect BlSAfE. A very salient
property is the syllable-timed rhythm of BlSAfE, as opposed to the stress-timed
rhythm of most native varieties (Wissing, Gustafson and Coetzee 2000). Conse-
quently, Van Rooy (2002) argues that there is no organisation of syllables into met-
rical feet in BlSAfE. Stress assignment is on the second last syllable, e.g. sevénty,
except when the final syllable is superheavy, i.e. it has a tensed vowel (usually a
diphthong) and coda consonant, e.g. campáígn or any vowel and a consonant clus-
ter in the coda, e.g. contrást. In such cases, stress is assigned to the final syllable.
In older research, a few relevant observations are made about other aspects
of prosodic structure in BlSAfE. Gennrich-de Lisle (1985) claims that tone/in-
formation units in BlSAfE are shorter than in native varieties of SAfE; there are
consequently more syllables and words that receive semantic stress than in native
varieties of SAfE. Furthermore, they identify a general lowering of pitch through
the course of a sentence, combined with a weakening of the intensity. No recent
work has been done on these properties, and too little is known about the acrolect
to judge whether this is also true for the acrolect.
* Part of the introduction was originally prepared by R. Mesthrie in connection with the
companion piece on BlSAfE syntax. I wish to acknowledge my colleague Daan Wissing
for his contribution to my research and this article.
Selected references
ROM
952 Bertus van Rooy
Gennrich-de Lisle, Daniela

1985 Theme in conversational discourse: Problems experienced by speakers of
Black South African English, with particular reference to the role of prosody
in conversational synchrony. M.A. thesis, Department of Linguistics, Rhodes
University.
Hundleby, C. E.
1963 Xhosa-English pronunciation in the south-east Cape. Ph.D. thesis, Rhodes
University.
Van der Pas, Brigit, Daan Wissing and Wim Zonneveld
2000 Parameter resetting in metrical phonology: the case of Setswana and English.
South African Journal of Linguistics Supplement 38: 55–87.
Van Rooy, Bertus
2000 The consonants of BSAE: current knowledge and future prospects. South
African Journal of Linguistics Supplement 38: 35–54.
2002 Stress placement in Tswana English: the makings of a coherent system. World
Englishes 21: 145–160.
Van Rooy, Bertus and Gerhard B. van Huyssteen
2000 The vowels of BSAE: current knowledge and future prospects. South African
Journal of Linguistics Supplement 38: 15–33.
Wissing, Daan
2002 Black South African English: a new English? Observations from a phonetic
viewpoint. World Englishes 21: 129–144.
Wissing, Daan, Kjell Gustafson and Andries Coetzee
2000 Temporal organisation in some varieties of South African English: Syllable
compression effects in different types of foot structures. In: Daan Wissing
(ed.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Black South African English, 59–68.
Linguistics Society of Southern Africa Conference, Cape Town, 12–14
January 2000.
Indian South African English: phonology
Rajend Mesthrie
1. Introduction
South African Indian English (henceforth InSAfE) is worthy of the attention of

sociolinguists for a variety of reasons. It offers the opportunity of examining in
a relatively fossilised form (on account of former rigid segregative tendencies in
South Africa) the evolution of a dialect of English under less than perfect condi-
tions concerning educational and social contact with target-language speakers. It
provides, again in a relatively fossilised form, the opportunity of studying the
changes a language undergoes as it shifts from L2 to L1. Indian languages have
existed in large numbers in South Africa, chiefly in the province of Natal (now
KwaZulu-Natal), since 1860. Their existence in this country is ultimately a con-
sequence of the abolition of slavery in the European colonies. Colonial planters in
many parts of the world looked to migrant labour from Asian countries to fill the
gap caused by the understandable reluctance of slaves to remain on the plantations
once they were legally free. The British-administered Indian government permit-
ted the recruiting of labourers to a variety of colonial territories. This resulted in
a great movement of hundreds of thousands of Indian labourers first to Mauritius
(1834), then British Guyana (1838), Jamaica and Trinidad (1844), and subsequent-
ly to various other West Indian islands, Natal, Suriname and Fiji. Although Natal
was a new colony that had not employed slave labour, the policy of consigning the
indigenous, mainly Zulu-speaking population into `reserves’ created a demand for
Indian labour on the sugar, tea and coffee plantations. Just over 150 000 workers
came to Natal on indentured contracts between 1860 and 1911. A large majority
chose to stay on in South Africa on expiry of their five or ten year contracts.
The languages spoken by the indentured workers were as follows:
(a) From the South of India chiefly Tamil and Telugu, and in small numbers – Ma-
layalam and Kannada. The latter two languages did not have sufficiently large
numbers of speakers to survive beyond a generation in South Africa.
(b) From the north of India a variety of Indo-European languages including Bho-
jpuri, Awadhi, Magahi, Kanauji, Bengali, Rajasthani, Braj, etc. These dialects
coalesced to form one South African vernacular, usually termed ‘Hindi’.
(c) A small number of Muslims amongst the indentured labourers (about 10%
among North Indians and slightly fewer amongst South Indians) would have
spoken the village language of their area as well as varieties of Urdu.
954 Rajend Mesthrie
From 1875 onwards smaller numbers of Indians of trading background arrived in

Natal, establishing languages like Gujarati, Konkani and Meman which are still
spoken today in South Africa. In addition to these spoken languages people of
Hindu background used Sanskrit as their prestige religious language, while Mus-
lims looked to Arabic for this purpose.
The sociolinguistic milieu in which Indians found themselves was a particularly
complex one. Not only did they lack a knowledge of English and Zulu, but they
would not always have been able to converse amongst themselves. In particular
people from the north, speaking Indo-European languages, would not have been
able to understand people from the south who spoke Dravidian languages. Fur-
thermore only about 2% of incoming Indians had a knowledge of English (these
would have been Christian Indians, some of whom had been recruited as teachers
or a small proportion of the trading-class Indians). Under these circumstances
a pidgin English might have arisen, but for the prior existence of a Zulu-based
pidgin, Fanakalo. The learning of English was a relatively gradual process (see
Mesthrie 1992: 11-33), though Gandhi mentions the use of English by some ur-
ban youths amongst themselves, in a newspaper article of 1909 – i.e. before the
end of the period of indenture. Multilingualism and the lack of a lingua franca of
Indian origin resulted in a shift to English (not without regrets and resistance) by
the 1960s, when English started to be introduced as a language of the home. The
period of language shift can be thought of as gradual or rapid, depending on one’s
defining criteria. As 1960 was exactly one hundred years since the first immigra-
tions, the period of shift might seem a gradual one; but as 1960 was also less than
fifty years since the last shipload, the period is perhaps not all that gradual.
The kind of English that stabilised was, as I have already indicated, a very spe-
cial one, given that the policy of apartheid (1948-1991) kept Indian children away
from first-language speakers of English descent, in hospitals, homes, neighbour-
hoods, public facilities, schools, and even universities. The result is that whilst
being quite South African in some respects (aspects of lexis and phonology), it
is a recognisably different variety of South African English. The peculiarities of
apartheid society have ensured that there is continuity between IndE and InSAfE
(in aspects of pronunciation, lexis and syntax). The relationship between the two
varieties is not straightforward, however. Some of the early input into InSAfE
was indeed directly from India, but of a diverse nature. This included: (a) the first
generation of clerks, interpreters and teachers brought over in small numbers, (b)
indentured workers of Christian background, mainly from South India, (c) some
traders from India with a previous knowledge of English and (d) political leaders
from India (e.g. Gandhi, Sastri, Gokhale). But given the fact that most first genera-
tion immigrants did not learn English we should be careful not to overestimate the
links between IndE and InSAfE. Although the second and third generations learnt
English without direct contact with India, conditions of acquisition and teaching
were such that there was considerable transfer from the Indian languages. This
Indian South African English: phonology 955
was a factor that ensured further continuity between InSAfE and IndE. However,
in South Africa the substrate comprised of both Indic and Dravidian languages,
causing a blend of Indic and Dravidian influence in InSAfE that I suspect is not
found in India. And, of course, the features of L1 English of Natal as well as
contact with Zulu and (to a small extent) Afrikaans made InSAfE further diverge
from IndE.
InSAfE uses a great many words of Indian origin and a great many neologisms
from other sources (see Mesthrie 1992b, a lexicon comprising about 1400 of such
items). Only a few of these have passed into the wider society. These tend to be
terms pertaining to vegetables (e.g. dhania ‘coriander’) and culinary terms (e.g.
masala ‘ground spices’, roti ‘flat, round unleavened bread’, bunny chow ‘half a
loaf of bread stuffed with curry’).
2. Segmental phonology
InSAfE has been studied mostly as a contact variety that involves a great deal
of syntactic variation. If less attention has been paid to its phonetics, it has to do
with the paucity of researchers working on the accents of varieties of South Af-
rican English (SAfE) rather than any intrinsic qualities of InSAfE phonetics. On
the contrary, InSAfE holds the promise of subtle variations along the following
dimensions:
(a) Five substrate languages belonging to two distinct language families: Dra-
vidian (Tamil, Telugu) and Indo-European (Bhojpuri-Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu,
Konkani and Sindhi/Meman dialect);
(b) Links with IndE (the English of India);
(c) Links with South African varieties of English, especially varieties spoken in
KwaZulu-Natal;
(d) Emergence of a core InSAfE phonology as younger speakers lose contact with
the languages of their grandparents’ generation;
(e) Ongoing acculturation amongst middle-class speakers to “General” and “Cul-
tivated” varieties of SAfE as the rigid barriers between young people of differ-
ent backgrounds weaken, especially in the post-apartheid schoolgrounds;
(f) Regional variation within InSAfE, involving the main dialect in KwaZulu-Na-
tal and smaller pockets in other provinces – Gauteng, Eastern Cape and West-
ern Cape.
The description below is based on my analysis of a cross section of tape recordings
carried out in the mid-1980s, reported in Mesthrie (1992: 34-43) for fieldwork,
(1992:136-141) for phonetics. These have been supplemented by more recent re-
cordings in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In addition I rely on earlier discussions
by Bailey (c 1985, unpublished notes), Naidoo (1971) and Bughwan (1970).
956 Rajend Mesthrie
Table 1. The vowels of Indian South African English (mesolect) – summary
KIT ї>I>F_ FLEECE i˘ PRICE aI

FOOT U>F GOOSE u˘>u˘ CHOICE çI
TRAP E>Q DRESS e>e_ >E_ SQUARE e˘
NURSE Œ˘>e˘ THOUGHT ç˘>Å NEAR ijE>I´
LOT Å>ç˘ FORCE ç˘>Å GOAT oU
CLOTH Å NORTH ç˘>Å CURE jç˘
STRUT √ START A˘ FACE eI
commA A˘ BATH A˘ MOUTH aU
lettER E PALM A˘
happY i˘ horsES ´ About E>a
2.1. The short monophthongs

1. KIT: As with general SAfE, InSAfE shows a ‘KIT-split’. That is, the value
before or after velar and glottal consonants is [] (as in kit, big, sing, hit, sick,
give). The most common realisation in other contexts is a centralised vowel
[] (as in bit, fit, sit, bin, etc.). Further retraction before /l/ as in bill, kill, will
to [] or [] is possible.
2. DRESS: The usual realisation of this vowel is [e] or a slightly centralised [ё],
which differs from raised equivalents in general SAfE and [] in varieties of
British and American English. Before /l/ the latter ([]) does occur with some
centralising, as in bell, sell, etc.
3. TRAP: The usual realisation of this vowel is a lowered [] or raised [æ]. In
this regard it differs from raised equivalents like [e] in broad SAfE or fully
lowered equivalents like [æ] in RP and general American English.
4. FOOT: The usual realisation in InSAfE is a weakly-rounded back []. An un-
rounded, lowered variant [] may also occur. Centralising of the vowel, which
is an increasing feature of varieties of L1 English world-wide, is not associ-
ated with core InSAfE. However, younger speakers in contact with general
SAfE may show this feature in certain non-vernacular styles.
5. STRUT: The usual realisation is [], which is a low back vowel. Although some
centralisation is possible within the InSAfE spectrum it is never as fronted as
younger, general SAfE centralised [+]. Allophones are more retracted before
velars, as in duck and rug, which have [].
6. LOT: The usual realisation is [ ], a weakly-rounded back vowel. The unround-
ing and centralising that one finds among younger, general SAfE speakers, is
not an option in InSAfE. There is some sharing between elements of the LOT
and CAUGHT sets among older InSAfE speakers. In vernacular styles the fol-
lowing may be lengthened to [ç]: lot, coffee, pond, pod, boss, salt.
Before nasals there is an age-graded difference in the treatment of the LOT
vowel. Some older speakers have [] in words like comment, condemn, non-
whites. This is probably an inheritance from IndE, as speakers attempted an
approximation of schwa. Younger InSAfE speakers generally produce [ ]
here, though non- allows [ ] or [ç]. Related words like tomato and connect
are discussed under schwa (section 2.4).
2.2. The long monophthongs

7. NURSE: The most usual variant is [
], a mid-central, unrounded vowel, slight-
ly closer than RP [
]. A variant amongst middle-class, and mostly female
speakers, is similar to RP [
], but possibly overshooting this target to a slight-
ly fronted and lowered equivalent. Older speakers of an Indo-European back-
ground (chiefly Bhojpuri-Hindi and Urdu) use [] or [e] here. The rounding
of the NURSE vowel that one finds in some varieties of SAfE does not occur
in InSAfE.
8. FLEECE: The FLEECE vowel is uniformly [i] as in all L1 varieties of SAfE.
9. GOOSE: This vowel tends to retain a back, rounded quality [u]; the centralised
and weakly-rounded quality [u] spreading in young peoples' L1 English
worldwide is not generally part of InSAfE. Younger InSAfE speakers may
well have the latter [u] as a stylistic option. After palatalised consonants as in
few, news the centralised [u] is the norm.
10. PALM: [] is a low back, unrounded vowel. It is neither as back as its equiva-
lent in broad SAfE nor subject to raising or rounding.
11. THOUGHT: The usual vowel in InSAfE is [ç], a half-open, weakly-rounded,
back vowel. For some speakers raising to [o] occurs in formal styles, under
influence of general SAfE. A less prestigious variant involves shortening to
[ ] in words like taught (vernacular form [t t], shorts [ ts], caught [k t],
north [n t]). There is thus a fair amount of overlap in the membership of the
sets LOT and THOUGHT (see 6 above in section 2.1). After /w/ in words like
war, warm, water the usual vowel is [], not the raised and rounded [ç] of
general SAfE, RP, and other varieties.
12. START: Postvocalic /r/ is not pronounced in InSAfE, the only exception being
the letter r itself, which is pronounced [r] with a weak trill. The usual vowel
here is [].
958 Rajend Mesthrie
13. NORTH: The usual vowel here is [ç], which is a half-open, weakly-rounded,

back vowel. Raising to [o] does not occur, except as a prestige variant for
some speakers in formal styles. A less prestigious variant involves shortening
to [ ] in words like taught, shorts, caught, north (see 11 above).
14. FORCE: FORCE behaves the same as NORTH. That is the usual vowel is [ç],
with [o] a prestige variant in formal styles. A less prestigious variant involves
shortening to [ ] in words like sports, horse, orphan.
2.3. The diphthongs

15. FACE: The only realisation is [e]. The first element tends to be short, as is the
[] glide. In this regard InSAfE differs from varieties of SAfE which involve
varying degrees of lowering, with centralising of the [e].
16. GOAT: The usual diphthong here is [o] with a weakly-rounded first element.
For some speakers the glide [] is short, resulting in [o] as a variant. How-
ever, monophthongal [o], as in varieties of northern British English, is rare.
The range of the initial element /o/ ranges from back to central-back, but does
not approach fully-central or fronted or lowered variants found in other variet-
ies of SAfE.
17. PRICE: The usual variant here is [a], with degrees of centralising of the [a].
The glide element [] is not weakened in contrast to other varieties of SAfE,
including local prestige 'white' varieties in KwaZulu-Natal, in which a ten-
dency towards monophthongisation exists.
18. CHOICE: The usual variant here is [ç], with half-open [ç]. Closer variants in-
volving [o] may be used by some speakers in formal public styles, in response
to the greater prestige of this variant within general SAfE.
19. MOUTH: The usual variant is [], with fronter pronunciations of the first
element in the direction of [a] also possible. The gliding element [] is not
weakened, unlike general SAfE, where a tendency towards monophthongisa-
tion is present.
20. NEAR: The usual pronunciation of this diphthong is [ij], that is a long [i] and
a fairly open [] are spread over two syllables with an intervening glide [j];
thus [fij] 'fear', [t ij] 'cheer', etc. However, [] surfaces in polysyllabic
words like fearsome [fsm], and cheerful [t fl'].
21. SQUARE: This diphthong is usually reduced to the long monophthong [e] as in
general SAfE. The [e] is slightly retracted in InSAfE. The RP equivalent [ ]
is associated with 'Speech and Drama' accents, and is not aimed at by InSAfE
speakers outside the acting world.
Some speakers exhibit considerable overlap between the NURSE and SQUARE
vowels, i.e. between [
] and [e]. A cross-over is sometimes heard between
pairs like fur-fair, with [e] – [
] respectively, rather than the expected reverse
pattern of other varieties. Likewise hair and parents may each waver between
centralised [e] and [
].
2.4. Other vowels

22. CURE: This is a mixed bag in InSAfE, as in SAfE generally. Cure and pure
have [jç]; sure has [ç]; poor and tour have []; while plural and jury have
[u].
23. happY: This class takes a half-lengthened /i/ i.e. [i0]
24. lettER: The norm for final schwa in InSAfE is //, a half-open to open vowel. It
is subject to style-shifting, with middle-class speakers producing [] in formal
styles.
25. horsES: The usual vowel here is [].
26. commA: Words spelt with final a - sofa, zebra, comma – typically take a half-
lengthened //, i.e. []. Bailey notes a minimal pair mynah–miner having [:]
and [] respectively in InSAfE.
28. About: The usual vowel here is /æ/ ranging from [] to [a]. Schwa occurs in
non-vernacular contexts. Schwa is absent in some words like tomato and con-
nect. The first vowel in tomato is [] for older speakers. ([t*matou]); and []
or [ ] for younger speakers. For connect the first vowel is generally unreduced
[k *nekt].
2.5. Stops
P, T, K have aspiration patterns that differ from the prototypical English patterns
of aspiration. As this is a complex issue, it is discussed under ‘current research’
below.
There is not much to be said about B, D, G as a set. T, D however, are subject to
variation. The usual variants are alveolar [t] and [d]. However, retroflex variants
are still heard, though this feature is recessive in InSAfE, and not the prominent
characteristic it is in IndE. Furthermore, the degree of retroflexion (curling of the
tongue tip to strike the palate) is not as strong in InSAfE. Retroflex // and //
are far outnumbered by their alveolar equivalents and there are no contrasts made
between [t] and [] or between [d] and []. They are stylistic variants: the more
'public' or 'formal' the speech, the less retroflexion; the more vernacular the context
and emphatic the utterance, the greater the likelihood of some retroflexion. Thus
960 Rajend Mesthrie
die might ordinarily have alveolar [d] but in emphatic (vernacular) utterance, Go
and die!, the chances of a retroflex [] increase.
2.6. Nasals
M, N, and // are unremarkable, except for the occasional retroflexion of N, under
the same conditions as for T and D. It is more likely to be retroflexed homorgani-
cally with // and //, rather than on its own. Thus send may appear as [se] and
aunty as [i] in certain styles, but sin and sun do not have retroflex [].
2.7. Fricatives
F and V are realised more as approximants [] and [], rather than as fricatives; i.e.
contact between the lower lip and upper teeth is made without the audible friction
that one finds in RP or SAfE. The v/w overlap that one finds in IndE is rare and
recessive in InSAfE; only some older speakers say things like wamit [*wm*t] for
vomit.
// and // are regularly realised as dental stops /t/ and /d/, thus theme = [tim],
weather = [wed] and then = [den]. An interesting set of substitution of dental [t]
for the alveolar stop [t] concerns words dealing with the mouth cavity: tooth, teeth,
tongue, tonsil all have an initial dental stop, making a set with throat. Likewise,
though teach has initial [t], taught has initial dental [t], possibly a dissimilation
from the final [t] or based on an analogy with thought.
/s/ and /z/ are regular alveolar fricatives. Likewise there is little significant dif-
ference between / /, //, /t / and /d/ in InSAfE and general SAfE. Combinations
of /t/ or /d/ with /j/ may be realised as [t ] and [d], thus tune = [t un] and deuce
= [dus] for some speakers.
/h/ has several realisations, depending on speakers' language and social class
backgrounds. People of North Indian origin usually produce a voiced fricative []
or a murmured (breathy-voiced) fricative []. People of South Indian background,
especially Tamil, tend to produce what is popularly seen as H-dropping. That is H
is realised as either a glottal construction (with discernible rise in pitch of a follow-
ing vowel), or as a weak murmur on a following vowel. Within the InSAfE com-
munity H-dropping is a stereotype associated mainly with Tamil speakers. Some
speakers of this group may even produce hypercorrections like hant for ‘ant’ and
hout-’ouse for ‘out-house’. Occasionally speakers substitute a ‘euphonic’ [j] and
[w] in place of h (yill, yad, liveliwood, for ‘hill’, ‘had’, ‘livelihood’). More gen-
erally some ‘euphonic’ [j] and [w] occurs amongst older speakers of Dravidian
background as in yevery for ‘every’, but this is recessive in InSAfE.
/l/ is reported to have 'light' (= non-velarised) allophones in place of dark (velar-
ised) ones in words like ball. (Bughwan 1970). This feature has not been studied
to ascertain if there have been more recent changes. As far as /r/ is concerned,
InSAfE is non-rhotic (in strong contrast to IndE); the only exception being the pro-
nunciation of the letter r itself as [r], as in all SAfE varieties. /r/ varies between
an approximant or obstruent [r], depending on linguistic context and speaker vari-
ables. In clusters it is usually a rolled r as in trap, drake, break. In initial position
it is either an approximant or a roll. Linking and intrusive /r/ are uncommon, since
[] is used instead. Thus far out is likely to be pronounced as [f at] rather
than [fr at]. This is generally true of SAfE.
3. Suprasegmentals
It is still easy to deduce the linguistic background of older InSAfE speakers on

the basis of an ‘articulatory setting’ that involves murmur or ‘breathy voice’ for
people of North Indian descent and its absence amongst people of South Indian
descent (especially Tamil speakers). This difference is slowly being levelled out
amongst younger speakers. It is claimed that InSAfE is syllable- rather stress-
timed, though this has yet to be researched objectively. Subjectively, the speech
rate is deemed fast and the stress patterns fairly different from those of general
SAfE. Furthermore sentence rhythm results in shortening of long vowels and even
of short vowels.
Although word stress approximates to that of SAfE there are instances of stress
being postponed to a medial or final syllable, where SAfE (like RP) has word-ini-
tial stress. The InSAfE pattern is, accordingly, closer to that of Hiberno-English (Ó
Sé 1986). Furthermore, it is a feature of all informal InSAfE speech. The follow-
ing representative list of InSAfE words follows the IPA convention that the stress
mark precedes the main-stressed syllable:
accommo*date immi*grate
corp(o)*ration immi*grating
criti*cise imi*tate
exagge*rate in*dustry
re*gister or*chestra
For further examples see Bughwan (1970: 256).
4. Current research issues
The phonology of InSAfE is still open research territory. I shall concentrate on

the possibilities offered by the study of aspiration. P, T, K have aspiration patterns
that are different from the prototypical English patterns of aspiration in all initial
positions. Detailed research has still to be undertaken, and a preliminary analysis
suggests the following in vernacular mesolectal speech:
962 Rajend Mesthrie
P is always unaspirated before //, /ç/, //, / /, /e/, /o/ and //. Thus park,
pork, put, pot, pay, poke, pair all have unaspirated initial P. Likewise P is always
unaspirated before /r/ and /l/, e.g. in pray and play. This means that /r/ and /l/ are
voiced in InSAfE in contrast to many varieties of English in which the aspiration
on initial consonants causes /r/ and /l/ to become voiceless. In all other contexts
whether P is aspirated or not, depends on the particular word. Taking P before /e/
as an example, the following words always have aspiration – pen, pebble, pet;
whereas penny, pepper, petal, peck are always unaspirated. It has still to be re-
searched whether there is intra-speaker variability (i.e. pronouncing the same word
differently) or variation across speakers. Speakers who produce aspiration invari-
antly with initial P, T, K would be judged as putting on a ‘Speech and Drama’ ac-
cent. The dialect has minimal pairs like pea and pee; piece and piss (pronounced
[pis]). It also has near-minimal pairs like pet and petal, pen and pencil.
Similar principles apply to T and K. The reason for this unusual system is two-
fold. Firstly it represents a shift from languages with differential patterns of as-
piration towards the general English norm. The Indic languages have phonemic
distinction between aspirated and unaspirated P, T, K. Speakers appear to be com-
fortable with the categorical absence of aspiration in some words and its categori-
cal presence in others. On the other hand, as the Dravidian language, Tamil, does
not have aspiration, its speakers have to adopt this feature afresh in their English.
The InSAfE mesolect seems a happy compromise between the two systems: no
aspiration before certain back vowels, certain diphthongs and both liquids; and in
all other contexts aspiration is word-dependent. The actual minimal pairs are mar-
ginal: both pee and piss cited above are, in fact, taboo words, and therefore do not
occur in the same register as pea and piece. The second reason for this unusual
system is that it is probably a stage in the language acquisition-cum-lexical diffu-
sion process. It is not hard to envisage a gradual shift to a system with aspiration
for all initial P, T, K.
Selected references
ROM.
Bailey, R.
c1985 South African Indian English Phonology. Unpublished notes. Department of
Speech and Hearing Therapy, University of Durban-Westville.
Bughwan, D.
1970 An investigation into the use of English by the Indians in South Africa, with
special reference to Natal. PhD thesis, University of South Africa.
Mesthrie, R.
1992 English in Language Shift. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Naidoo, K.
1971 Some aspects of the phonetic deviations in the speech of Tamilians in Durban.
Unpublished MA thesis, University of Natal.
Ó Sé, D.
1986 Word-stress in Hiberno-English. In: J. Harris, D. Little and D. Singleton
(eds.) Perspectives on the English Language in Iceland: Proceedings of
the First Symposium on Hiberno-English. Dublin: Centre for Language and
Communication Studies, Trinity College, pp. 97-107.
Cape Flats English: phonology*
Peter Finn
1. Introduction
Cape Flats English (CFE) originated in working class neighbourhoods in inner-

city Cape Town. However, as a result of Apartheid social engineering, most of its
speakers now live far from the city centre in a number of adjoining areas collec-
tively known as ‘The Cape Flats’. (The name refers to a large, flat, sandy expanse
bordered by mountain ranges and the sea.)
This variety of English is also sometimes called ‘Coloured English’ but that
term is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it is an over-generalisation: not all
people who were classified as ‘Coloured’ during the Apartheid era speak this dia-
lect since they are not homogenous with regard to region and social class. Sec-
ondly, the term ‘Coloured’ as a descriptor is not universally accepted by those
to whom it has been applied. From the mid 19th century, it was used to refer to
people of mixed Asian, African, and European ancestry. A hundred years later, it
was assigned by the Apartheid government to people who did not fit its two major
population categories: ‘European’ or ‘white’, and ‘Bantu’ or ’black’. It was thus
a catch-all category for people who did not constitute a group on any intrinsic
grounds of shared ethnicity, culture or region. For this reason ‘coloured identity’
is still a hotly debated concept. However, segregation did create some common
ground which is of sociolinguistic significance because it minimised the possibil-
ity of intensive contact with speakers of other varieties of English. Members of
each official population group were forced to spend most of their lives together in
segregated residential areas, educational, leisure and other institutions.
1.1. Historical and cultural background

Settlement in South Africa by English-speaking people started in the closing de-
cade of the 18th century, when British forces occupied the Cape. In 1815, at the
end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Cape was allocated to Britain by the Congress of
Vienna. This put an end to one and a half centuries of control by the Dutch East In-
dia Company. By this time Cape Town was very cosmopolitan. Indigenous people
did not constitute a large proportion of its inhabitants, having been decimated by
smallpox or driven out of the area, or – as was the case for many hunter-gatherers
– killed by settlers. Prior to the arrival of the British, the settlers were mainly of
Dutch origin, but included people from other European countries. The large slave
Cape Flats English: phonology 965
population was the most heterogeneous in the world, having been brought from
Dahomey, Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Oibo, various parts of
India, Ceylon, the Malayan Peninusula and the Indonesian Archipelago (particu-
larly Java, Sumatra, the Celebes, Macassar, Ternate and Timor). Most of the slaves’
languages did not survive beyond the first generation, Malay being a notable ex-
ception. Portuguese Creole and a Cape Dutch pidgin acted as lingua francas for
slaves, but they all had to learn Dutch. In doing so, they contributed to the devel-
opment of what is now known as Afrikaans, a language that has significant struc-
tural differences from Dutch. Slavery was abolished in 1834, almost two decades
after the establishment of British colonial rule.
In 1822 a policy of anglicization was instituted by Governor Charles Somerset.
It was aimed at weakening the independence of those who had previously been
dominant, namely the Dutch/Afrikaans-speaking slave-owning group, but obvi-
ously the policy also affected the rest of the people in the colony. Of the three do-
mains subjected to anglicization – law, religion and education – it was in education
that the policy had the greatest success. English was entrenched as a medium of
instruction by the simple expedient of refusing state funding to schools that taught
through the medium of any other language. A few private schools were established
to provide education in Dutch, but they were unable to survive financially for
more than two decades. Aided by grants from the state, Christian religious institu-
tions took a major share of responsibility for primary and secondary education in
the Cape Colony during the nineteenth century. In Cape Town most of the church
schools and all the state schools taught through the medium of English, regardless
of the fact that the home language of many learners was Afrikaans.
The phasing out of socio-economic structures based on slavery did not result in
an egalitarian society. There was stratification based on class and, increasingly, on
colour though legally entrenched segregation started only in the 20th century. As is
common, working-class areas were more multicultural and multilingual than mid-
dle-class areas. They were home to freed slaves and their descendants, to indige-
nous people (both local and from territories further north), and also to immigrants.
In the early years of the colony, the majority of the immigrants were English-
speaking. Later in the century, economic opportunities in South Africa created by
the discovery of mineral wealth, coupled with events in Europe prompted the im-
migration of thousands of people from Eastern and Western Europe. Many of them
started their South African life in the boarding houses and rented accommodation
of inner-city neighbourhoods. One of these, District Six, included among its resi-
dents East European Jewish immigrants who spoke Yiddish, Russian and Polish,
and read Hebrew; Muslim descendants of slaves and political exiles who under-
stood Malay, read Arabic, but spoke Afrikaans as their home language; Christians
– descendants of settlers and of slaves, and newer immigrants, whose languages
included Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho. Cape Flats English has its roots
in these old, mixed residential areas where language contact was the order of the
966 Peter Finn
day, and where everyone needed to acquire some command of English if they had
any dealings in the adjacent city centre or the middle-class suburbs to the south.
The dialect spread to the Cape Flats as residents of the older suburbs moved to that
area voluntarily or through the massive forced removals of the 1960s and 70s.
Information on the areas of origin of 19th century English-speaking immigrants
to Cape Town is sparse. Most of them did not come in the kind of organised im-
migration schemes used by settlers in the Eastern Cape or Natal, which provided
documentation about background. Because British subjects could travel relatively
freely in the Empire, if they came as individuals or in small privately organised
groups, they did not have to fill in their particulars on immigration forms when
they arrived in Cape Town. Thus there are no consolidated documentation bases
to draw on in working out which dialects of English these immigrants would have
spoken. Church and secular registers of marriages and births provide some clues,
as do ships’ passenger lists, but as yet these have not been systematically followed
up. Studies of the English of nineteenth century immigrants who settled in other
parts of South Africa show non-standard British English dialect features which are
also found in Cape Flats English (see Mesthrie and West 1995). Whatever their
provenance, non-standard dialects of English spoken in Cape Town would have
had an important role shaping the early form of what is now known as ‘Cape Flats
English.’
Since the dominant language of the central business district was English, resi-
dents of the adjacent working-class neighbourhoods who wanted to engage with
its resources had to learn some English, if it was not their home language. Adults
mostly did this informally, picking it up from their neighbours who, if they were
not also speakers of an L2 English, were more likely to speak a regional dialect
of British or Irish English, than standard English. Children had more exposure to
standard English from their teachers and text books. However, in the playgrounds
they would have been more likely to have heard L2 English or regional dialects
than standard English. This is because working-class children tended to go to what
were called ‘mission schools’, which offered a practical curriculum and were for
poorer children, while middle-class children attended ‘church schools’, which had
an academic curriculum. Christian schools offered both secular and religious edu-
cation. Madressahs and cheders offered only religious and related cultural Islamic
and Jewish education, respectively. The former had taught through the medium
of Malay until about the 1830s, when they started to use Afrikaans. They taught
pupils to read Arabic. The latter used Yiddish and, later, English, and taught the
reading of classical Hebrew.
In 1905 racially-based segregation was introduced in Cape schools. This obvi-
ously affected the range of English varieties to which children were exposed in the
classroom and the playground. In 1915 Afrikaans was recognised nationally as a
viable medium of instruction, and a ‘mother-tongue’ policy was put on the statute
books shortly thereafter. However, it was not strictly enforced, and in Cape Town
most schools for coloured children continued to teach through the medium of
English, regardless of the children’s home language. In the 1950s, when apartheid
education policies forced the implementation of mother-tongue education, many
of these schools had to change to Afrikaans as medium of instruction or at least
add an Afrikaans stream.
Being forced to use Afrikaans in this way was bitterly resented by coloured
parents and teachers, some of whom circumvented the law by placing Afrikaans-
speaking children into the English stream or into English schools. A very wide-
spread belief developed among parents and children that children got a better
education in English schools and classes than in the Afrikaans counterparts, and
therefore would have better opportunities for further study and for employment.
Separation by language was seen as contributing to the construction of social class
division. (In neighbourhoods which wished to counter such division, one of the
markers of solidarity was the used of a bilingual vernacular – see McCormick
2002.) A common thread in oral history interviews is the memory of playground
division, with children from the Afrikaans and English classes not mixing with
one another at all while at school because ‘the English children are snobbish’ or
‘the Afrikaans children are rough and wild’. Thus, the combination of government
policy and social divisions meant that the generation who had their education
through the medium of Afrikaans after 1950 had far less exposure to English than
previous generations had had. As a result, by the nineteen seventies there were
clear intergenerational differences with regard to proficiency in English in those
working-class coloured families who spoke mainly a local dialect of Afrikaans
at home and in the neighbourhood. The grandparents and great-grandparents had
had all their schooling in English and were comfortable speaking it. Some had
L1 proficiency. The parent generation had had little opportunity to use English
outside the classroom and were less confident in the use of their L2 variety. As
they did not want their children to have the same experience of what they saw as
second-rate education, they raised their children in English so that they could go
into English classes. Thus it was common that the input for the children’s L1 was
an L2 variety of English.
1.2. Previous research on CFE phonology

CFE is an under-researched variety overall, but especially in terms of phonology.
The main earlier studies are referenced in the CD Rom accompanying this text.
In terms of the phonological system as a whole, CFE (like SAfE) differs little
from the reference variety, RP. As with mainstream South African English (SAfE,
more specifically WSAfE), probably the only case where a difference in the over-
all system can be argued for is in the ‘KIT-Split’ (see below).
As a type of South African English, CFE most closely resembles the lect of
(typically) white SAfE most closely associated with the lowest socio-economic
968 Peter Finn
class (that is, the English of white working-class native speakers). This is the lect
termed ‘Extreme SAfE’ by Lanham (1982), which in turn closely resembles the
L2 English accent of white native speakers of Afrikaans (Afrikaans English, or
AfkE).
Wood (1987) argues that a similar dichotomy of lects can be set up for CFE
itself, with ‘Extreme’ and ‘Respectable’ sub-lects characteristic of working-class
and middle-class speakers respectively. I would argue (Finn [forthcoming]) that
this dichotomy tends to correlate with whether or not speakers could be said to
have CFE or CVA (Cape Vernacular Afrikaans) as L1, since L2 CFE speakers tend
to be working-class and L1 speakers middle-class.
2. Phonetic description – segmental features

2.1. Vowels
Table 1. The vowels of CFE according to Wells’ Lexical Sets
KIT IT I1i
SIT ï
DRESS e>E1Q
TRAP E > Q > Qe
LOT ç 1 Å > Å(˘)e
STRUT a1å>√>Å
ONE a1å>Å
FOOT u>¨>F
BATH a 1 A > a˘(´) A˘(´) > Å˘(˘)´
DANCE Q˘(´) > a˘(´) 1 A˘(´)
CLOTH ç1Å
NURSE Œ˘ > O (´) > å 1 Å˘´ 1 ´ > o˘
FLEECE i˘1 i > i (˘) ´ 1 iU
FACE Ei 1 e > í 1 åi 1 √i > E
LAYER eij
PALM a 1 A > a˘(´) 1 A(´) > Å(˘)´
THOUGHT ç 1 o˘ > o˘´
GOAT åu 1 √u > [ú] > [çu] 1 [Åu] > [ou] 1 [au]
GOAL çU 1 oU > Å>
GOING åuw
Table 1. (continued) The vowels of CFE according to Wells’ Lexical Sets
GOOSE u˘ > 2 > u > 2

PRICE BITE 3i > i 1 i > i 1 æi 1 i
BIDE ai > i 1 i > a>´ >a˘
BYRE aij
BILE a>´ >a˘
CHOICE çi 1 oi
MOUTH BOUT 3u > æu > u 1 u
BOWED au > u u
BOWER auw
BOWEL a˘´
NEAR i˘ 1 ˘ 1 ˘ e˘ 1 ˘> i3 > i 1 i
SQUARE e˘ > e˘´ > E˘
START a˘´ > ˘ 1 a˘Œ
NORTH/FORCE o˘ 1 ç˘ > o˘(´) >
CURE u 1 o˘ 1 ç˘
happY i> 1 i˘ > i
lettER 1 1 3 > R
horsES
commA 3>
uncLE 41ç1o
Vowel retraction before /l/

This process is noted here in advance because it is a general, pervasive feature.
Wood (1987: 127–128) maintains that such retraction occurs across the social scale,
as in WSAfE, so it probably also has prestige value. However, an ‘iotacised’ sub-
variant (e.g. self [sjælf]), occurring in Wood’s and my own data, is stigmatised.
KIT
CFE, like SAfE, evidences the (ongoing) ‘KIT-split’ (Lass 1995: 97; Wood 1987:
122–123), whereby KIT is realised as (a) [] ~ [i] initially, after /h/, in velar en-
vironments, and often before // (the IT subset), while (b) and as centralised [+]
elsewhere (the SIT subset). Lass notes that while ‘Respectable’ (= Educated) SAfE
usually has IT = [] vs. SIT = [+]; Extreme SAfE (and AfkE) usually has IT = [ ] vs
SIT = [+]. My data indicate that this general pattern is also true of CFE, except that
the patterning IT = [i], SIT = [+] extends higher up the social scale than it does for
SAfE – as confirmed by Wood (1987: 122), who notes that the ‘low schwa’ reali-
970 Peter Finn
sation of KIT occurs in the speech of both Extreme and Respectable CFE speakers
(see also Hastings 1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111). Also as with SAfE, before /l/
(= [l5]) KIT is typically realised as [6] (also [6( )], [ç]).
DRESS
Predominantly ‘raised’ to [e] (as also Wood 1987: 122; Hastings 1979, quoted in
Wood 1987: 111), but with some tendency for lowering towards []. Wood (1987:
123) also notes a tendency for [ ()] in certain contexts, e.g. yes. As with SAfE,
realisations are affected by following /l/ (= [l5]), typically towards [æ ~ ] (e.g. self
[sælf], often also with iotacisation).
TRAP
As in Extreme SAfE and AfrikaansE (the English of White Afrikaans speakers),
there is a marked tendency towards [] (as Wood 1987: 122, Hastings 1979, quoted
in Wood 1987: 111), though [æ] and [æ ] do also occur. TRAP retains this value be-
fore /l/ in CFE and SAfE generally, this time in contrast to RP, where [ç˘] is usual.
LOT
For L2 (and Extreme CFE) speakers typically [ç] ~ [ ], for L1 speakers more
consistently [ ] (as Wood 1987: 122, Hastings 1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111),
although [ () ] also occurs. Wood (1987: 133) also notes the apparently consis-
tent pronunciations want [wnt] and non- [nn]. LOT is not apparently affected
by following /l/.
STRUT
According to my own and Wood’s data (1987: 122), for L2 speakers typically [a]
~ [3], for L1 speakers more consistently [3] (sporadically also []). According to
Wood, STRUT-lowering is not obviously stigmatised. STRUT is typically realised
as [ ] before /l/ (as also Wood 1987: 128). In the subset ONE (comprising (-)one,
once), realisations vary between L2 [a] and L1 [3, ].
FOOT
Very typically in the region of [u], i.e. with a marked degree of backing and round-
ing (though perhaps somewhat less so for L1 than L2 speakers). Also [2], [6]. Not
apparently affected by following /l/.
BATH/PALM
Typically [a] ~ [] (often [a( ) ~ ( )]), with some instances of [ () ]-type re-
alisations. However, in the subset DANCE realisations are typically in the region
of [æ( )] (as Wood 1987: 123); also [( )] ~ [( )]. Wood (1987: 137) claims
DANCE Raising is typical of Extreme CFE speakers.
CLOTH
See LOT. For L2 (and Extreme CFE) speakers typically [ç], for L1 speakers more
consistently [ ].
NURSE
There is a high degree of variability. Wood (1987) records mainly [], with some
instances of [ ()]. My data (especially from L1 speakers) showed especially
[ø( )], with some instances of [3], [ ] and [ ]. Before /l/, NURSE seems to be
realised especially as [o].
FLEECE
Typically [i] in stressed position, [i] in unstressed position, for all speakers. Be-
fore /l/, FLEECE generally remains as [i] , but there is some tendency to ‘breaking’
(e.g. [i() ], [i()], as also Wood 1987: 128).
FACE
According to my own and Wood’s (1987: 123) data, typically [i] for L2 speakers,
[ei] for L1 speakers, though for all speakers there is also some tendency towards
centralisation of the onset (nucleus), e.g. [ i], [3i], [i]. There is also some evi-
dence for a Canadian Raising-type distribution, with front onsets tending to oc-
cur in pre-fortis environments and non-front onsets elsewhere (see GOAT). Wood
(1987: 123) and Hastings (1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111) also note (sporadic?)
instances of glide weakening, e.g. take [tk]; Hastings claims diphthong offset
weakening is typical of CFE. However, note also the typically markedly peripheral
(i.e. strongly high front) offset; this is particularly noticeable in word-final posi-
tion. According to Lanham (1982: 343), this ‘high diphthongal glide’ is character-
istic of Afrikaans-influenced English generally, and used even by well-educated
speakers – as confirmed in Wood’s (1987: 137–138) and my own data. In hiatus
(as in the subset LAYER), this offset is typically realised as [j], e.g. [*l5eij30]. Reali-
sations are not apparently affected by following /l/.
THOUGHT
According to Wood (1987: 122), Extreme CFE speakers typically have [ç]. My
data indicates realisations typically in the region of [o] for all speakers; [o ] is
also frequent. Not apparently affected by following /l/.
GOAT
Although there is a high degree of variability here, analysis of Wood’s (1987:
125ff) and my own data reveals that realisations are typically in the region of
[3u] and [u], for all speakers; other realisations observed include [ u], [7u], [ u]
fairly frequently, and less often [ou], [au]. There is also some evidence for a Ca-
nadian Raising-type distribution, with back onsets tending to occur in pre-fortis
environments and non-back onsets elsewhere (see FACE). Despite the fact that
Wood records some cases of offset weakening, e.g. [ç], [o], and Hastings (1979,
quoted in Wood 1987: 111) maintains that diphthong weakening is typical of CFE,
the available data would suggest that in fact such weakening occurs especially
(a) before /l/ – where, in common with SAfE, onset quality is also affected, typi-
cally yielding [ >] (e.g. [*k 0l5d3>]) – and (b) in unstressed position (though see
972 Peter Finn
Non-Reduction, below). In fact, as with MOUTH, offsets of GOAT are typically

markedly peripheral (i.e. strongly backed and rounded) rather than weakened (see
also Wood 1987: 128). Yet again, Lanham (1982: 343) maintains that this ‘high
diphthongal glide’ is characteristic of Afrikaans-influenced English generally, and
used even by well-educated speakers – as confirmed in Wood’s (1987: 137–138)
and my own data. It is particularly noticeable in word-final position. In hiatus
(as in the subset GOING), the offset is typically realised as [w] (e.g. [*3uwi]).
Wood (1987: 137–138) observes that both onset lowering and markedly backed
and rounded offsets, are typical across the social scale.
GOOSE
Several commentators (Hastings 1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111; Wood 1987:
128; Lass 1995: 98–99) note that CFE (as well as South African Indian English;
see Mesthrie 1995: 253) is to be distinguished from SAfE by typically having ‘old-
fashioned’ (in SAfE terms) realisations for GOOSE, in the area of [u] – that is, with
a marked degree of backing and rounding (as also for FOOT). This is especially
noticeable in word-final position. Wood maintains that marked rounding (but not
backing) is typical across the social scale, and Lass similarly claims that there is a
strong tendency to avoid fronter values even in very standard registers. However,
my data revealed that some (mainly L1) speakers do approximate to the more
centralised SAfE norm, with [2]. Both types of realisation are typically shortened
when unstressed, sometimes making them indistinguishable from FOOT. Realisa-
tions are not apparently affected by following /l/.
PRICE
Wood (1987: 123–125, 135) notes two typical realisations of PRICE: (a) with raised
onsets (e.g. [], [æ], [ ), and with low onsets and offset weakening (e.g. [a], [a]).
He maintains that raised-onset variants are associated with Extreme CFE speak-
ers, although also occurring further up the social scale, and are only found in CFE
(since Extreme SAfE typically has low back onsets), while the low, glide-weak-
ened variants are a defining variable of Respectable SAfE, and are associated with
Respectable CFE also. Detailed research by Finn (in progress) has revealed that in
fact, PRICE (along with MOUTH) is subject to a sub-phonemic Canadian Raising rule,
whereby non-low onsets occur in pre-fortis environments and low ones elsewhere.
Thus, typical realisations are BITE as [b3it] compared to BIDE and BUY as [baid8] and
[bai] respectively (see full discussion below). Other pre-fortis realisations include
[i] and [ i], while non-pre-fortis realisations include [i] and [ i]. Note also that
in fact, PRICE offsets are typically markedly peripheral rather than weakened (i.e.
strongly fronted and raised); when reduction does occur it is typically in unstressed
position, and especially for the high-frequency pronoun I. As in the case of FACE
above, Lanham (1982: 343) maintains that ‘high diphthongal glides’ are charac-
teristic of Afrikaans-influenced English generally, and used even by well-educated
speakers – as confirmed in Wood’s (1987: 137–138) and my own data. It is particu-
larly noticeable in word-final position. In hiatus (as in the subset FIRE), this offset
is typically realised as [j], e.g. [ faij30]. Realisations are affected by a following /l/,
with the offset being reduced (e.g. [a0 ], as in [ta0 l1d8] child) or – less commonly
– backed (e.g. [a], as in [ta0l1d8] child; see Wood 1987: 128).
CHOICE
Realisations are typically in the region of [çi], [oi]. The observations made above
regarding markedly peripheral offsets as in PRICE and FACE generally apply to
CHOICE also, although it is not apparently affected by following /l/.
MOUTH
Wood (1987: 124–125) maintains that ‘raised’ (and often glide-weakened) onsets
in MOUTH are typical of Extreme CFE speakers and are very common among L1
speakers, but would be avoided by those higher up the social scale, who usually
use [a]. Hastings (1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111) maintains that diphthong
weakening is typical of CFE. However, detailed research by Finn (forthcoming)
has revealed that in fact, MOUTH (like PRICE) is subject to a sub-phonemic Ca-
nadian Raising rule, whereby onsets are non-low in pre-fortis environments but
low elsewhere. Thus, typical realisations are BOUT as [b3ut], [bæut] compared to
BOWED and BOUGH as [baud8] and [bau] respectively (see full discussion below).
Other non-low pre-fortis realisations include [u] and [ u], while other non-pre-
fortis realisations include [u] and [ u]. Also similarly to PRICE, offsets of MOUTH
are in fact typically markedly peripheral (i.e. strongly backed and rounded) rather
than weakened. Once again, Lanham (1982: 343) maintains that ‘high diphthongal
glides’ are characteristic of Afrikaans-influenced English generally, and used even
by well-educated speakers – as confirmed in Wood’s (1987: 137–138) and my
own data. It is particularly noticeable in word-final position. When reduction does
occur it is typically in unstressed position or before /l/ (e.g. [a0l5] owl). In hiatus
(as in the subset POWER), the offset is typically realised as [w] (e.g. [*pauw30]).
NEAR
My data reveals a usual realisation in the region of [i3], with [i] and [i ] also
occurring. Wood (1987: 126), whose data reveals monophthongised variants, [i],
[], [ ], [e] and [], maintains that such monophthongal realisations occur across
the social scale.
SQUARE
My data revealed a usual realisation of [e], with some cases of [e]. Wood (1987:
126) also notes [] and again maintains that such monophthongal realisations oc-
cur across the social scale.
START
In my data START was typically realised as [a: ], with [] and [a
] also occurring.
Wood (1987) notes only [].
974 Peter Finn
NORTH/FORCE
According to Wood (1987: 122), Extreme CFE speakers typically have [ç]. My
data indicated realisations typically in the region of [o] ~ [ç], with some instances
of [o( )], as well as [ ]. Shortening typically occurs when unstressed.
CURE
Realisations typically vary between [ u] and [o] ~ [ç˘]. Wood (1987: 126) main-
tains that monophthongal realisations (especially in word-final position, e.g. in
poor [pç˘]) occur across the social scale.
happY
Although Wood (1987) records only [i], my data revealed a tendency toward hap-
pY-lengthening, with [i>] or [i].
lettER
Typical realisations in my data were [ ], [] (also in Wood 1987: 127), [3]. Wood
also notes rhotic realisations for some L2 speakers, e.g. [ R].
horsES
Typically [ ].
commA
Typically [3], [ ]; however, realisations may be affected by following /l/, yielding
[4], [ç], [o] (as also Wood 1987: 128).
2.2. Consonants
Saffery (1986, apparently following Hastings 1979) notes the occurrence of ‘un-
released consonants’. However, Wood (1987: 112) notes that frequencies for these
would appear to be low.
2.2.1. Obstruents
(a) Variability
According to Hastings (1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111), in CFE there is typically
sporadic “confusion” between /d/ ~ //, /s/ ~ /z/, /n/ ~ //, /9/ ~ /h/ and / /B~ /b/
(some of the latter occurred intervocalically in my own data, e.g. about [3*:t],
available [3*:eil b6l5]).
(b) Final devoicing
Wood (1987: 132) maintains that a typical feature of Extreme CFE is devoicing of
final /d/ and /z/ (e.g. eight hundred [itnd; d8], seconds [sek ndz8]). I would claim,
on the basis of my own data, that CFE generally has a (variable) rule of final-obstru-
ent devoicing (terminal devoicing), whereby all obstruents will tend to be voiceless
(lenis) in syllable-final position (that is, final /b d v z / will typically be realised

as [b d8 8 v8 8 z8 8]); see the discussion on Canadian Raising below. Additionally, in
my data // and /d/ – phonemes not occurring in CVA – were often devoiced also
in initial position. On devoicing in CFE see also Lanham (1982: 343).
2.2.2. Plosives
According to Hastings (1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111), in CFE there is ‘typi-
cally some extra pressure on plosive release’; there is also ‘slow release’ on some
plosives.
P, T, K
According to Hastings (1979, quoted in Wood 1987: 111) de-aspiration of voice-
less initial stops is typical of CFE; according to Saffery (1986, cited in Wood 1987:
112) there is variation between aspirated and de-aspirated initial stops. Deaspira-
tion is also noted separately by Lanham (1982), and Wood (1987: 129, 137–138),
who claims its use is more typical of Extreme CFE than Respectable CFE speak-
ers. My own data evidenced both aspiration and de-aspiration, although L1 (= pri-
marily more middle-class speakers) tended to aspirate in line with RP norms.
T, D
My own data indicate that /t/, /d/ are very typically realised as dental, i.e. [t], [d].
Consonant lengthening
Wood (1987: 133) observes that continuants occurring before word-final voiced
alveolar consonants may be lengthened, e.g. things [iz].
2.2.3. Nasals
According to Wood (1987: 131), final nasals may be elided in CFE; see discussion
of elision, below.
2.2.4. Fricatives and affricates

F
Wood (1987: 123) notes the occurrence, especially among Extreme CFE speakers,
of antedental /f/, (that is, with the lower lip in front of rather than below the top
teeth).
TH
Wood (1987: 130–131) notes the presence of TH-Stopping, with // and // vari-
ably realised as (dental) [t] and [d]. He maintains that this is typical of Extreme
CFE speakers.
976 Peter Finn
SH, ZH, CH, J

Wood (1987: 129–130) notes that the hushing fricatives and affricates have, as
well as / t d/, two major distinctive realisations, involving hushing segments
realised as (a) hissing fricatives (thus, / t d/ realised as [s z ts dz]), or as (b)
backed hushing fricatives (thus, / t d/ realised as [ t d]). The former set
of realisations is typical of L2 (= mainly working-class, Extreme CFE) speakers,
the latter of L1 (= mainly middle-class speakers); in my data (mainly from middle-
class, L1 speakers), there was considerable use of backed variants. Wood suggests
these are hypercorrect forms. Lanham (1982: 343) also notes the tendency (prob-
ably among L2 speakers) for /d/ to be realised as [j] (e.g. judge [j3t]), as may
occur also in White Afrikaans English. Wood also notes an L2-speaker tendency
to substitute /s/ for // and vice-versa when in close proximity to following // or
// , e.g. social [* us l].
2.2.5. Approximants
R
Wood points out that although CFE has a characteristically ‘obstruent’ /r/, as a
variety of English CFE is generally non-rhotic; that is, unlike Afrikaans English
(AfkE), /r/ is not pronounced in pre-consonantal or word-final contexts, prob-
ably because CVA itself generally has no pronounced /r/ in similar contexts, such
as kerk ‘church’, ver ‘far’ (see Wood 1987: 114, 129). Steenkamp’s study (1980,
cited in Wood 1987: 112–114; see also Hastings 1979, cited in Wood 1987: 111),
which focussed on /r/, found at least four types in use – resonant [], fricative [r<],
tap [;] and trill [r] – with social differentiation correlating with linguistic variation.
Thus, [] and [r<] were most typical of middle-class speakers and [r] was most typi-
cal of working-class speakers, but [;] was most typical overall. Wood confirms
that tapped or flapped /r/ is typical of Extreme CFE speakers and that with [;] is
the most usual realisation, but notes a further variant – uvular [=], which is prob-
ably an L2 feature associated with speakers originating in the Western Cape inte-
rior. The impression gained from my own data is that the predominant realisation
is [;], supporting Wood’s and Steenkamp’s findings. Additionally, Saffery (1986,
also cited in Wood 1987: 112) notes the presence of intervocalic linking /r/.
L
According to Saffery (1986, cited in Wood 1987: 112), there is variation between
[l] and [l5], although [l5] occurs especially word-finally. In my own data, /l/ was
almost exclusively realised as ‘dark’, i.e. [l5].
J (and hiatus)
Wood (1987: 132) notes the presence of /h/-insertion (hiatus or glide replacement
by /h/), which apparently occurs in all Afrikaans-influenced varieties of English
(see also Lass 1996) and which he claims occurs across the social scale. The fa-
voured context seems to be intervocalically after an unstressed syllable, e.g. piano
[pi*9æn3u] – a typical realisation in my data also. Other hiatus-fillers in my data
included [j], [] and [>].
H
Typically, /h/ = [9]. According to Wood (1987: 132), /h/ is often realised as [j] in
word-initial position, e.g. hell /*hl/ = [ jæl5]. This occurred frequently in my data.
Glottal onset
CFE, like SAfE generally (see Lass 1996), tends very strongly to have a glottal
onset (‘hard attack’) in vowel-initial syllables.
3. Suprasegmental Features
3.1. Phonotactics
Wood (1987: 131) notes several types of elision, occurring frequently in Extreme
CFE and paralleled in CVA. Predictably, relatively few cases occurred in my data.

In common with reduction in other varieties of English, this especially applies
to clusters involving final stops, e.g. ask [s], addicts [diks], underground
[ n ræ n]. Again, predictably, relatively few cases occurred in my data.
3.1.2. Elision of final nasals

Wood notes that final nasals may be elided, leaving behind nasalisation of the pre-
ceding vowel, e.g. plan [plæ], exciting [eksæti]. His data indicate that a further
change may occur involving loss of nasalisation, producing a purely oral vowel.
These processes, combined with cluster reduction, are seen in Wood’s example
don’t [d ]. Nasalisation with loss of nasal is characteristic of Afrikaans, with
further denasalisation characteristic of CVA.
3.2. Stress
3.2.1. Non-reduction of unstressed vowels
Wood (1987: 126–127) notes as a very salient characteristic of CFE the marked
tendency not to reduce vowels in unstressed syllables as consistently as is done
in RP (e.g. in CFE possess is typically [p u*zes]). He maintains that this is typical
across the social scale, and indeed such phenomena were noted across my own
978 Peter Finn
data (mainly from middle-class and L1 speakers). While the issue is too complex
to analyse in detail here, it most likely relates to innovative changes in RP at the
‘core’ of the English-language speech community, with more conservative variet-
ies like CFE, SAfE, and American, Caribbean and Northern English Englishes
being at the periphery.
3.2.2. ‘Stress shift’

Wood (1987: 132) notes that in more Extreme CFE, the stress in polysyllabic
verbs (actually, certain Latinate verb stems) occurs on the ultimate instead of the
penultimate syllable, e.g. realíse, participáte, intoxicáted. He also notes that other,
less systematic shifts occur. Such patterns also occurred very widely in my data
(mainly from middle-class speakers); there were also many involving marked sec-
ondary stress (e.g. gráduàted). Such patternings also occur in other non-RP variet-
ies (e.g. South African Indian English, Caribbean Englishes, Southern Hiberno-
English, Scottish English), and would seem to reflect patterns of stress in earlier
and/or regional British English. However, the issue is too complex to analyse in
detail here.
3.3. Intonation
According to Lanham (1982: 343), CFE has especially distinctive intonation con-
tours, with little use of falling pitch in statements and a tendency for rising pitch
in final accented syllables. Douglas (1984, cited in Wood 1987: 116) found that,
compared to RP, tone-units were shorter, and there were more cases of nuclear
tones (implying greater nuclear pitch movement) and of rising tones, especially
with rising tails. According to Wood, the latter observation correlates with the
impression that CFE tends to have more rising intonations, especially noticeable
in the case of statements.
It may be argued that only certain features serve to distinguish CFE as a variety,
being shared with no other South African variety. Some features are shared with
other local varieties than L1 ‘white’ SAfE, while the majority are shared with at
least some lects of the latter.
Thus, features shared with varieties of L1 white SAfE include:
(a) vowel retraction before /l/;
(b) the South African Short Front Vowel Shift (KIT-, DRESS-, TRAP-Raising;
see Lass 1995: 96–98);
(c) the KIT-Split;

(d) ONE-Rounding;
(e) DANCE-Fronting (although this is not usual for Respectable SAfE);
(f) STRUT-Lowering;
(g) BATH/PALM/START-Fronting;
(h) NURSE realised as [:], [ø:];
(i) FLEECE realised as [i:];
(j) Onset Centralisation of FACE, GOAT;
(k) Onset Raising in CHOICE;
(l) THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE-Raising;
(m) Monophthongisation of NEAR, SQUARE, CURE;
(n) happY-Lengthening;
(o) Initial Stop De-aspiration;
p /h/ as [9];
(q) Obstruent-/r/;
(r) Dark /l/;
(s) Non-Reduction;
(t) (probably) Consonant Cluster Reduction
Features shared with other SAfE varieties than L1 white SAfE include
(a) those shared with White Afrikaans English:
(i) LOT-Raising;
(ii) Markedly Peripheral Offglides (PRICE, MOUTH, FACE, GOAT
CHOICE);
(iii) Final-Obstruent Devoicing;
(iv) B-Fricativisation;
(v) Dental T, D;
(vi) Sibilant Confusion;
(vii) Hushing/Hissing Substitution;
(viii) Initial //, /d/ Devoicing;
(ix) ‘Hard Attack’/Hiatus Filling with [];
(b) those shared with South African Indian English:
(i) Markedly Peripheral FOOT, GOOSE;
(ii) TH-Stopping;
(iii) Stress-Shift.
Unique features within the South African context – that is, the defining features of
CFE – would therefore comprise:
(a) Antedental /f/;
(b) Final-Nasal Elision;
(c) Canadian Raising in PRICE, MOUTH (and FACE, GOAT?);
(d) NURSE realised as [ ()], [3], [ ];
(e) Hushing Fricative Backing.
980 Peter Finn
5. Research issues
5.1. Afrikaans influence: The argument
Since L1 CFE may be described as a “language-shift variety”, the issue arises of
the potential influence on it of (Cape Vernacular) Afrikaans. However, demon-
strating such influence is not always straightforward.
Lass and Wright (1986) argue that most of the features of L1 ‘white’ SAfE pho-
nology commonly believed to stem from the influence of Afrikaans can be shown
to have a probable or at least possible origin in the varieties of British English
brought to South Africa in the 19th century – although it could still be argued that
the influence of Afrikaans in these cases is likely to have been a reinforcing one.
Since most of the features occurring in CFE are also found in white L1 varieties
of SAfE – especially Extreme SAfE – it is difficult to argue unambiguously for
Afrikaans influence. Nevertheless, some cases remain where a very clear case for
such influence can be made.
Thus, the features mentioned in Section 3 above may be categorised in terms of
probable origin, as follows:
(a) Probable primarily input feature from varieties of British English
(including BrE archaisms/regionalisms):
(i) ONE-Rounding; DANCE-Fronting
(ii) NURSE realised as [] [ø]
(iii) FLEECE [i]
(iv) THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE-Raising
(v) CHOICE Onset Raising
(vi) NEAR-Monophthongisation (some cases)
(vii) SQUARE-Monophthongisation
(viii) CURE-Monophthongisation
(ix) happY-lengthening
(x) lettER realised as [ ], [], [3]
(xi) Stress-Shift
(b) Probable or possible BrE input feature reinforced by CVA:
(i) At least some cases of vowel retraction before /l/ (especially with
iotacisation)
(ii) STRUT-Lowering
(iii) Markedly peripheral FOOT, GOOSE
(iv) BATH/PALM/START-Fronting
(v) LOT-, CLOTH-Raising
(vi) FACE, GOAT Onset Centralisation
(vii) NEAR-monophthongisation (some cases)
(viii) B-Fricativisation
(ix) Final-Obstruent Devoicing
(x) Initial Stop De-aspiration

(xi) Dental T, D; Obstruent-/r/
(xii) Dark /l/
(xiii) Non-Reduction
(c) Probable internal development/BrE input feature reinforced by CVA:
(i) South African Short Front Vowel Shift, involving KIT/DRESS/
TRAP-Raising
(ii) KIT-Split; Consonant Cluster Reduction
(d) Probable internal development: Antedental /f/

(e) Probable (near-)direct transfer from CVA:
(i) LOT-Raising
(ii) Markedly peripheral offglides in rising diphthongs (PRICE,
MOUTH, FACE, GOAT, CHOICE)
(iii) TH-Stopping
(iv) Sibilant Confusion
(v) Hushing/Hissing Substitution
(vi) /h/ as [9]
(vii) Initial /g/, /dZ/ Devoicing
(viii) Final-Nasal Elision
(ix) ‘Hard Attack’/Hiatus-Filling based on []
(f) Probable interlanguage feature (new intermediate form):
(i) Canadian Raising in PRICE, MOUTH, and possible similar
phenomena in FACE and GOAT
(ii) NURSE as [ ()], [3], [ ]
(iii) Hushing Fricative Backing
5.2. Afrikaans influence: Investigation

Research on CFE carried out by Finn (forthcoming) attempts to gain a better ap-
preciation of how substratum effects can lead to language change in a situation
of language shift, by taking better cognisance of the complex role of second-lan-
guage acquisition processes – embodied in the concept of interlanguage that such
a scenario implies.
Auditory analysis of audiotaped data collected in Cape Town indicates the exis-
tence in CFE of a type of ‘Canadian Raising’ (CR), whereby the onsets of closing
diphthongs of the PRICE and MOUTH classes are centralised in pre-fortis environ-
ments but low elsewhere:
982 Peter Finn
Table 2. The CFE major closing-diphthong system
Pre-fortis: Elsewhere:
PRICE: BITE [b3it] BIDE [ba0id?] BUY [bai]

MOUTH: BOUT [b3ut] BOWED [ba0ud ] BOUGH [bau]
FACE: BAIT [beit] BADE [be0id ] BAY [bei]
GOAT: BOAT [but] BODE [b0ud ] BEAU [bu]
Trudgill (1986: 153–161) plausibly attributes the rise of CR in Canadian and other
varieties of English to the reallocation, according to the phonetic principle of pre-
fortis clipping, of low- and centralised-onset PRICE and MOUTH variants originat-
ing in different dialects of English. My claim is that the development of Canadian
Raising in CFE similarly involved the interaction of variants originating in dif-
ferent varieties – but in this case the varieties were different distinct languages
(English and Afrikaans), instead of varieties of the same language (English). It is
proposed that the direct substitution of Afrikaans for English closing diphthongs in
the early Afrikaans-English interlanguage adversely affected intelligibility, since
quality and quantity contrasts required in the target language were not made, as
the following tables make clear:
Table 3. Proposed development of early L2 CFE
Cape English Closest CVA phoneme Early L2 CFE
PRICE: *// / i/ (*[j]) */ i/ (*[j])

MOUTH: *// / u/ */ u/
FACE: */e/ / i/ */ i/
GOAT: *// / u/ */ u/
Table 4. Early L2 CFE mergers
bide ~ bite ~ bade ~ baiT */b it/

bowed ~ bout ~ bode ~ boat */b ut/
buy ~ bay */b i/
beau ~ bough */b u/
It is argued that the CR pattern arose after learners utilised L1 length distinc-
tions between ‘pure’ diphthongs and vowel-glide clusters – a process necessarily
involving reanalysis of L1 phonotactic restrictions. CVA word-final /j/ more
closely resembles Cape English word-final [ ] than does / i/, in terms of onset
quality and quantity. Preferential substitution distinguishing BUY ~ BAY will pro-
vide the key to the wider merger problem – as long as learners violate their L1’s
phonotactic rules by extending /j/ substitution to cover not just word-final en-
vironments, but also pre-lenis ones (as in BIDE). Once this is achieved, BITE with
[ i] will be clearly distinguished from BIDE with [j] in terms not only of actual
onset duration, but also of a CR-type difference in onset quality. It is proposed
that the durational differential principle is then extended in turn to the MOUTH set,
where a CR distinction is similarly set up, and then to the FACE and GOAT sets.
The evidence suggests CR in CFE is indeed an interlanguage feature – since
no superior alternative explanations, such as local interaction of purely British
English dialects, or of universal language principles, could be found. The presence
of CR in all forms of CFE, as well as its continued salience at the latest stage of
entrenchment as an L1 in cases of longer-term intergenerational shift from CVA,
provides at least some support for the hypothesis that IL features can be shown to
play a role in shift-induced language change.
* Most of the introduction to this chapter was originally written by K. McCormick as
part of her contribution on the Morphology and Syntax of CFE in the companion vol-
ume of this handbook.
Selected references
ROM.
Douglas, Christine
1984 A preliminary investigation into the intonation patterns of a small sociolinguis-
tically definable group of South African speakers. Research report, University
of Cape Town.
Finn, Peter A.
forthcoming Interlanguage, language shift and phonological change in the develop-
ment of Cape Flats English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds/
College of York St John.
Hastings, J.
1979 The phonetic system of Coloured English. Honours dissertation, Department
of Logopaedics, University of Cape Town.
Lanham, Leonard W.
1982 English in South Africa. In: Bailey and Görlach (eds.), 324–352.
Lass, Roger
1995 South African English. In: Mesthrie (ed.), 89-106.
1996 Glottal stop and linking [h] in South African English: with a note on two an-
tique connections. In: Juhani Klemola, Merja Kytö and Matti Rissanen (eds.),
Speech Past and Present: Studies in English Dialectology in Memory of Ossi
984 Peter Finn
Ihalainen, 130-151. [Bamberger Beiträge zur Englischen Sprachwissenschaft

38.] Frankfurt: Lang.
Lass, Roger and Susan Wright
1986 Endogeny vs. contact: “Afrikaans influence” on South African English.
Malan, Karen C.
1996 Cape Flats English. In: de Klerk (ed.), 125–148.
Mesthrie, Rajend
1995 South African Indian English: from L2 to L1. In: Mesthrie (ed.), 251–264.
Mesthrie, Rajend and Paula West
1995 Towards a grammar of proto-South African English. English World-Wide 16:
105-133.
Saffery, Sandra M.
1986 A sociolinguistic study of the consonant system of “Coloured English”.
Unpublished B.Sc. thesis, Logopaedics Department, Universoty of Cape
Town.
Steenkamp, Jennifer
1980 A comparison in Coloured English-speaking children of pronunciation of /r/ as
a function of socio-economic status. Dissertation, Department of Logopaedics,
University of Cape Town.
Wood, Tahir M.
1987 Perceptions of, and attitudes towards varieties of English in the Cape Peninsula,
with particular reference to the “Coloured Community”. MA thesis, Rhodes
University, Grahamstown.
St. Helena English: phonology
Sheila Wilson
1. Introduction
The volcanic island of St Helena is situated in the South Atlantic Ocean, 1 930 km
west of Angola. Its nearest neighbour is Acension Island, approximately 1 100 ki-
lometres to the northwest. St Helena covers 122 sq km, a large proportion of which
consists of steep, relatively barren and rocky territory, unsuitable for cultivation. The
island’s capital and only town is Jamestown, although there are other smaller settle-
ments such as Blue Downs, Sandy Bay and Longwood (home to Napoleon Bonaparte
during his exile on the island from 1815 to his death in 1821). St Helena’s population
of approximately 5 000 (1998 census) is almost without exception of mixed Euro-
pean, African and Asian origin. English is the only language spoken on the island.
1.1. A brief history

Originally uninhabited, St Helena was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, and
was used by them and many other European seafaring nations as a refreshment sta-
tion on their journeys to and from the East. Until claimed by the British East India
Company in 1658, the island was never permanently or formally settled. From this
date, a concerted policy of settlement was implemented, and Company employ-
ees (soldiers and servants) and ‘planters’ were recruited to St Helena, along with
slaves supplied on request by EIC ships.
Of the European population, little is recorded of their precise origins, except
that most probably hailed from the southern parts of England. Various records and
correspondence detailed requests for, and the arrival of, slaves from the Guinea
Coast, the Indian sub-continent and Madagascar, as well as some mentions of
slaves coming from the Cape, the West Indies, the Malay Peninsula and the Mal-
dives. In 1789, the importation of slaves ended. The first consignment of Chinese
indentured labourers arrived on the island in 1810, followed by more in 1816. It
appears that very few, if any, stayed on permanently.
In 1815 the total population was 2 871, comprising 776 whites, 1 353 slaves,
447 free blacks, 280 Chinese and 15 lascars (Barnes 1817). When slavery was
finally abolished on the island in 1832, only 614 people were classed as ‘slaves’.
In 1834, St Helena’s administration was transferred from the East India Company
to the British government. By 1837, the population figures were noted as “2 113
whites and 2 864 coloureds”, implying that miscegenation had already occurred
986 Sheila Wilson
to a large degree. In 1875, Melliss notes that about one-sixth of the population
constitutes “pure West Coast Africans”, who were introduced after 1840 when
St Helena was used as a base for rehabilitating slaves from captured slave ships.
Some chose to stay while the majority were sent on to the West Indies or repatri-
ated to the African mainland.
St Helena was host to 500 Afrikaans-speaking Boer War prisoners in 1902.
Upon their release, negligibly few stayed and left little influence of their culture
or language.
The advent of steam-driven ships and the opening of the Suez Canal voided the
island’s raison d’etre as a refreshment station for shipping and a strategic British
possession. Left ‘stranded’ in mid-Atlantic, St Helena relies heavily on financial
support from the British government. With the exception of a short-lived flax in-
dustry (which ended in 1965 when the British postal service switched to cheaper
synthetic fibre for tying mail bags), no industry has provided a viable means of
sustaining the island. There is no airport, and a single government-subsidized ship
plies between the United Kingdom, Ascencion, St Helena and Cape Town (with
an annual run to Tristan da Cunha). Many St Helenians (or ‘Saints’) undertake
contract work on the military bases on Ascencion and the Falkland Islands, and
up until 1999, when the British Government conceded full citizenship rights to
islanders, had limited access to work in the UK.
Given the historical demographics and socio-economic conditions of the island,
it is unlikely that a full-blown creole language ever developed on St Helena. The
relatively small and impoverished European population and paucity of arable land
meant that slave ownership was on a small scale, with tiny communities living
in relative isolation from each other due to the volcanic geography of the island –
deep valleys and steep hillsides which could only be traversed by narrow, winding
donkey-paths. Slaves initially lived in a close – if socially stratified – relationship
with their settler masters. By the 19th century, the population was further integrated
by the practice of garrisoned soldiers marrying or entering into common-law rela-
tionships with free blacks. Such circumstances made the development of a creole
unnecessary, as access to English was generally always close at hand. What is
fairly probable is that the non-European population exerted an influence on the
English dialect which developed in the mid-Atlantic, in a similar vein to the Cay-
man Islands and Bay Islands in the Caribbean – Holms’ “creole-influenced non-
creole Englishes” (1988/89).
There is still evidence of phonological variation between the various settlements
on St Helena, particularly among the older population who are not as mobile as the
younger people who all attend a centrally located high school, or who may travel
across the island to work in Jamestown. While some St Helenians have access to
a more or less standard variety of English, particularly if they have undergone
tertiary education on the British mainland, the speech community could be consid-
ered as spread over a continuum, from the basilectal ‘broad’ variety of St. Helena
St. Helena English: phonology 987
English (StHE) (commonly referred to on the island as ‘Saintspeak’) to a fairly

Standard British English at the acrolectal end. There is no evidence that there is
any one-way movement towards standard English, as young speakers, if anything,
have a more marked tendency to use non-standard features.
2. Phonology
2.1. The vowels of StHE
Table 1. The vowels of StHE
KIT I > i > i. FLEECE i:

FOOT U GOOSE u: > ü:
TRAP Q > E DRESS e>E
NURSE a: THOUGHT ç:
LOT a> DOOR ¨ > ç
CLOTH Å>a START A:
STRUT BATH A:
COMMA PALM A:
LETTER > HAPPY i
PRICE AI > aI > çI >I HORSES
CHOICE oI > çI SQUARE e
NEAR i > I > ijE GOAT oU > U
CURE ju FACE eI
MOUTH AU > aU > a
The short monophthongs

KIT
StHE does exhibit a ‘KIT-split’, [I] being the common realisation in velar and
glottal contexts, as in kit, big, sing, hit and give; and a more centralised vowel
[I] elsewhere, as in bit, fit, sin, bin etc. Particularly in older speakers the split is
not as widespread, with the vowel in tin, mill, spin etc. often realised as high
front [i]. There is some variation even in individual speakers, who might, for
example, pronounce a high front [i] in tin and a rather central to back [I] in mill.
There is another notable anomaly to the split, in the realisation of segments that
are preceded by [s] and end in [k], such as sick and sixty where the /i/ vowel is
articulated much further back and laxer, approximating [ƒ_]. To a lesser extent,
988 Sheila Wilson
before /k/ the vowel is realised as central or even slightly back of central as in
cricket and pick [].
DRESS
The usual realisation of this vowel is mid-front [e], approximating to slightly low-
ered [E] in many environments e.g. before the nasal /n/ in second for some speak-
ers. For some words ending in [g], such as leg, there are occasional realisations of
the vowel as a diphthong – [leIg] (see discussion below under LOT).
TRAP
The vowel here is generally equivalent to RP [Q]. However some speakers have
[ ] in bed, that, etc.
FOOT
Generally a weakly-rounded back [U]. In some speakers this vowel is slightly cen-
tralised and unrounded.
STRUT
This is generally articulated as a low back vowel [], with occcasional tendency
towards centring.
LOT
There is some variation, with RP standard [Å] used by some speakers on occasion,
but the general tendency is towards unrounding to [a]. In monosyllabic words end-
ing in [g], such as fog and dog, a certain number of speakers articulate a length-
ened diphthong [oU], analagous to the pronunciation of vogue. This doesn’t appear
widespread, and is generally considered by the speakers themselves as amusingly
parochial, and is probably an archaism that was much more prominent in the past. A
diphthong quality also appears with [e] before /g/. Evidence that this is a related ar-
chaism could be taken from the fact that one of the common, and therefore historical,
family names on St Helena is Legg, pronounced by the local radio station interview-
er as [leIg], whereas in his everyday speech he would not use such a realisation.
The long monophthongs
NURSE
Although some older speakers use the vowel similar to RP [:], there is a promi-
nent ‘island variant’ here, which is unrounded, lax and more open than RP [:]. It
is difficult to transcribe and I tentatively use [a:] for it. It has a fronter value ap-
proximating [Q:] in church and a backer value approximating [˘] in work.
FLEECE
This vowel is uniformly [i:].
GOOSE
Generally a back rounded vowel, approximating [u:].
PALM
The usual vowel here is [A˘].
THOUGHT
Generally [ç:], but tendency in some speakers to articulate vowel as diphthong [ç ].
NORTH
StHE is a non-rhotic variety. Hence this vowel is often realised as a diphthong [ç ]
or less commonly [ ] in words like before and door.
START
The vowel quality here is normally [A:], sometimes raised and/or rounded.
The diphthongs
FACE
This diphthong is generally realised as [eI].
GOAT
Realised as [oU] with first element weakly rounded; in some speakers, the onset is
more centralised with even less rounding – [ U] or even [aU] occasionally.
PRICE
Although there are some realisations of this diphthong that approach an equivalent
of RP [aI], there is a certain amount of variation. There is evidence (from oc-
casional visitors’ parodies) that at least in the 19th and early 20th century a broad
tendency to approximate [çI] was usual for this diphthong. An interesting split is
evident, taking the much-used word island. In some speakers the vowel element
has become monophthong [a:], while others retain a diphthong with rounding in
the first element. Why is enunciated with rounding, as is size and kind. Time, has
a rounded diphthong but also is enunciated as a monophthong [A:], varying even
in the same speaker. There is also a tendency among younger speakers towards
‘Canadian’ raising in words such as like and right – where the vowel quality is [ I].
This is also apparent in the speech of some elderly speakers.
CHOICE
This diphthong is generally [çI] ~ [oI].
MOUTH
Generally [aU], but some realisations of [oU], in about etc. In this class town is
exceptional since for many certain StHE speakers the diphthong in town has the
realisation [a ].
NEAR
Usually [i ] or [I ]; occasionally the second element glide is not enunciated, re-
sulting in a monothong [i:].
990 Sheila Wilson
SQUARE
For the most part, this diphthong is realised as [i ], thus pairs like hear/hair, steers/
stairs are homophones. The vowels in here, there and bread are noticeably [i ].
Schwa
In some multisyllabic words, such as expensive, the unstressed vowel in the first
segment results in a weak initial [ ]. This would also be influenced by the glottal
consonant following the initial vowel. With certain other words such as animal
and hospital, where the second vowel would be schwa in most dialects of English,
StHE speakers use a high front vowel [i].
Consonants and processes affecting consonants
V and W
In most speakers, /w/ is variable occurring as [w] or more commonly, especially
word-initially as a labiodental approximant [V] - e.g. ven the vether is vet (‘when
the weather is wet’); tin vistles (‘…whistles’), the Prince of Vales (‘…Wales’), and
veel (wheel). The opposite change – [w] for /v/ also occurs, but this is rare – e.g.
ower for ‘over’. Hancock (1991:20) comments as follows:
The most evident feature is the transposition of [v] and [w], which is widespread in
the island and coastal dialects (e.g in Pitcairn, Norfolk, Gullah, some varieties of Nova
Scotian, & c.), and which have sometimes fallen together as [v] or [B]. This feature was
common in some 19th Century British dialects, but has largely disappeared in Britain.
D and T
In most cases, especially word initially, the interdental fricatives are replaced by
other sounds, most commonly [D] > [d] and [T] > [t]; e.g. dat (that); tings (things).
Sometimes there are dental stop realisations rather than alveolar stops; and less
commonly an aspirated alveolar [tH], thus some speakers produced [tHQnks] for
thanks.
Consonant cluster simplification

Consonant clusters are often simplified, especially at word endings; e.g. [fa:s] for
‘fast’, [p n] for ‘pound’, and [k lk] for ‘collect’. Consonant cluster simplifica-
tion, although not as common, has also been noted e.g. [tIrn'] for ‘children’, [tad]
for ‘child’ and [spIdl] for ‘spindle’.
–ING
This suffix is almost unexceptionally reduced to [ n], with the vowel occasionally
dropped in fast, connected speech to produce a syllabic /n/.
Devoicing
Final devoicing occurs in StHE. It is particularly common in the plural morpheme
/s/ e.g. in beans, peas, days, houses, stairs and things.
Glottalisation and flaps

In casual StHE speech, secondary or unstressed segments, particularly word end-
ings, are accorded even less stress than in standard varieties like RP. This affects
the pronunication of intervocalic [t] in words like ‘sitting’, which is realised as a
glottal stop with the last syllable reduced, approximating [sI/n]. In words like ‘let-
ter’, [t] is flapped, resulting in [lER ].
/v/ > [b] and /b/ > []
In intervocalic position [b] occasionally turns up as a realisation of /v/ and [B] for
/b/. Slight evidence that this may have been more common historical process is sug-
gested by two examples. One informant identified a breed of duck as a scoby (from
Muscovy). Conversely, two other elderly informants, talking of their work in the now
defunct flax mills, enunciated the /b/ in ‘fibre’ as a bilabial fricative [B]. It appears
that this articulation of /b/ is not productive, and is limited to particular words.
3. Conclusion
It is evident that that StHE is a fascinating variety in terms of its historical reten-
tions of certain sounds and processes common to the input British dialects. It also
shows common processes like final devoicing that might be motivated by lan-
guage and dialect contact on the island. As a variety whose history involves BrE
dialects, languages of slaves from West Africa (and other parts) and their versions
of English, StHE invites comparisons with African American English, Caribbean
Englishes and so forth. At the same time in some features, like rounded realisa-
tions of the PRICE vowel and the KIT split, it invites comparisons with other South-
ern Hemisphere Englishes. There is clearly much work to be done.
Selected references
ROM.
Hancock, Ian
1991 St. Helena English. In: Francis Byrne and Thom Huebner (eds.), Development
and Structures of Creole Languages. Essays in Honor of Derek Bickerton, 16-
28.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Barnes, John
1817 A Tour through the Island of St Helena. London: JM Richardson.
Mellis, John Charles
1875 St Helena. A Physical, Historical and Topographical Description of the Island:
Its Geology, Fauna, Flora, and Meteorology. London: L Reeve
Indian English: phonology
Ravinder Gargesh
1. Introduction
Indian English (IndE) is a cover term for a number of varieties of English used
as a second language in India. These varieties exhibit significant phonological
variations, stemming from regional linguistic differences. However many of these
features converge into what can be considered a ‘general’ phonology of IndE. Eng-
lish is widely used in India - it is the ‘associate official’ language of the country
and it also serves as a link language between the educated. It is the most potent
medium of higher education, perhaps the sole medium of science and technology.
Most books, newspapers, reports, seminars and so forth directed to a nationwide
audience are brought out in this language.
Work on IndE phonology has so far been largely sketchy or tilted towards the
use of English in a particular region. Because of an earlier focus on language
teaching, IndE has often been characterized as a ‘deviant’ variety, with researchers
focusing on its phonetic differences from RP. It is nonetheless surprising that no
full-length description of IndE is available, despite its widespread use. English is
spoken in India by a very large section ranging from the semi-literate to the highly
educated. For the purposes of this paper a random selection has been made of
educated speakers who use English as a second language. An effort has been made
to broadly cover all the major areas of the country in order to make phonological
generalizations and show the range of variation in IndE.
2. Phonology of IndE
The present study is based on the phonological description of the variety used by
educated speakers in the areas of education, administration, science and business
etc.
2.1. Overview of previous studies

Work on the phonetics and phonology of Indian English can be divided into five
broad categories, which are more fully referenced in the CD accompanying this
Handbook. The first category consists of works describing the phonetic aspects of
IndE (e.g. Bansal 1978). The second category comprises studies that compare the
Indian English: phonology 993
sound system of RP with an Indian language and in the process involve a variety of
IndE (e.g. with Tamil - Balasubramanian 1972). In the third category occur works
which contrast RP with a regional variety of IndE (Marathi English – Kelkar 1957).
The fourth category consists of works that study the perception and intelligibility
of IndE (e.g. Bansal 1978). The fifth category consists of scholars who focus on
the study of IndE in sociolinguistic contexts (e.g. Agnihotri 1991). In this process
significant phonological patterns have been highlighted by Nihalani, Tongue and
Hosali (1979), Kachru (1982: 359), Trudgill and Hannah (1982: 105) and others.
The view emerging from most of these studies is that IndE is largely shaped by the
phonological patterns of the respective mother tongues and that this process needs
to be studied in depth. The description of IndE in the present work is based on tape
recordings carried out in 2003 and 2004. The elicited data consists of word lists
of Wells (1982) and Foulkes and Docherty (1999), a reading passage and a stretch
of free conversation by speakers of IndE from various parts of the country. Since
there is a large transferring or migrating population in Delhi, the entire recording
was done in this capital city. For the analysis this work will first enumerate the dis-
tinctive sounds of IndE and then go on to look at the major phonological processes,
and the principles of word accentuation and intonation.
2.2. Distinctive sounds of Indian English

The distinctive sounds of Indian English have been identified by Bansal (1978:
101-111) and Nihalani, Tongue and Hosali (1979: 209-212) by viewing IndE as a
uniform variety of an educated group. However, much regional variation is found
in the utterance of many vowels and consonants across the length and breadth of
the country. The variations are mainly due to the following factors:
(i) The influence of the phonology of Indian languages which consist of over
200 mainstream languages belonging to four distinct language families: Indo-
Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman.
(ii) Within the languages of the respective language families there is much re-
gional variation.
(iii) Since English is taught to Indians by Indians the local influence of sounds
can be easily perceived.
(iv) Sociologically, the IndE speech community consists broadly of three kinds
of speakers: (a) a small number of people whose command over English is
near-native, (b) a significant number of administrators, teachers, scientists,
journalists, businessmen etc., at the middle level, whose variety is consid-
ered to be the educated variety and a benchmark for English Language teach-
ing (ELT) and (c) at the lower level there are many others whose competence
is severely limited and who can use English only in their restricted domains,
e.g. shopkeepers, waiters etc.
994 Ravinder Gargesh
2.3 The vowels of IndE

Table 1. The vowels of IndE according to Wells’ lexical sets.
KIT I > i˘
DRESS e>E>´
TRAP Q>E
LOT ç>Å>a
STRUT √>´>U
FOOT U > u˘
BATH ˘
CLOTH ç > o > a˘
NURSE Œ˘ > √ > ´ > a˘
FLEECE i˘ > I
FACE e˘
PALM ˘
THOUGHT ç˘ > o˘ > a˘
GOAT o˘ > ç˘
GOOSE u˘
PRICE aI
CHOICE çI > oI > oe
MOUTH aU
NEAR I´ > i˘j´ > Ij´˘ > e´
SQUARE Q > e˘ > e´ > E˘
START ˘
NORTH ç˘ > a˘ > Å
FORCE ç˘ > o˘
CURE Ijo˘ > Ijç˘ > Iju˘ > Iju´
happY I > i˘
lettER ´
horsES ´>ˆ
commA a
The short monophthongs

KIT
This short, stressed, high vowel is generally articulated all over India, except for
the Bengal-Orissa region in Eastern India where the languages of this region do
not have the long-short vowel distinctions. Hence, this vowel freely alternates
with the long, stressed, high vowel [i:] in the category of FLEECE.
DRESS
The major realizations of this vowel are [e] and []. In regions of Uttar Pradesh,
Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, it is realized as [e]. How-
ever, in Maharashtra, Kashmir, Punjab, Bihar, and Orissa and in the Northeastern
region of India it is realized as []. At times it is also realized as [´].
TRAP
By and large the vowel is realized as [Q], however in Haryana, Rajasthan and
Gujarat it is often heard as the lowered [].
LOT
The usual vowel realization is [ç]. In some regions like Gujarat, Maharashtra and
Kashmir it is realized as [Å]. Its variation [a:] can also be heard in most parts of
India.
STRUT
While it is usually realised as [√], some informants from Kashmir, Harayana and
Uttar Pradesh (UP) articulate it as the non-stressed [´]. Some follow the written
convention to realize it as [U].
FOOT
Mostly it is realized as a weakly-rounded [U]. However, there are regions like
Bengal, Orissa, and parts of Bihar, UP and Rajasthan where the long back vowel
[u:] can often be heard.
The long monophthongs

BATH
It is realized as long low back vowel [:].
CLOTH
It is mostly articulated as [ç:] and is also realized as [o:] in Haryana, UP, Rajasthan
and Bengal. However, in most parts of the country it is also realized as [a:].
NURSE
It is mostly realized as [E:]. It occurs as [√] in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Pun-
jab and in North-East India. In Maharashtra, UP, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra
Pradesh (AP), and Kerala it realized as [´]. In areas of Orissa and Bengal it is also
articulated as [a:].
FLEECE
It is by and large articulated as [i:] with [I] being in variation amongst speakers of
Orissa and Bengal.
PALM
It is realized as the low-back, long, unrounded vowel [:] as in BATH.
THOUGHT
The usual realization is [ç], a half-open weakly rounded back vowel. It is also real-
ized by some speakers as [o:] and by still others as [a:].
GOOSE
It is usually realized as the high, back rounded [u:].
START
Mostly realized as [:], at times with a postvocalic trilled /r/.
NORTH
Largely it is realized as [ç]. However, extensive variation exists in the form [a:]
and [Å:].
FORCE
Mostly it is realized as [o]. Some variation is available in the form [ç].
The diphthongs
FACE
It is invariably realized as the monophthong [e:].
GOAT
It is usually realized as a monophthong [o:]. Some speakers articulate it as [ç:] due
to, probably, spelling convention in words like broad.
PRICE
It is realized as a diphthong [aI]. The glide element of [I] is quite distinct.
CHOICE
This diphthong has three variations: [çI], [oe], and [oI].
MOUTH
It is uniformly realized as the diphthong [aU]. The latter sound of the diphthong is
relatively stronger than the one in RP.
NEAR
The most widespread realization is the diphthong [I´]. The other significant varia-
tions are [i:j´], [Ij´:] and [e´].
SQUARE
Mostly it is realized as [:]. Other variations are [e:], [Q] and [e´].
CURE
Generally the diphthong is realized as [Ijo:]. But it has variations such as [Ijç:],
[Iju:], and [Iju´].
TUEsday
Generally it is realized as [Iju:].
FIRE
The triphthong is realized as [aI´] mainly in South India, Bengal and Orissa. The
variant form [ae´] is realized in UP, Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan.
EITHER
The initial diphthong is realized as [aI] most of the time. Its variant form [eI] is
heard more in South India, particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Some speakers
also realize it as [i:], and in the northeast some even as [e:].
Other vowels
happY
Generally it is articulated as the short front high vowel [I], but its variant form [i:]
can be heard in parts of the country.
lettER
This is realized as [´r] although in the highly educated variety it tends to be the
non-rhotic [´]. Generally, the trilled /r/ is highly pronounced whenever it occurs in
the graphic script in all varieties of IndE as second language.
horsES
It is realized as the mid high vowel [ˆ] and at times as the low mid-vowel [´].
commA
It is realized as the half-lengthened [a.].
The opposition between /√/ and /´/, /Å/ and /ç/ and /E/ and /Q/ is not clear-cut in
IndE varieties. There is recognizable alternation between /Å/, /ç/ and /:/ (LOT vs
THOUGHT vs PALM).
2.4. The consonants of IndE

Stops
Out of the stops P, T, K, B, D, G, it is only the former three that show differ-
ent realizations. Firstly, the voiceless stops are not aspirated in the syllable-initial
position in IndE. This may be because aspirated voiceless stops are phonemic in
North Indian languages, and the relatively weakly aspirated allophones of P, T,
K in BrE are either not noticed or not associated with the phonemic aspirates of
North Indian languages. Secondly, T, and D tend to be retroflexed as in the words

certificate [s´rˇifike:ˇ] and London [lń@ n].
Nasals
In syllable-initial position only /m/ and /n/ occur; the velar nasal /N/ occurs as a
homorganic variant of /n/ before velars. The velar nasal is realized as a combina-
tion of the nasal and the voiced velar consonant as in the words sing and rung
- [sINg], [r√Ng]. The retroflexed nasal /A/ can also be heard when the alveolar nasal
is articulated before a retroflexed stop as in the words aunty and band – [a:ABi:],
[bQ˜Í]
Affricates
The affricates [tS] and [dZ] are distinct as in the words chin and gin and not gener-
ally subject to variation.
Fricatives
F and V are not realized as labiodentals in some varieties of IndE. For most speak-
ers of Oriya and Bangla and those in the Hindi speaking belt, F is realized as [ph]
and V often overlaps with W as in the realizations of the word power - [pa:v´r] ~
[pa: w´r]. In Orissa and Bengal the V is also realized as [bh] as in the word never
- [nebh ´r].
The dental fricatives /T/ and /D/ are non-existent in IndE. The aspirated voice-
less stop [t9H] is realized for /T/; the voiced stop [d] is realized for /D/ - as in thin =
[t9hIn] and then = [den]. In South India the alveolar stop /t/ is often used instead of
/T/ as in thought - [tçt].
/s/ and /z/ do occur in IndE. However, regional variations are often heard. E.g.,
in Bengal /s/ is replaced by /S/ as in [Sem] for same. The [z] is also often realized
as [dZ] as in [phri:dZ] or [fri:dZ] for freeze and [praIdZ] for prize.
The palato-alveolars /S/, /Z/ also have their variant forms. While /S/ is realized
in most places as in RP, in Orissa it is often replaced by a /s/ as in [si:] for she, and
[si:p] or [sIp] for ship. The /Z/ sound is mostly non-existent in IndE. It is realized
as /dZ/, /z/ or /j/ as in [ple:dZ´r], [ple:z´r] or [plaIj´r] for pleasure.
The glottal fricative /h/ is generally realized in North India. There is, however,
a tendency towards H-dropping, substituted by a low tone amongst some Punjabi
speakers; e.g., house is realized as [a$us] and heat as [i$:t]. In South India a ‘euphon-
ic’ /j/ and /w/ are sometimes realized in place of the /h/ as in [jill] for hill, [jQd] for
had and [laIvliwud] for livelihood .
IndE has two liquids, /l/ and /r/. The /l/ is generally `clear’ (i.e. alveolar), even
after contexts that induce a dark /l/ in other dialects of English (e.g. after back
vowels). The liquid /r/ is generally trilled; in consonant clusters in words like
trap, drain, cry etc it has a trilled rather than approximant realization. This is
true of postvocalic /r/ as well: e.g., [ka:r] and [ka:rˇ ] for car and cart respectively.
Although postvocalic realizations of /r/ might be an instance of spelling pronuncia-
tion, it must be conceded that the English brought to India from the earliest times
is likely to have its postvocalic r’s intact.
Amongst the semivowels /j/ is only realized as [j]; while /w/ has an overlap with
the labiodental fricative /v / as in [pa:v´r] or [pa:w´r] for power. It has already
been pointed out that the ‘euphonic’ /j/ and /w/ exist in most South Indian speech
as can be seen in [jevery] for every and [won] and [wonly] for own and only re-
spectively.
3. Some specific phonological processes of IndE
As a formally-learnt variety IndE shows greater correlation between writing and

speech sounds than one encounters in informally learnt L1 English. In North India
vowel-initial consonant clusters of the type #sp- ; #st-, # sk- and #sl- are generally
broken up. In eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar a short high prothetic vowel /I/ is in-
serted in the word-initial position: hence [Ispi:tS] for speech and [isku:l] for school.
In Punjab and Haryana, on the other hand, the low-back, untensed, svarabhakti (or
anaptyctic) vowel /´/ is inserted between the clusters: hence [s´pi:tS] for speech
and [s´ku:l] for school. Both these processes convert the initial monosyllable into
a disyllable.
In the north-east, particularly in Nagaland and Manipur, a word-final consonant
cluster is simplified by dropping the last consonant, e.g., act is realized as [Ek] and
fruits as [fru:ˇ ].
In South India svarabhakti operates in word final –nst # clusters. Thus, against
is realized as [age:n´st].
IndE also reveals at times /´/ deletion in relatively light positions, in keeping
with BrE norms: dispensary = /dIs»pEns´ri:/ = [dIs»pEnsri:]; allegory = /´»lEg´ri:/ =
[´*lEgri:]; confederation = /kńfEd´»re:Sń/ = [kńfEd»re:Sń].
Wh- words are often articulated with the /wh/ sequence, as in [wha:i] and
[whey´r] for why and where respectively. That is, /w/ is aspirated, not pre-aspi-
rated as in RP and a few other English dialects.
Geminates frequently occur within and across morpheme boundaries in words
like the following:
innate [Inneˇ] fully [fulli:]
cannot [kEnnoˇ] oppressive [oppressiv]
IndE shows greater usage of [d] rather than of [t] for –ed inflections after voiceless
consonants. Thus traced = [tre:sd], advanced = [Edva:nsd] and packed = [pQkd].
Words like trust and trussed are homophones in RP but are distinguished in IndE
by the realization of [t] and [d] in the respective words.
Some speakers omit the semivowels /j/ and /w/ when following a mid or close
vowel agreeing in backness. Thus yet is realized as [Eˇ ] and won’t as [o:nˇ ]. Con-
versely, it has already been mentioned that some other speakers add a semivowel
before an initial vowel in exactly the same conditions, thus every = [jevri], about
= [je*baUˇ] and old = [wo:l@], own = [wo:n] etc.
It should also be noted that the rule of syllabic consonant formation (which
converts [´] plus a sonorant into a syllabic sonorant) does not apply in IndE. Thus
metal = [meˇ´l], button = [b√ˇń] etc.
One of the markers of IndE as a distinct variety is its peculiar word-stress and in-
tonation patterns. These make IndE less comprehensible to speakers from outside
South Asia than to its own speakers and those of South Asian English generally.
This is because the rules of accentuation of IndE are closer to those of Indian lan-
guages than to those of RP.
4.1. Word stress/accentuation

Word accentuation in IndE shows a heavy influence of the filter language(s). It is
observed that in IndE a syllable of a word is more prominent than in RP. A careful
examination shows that there is significant correlation between the weight and
position of syllables within a word and their prominence. The problem can be
explained by accepting the tripartite division of syllable types in terms of their
weight: (a) Light = (C)V, (b) Heavy = (C)V: /VC, and (c) Extra–heavy = (C)V:
C/(C)VCC (see Singh and Gargesh 1995).
The following rules of accentuation broadly appear to apply in IndE:
(a) All monosyllabic words are accented irrespective of the quantity of the syl-
lable.
(b) In bisyllabic words the primary accent falls on the penultimate syllable if it is
not followed by an extra–heavy syllable, otherwise the primary stress would
full on the ultimate syllable.
(c) In trisyllabic words the primary accent falls on the penultimate syllable if it is
heavy by nature or position, otherwise it falls on the antepenultimate syllable.
The above rules can account for the placement of primary accent in a word of IndE.
The first of these rules leads to the tendency of providing relatively strong stress
to weak syllables such as in auxiliary verb forms, articles etc. Rules (b) and (c)
go on to provide primary stress to a syllable in a polysyllabic word. Thus, for the
application of rules (b) and (c) the following examples can be viewed:
Rule (b):
taboo [»ˇQbu:] degree ['ÍIgri:]
mistake [»mIsˇek] bamboo ['bQmbU]
defy [dIf CaI] impact [Im»pQkˇ]
record [rI»kA:rÍ] servile [s´r»va:Il]
gymnast [dZIm'nA:sˇ] cartoon ['kA:rˇu:n]
monsoon ['mç:nsu:n] concrete ['kç:nkri:ˇ]
abstract ['QbsˇrQkˇ]
Rule (c):
tendency [ˇEn»ÍEnsI] modesty [mo»ÍEsˇI]
minster [mI'nIsˇ´r], character [kQ»rQkˇ´r]
curvature [k´r've:tS´r] literature [liˇ»re:tS´r]
necessary [nE'sEss´rI] terrific ['ˇErrIfIk]
diminish ['ÍImInIS] category [k´»ˇQgorI]
attestation [´»ˇEsˇeSń].
In the case of compounds the leftmost primary stress is generally retained. Thus:
animation ['QnImeSń] relaxation [rI'lQkseSń]
Chinese ['tSaIjni:z] Japanese [»dZQpńi:z]
meditative ['mQÍIˇeˇIv] dramatic ['drQm´ˇIk],
photography ['foˇogra:fI].
As a result of the rules of accentuation many times the shift of accent due to gram-
matical factors is not observable. Thus the noun and verb form often remain the
same: permit ['p´rmIˇ]; transfer ['ˇra:nsf´r]; impact [Im'pQkˇ]; protest [pro'ˇEsˇ].
4.2. Rhythm and intonation

IndE has its own syllable-timed rhythmic patterns. Here syllables are uttered with
an almost equal prominence. This also means that often IndE does not use weak
forms of vowels in unstressed positions. Thus a sentence like I’m thinking of you
can be heard as: [»a:I »Qm »t5HINkiNg »çf »ju:]. Here the first person singular pro-
noun, the auxiliary and the preposition too have a relative stress and hence they
are not realized in their shortened forms like [a:Im] or [´v] etc. Since the syllables
are articulated more fully, IndE takes relatively more time in articulating similar
stretches of the English language than, say, RP.
IndE reveals a falling intonation in statements, such as in: The boy is running
on the road = [d´ bçe Iz Ã»r√nnINg çn Õ d´ ro:Í]. A falling intonation can be
perceived in commands and exclamations.
Rising intonation is visible in yes-no questions, tag questions, some wh- ques-
tions, and in dependent clauses:
Yes-No question
Are you coming? = [a:r ju: Ã k√mINg?]
Tag question
He has done the work, hasn’t he? = [hi: hQz d√n d´ v´rk, ÃhQznˇ hi:?].
Wh- question
What is the financial benefit? = [w√ˇIz d´ faInQnS´l Ã bEnEfIt?].
Dependent clause
The boy who is walking will come here soon. = [d´ bçe Ã hu: Iz va:kINg
Õ wIl k√m he´r su:n].
5. Current research issues
The phonology of IndE requires more work on the sound patterns of the many
regional varieties of IndE. Intonation has been a more or less neglected field that
offers many challenges to researchers. Given the expanse of the country and its
immense linguistic variation there is scope for research in almost every branch of
the phonology of IndE.
Selected references
ROM.
Agnihotri, Rama Kant

1991 Sound patterns of Indian English: A sociolinguistic perspective. In: R.S. Gupta
and K. Kapoor (eds.) English in India: Issues and problems, 175 – 88. Delhi:
Academic Foundation.
Balasubramanian, T.
1972 The vowels of Tamil and English. CIEFL Bulletin 9: 27-34.
Bansal, R.K.
1978 The phonology of Indian English. In: R. Mohan (ed.), Indian Writings in
English. Madras: Orient Longman.
Nihalani, Paroo, R.K. Tongue, and Priya Hosali
2004 Indian and British English: A Handbook of Usage and Pronunciation. Delhi:
Oxford University Press. 2nd ed.
Singh, A. and Ravinder Gargesh
1996 Some aspects of syllable structure and word- accent in Hindi. In: S.K. Verma
and A. Singh (eds.), Perspectives on Language and Society. Papers in Memory
of Prof. R.N. Srivastava, Volume II. Delhi: Kalinga Publications.
Pakistani English: phonology
Ahmar Mahboob and Nadra Huma Ahmar
1. Introduction
A study of Pakistani English (PakE) must begin with an understanding of its his-
torical and social roots in an undifferentiated, pre-partition ‘British India’. English
was first introduced in the Indo-Pak subcontinent by the British in the 16th century.
It received official recognition with the passing of Macaulay’s minutes of 1835.
Throughout the British era, English kept gaining political and social status. By
1947, when Pakistan and India gained their independence from the British, the
English language had become so entrenched in the socio-political fabric of the re-
gion that it was retained as an official language in both countries (see Ali 1993).
English in British India initially spread because of economic and social mobility
associated with the language. People learned English either by contact or through
formal schooling. However, since there were not enough native English-speaking
teachers to meet the demand, most English teachers were Indians. Thus, the input
that English language learners received in South Asia was non-native and local.
There was relatively little contact with native varieties of English in India, and after
independence, this contact was further reduced. These factors have contributed to
the institutionalization and evolution of South Asian English as a distinct variety.
During the British era, as various nationalist and ethnic movements in South
Asia used language as a symbol of their identity, linguistic issues complexified. An
example of such symbolism is the division leading to linguistic changes between
Hindi and Urdu which strengthened (and is strengthening) as a result of religious
affiliation of these languages with Hinduism and Islam, respectively. In a regional
setting, the status of Hindi vs. Dravidian languages of South India in post-colonial
India, or the role of Urdu vs. Sindhi in Pakistan, has been a cause of strife within
each country. As a result of this politicization of local languages, English, because
of its ‘foreignness’, has been preferred as a neutral language and gained politi-
cal acceptance in the new countries. These local needs and uses of English, and
the limited contact with native speakers of English has resulted in what has been
called ‘nativization’ of English in the Indian sub-continent.
With the political partition of the sub-continent, the fate of English fell into the
hands of the respective political leaders in India and Pakistan. In Pakistan, English
was to go on a roller-coaster ride. While it was initially maintained by the Pakistani
leadership, it soon became a symbol of resentment amongst the religious parties,
who felt that maintaining the status of English symbolized a new form of coloniza-
1004 Ahmar Mahboob and Nadra Huma Ahmar
tion. There was intense opposition to English by these groups. However, there were
three reasons why these demands were not taken into consideration by the govern-
ment: (1) there was insufficient material in local languages to use in education and
other domains (lack of corpus planning), (2) there was no other politically neutral
language that could replace English, and (3) the religious parties did not have suf-
ficient political power. As a result, English maintained its supremacy in Pakistan and
little was done to change this. However, this status quo changed with General Zia-ul-
Haq’s capture of power through a military coup in 1977. General Haq justified his
coup by implementing rapid Islamization and Urduization policies and decentral-
izing the role of English. His was the first serious effort by a Pakistani government
to decrease the role of English. This change in the government’s attitude towards
English was manifest in the 1978 language in education policy which advised all
English medium schools (schools where all classes were taught in English) to switch
to Urdu. However, elite English medium schools, where children of the people in
power studied, were waived from the need to make these changes. Although these
changes were supported by leaders of certain political parties and religious organi-
zations, they did not find favour among the populace. By 1983, there was recogni-
tion within General Haq’s government that the language in education policy had
been hurriedly passed without the required planning, and, by 1987, it was retracted.
Although the Urdu-only policies have been revised, the impact of non-English edu-
cation for approximately a decade and its dismissal from official use (especially in
government) is still evident. Today, the government realizes the value of English
in a global economy and is implementing policies to teach it at primary level in all
schools. This change in policy is supported by most of the people who prefer learn-
ing English to other languages and see it as a means of economic development
1.1. Pakistani languages and PakE

While work on South Asian English suggests that there is a need for a description
of a pan-South Asian model of English, it also recognizes differences between
various sub-varieties of South Asian English (Kachru 1983). These sub-variet-
ies are defined in terms of local languages. Thus, PakE and Indian English have
unique features based on the differences in the vernaculars of the population of
each country (and on the different political, educational and economic policies of
each country). Similarly, PakE itself is heterogeneous not only because of the so-
cio-economic, geographic, and educational background of the people who speak it,
but also because of the various first languages of its speakers. An example of this
is the difference in the placement and quality of the epenthetic vowel in English
spoken by native speakers of Urdu and Panjabi.
– Native speakers of Urdu: [strt] ‘start’
– Native speakers of Panjabi: [s trt] ‘start’
Pakistani English: phonology 1005
Another example of variable influence of first language on PakE concerns the

realization of []:
– Native speakers of Urdu: [mer] ‘measure’
– Native speakers of Panjabi: [mejr] or [medr] ‘measure’
In this example, the [] is either realized as a [j] or a [d] by Panjabi speakers of
PakE. The exact distribution of this variation has not been studied.
These examples of differences in PakE suggest that there may be considerable
variation within PakE based on speakers’ first language. Pakistan is a multilingual
country with at least 69 living languages (Ethnologue 2002), and speakers of these
different languages may be predicted to speak English differently. Unfortunately,
at present, there is no research that explores the extent of influence of various
mother tongues on PakE(es). A review of the small number of studies that focus
on PakE is presented in the companion paper on PakE in the syntax volume of this
handbook..
The dominant (numerically and politically) languages of Pakistan include (in
alphabetical order), Balochi, English, Pashtu, Panjabi, Sindhi, Siraiki, and Urdu.
The percentage of native speakers of these languages is given in Table 1 below. The
numbers (except for English) provided in Table 1 are based on the CIA World Fact
Book (2002). The estimated percentage for English is based on the literacy rate of
42.7%, and the ratio of English medium schools. In interpreting the numbers pro-
vided in Table 1, the total estimated population of Pakistan, of approximately 150
million, should be kept in mind. Thus a seemingly tiny 3% of Baluchi speakers
corresponds to about 4.5 million people. Similarly, if English is spoken with some
proficiency by 4% of the Pakistani population, the number represented is approxi-
mately 6 million people, more than the total population of New Zealand.
Table 1. Major languages of Pakistan
Language Percentage of native

speakers (except English)
Panjabi 40%
Sindhi 12%
Siraiki (a variant of Panjabi) 10%
Pashtu 8%
Urdu (official and national language) 8%
Balochi 3%
Other 19%
English (official language; used as a second language 4% (not verified)
with a focus on writing rather than oral communication)
Although this information has not been fully utilized in research on PakE at pres-
ent, it is hoped that future research will explore the relationship between PakE(es)
and various indigenous languages. It might be useful to begin a comprehensive
study of PakE with a focus on English as used by native speakers of the major
languages listed here. The present study focuses on native speakers of Urdu be-
cause it is the national language of Pakistan and one of the two official languages
of Pakistan (the other official language being English). Reference to speakers of
other languages is made where information is available.
2. Sounds of PakE
At present, there are no detailed studies of the phonology of PakE. This paper
therefore attempts to present a preliminary description of PakE phonology based
on data collected in Karachi in the summer of 2002. Language samples presented
and analyzed in this paper (unless otherwise stated) were collected from six edu-
cated Pakistanis between the ages of 22 and 37. Four of these participants were
female and two were male. All of the participants were native speakers of Urdu.
Language samples were first elicited using the Sheffield word-list (Foulkes and
Docherty 1999) and then the ‘North Wind’ reading passage.
Table 2. Vowel realization in PakE using Wells’ lexical sets
KIT DRESS e
TRAP æ LOT ç
STRUT FOOT ~ u
BATH æ ~ CLOTH ç ~ç ~ o
NURSE FLEECE i
FACE e ~ e PALM
THOUGHT ç GOAT ~ o ~
GOAL ~ o GOOSE u
PRICE a CHOICE ç
MOUTH a NEAR ~ e
SQUARE e ~ ~ START
NORTH ç FORCE ç ~ ç
CURE j ~ eç ~ jeç HAPPY
LETTER HORSES
COMMA
2.1. Vowels
Vowels collected using the Sheffield set as listed in Table 2 can be sorted into two
main groups. The first group contains vowels which were spoken without varia-
tion by the Pakistani speakers. The second group consists of vowels that varied in
their realization as spoken by different speakers.
2.1.1. Group 1: invariant vowel realisations

Pakistani speakers did not exhibit any variation in their realization of vowels in this
group. Vowels within this group can be further categorized into two sub-groups
vis-à-vis RP. The first sub-group (Group 1A) contains vowels that are similar to RP
and the second sub-group (Group 1B) includes vowels which are different.
Group 1A
Table 3 provides a list of words that fall in this category. This list itself has two
sections. The first section lists monophthongs and the second section lists diph-
thongs.
Table 3. List of vowels with no variation among Pakistani speakers and similar
to RP
Lexical item PakE RP (based on Oxford Dictionary)
Monophthongs
KIT
HAPPY
THOUGHT ç ç
NORTH ç ç
FORCE ç ç
PALM
START
DRESS e e
TRAP æ æ
STRUT
FLEECE i i
GOOSE u u
Table 3. (continued) List of vowels with no variation among Pakistani speakers

and similar to RP
Lexical item PakE RP (based on Oxford Dictionary)
Diphthongs
PRICE a a
CHOICE ç ç
MOUTH a a
This group is the largest containing 15 of the 29 words in the Sheffield set. These
vowels did not vary among the six Pakistani speakers studied and were also simi-
lar to RP.
Group 1B
This group consists of vowels which showed no variation within Pakistani speak-
ers, but differed from RP. Table 4 is a list of these vowels.
Table 4. List of vowels with no variation among Pakistani speakers

but different from RP
Lexical item PakE RP
horsES
lettER
commA
NURSE
LOT ç ç
The first three words in this group are bi-syllabic. In RP, the second syllable is
unstressed and, as a result of unstressing, the vowel is frequently reduced to [ ].
For example, RP speakers stress the first vowel and reduce the second to a lax mid-
central vowel, schwa, in [let ] letter or [kçm ] comma. Pakistani speakers did
not reduce the vowel but rather used a full vowel, e.g., [lettr] letter or [kçmm]
comma. Thus, there were no observed instances of schwa in the data collected us-
ing the Sheffield set (however, instances of / / were observed in connected speech
and will be discussed later).
The NURSE vowel is [] and the LOT vowel [ç].Their RP equivalents, [] and
[ç], are not attested in the samples of PakE collected for this study. The tense mid-
high central vowel [] is not attested in Rahman (1990) – see section on rhoticity
for a discussion of Rahman’s work on PakE. Nihalani, Hosali and Tongue (1989)
also do not list this vowel in their table of ‘Educated Indian English’ monoph-
thongs. However, they do list the lax low back vowel [ç] in words such as cot and
caught. Pakistani speakers in this study substitute [ç] with either a tense mid back
vowel, [ç], as in LOT or a tense mid-high back vowel, [o], as in CLOTH (see group
2 below). It is possible to explain the absence of the vowels [] and [ç] by looking
at the Urdu vowel system. Urdu does not use either of these vowels and thus it may
be the case that PakE speaker replace these with Urdu vowels.
2.1.2. Group 2: vowels exhibiting variation

There was some variation in the vowels in this group as realized by Pakistani
speakers. These vowels are again grouped within the chart as monophthongs and
diphthongs and are listed in Table 5 below. While this paper documents variation
in the realization of these vowels in PakE (of native speakers of Urdu), the range
and distribution of these variations within the community has not been examined.
Table 5. List of vowels with variation among Pakistani speakers
Lexical item PakE RP
Monophthongs
FOOT ~ u
BATH ~ æ
CLOTH ç ~ ç ~ o ç
Diphthongs
FACE e ~ e e
GOAT o ~ ~
GOAL o ~
NEAR ~ e
SQUARE e ~ ~ e
CURE j ~ jeç ~ eç j
The vowel in FOOT varies between a lax mid-high rounded back vowel, [], and
a tense high rounded back vowel, [u]. The vowel in BATH varies between a tense
low back vowel, [], and a lax low front vowel, [æ]. The vowel in CLOTH is real-
ized as a tense mid back vowel, [ç], a tense mid-high back vowel, [o], or a lax
mid back vowel [ç]. In all the three cases here, it appears that the vowels vary
between a tense and a lax form. In addition, another commonality between the
pronunciations of these three words is that, while some speakers of PakE use the
same vowel as in RP, others have a slightly raised variant.
The diphthongs in FACE, GOAT, and GOAL in PakE vary between a diphthong
and a monophthong. Whereas Rahman (1990: 25–26 and 90) suggests that
monophthongisation is a general characteristic (especially in case of [e] → [e])
of PakE, data here shows that there is variation across speakers. In all three cases,
two speakers (the same ones) use a diphthong while the other four use a monoph-
thong.
The diphthongs and triphthongs in SQUARE and CURE respectively vary be-
tween being centring and closing. The centring diphthong in NEAR varies in its
point of origin. One of them starts from a mid-high vowel, [], and the other from
a mid-low vowel, [e].
2.2. Consonants
2.2.1. Rhoticity
PakE, based on the language samples collected, may be labeled a rhotic variety
of English. [r] is pronounced in all contexts, including after a vowel, by most
speakers. Examples of this were found in both the Sheffield set and in the passage:
[fçrs] ‘force’ and [wrm] ‘warm’.
Postvocalic [r] is produced variably – individual speakers did not pronounce it
all the time. However, the presence or absence of [r] was not categorical for any
given speaker. For example, the same speaker was observed to use [r] in start, cure
and letter, but to drop it in force. The rules and distribution for such variation need
to be explored.
Rahman (1990) states that the degree of rhoticity in PakE varies based on socio-
linguistic factors. He claims that speakers of an acrolectal variety of PakE may or
may not pronounce instances of postvocalic [r]. However, the exact distribution of
rhoticity within acrolectal speakers of PakE is not discussed. He further states that
mesolectal and basilectal varieties of PakE are rhotic and speakers of these variet-
ies pronounce [r] in all contexts. While it may be possible to identify sub-varieties
of PakE using this terminology (as has been done for other varieties of English,
e.g. Singaporean), we have avoided doing so. To date, there is very limited docu-
mentation of the linguistic features of PakE (in any social context) and therefore
we feel that it is too early to sub-categorize PakE and attempt descriptions of pos-
sible sub-categories. Rahman’s work is based on only 10 speakers (from various
L1 backgrounds), and his data was collected (rather anomalously) from Pakistanis
living in the United Kingdom. His study has accordingly been severely criticized
for a number of reasons.
2.2.2. Retroflexion of [t] and [d]

PakE uses retroflex stops. The alveolar stops of other English dialects are realized
as [B] and [@]. This use of retroflex stops instead of RP alveolar stops is listed as
an example of ‘series substitution’ by Kachru (1992: 62) and is a feature of South
Asian English. Examples of use of retroflex stops [B] and [@] in PakE are: [sBrB]
‘strut’ and [@res] ‘dress’.
2.2.3. [t ] and [d] (dentalization)

Pakistani speakers used dental stops instead of the RP dental fricatives. This
change in the manner of articulation is also cited as a feature of South Asian Eng-
lish (Kachru 1992: 62). Examples of [t ] and [d] in PakE are [nçrt ] ‘north’ and
[den] ‘then’.
2.2.4. /v/ and /w/

Urdu does not have a phonemic distinction between /v/ and /w/. A phonemic dis-
tinction between [v] and [w] was not evident in PakE either. The two sounds
were realized as allophones of /w/. An example of variation between these sounds
was observed in the pronunciation of the word wind which was either realized
as [vn@] or as [wn@]. Examples of the variation in use of [v] and [w] are also
found in Rahman (1990). The use of [v] for [w] appears to be a feature of South
Asian English and is also discussed by Bhatt (1995) and Sahgal and Agnihotri
(1988) among others.
Rahman (1990: 33) also discusses this feature in reference to Pushto speakers.
He states that Pushto speakers do not articulate [v] in word final positions and
gives the example of [luo] ‘love’.
Rahman states that this is an influence of Pushto, which also deletes [v] in these
contexts. The realization of [v] and [w] in other contexts is not discussed.
2.2.5. Clear [l]

All realizations of /l/ were ‘clear’. Kachru (1992: 62) lists this as a feature of South
Asian English as well. In RP there is an allophonic distribution between a clear and
a dark [l]. /l/ is realized as ‘dark’ or velarised [l5] when it is in a word final position
or when it is followed by a consonant. It is realized as [l], a ‘clear’ or alveolar [l],
in all other contexts. The following examples show that Pakistani speakers do not
exhibit this allophonic variation: [ol] ‘goal’ and [lçB ] ‘lot’.
The absence of this allophonic variation in PakE may be explained by looking at
Urdu, which does not make a distinction between a dark and clear /l/.
A number of phonological features were observed in the data collected. While

we have described some of the key features below, these should be considered
preliminary findings and generalizations should be avoided. The exact distribu-
tion of these features in PakE and the contexts in which they operate need to be
studied.
3.1. Spelling pronunciation/gemination

PakE tends to use spelling as a guide to pronunciation. One manifestation of this
is in the gemination of consonants based on spelling. For example, all the speak-
ers geminated the [p] and the [t] in [hæpp] happy and [lettr] letter. Gemination
was also noticed in connected speech. For example, all speakers geminated the
[m] consonant in immediately [mm@jtli]. However, exceptions to gemination
were also observed in the language samples. For example, one regular exception
was the word wrapped.
3.2. Vowel reduction

The only instances of / / observed were in connected speech. In our analysis of
the passage, as read by the six speakers, there were certain words in which an un-
stressed vowel was systematically reduced to a schwa. Examples of these words
include: (a) the indefinite article a; (b) the definite article the; (c) the past singular
BE form was; and (d) words with initial a like attempt. These words were predict-
ably pronounced as [ ], [d ], [w z] and [ ttemp(t)] respectively. Based on the
language samples, it appears that vowel reduction in PakE is limited to certain
(grammatical) words and environments in fast speech, rather than being a corre-
late of unstressed syllables.
It is possible to explain this non-reduction of unstressed vowels in terms of
spelling pronunciation of PakE. A good example of this is the pronunciation of
of. RP speakers realize this word as [ v] by reducing the vowel in this word to a
schwa and voicing the labiodental fricative. However, in PakE this word is real-
ized as [çf], based on the way it is spelt.
3.3. Epenthesis
One of the most predictable contexts where epenthesis was observed was in a
consonant cluster where the first consonant was a voiceless sibilant and the sec-
ond consonant was a stop. Thus, stronger was pronounced [strçr] and start
was realized as [strt]. A less predictable context for epenthesis was between
a voiced bilabial stop and an alveolar lateral approximant. Thus, blue was pro-
nounced [blj] by some of the speakers. Both these cases of epenthesis may be
explained by looking at Urdu, which does not permit these consonant clusters.
Rahman (1990: 31) gives examples from speakers of PakE who speak Panjabi
as a first language. Such speakers break the consonant cluster by inserting a short
vowel, / /, between the sibilant and the stop. He gives the examples of [s pik]
‘speak’, [s kul] ‘school’, [s tl] ‘stall’.
In contrast, Pushto speakers of English do not have any problems with this con-
sonant cluster because Pushto permits these clusters (Rahman 1990: 33).
3.4. Aspiration
Pakistani speakers do not aspirate stops in word initial position when they occur
before a vowel. Thus, the word kit was realized as [kB], without an aspiration on
[k] unlike RP [kDt]. This non-realization of an allophonic distribution of voiceless
stops in PakE can be explained by looking at Urdu. Urdu, like many other South
Asian languages, has a four-way phonemic contrast between voiced and voiceless
stops, and aspirated and unaspirated stops. This phonemic contrast is represented
in the orthography of the language. There is therefore a good cause for L1 influ-
ence in English, with speakers treating stops in all positions as unaspirated. For
further discussion see Kachru (1983: 29).
Kachru (1983) states that it is the non-segmental features of South Asian English
(SAsE) such as stress and rhythm, rather than segmental features, that mark its
uniqueness. He argues that while the segmental features of SAsE are heavily influ-
enced by mother tongues and may therefore be different between various speakers,
non-segmental features are shared. One of the primary examples given by him and
other linguists working on SAsE is its stress pattern. Variation in stress between
RP and SAsE (and a lack of vowel reduction in SAsE) also causes differences in
the rhythm of the two varieties.
Research shows that the stress patterns of various sub-varieties of SAsE are
comparable and that they do not seem to be influenced by the various first lan-
guages of its speakers (Pickering and Wiltshire 2000). In their study, Pickering
and Wiltshire looked at SAsE spoken by native speakers of Hindi/Urdu, Bengali,
and Tamil and found that there was no significant difference in the lexical stress
pattern in the English spoken by speakers of these three languages. This supports
Kachru’s claim that SAsE shares non-segmental features. Thus, the following de-
scription of stress, based on studies of other South Asian dialects of English, may
be used to describe PakE as well, since no independent reliable studies of stress of
the latter are currently available.
Four dimensions of stress in SAsE have been studied: syllable-time, frequency,

pitch, and amplitude.
4.1. Syllable timing vs. stress timing

SAsE, including PakE, is described as a syllable-timed variety (Nelson 1982; Ka-
chru 1983). Syllables in PakE occur at regular intervals. This is different from
RP which is stress-timed with variation in the length of syllables. The traditional
explanation for this difference between RP and PakE is given in terms of the first
language. Most South Asian languages, including Urdu, are syllable-timed and
therefore it is concluded that this pattern is adopted by Urdu speakers of English.
The syllable-timed rhythm of PakE goes hand-in-hand with a lack of reduction.
4.2. Frequency, pitch and amplitude

Pickering and Wiltshire (2000) found that accented syllables were marked by a
lower frequency as compared to unaccented syllables in speakers of Indian Eng-
lish, including those of Hindi/Urdu. They find this in contrast with American
English and state (2000: 177), “compared to A[merican] E[nglish], in which ac-
cented syllables have increased frequency in these contexts, I[ndian] E[nglish]
shows a distinct use of a decrease in frequency in accented syllables in similar
contexts. This use of low frequency on accented syllables can also be found in
Indian languages, suggesting a possible source”. Based on the use of frequency
to mark stress, Pickering and Wiltshire label South Asian English as a ‘pitch-ac-
cent’ language. They use the distinction between a pitch-accent and a stress-accent
language and state that the major marker of accent in South Asian English is pitch.
Pickering and Wiltshire also find that unlike speakers of American English, South
Asian speakers do not use amplitude to mark stress.
In conclusion, they state (2000: 181) that “there are two differences between
IndE and AmE in the phonetic realization of word accent. First, AmE is a stress-
accent language, and uses cues such as amplitude and duration as well as fre-
quency, while IndE uses pitch-accent, and relies primarily on the frequency to
indicate an accented syllable. Second, AmE indicates an accented syllable with a
high frequency, while IndE marks it with a low”.
5. Conclusion
In this paper we have attempted to provide a brief overview of the history and
phonology of PakE. However, the description of PakE phonology is far from be-
ing thorough. This is partly because no detailed studies of PakE phonology are
currently available. In order to compensate for this gap, this paper provides a
phonological analysis based on a small language sample. Research in World Eng-

lishes in general and Indian and Singaporean English in particular has shown a
richness of sociological markings within varieties of English. PakE, as a living
language, displays such variations as well. However, these variations have not yet
been investigated. We hope that this paper will motivate linguists to explore these
variations and study PakE in more detail.
Selected references
ROM.
Ali, Ahmed
1993 English in South Asia: A Historical perspective. In: Robert J. Baumgardner
(ed.), The English Language in Pakistan, 3-12. Karachi: Oxford University
Press.
Baumgardner, Robert J. (ed)
1993 The English Language in Pakistan. Karachi, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Baumgardner, Robert J.
1993a The indigenization of English in Pakistan. In: Robert J. Baumgardner (ed.),
The English Language in Pakistan, 41-54. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
1993b Utilizing Pakistani newspaper English to teach grammar. In: Baumgardner
(ed.), 255-273.
Bhatt, Rakesh
1995 Prescriptivism, Creativity, and World Englishes. World Englishes 14: 247–
259.
CIA.
2002 CIA: The world factbook. CIA. Retrieved December 10, 2002, from the World
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2000 Pitch accent in Indian-English teaching discourse. World Englishes 19: 173–
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University.
Sahgal, Anju and R.K. Agnihotri

1988 Indian English phonology: A sociolinguistic perspective. English World-Wide
9: 51–64.
Singapore English: phonology
Lionel Wee
1. Introduction
To understand the English language in Singapore, it is useful to make a distinc-

tion between two different varieties, Standard Singapore English and Colloquial
Singapore English (CollSgE) (popularly known as Singlish). Though it is gen-
erally acknowledged that the variation within Singapore English is in actuality
a continuum, language policies and attitudes, as well as academic perspectives,
are often based on the polarization of this continuum into the two varieties just
mentioned.
In this overview, I begin first with a brief historical sketch of the ‘arrival’ of
English in Singapore under British colonial rule, followed by a discussion of mod-
ern Singapore society and its language policy of “English-knowing bilingualism”.
I then continue with a description of attitudes towards the colloquial variety, Sin-
glish, before concluding with academic debates on whether Singapore English is
better described in terms of a lectal continuum or a framework of diglossia.
1.1. A brief history of the English language in Singapore

English came to Singapore when in 1819 Sir Stamford Raffles set up the first
major British trade settlement there. Prior to that, English speakers had visited
the island for purposes of trading and reconnoitering, but it was the arrival of
Raffles that “began a formal connection with Britain which was responsible for
the prominence that English has in Singapore today” (Gupta 1998: 106). Upon its
arrival, the British administration encountered a ‘capitan’ system, which divided
the society into three groups: Malays, Chinese, Indians, plus a capitan-less group
of ‘others’, and each ethnic community had in effect its own legal system under
the jurisdiction of its own ‘capitan’ (Bloom 1986: 352). This ethnically-based divi-
sion was preserved by the British and till today, can be seen in Singapore’s policy
of ‘multiracialism’ that underpins its current language policy (see below).
The British were keen to cultivate a group of English-educated elites, and in
1870, produced young men “competent to earn a livelihood in Government and
mercantile offices, but the majority of these clerks know only how to read, write
and speak English imperfectly” (cited in Bloom 1986: 358). Crucially, however,
English had been established as the language by which socio-economic mobility
was to be attained, and by 1900, this group of elites had come to enjoy a much
1018 Lionel Wee
greater degree of English language proficiency and to also cover a much wider
occupational range.
Alongside the more standardized variety of English taught in the schools, there
also developed a colloquial variety, one which showed a high degree of influence
from other local languages such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay and Tamil (Platt
and Weber 1980: 18). The varieties of Malay most important to the development
of the colloquial variety were Bazaar Malay (a simplified form of Malay then used
predominantly as an inter-ethnic lingua franca) and Baba Malay, spoken primarily
by the Straits Chinese. The Straits Chinese or Peranakans are of mixed (Chinese
and Malay) ancestry. While they tend to see themselves as culturally and ethni-
cally Chinese, they often use a variety of Malay as the home language.
As Gupta (1998: 109) points out,
These two contact varieties of Malay had themselves been influenced by the southern
variety of Chinese, Hokkien. The lexical items in CollSgE which are not from English
are overwhelmingly from Malay and Hokkien – contributed from these two varieties of
Malay.
This colloquial variety also developed in the English-medium schools, though
more in the playgrounds than in the classrooms. According to Platt and Weber
(1980: 19):
The English-medium schools of Malaya and the Straits Settlements used English as the
medium of instruction for all lessons and children were expected to speak English in the
classroom. It is well known that children at many schools were expected to pay a small
fine if caught speaking anything else. Furthermore, English was regarded as a prestige
language, the way to better employment, the language which opened up knowledge of
the Western way of life. In a situation like this, children often acquired some English
from elder siblings even before commencing school, used it with other children at school
and later on extensively in the Employment and Friendship domains …
This developing colloquial variety spread from the school playgrounds to the
homes where
it became a more prestigious variety than the local colloquial ethnic variety spoken
by servants, parents (especially mothers) and younger siblings. Younger siblings were
impressed by the new language and, as mentioned before, they often picked it up well
before entering school in the version transmitted to them by their elder brothers and
sisters, and used it together at home and when playing with neighbouring children.
(Platt and Weber 1980: 20-21)
A number of things from this brief historical sketch will be relevant in the rest of
this overview: the classification of modern Singapore society along ethnic lines,
the view of English as a language serving instrumental functions, and the status
relation between the standard and colloquial varieties.
Singapore English: phonology 1019
1.2. English and the official mother tongues

Singapore’s language policy today treats Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English as
the four official languages. Malay is also the national language, having a primarily
ceremonial function: the National Anthem is sung in Malay, and military com-
mands are given in Malay. Malay’s national language status is primarily due to
Singapore’s past when it was briefly a member of the Malaysian Federation until
it achieved full independence in 1965. A reason for retaining Malay as the national
language is essentially diplomatic: Singapore is surrounded by Malay-Muslim
countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Keeping Malay as the national
language is intended to reassure these countries that Singapore will not go the way
of becoming a Chinese state.
The other point to note is that, aside from English, there is a very specific rea-
son why Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil are the three official languages. This is be-
cause the Singapore government groups the population into four main categories:
Chinese, Malay, Indian, and ‘Others’. Here we see a modern-day version of the
‘capitan’ system, a policy of multiracialism, where equal status is accorded to the
cultures and ethnic identities of the various races that comprise the population, and
which, crucially, serves to maintain the compartmentalization and distinctiveness
amongst the races.
Singapore has a population of about 3.2 million, and its racial composition is as
follows (2000 Census of Population):
Chinese 76.8%
Malays 13.9%
Indians 7.9%
Others 1.4%
‘Others’ is a miscellaneous category comprising mainly Eurasians and Europeans.

The first three are specific ethnic communities, and these three official languages
are their official mother tongues: Mandarin for the Chinese, Malay for the Malays,
and Tamil for the Indians. There is no official mother tongue for ‘Others’ since
this does not constitute a specific ethnic community. Thus, English is the only one
of the four official languages that does not have a specific ethnic affiliation. This
point is important to bear in mind because English is intended by the government
to be a ‘neutral’ language, serving as the lingua franca for international and inter-
ethnic communication. It allows access to Western science and technology, and is
the medium of education so that success in the school system depends to a great
extent on proficiency in the language. As Gupta (1998: 120) points out, citing data
from the 1990 census, this means that “(w)hatever measure of social class is taken,
it is still the case that the higher the social class, the more likely it is that English
is an important domestic language.”
1020 Lionel Wee
The government clearly acknowledges the gatekeeping role that English plays
in Singapore, but is also committed to the view that Singapore society is merito-
cratic. This notion of meritocracy is intimately tied up with the government’s com-
mitment to multiracialism, which calls for the equal treatment for all ethnic groups.
Where English is concerned, this means that the government does not want it to be
seen as being tied to any particular ethnic community. That is, the role of English
in the unequal allocation of social and economic capital is acceptable precisely
because English is officially no one’s mother tongue. Thus, to accept English as
a mother tongue for any ethnic community would undermine its officially neutral
status.
Having encouraged the learning of English as a means of facilitating economic
prosperity, the government is also concerned that English could act as the vehicle
for unacceptable Western values. Here, the mother tongues are important because
they are supposed to act as ‘cultural anchors’ that prevent Singaporeans from los-
ing their Asian identities. This dichotomy between English and the mother tongues
was underscored by Lee Kuan Yew (former Prime Minister and currently Senior
Minister) in his 1984 Speak Mandarin Campaign speech, when he stressed that
English is not “emotionally acceptable” as a mother tongue for the Chinese (the
same rationale applies to the other communities):
One abiding reason why we have to persist in bilingualism is that English will not
be emotionally acceptable as our mother tongue. To have no emotionally acceptable
language as our mother tongue is to be emotionally crippled… Mandarin is emotionally
acceptable as our mother tongue…It reminds us that we are part of an ancient civilisation
with an unbroken history of over 5,000 years. This is a deep and strong psychic force,
one that gives confidence to a people to face up to and overcome great changes and
challenges.
This bilingual policy of learning English and the mother tongue, known as “Eng-
lish-knowing bilingualism”, is a fundamental aspect of Singapore’s education sys-
tem. Passage from one level to the next, including entry into the local universities,
depends not only on academic excellence, but also on relative proficiency in one’s
mother tongue. In 1986, Dr Tony Tan, then Minister for Education, underlined the
importance of the bilingual policy:
Our policy of bilingualism that each child should learn English and his mother tongue, I
regard as a fundamental feature of our education system… Children must learn English
so that they will have a window to the knowledge, technology and expertise of the
modern world. They must know their mother tongues to enable them to know what
makes us what we are.
Together, this statement and the one by Lee Kuan Yew clearly lay out the gov-
ernment’s position on the relationship between English and the mother tongues.
There is a division of labor where English functions as the language of moder-
nity allowing access to Western scientific and technological knowledge while the
mother tongues are cultural anchors that ground individuals to traditional values.
By contrasting English with a mother tongue, the policy makes clear that English
is not acceptable as a mother tongue.
1.3. Attitudes towards Colloquial Singapore English/Singlish

The official unacceptability of English as a mother tongue creates an arena of con-
flict since there is evidence that English is growing rapidly as a home language.
The data below, based on the 2000 Census of Population, show that, except for the
Malays, the officially assigned mother tongue is often not necessarily the home
language.
Language most frequently spoken at home (figures in %):
Chinese homes: English (23.9), Mandarin (45.1),
Chinese dialects (30.7)
Malay homes: English (7.9), Malay (91.6)
Indian homes: English (35.6), Tamil (42.9)
Others (i.e. mainly Eurasians and Europeans): English (68.5)
This has led to occasional calls for English to be officially recognized as a mother
tongue. But it has also created a tension between the standard variety of English
and its more colloquial counterpart (better known as Singlish). This is because
the government insists that English must continue to serve a purely instrumental
role if Singapore is to maintain its economic competitiveness. The existence of
the colloquial variety is felt by the state to undermine the development of pro-
ficiency in the standard, and hence, to threaten that economic competitiveness.
Thus, in his 1999 National Day Rally Speech, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong
stated that:
The fact that we use English gives us a big advantage over our competitors. If we carry
on using Singlish, the logical final outcome is that we, too, will develop our own type of
pidgin English, spoken only by 3m Singaporeans, which the rest of the world will find
quaint but incomprehensible. We are already half way there. Do we want to go all the
way?
The Prime Minister thus expressed the hope that in time to come, Singaporeans
will no longer speak Singlish:
Singlish is not English. It is English corrupted by Singaporeans and has become a
Singapore dialect… Singlish is broken, ungrammatical English sprinkled with words
and phrases from local dialects and Malay which English speakers outside Singapore
have difficulties in understanding… Let me emphasise that my message that we must
speak Standard English is targeted primarily at the younger generation… we should
ensure that the next generation does not speak Singlish.
(The Straits Times 29 August 1999)
1022 Lionel Wee
This led the government to launch the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM)
on 29 April 2000, and according to the chairman of SGEM, Col. David Wong (The
Straits Times, 31 March 2000):
We are trying to build a sense of pride, that as Singaporeans, we can speak good English
as opposed to pride that we can speak Singlish. We are trying to check a trend in which
younger Singaporeans are beginning to feel that it is perhaps a way of identifying
themselves as Singaporeans if they speak Singlish.
The view that Singlish should be eliminated or at the very least, discouraged, has
met with resistance from some Singaporeans who see it as “a key ingredient in
the unique melting pot that is Singapore” (Hwee Hwee Tan, Time magazine, 29
July 2002).
As Bloom (1986: 402) puts it,
We now come to the crux of our problem. We seem at times to be talking about two
different languages. On the one hand, English is this marvellous instrument of nation-
building, the language of the “true” Singaporean; on the other hand it is a language
learned strictly for the purpose of getting rich, divorced from the traditional values of
Singapore’s component peoples, the language of, in the terms of S. Rajaratnam, the
Second Deputy Prime Minister (Foreign Affairs), the religion of “moneytheism”.
This tension between, on the one hand, accepting Singlish as a legitimate part of
Singapore’s linguistic ecology, and on the other, rejecting it in favor of a more
standard variety is a continuing and important aspect of understanding English in
Singapore. A similar preoccupation with the relationship between the colloquial
and standard varieties can be seen in more academically-oriented discourses, to
which we now turn.
1.4. Approaches to Singapore English

There have been two main approaches to the study of Singapore English: in terms
of a lectal continuum, and in terms of diglossia. The lectal approach is primarily
associated with the work of Platt and Weber (1980), and treats Singapore English
as a range extending from a basilect (which is supposed to show features associ-
ated with creoles) to an acrolect, which approximates a superstrate standard, with
the two mediated by a transitional mesolect:
Unlike other varieties of English such as British English… and the English spoken in
the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where there are two dimensions, one
on a scale of regional variation and one of social variation, the variation in SE can be
observed along one axis which is related to the educational level and the socio-economic
background of the speaker. There is considerable variation within spoken, and to some
extent written, English from the more prestigious variety of SE, the acrolect, through
mesolects down to the basilectal sub-variety, and speakers of SE can be placed along a
scale according to a range of linguistic features. (Platt and Weber 1980: 46-7)
This approach has been criticized (e.g. Kandiah 1998: 95) for, one, assuming that
concepts developed in the study of pidgins/creoles can be straightforwardly ap-
plied to Singapore English; two, for treating the superstrate as the standard that
is aspired to by speakers of Singapore English; and three, for assuming that the
continuum is mainly a cline of proficiency.
The diglossia approach (Gupta 1994), in contrast, treats the continuum in terms
of communicative choice rather than proficiency. It also treats Singapore English
as a native variety which can and should be described autonomously. Thus, Gupta
(1994: 7-9) suggests that the Low differs from the High mainly in syntax and mor-
phology, and that the use of the Low “is not the result of error in using a language
which may or may not be native, but a matter of choice based on context and af-
fective messsage.” However, the diglossia approach is not without problems of its
own. The fact that the Low and High are not strictly compartmentalized and ‘leak’
into each other suggests that the concept of diglossia is being used here in a non-
traditional manner. Either that or we are simply looking at cases of code-switching
without any society-wide functional organization of codes. Also, a large number
of Singaporeans do share the government’s negative attitude towards the collo-
quial variety, pointing to a degree of linguistic self-flagellation and suggesting
that this continuing anxiety over issues of standards and intelligibility may well
encourage an attitude of exonormativity. As such, we need to recognize that while
some Singaporeans easily code-switch between the standard and colloquial variet-
ies, the very pervasive negative attitude towards the colloquial variety suggests
that rather than simply assuming the correctness of one approach over the other, it
may be more pertinent to combine insights from both if we are to achieve a bet-
ter understanding of the grammatical and sociological issues surrounding English
in Singapore. The dichotomy between the lectal and diglossia approaches, at this
point, is thus best viewed as an unresolved debate.
2. Phonology
Because the focus of this volume is on features that are different from the stan-
dard varieties, this discussion of the phonology of Singapore English, as well as
the later discussion of its morphology/syntax, is restricted mainly to features of
CollSgE. Lim (forthcoming) is a major treatment of various aspects of Singa-
pore English and the discussion of reduplication and discourse particles draws on
Wee’s contribution to this source. In the case of CollSgE phonology, most of the
discussion is based on Bao (1998), which provides a comprehensive survey of the
relevant works.
In some of these works, the authors refer to the variety they are concerned with
as ‘Singapore English’; in others, the reference is to ‘English in Malaysia and
Singapore’. In order to better bring out the distinctive properties of CollSgE, these
1024 Lionel Wee
authors also often provide descriptive contrasts with RP (Received Pronunciation).

This decision, it must be stressed, is purely intended to facilitate the description
of CollSgE; it is conceptually a separate issue from the more controversial one of
whether CollSgE can in fact be analyzed as an autonomous linguistic system.
In what follows, I shall simply use ‘CollSgE’. I also continue the contrast with
RP when describing the various properties of CollSgE.
2.1. Phonemic inventory

The following set of keywords illustrates the lexical incidence of the vowels.
Table 1. The vowels of CollSgE according to Wells’ lexical sets
KIT i FLEECE i NEAR i

DRESS æ FACE e SQUARE æ
TRAP PALM START
LOT ç THOUGHT ç NORTH ç
STRUT GOAT o FORCE ç
FOOT u GOOSE u CURE ç
BATH PRICE ai happY i
CLOTH ç CHOICE çi lettER
NURSE MOUTH au commA
horsES POOR u
(POOR is not part of the standard lexical set, but has been included here because
the CollSgE diphthong /u / appears in words such as poor, sure and tour.)
Table 2. The vowel chart for CollSgE
Front Central Back
Close i u
Close-mid e o
Open-mid ç
Open æ
The following table provides a summary of the consonant inventory of CollSgE. It

has been noted that accents of English do not differ very much in their consonant
inventories, and in this respect, the consonant inventory of CollSgE is similar to
that of a variety such as RP.
Table 3. Consonants of CollSgE
Labial Inter- Alveolar Post- Palatal Velar Glottal

dental alveolar
Plosive p b t d k g
Affricate t∫ d
Fricative f v s z ∫ h
Nasal m n
Liquid l r
Glide w j
Two points are particularly worth noting. One, there is no aspiration of voiceless
plosives or affricates in CollSgE. This means that /p/, for example, is realized the
same way in words like pin and spin. Two, the interdental fricatives tend to be
realized as [t, d] when pre-vocalic and [f] when at the end of a word. For example,
thin is realized as [tin] and then as [den], but in word-final position, we get [brf]
and [brif] for breath and breathe respectively. This gives an alternation between
[f] and [t] in filth [filf] and filthy [filti] since in the second word, the consonant is
in pre-vocalic position. Words ending in /t/ do not display this alternation, as seen
with a pair such as guilt [gilt] and guilty [gilti]. It is this alternation which leads
Hung (1995: 32) to tentatively posit the interdental fricatives as CollSgE pho-
nemes even though they are, in fact, never phonetically realized as such:
It is therefore quite possible that there is a separate phoneme in SE (represented in other
accents as //) which is distinct from /t/ and /f/, and which is phonetically realised as
[t] in the onset and [f] in the coda of a syllable. Obviously, further data and analysis are
required before any such conclusion can be drawn.
Hung’s caution is understandable since this, of course, bears on the theoretical
question of just how abstract phonological representations ought to be. This is a
controversial issue, and perhaps particularly so in the study of new varieties of
English since there are often ideological as well as more ‘purely’ linguistic ones
for wanting to treat each variety as a self-contained system. Whether this is in fact
possible is a matter of some contention.
Where the vowels are concerned, CollSgE contains nine monophthongs and
five diphthongs. Table 2 provides a list of the monophthongs. The five CollSgE
diphthongs are /ai, çi, au, i , u /.
Two features of the CollSgE vowels bear mentioning, both relating to the neu-
tralization of vowel distinctions. The first is that there is no length contrast so that
any length difference tends to be sporadic. Hung (1995: 29) points out that while
Singaporean speakers may be able to detect and even mimic vowel length differ-
ences in other varieties of English, "in their own spontaneous, natural speech, no
distinction is normally made…". Thus, the distinction found in RP, for example,
1026 Lionel Wee
in pairs like pool/pull or beat/bit is absent in CollSgE; the pairs are essentially
homophonous instead. The other is that there is also no contrast between tense and
lax vowels so that all vowels tend to be ‘equally tense’. However, given that the
tense-lax distinction has been criticized for being too vague, and that tense vowels
are more likely to be longer, it might be possible to reduce the two features to one,
and simply note the absence of contrastive vowel length in CollSgE.
2.2. Phonotactics
The phonotactic distribution of sound segments in CollSgE is best understood in
terms of the syllable structure. In the onset, CollSgE allows a maximum of three
consonants, much as in RP. Examples include string and spray.
Where the coda is concerned, CollSgE is much more restrictive. Hung (1995:
33) notes that for most speakers the upper limit seems to be either two or three
consonants in the coda as shown in words like texts or glimpsed below.
RP CollSgE
texts [teksts] [teks]
glimpsed [glimpst] [glims]/[glimst]
Hung (1995: 33) goes on to suggest that “(p)erhaps as a result of these syllable-
structure constraints, final consonant clusters are regularly simplified in SE, by the
deletion of some of the word-final consonants.” The deletion of final consonants
is discussed below.
Regarding the nucleus of the syllable, unlike a variety of English such as RP,
where the lateral /l/ and the nasals can be syllabic, that is, occupy the nucleus
position of a syllable, in CollSgE this is simply not possible. Instead, a process of
schwa insertion takes place, leading this vowel to occupy the nucleus position, and
thus relegating the lateral or nasal to the coda. The following examples, from RP
and from CollSgE, provide the relevant contrasts.
RP CollSgE
button [btn'] [bt n]
bottle [bçtl'] [bçt l]
whistle [wIsl'] [wıs l]
In a word like button, the schwa intervenes between the /t/ and the /n/. In bottle, it
is inserted between /t/ and /l/. And, similarly, in whistle, it appears between /s/ and
/l/. In all such cases, the effect is that syllabic laterals and nasals are avoided.
3. Phonological processes
There are four phonological processes that should be mentioned in connection

with CollSgE: consonant devoicing, consonant deletion, glottalization, and me-
tathesis. These are discussed in turn.
3.1. Consonant devoicing

In CollSgE, voiced obstruents commonly become devoiced when in word-final
position, as the following examples indicate.
RP CollSgE
leg [lg] [lk]
news [njuz] [njus]
tab [tæb] [tp]
believe [bıliv] [bilif]
judge [dd] [dt]
Emphasizing the extent to which devoicing takes place in CollSgE, Hung (1995:
34) points out that
[i]n other varieties of English, word-final obstruents are also partially devoiced, but not
as completely as in SE. The ‘dg’ in judge is in fact as voiceless as the ‘ch’ in batch.
The contrast between voiced and voiceless obstruents, however, is maintained in
non-final position, as can be seen from the pronunciations of to [tu] and do [du].
3.2. Consonant deletion

In discussing consonant deletion in CollSgE, it is useful to distinguish two factors
which together serve to delimit the conditions under which the process occurs.
These are (i) the kinds of consonants that get deleted – only stops get deleted, and
(ii) the contexts in which such deletions take place – the stops are deleted only if
they are in word-final position, and if they are preceded by a continuant.
We first begin with examples indicating that only stops get deleted. As the fol-
lowing examples illustrate, in words like limp or cent where the final stops /p, t/
are preceded by the nasal consonants /m, n/, the stops are deleted.
RP CollSgE
limp [lımp] [lim]
cent [snt] [sn]
stink [stık] [sti]
This deletion process does not occur with other kinds of consonants such as frica-
tives or affricates so that in words like nymph or laps, the word-final /f/ and /s/ are
retained in the phonetic realization.
1028 Lionel Wee
RP CollSgE
nymph [nmf] [nimf]
laps [læps] [lps]
lunch [lnt] [lnt]
As for the contexts in which the deletion occurs, notice that once these stops are no
longer in final position, as when they are suffixed with –ing, there is no deletion.
Thus, being in final position is crucial. Examples are given below.
limping [limpi]
standing [stndi]
This deletion process also takes place with words derived by the addition of the
past tense suffix –ed, so that the final [t] or [d] is not pronounced.
RP CollSgE
helped [hlpt] [hlp]
stabbed [stæbd] [stp]
backed [bækt] [bk]
Two points are worth noting. One, though the deletion of [t] in helped follows from
the fact that the consonant is in final position and preceded by another consonant,
the fact that [p] is retained (despite being preceded by [l]) suggests that consonant
deletion does not take place if the preceding consonant is a continuant. Thus, in
words like milk, silk, and bolt, the final stop is not deleted. Two, the realization of
stabbed as [stp] follows if we take into account the process of consonant devoic-
ing (mentioned in the previous section). Thus, the addition of the past tense suffix
gives us /stb +d/. Consonant deletion leads to the removal of the final consonant,
and devoicing results in [p], giving us [stp] for stabbed.
3.3. Glottalization
In CollSgE, stops in final position are often unreleased (represented by the E dia-
critic), causing the vowels that precede them to become glottalized.
RP CollSgE
tap [tæp] [tpE]
tab [tæb] [tpE]
leak [lik] [likE]
league [li] [likE]
Admittedly a variable phenomenon, the stops may on occasion themselves get
deleted so that the word then ends in a glottal stop, as in like [lai] and hit [hi].
Bao (1998: 164) suggests that this is an influence from the phonology of the sub-
strate languages, in particular, Malay and the Chinese dialects. In these languages
also, the word-final stops are unreleased, and the vowels that precede them glot-
talized.
Glottalization also takes place in words beginning with vowels, as indicated in
words like a [ ], of [çf], eat [it] and apple [p l]. Brown (1988: 119) points
out that there is no phenomenon of liaison (the linking of the final sound of one
syllable or word directly onto the initial sound of the following) in CollSgE, and
suggests a relationship between the absence of liaison and the predominance of
glottal stops. He hypothesizes that because CollSgE words tend to be separated by
glottal stops, this has prevented features associated with liaison (such as linking
and intrusive /r/) from arising.
3.4. Metathesis
Metathesis in CollSgE seems to be highly specific, being limited to the cluster sp,
which is realized as [ps]. Exactly why the sp cluster should be prone to metathesis
remains unclear.
RP CollSgE
lisp [lsp] [lips]
grasp [rasp] [graps]
crisp [krsp] [krips]
wasps [wasp] [waps]
Other clusters such as st or sk do not seem to undergo metathesis (examples be-

low); instead, they undergo the process of consonant deletion mentioned earlier.
RP CollSgE
last [last] [las]
mask [mask] [mas]
Three prosodic features of CollSgE are of particular interest. One is its syllable-
timed rhythm, which has been claimed to give CollSgE its ‘Singaporean’ charac-
teristic. The other is its pattern of stress assignment, which can be rather complex.
The third is its lack of pitch contrasts to express various kinds of speaker mean-
ing.
1030 Lionel Wee
4.1. Syllable-timed rhythm

In a stress-timed variety (such as RP), the stressed syllables occur at regular inter-
vals. For this to happen, the unstressed ones have to be ‘squeezed in between’ the
stressed syllables. This can often lead these unstressed syllables to undergo further
reduction so that speakers not familiar with the stress-timed variety may often
have difficulty hearing the unstressed/reduced syllables.
In contrast, the syllable-timed rhythm of CollSgE essentially means that all
syllables take up the same amount of time, regardless of whether the syllables
are stressed or not. According to Platt and Weber (1980: 57), this gives Singapore
English “an even, somewhat staccato rhythm” and Tay (1993: 27) has been quoted
as saying that “(t)his ‘machine-gun rhythm’ is one of the most prominent features
of Singaporean English.”
However, Brown (1988: 116), while agreeing that CollSgE does lack a stress-
timed rhythm, disputes the sharp dichotomy being made between stress-timed
and syllable-timed rhythms. He suggests (1988: 117) instead that it is premature
to treat CollSgE as syllable-timed “merely because it lacks the relatively strong
stress-based rhythm of native accents.” Thus, Brown prefers a negative charac-
terization of timing in CollSgE, speaking in terms of the absence of a strongly
stress-timed rhythm rather than the presence of an unambiguously syllable-timed
rhythm.
4.2. Stress patterns

Patterns of stress assignment are difficult to detect in CollSgE because of its syl-
lable-timed rhythm. Since all syllables are given equal time, it is not always easy
to detect relative differences in prominence among the syllables. This is unlike
a stress-timed variety, where stressed syllables are typically realized with higher
pitch, loudness and length.
Tay (1993: 27-28) suggests a number of ways in which CollSgE stress patterns
are distinctive. One is the use of equal stress in words which otherwise receive
primary and secondary stress. Thus, in RP, a word like celebration receives pri-
mary stress on the syllable bra. In CollSgE, however, all four syllables receive
equal stress.
RP CollSgE
cele'bration 'ce'le'bra'tion
anni'versary 'an'ni'ver'sa'ry
Another source of distinctiveness arises from the absence of differential stress

patterns to mark changes in parts of speech. Thus, whether as a verb or a noun,
the word increase is stressed in the same way; there is no difference in stress pat-
tern corresponding to the change in grammatical category. This contrasts with RP,
where in the case of increase, for example, stress is mainly on the second syllable
(if meant as a verb) and on the first syllable (if meant as a noun).
RP CollSgE
in'crease (verb) 'in'crease (verb and noun)
'increase (noun)
com'ment (verb)
'comment (noun) 'com'ment (verb and noun)
Similarly, in RP, stress placement systematically distinguishes compounds from

phrases. Thus if white house is a phrase, stress falls on house, while if it is a
compound, stress falls on white. In CollSgE, however, regardless of whether it is
a phrase or a compound, stress is consistently placed on the second word house.
Thus stress in CollSgE does not distinguish nouns from verbs, nor compounds
from phrases.
And finally, there is also the fact that in a number of words, the placement of
stress simply occurs on a different syllable.
RP CollSgE
'faculty fa'culty
'character cha'racter
eco'nomic e'conomic
Trying to formulate a set of general rules that would predict how stress assignment
works in CollSgE is not easy. However, there is a general opinion that stress in
CollSgE tends to be oriented towards the end of a word. More specific attempts to
describe the rules of CollSgE stress assignment run into difficulties. For example,
Bao (1998: 169) suggests three possible rules: heavy syllables are stressed, stress
occurs on alternative syllables, and if a word has more than one stressed syllable,
the last stressed syllable carries the main stress. The distinction between heavy
and non-heavy (light) syllables is based on the length of the vowel, which is as-
sumed to be phonemically distinctive even though there is no phonetic evidence
for this assumption. Bao thus acknowledges that for the rules to work, he has to as-
sume that vowel length is phonemic in CollSgE. But this is a highly controversial
assumption since there is no real evidence internal to CollSgE for treating vowel
length as phonemic; the only justification is to argue, as Bao himself does, that RP
(where vowel length is indeed phonemic) acts as the input to CollSgE. This is a
position that other researchers may find untenable since it undermines claims that
CollSgE can or should be analyzed as an autonomous variety without reference to
more established varieties (e.g. Hung, 1995: 30).
1032 Lionel Wee
4.3. Intonation
A number of authors have observed that CollSgE makes use of a much smaller
number of pitch contrasts than a variety such as RP. Thus, Platt and Weber (1980:
58) note that CollSgE speakers “do not use variations in pitch to express certain
differences which may be expressed partly by such variations in RP”. For example,
in RP, in a sentence like Sam likes coffee, a high falling pitch on Sam could be in-
terpreted as contradicting the assumption that nobody likes coffee. And similarly,
a high pitch on the first syllable of coffee could be interpreted as contradicting the
assumption that Sam doesn’t like caffeine-based beverages. In CollSgE, speakers
do not generally use such forms of pitch variations to express contrastive mean-
ing.
However, CollSgE speakers do often lengthen the final syllable as a form of
emphasis. For example, when Reading! is uttered in reply to a question such as
What are you doing? the final syllable of Reading! can be clearly lengthened as
part of the assertion. Thus, coming back to a sentence like Sam likes coffee, a
CollSgE speaker might, for emphasis, simply lengthen the final syllable of coffee
regardless of whether he/she is challenging the assumption that nobody likes cof-
fee or that Sam doesn’t like caffeine-based beverages.
Selected references
ROM.
Bao, Zhiming
1998 Theories of language genesis. In: Joseph A. Foley, Thiru Kandiah, Bao Zhiming,
Anthea F. Gupta, Lubna Alsagoff, Ho Chee Lick, Lionel Wee, Ismail S. Talib,
and Wendy Bokhorst-Heng, English in New Cultural Contexts: Reflections
from Singapore, 41-72. Singapore: Oxford University Press.
1998 The sounds of Singapore English. In: Joseph A. Foley, Thiru Kandiah, Bao
Zhiming, Anthea F. Gupta, Lubna Alsagoff, Ho Chee Lick, Lionel Wee, Ismail
S. Talib, and Wendy Bokhorst-Heng, English in New Cultural Contexts:
Reflections from Singapore, 152-174. Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Bloom, David
1986 The English language and Singapore: A critical survey. In: Basant K. Kapur
(ed.), Singapore Studies: Critical Surveys of the Humanities and Social
Sciences, 337-458. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Brown, Adam
1988 The staccato effect in the pronunciation of English in Malaysia and Singapore.
In: Joseph Foley (ed.), New Englishes: The Case of Singapore. Singapore:
Singapore University Press.
Foley, Joseph A., Thiru Kandiah, Bao Zhiming, Anthea F. Gupta, Lubna Alsagoff, Ho Chee
Lick, Lionel Wee, Ismail S. Talib, and Wendy Bokhorst-Heng
1998 English in New Cultural Contexts: Reflections from Singapore. Singapore:
Gupta, Anthea F.
1992 The pragmatic particles of Singapore Colloquial English. Journal of
Pragmatics 18: 31-57.
1994 The Step-Tongue: Children’s English in Singapore. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
1998 The situation of English in Singapore. In: Joseph A. Foley, Thiru Kandiah,
Bao Zhiming, Anthea F. Gupta, Lubna Alsagoff, Ho Chee Lick, Lionel Wee,
Ismail S. Talib, and Wendy Bokhorst-Heng, English in New Cultural Contexts:
Hung, Tony
1995 Some aspects of the segmental phonology of Singapore English. In: Teng
Su Ching and Ho Mian Lian (eds.), The English Language in Singapore:
Implications for Teaching, 29-41. Singapore: Singapore Association for
Applied Linguistics.
Kandiah, Thiru
1998 The emergence of New Englishes. In: Joseph A. Foley, Thiru Kandiah, Bao
Zhiming, Anthea F. Gupta, Lubna Alsagoff, Ho Chee Lick, Lionel Wee, Ismail
S. Talib, and Wendy Bokhorst-Heng (eds.), English in New Cultural Contexts:
Lim, Lisa (ed.)
forthcoming Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. Amsterdam/
Platt, John and Heidi Weber
1980 English in Singapore and Malaysia: Status, Features, Functions. Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Tay, Mary W. J.
1993 The English Language in Singapore: Issues and Development. Singapore:
Unipress.
Malaysian English: phonology
Loga Baskaran
1. Introduction
In considering the sociolinguistic profile of Malaysia it is important to study the

ethnic diversity so characteristic of this nation. This diversity is a consequence of
several phases and aspects of conquest or colonization and settlement (see Bas-
karan 1987). Thus we have the indigenous Malay speakers (Austronesian speak-
ers) with their Austroasiatic counterparts (the aboriginal tribes) and the settler
populace – by way of the Chinese, Indians, Arabs and Eurasians.
The Austronesian speakers are the Malays in West Malaysia (with Bahasa Ma-
laysia as their language) whilst the Kadazans of Sabah and the Dayaks of Sarawak
are the major Malay groups in East Malaysia (with Kadazan and Iban as their lan-
guages respectively). The Austroasiatic speakers are the Malays in West Malaysia
(the majority of whom are Negritos). There are many smaller groups of speakers
speaking among themselves a host of languages of the Austroasiatic group. The
language most commonly spoken among these groups is Temiar. However, all the
languages spoken amongst these people have now been categorically classified as
aslian – from the term asli ‘aborigine’ originally assigned to them. For purposes
of conciseness, the umbrella term Malays would be used to include both the Aus-
tronesian and Austroasiatic speakers who form altogether about 55% of the total
population of Malaysia.
The settler population of Malaysia is mainly found in the Chinese, Indians, Ar-
abs and Eurasians, with a sprinkling of Thais and Europeans. Of these, the Chinese
and the Indians are the majority groups who are represented constitutionally on
a pro rata basis. The Chinese form the second biggest portion of the population.
They constitute about 30% of the total population of Malaysia. Just as the Malays
have a kaleidoscope of minority racial groups with their equally diverse language
groups, the Chinese also have a variety of dialectal groups. The main dialectal
groups are the Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew and Hainanese peoples. The
official Chinese language is Mandarin (also known as Kuo-Yu), which is used for
all official purposes and in the media.
The third largest group in the composite population of Malaysia is the Indian
community. It forms about 10% of the Malaysian population and is just as hetero-
geneous as its Malay and Chinese counterparts. The majority of the Indians are
Tamil-speaking followed by the Malayalis, Telugus, Punjabis, Bengalis, Gujaratis
and Singhalese.
Malaysian English: phonology 1035
The minority groups like the Thais, Eurasians (a blend of Europeans and
Asians) and Arabs are all designated under the term others in the Constitution,
their proportion totalling about 5% only. The Thais and Arabs use their own
language; whilst the Eurasians and those who inter-marry use mainly English or
Malay.
Education has been significant in determining the importance of the various
languages of the nation. With the National Education Policy as well as the New
Economic Policy (of equal rights and opportunities for all the constituent ethnic
groups) there has emerged an attempt to unify the various races of the nation by
an official and national language. The official national language – that used as
the medium of instruction in education at all levels and that used in oral and writ-
ten communication in the various channels of officialdom – is Bahasa Malaysia.
Previous to 1967, both English and Bahasa Malaysia were official languages. But
since 1967, English has been accorded the status of a strong second language,
whilst Bahasa Malaysia remains the official national language.
The languages accorded vernacular status are the Chinese language (Mandarin)
and Tamil, with Iban in Sarawak and Kadazan in Sabah. These languages repre-
sent the majority languages of the major ethnic groups (Chinese, Indians, Dayaks
and Kadazans). Thus Mandarin is used as an overall representative language of
the Chinese via the media, for religion and for purposes of vernacular education
in national schools where provision is made for pupils to have instruction in their
own languages – if there is a substantial enough number of pupils requesting such
instruction (these are termed pupils’ own languages – P.O.L.).
The situation is similar where the Indians are concerned. The official represen-
tative language of this subgroup is Tamil. Thus the media mostly caters for Indians
in this language – through films, radio broadcasts via a special network, certain
allotted television programmes and the dailies. In matters of religion too, Tamil
is the predominant and official language used – both in the temples of the Hin-
dus (where some of the verses are, however, in Sanskrit) and the churches of the
Indian Christians. There are, however, small, rather insignificant deviations from
this norm in the other Hindu temples (Punjabi or Bengali Hindu temples) using
Punjabi/Urdu and Bengali/Gujarati respectively, and Malayali Christian churches
(termed Syrian Christian or Orthodox Christian) using Malayalam as their lan-
guage of worship. There are some Indians who are Muslim by religion and these
are almost entirely Malay in their way of life. Thus Malay is their language both
in the official and unofficial domains of life.
The status of English as a strong second language means that meetings, confer-
ences and any such liaison with an international audience would warrant the use
of English as the official language. The Government, therefore, deems it important
to use English as a language of international communication whilst maintaining
Bahasa Malaysia as the official language within the country. This tolerant and
rational policy is further extended to the other major languages as well, in that
1036 Loga Baskaran
there are provisions in the media for both Bahasa Malaysia and English as well as
Chinese and Tamil – on a pro rata basis.
In the field of education, as outlined earlier, the official medium of instruction is
now Bahasa Malaysia at all levels – primary, secondary and tertiary, whilst English
is used as second language in all schools. In the universities, some courses are given
in English, with other designated courses being given in their respective languages.
With the various official statuses accorded to the four basic languages in the
country (Bahasa Malaysia, English, Chinese-Mandarin and Tamil) along with the
diverse range of languages in actual currency amongst the people of Malaysia, it is
unsurprising then that the average Malaysian is at least bilingual, if not conversant
in three or more languages.
1.1. Malaysian English – a preamble

In Malaysia, the variety known as Malaysian English (MalE) owes much to its co-
existence with other local languages. Several indigenised sub-varieties of MalE
can be identified at the informal level, depending on the L1. These sub-varieties co-
exist with a more codified and standardised model variety. In some aspects, how-
ever, (on the lexical level particularly) this tendency is slowly being changed, with
some of the informal features also appearing in rhetorical and official discourse.
Some lexical items occur in the Malaysian print and broadcast media not only in
headlinese style but in full reporting style. Some headline examples are Anti-da-
dah (‘drug’) operations in kampong (‘village’); Ganja (‘marijuana’) victim gets
six years and rotan (‘caning’); Sawi (‘spinach’) glut hits farmers; Eight get Da-
tukship (‘lordship’) for Ruler’s Birthday; Toddy (‘fermented coconut water’) to be
bottled and canned for export and Penghulus (‘village-chiefs’) get ultimatum.
Apart from such influx of lexis into the MalE speaker’s repertoire, the pho-
nological and syntactic features too have elements of nativisation. The extent or
degree to which each of these levels have been indigenised varies, however, from
one non-native variety to the other. Furthermore, within each of these new Eng-
lishes there is also differentiation between the standardised norm (the model ac-
ceptable for official purposes like teaching in schools, official functions etc.) and
the more communicative style used in the speech of most users. The terms used
to distinguish these two levels are the acrolect and the mesolect respectively. In
Malaysia, the acrolect tends towards StdBrE although some local influence at the
lexical and phonological levels is tolerated. The mesolect is very much the Malay-
sian variety – the informal style used among Malaysians. Speakers often weave
into and out of this mesolect, using an almost International English at one instance
(perhaps when speaking to a superior or with a non-Malaysian) and then switching
into the mesolectal MalE when speaking to a friend.
There is a third lect so to speak – the basilect – which most often signifies the
uneducated style of speech communication which can be considered the patois
form of the new Englishes – be they Malaysian, Indian or African English. In Ma-
laysia, this is often termed broken English or half-past six English (half-past six
being a local adjective referring to something below expectation or standard).
With almost two centuries of nurturing and over three decades of nursing, Eng-
lish in Malaysia has developed into a typical progeny of the New Englishes. Two
centuries indicate the period of English language currency in Malaysia. Three
decades represent, firstly, the time span during which English in Malaysia was
officially ascribed secondary status (1965 to 2003) and when its official role has
changed. Secondly, it represents the approximate period of time during which
most recent issues in the identification and recognition of the New Englishes have
been vehemently debated.
Although its basic features of phonology, syntax and lexis are not totally differ-
ent from the original British English, MalE shows sufficient influence from local
languages as well as modifications by way of over-generalisation, simplification,
omission etc. that have become fossilised enough to be recognisably Malaysian.
This is attested to by captions like the following which appear frequently in ar-
ticles and editorials in the local English dailies: ‘Our special way of talking; The
Malaysian ‘lah’ is here to stay; We all talk like machine-gun aa?; Our own lingo-
lah and Malaysian English dictionary on the way’.
1.2. MalE – global change

Although previous studies of MalE closely linked it to Singapore English (SgE),
it is now appropriate to divorce them from each other at least on two historical
considerations. Firstly, since 1965 Singapore is no longer in any way politically
connected to Malaya or Malaysia; the case for sociolinguistic differentiation over
40 years is therefore reasonably strong. Secondly, the language policies in both na-
tions have been different for the past 40 years. This will have varied implications
on the role and long-term effects of English on the local populace of each nation.
Tongue (1974), who describes the English of Singapore and Malaysia (ESM) in
his book, predicted that within a hundred years the idea of one ‘ESM’ would be-
come inapplicable. In linguistic terms, there are significant differences in substrate
too. Chinese varieties predominate in Singapore, but are a minority in Malaysia.
The implications of this difference have yet to be researched.
Many researchers have described ‘ESM’ in terms of a standard and colloquial
form with various terms like ‘standard’, ‘informal’, ‘uneducated’, ‘low’ and ‘com-
municative forms’. Platt and Weber (1980), along with Mary Tay (1993), see a
three-tiered lectal continuum. I, too, prefer to take a three-tiered approach to de-
scribing MalE although I prefer to use the terms official MalE (standard MalE),
Unofficial MalE (dialectal MalE) and Broken MalE (patois MalE). Thus the basic
subdivision in my description of MalE would be as tabulated below:
1038 Loga Baskaran
Table 1. Characteristics of the three sub-varieties of MalE
Official MalE Unofficial MalE Broken MalE

General Standard MalE: Dialectal MalE: Patois MalE:
characteris- Spoken and written; Spoken and written; Spoken only;
tics Formal use; Informal use; Colloquial use;
International intelligibil- National intelligibil- Patois intelligibility and
ity. ity. currency.
Phonology Slight variation prevalent More variation is Severe variation – both
and internationally intel- prevalent – includ- segmental and prosodic,
ligible. ing prosodic features, with intonation so stig-
especially stress and matised – almost unin-
intonation. telligible internationally.
Syntax No deviation. Some deviation pres- Substantial variation/de-
ent. viation – national intel-
ligibility.
Lexis Variation acceptable es- Lexicalisations quite Major lexicalisation –
pecially for words not prevalent even for heavily infused with
substitutable in an interna- words having in- local language items.
tional context (or to give ternational English
a more localised context). substitutes.
2. Vowels
2.1. Phonemic inventory of the vowels
Close phonetic analysis of the vowels of MalE remains a desideratum. The fol-
lowing account is a preliminary one that, it is hoped, will form the basis of future
work and of refinements.
Table 2. The vowels of MalE according to Well’s lexical sets
KIT i FLEECE i > i NEAR i > i

DRESS æ>>e FACE e>e SQUARE æ>ε
TRAP æ>ε PALM > + START > +
LOT ç THOUGHT ç NORTH ç
STRUT GOAT o > o FORCE ç
FOOT u GOOSE u > u CURE ç
BATH > + PRICE ai happY i
CLOTH ç CHOICE çi lettER
NURSE MOUTH au commA >
horSES POOR u
2.2. Vowel qualities

There are some differences in vowel quality, especially that of back vowels. The
THOUGHT vowel is somewhat raised and centralised. The same applies to the
BATH vowel.
2.3. Vowel length

There is a general tendency to shorten long vowels in MalE – no doubt under the
influence of Bahasa Malaysia, which lacks long vowels. This shortening occurs
mainly in medial position. Some examples follow:
/i/ realised as [i] e.g. [fild] ‘field’
[pil] ‘peel’
// realised as [] e.g. [haf] or [hf] ‘half’
[pak] or [pk] ‘park’
/ç/ realised as [ç] e.g. [wçt ] ‘water’
[bçn] ‘born’
/u/ realised as [u] e.g. [fud] ‘food’
[muv] ‘move’
// realised as [ ] e.g. [ l] ‘girl’
[w d] ‘word’
Conversely short vowels may be lengthened in MalE, especially before /n, l, r, s, /,
though the example of would shows that this might be lexically governed and not
just phonological:
/i/ realised as [i] e.g. [fiFS] ‘fish’
[pin] ‘pin’
// realised as [a] e.g. [ran] ‘run’
[das(t)] ‘dust’
/ / realised as [ç] e.g. [sç˘ri] ‘sorry’
[ç˘n] ‘gone’
/u/ realised as [u] e.g. [wud] ‘would’
[ful] ‘full’
/ / realised as [ ] e.g. [sæl d] ‘salad’
[brekf s(t)] ‘breakfast’
1040 Loga Baskaran
2.4. Use of unreduced vowels

As reported for several ‘New Englishes’, vowel reduction is not as common as in
RP. In the following MalE words schwa of RP is replaced by a full vowel:
[*raUn(d)] ‘around’
[æ*ses] ‘assess’
[pçn] ‘upon’
[kçnsil] ‘conceal’
In the above set the vowel that is reduced to schwa in RP is underlined.
2.5. Diphthongs
Some diphthongs of RP have a reduced quality in MalE, with glide weakening to
the extent that they can be considered as monophthongs:
/e/ realised as [e] e.g. [mel] ‘mail’
[relwe] ‘railway’
/ u/ realised as [o] e.g. [foto] ‘photo’
[slo] ‘slow’
/ / realised as [] e.g. [] ‘there’
[h] ‘hair’
The RP diphthong / / is realised as [ç] in MalE. This represents a different qual-
ity to the lexical set CURE, rather than monophthongisation per se. Thus [kjç]
‘cure’, [pjç] ‘pure’ are the usual realisations in MalE. Similarly whereas the <er>
sequence in words like ‘material’, ‘serious’ and ‘experience’ is realised as [ie] in
RP, the usual rule in MalE is not to diphthongise /i/ before /r/ [siri s] ‘serious’,
[matiri l] ‘material’ and [ekspiri ns] ‘experience’.
3. Consonants
3.1. Consonant cluster reduction
Although consonant cluster reduction is normal in fast speech in many L1 dialects
of English, the process appears to be particularly characteristic of MalE. Clusters
of three consonants may be reduced medially to two as in the following exam-
ples:
[hnsm n] ‘huntsman’ (nts > ns)
[mrid] ‘umbrage’ (mbr > mr)
The reduction of tri-consonantal clusters is even more common in final position:

[lims] ‘glimpse’ (mps > ms)
[mids] ‘midst’ (dst > ds)
In clusters of two consonants, /l/ is frequently deleted if it is the first consonant:
[rizt] or [rizl] ‘result’ [eb ] ‘elbow’
[sef] or [sel] ‘self’ [ç˘s ] ‘also’
Loss of final /t/, /d/ or // in clusters can be seen in the following:
[iksep] ‘except’ [stæn] ‘stand’
[dades] ‘digest’ [fif] ‘fifth’
[indek] ‘inject’
3.2. Fricatives
(a) Devoicing
There is a tendency for the devoicing of /v, z, , d/ in final position. Some ex-
amples follow:
[if] ‘give’ [is] ‘is’
[muf] ‘move’ [ds] ‘does’
[weif] ‘wave’ [nçis] ‘noise’
[wi] ‘with’ [ru] ‘rouge’
[bei] ‘bathe’ [bei] ‘beige’
[smu] ‘smooth’
There is also evidence of occasional devoicing of /z, / in medial position:
[isi] ‘easy’ [juu l] ‘usual’
[hsb n] ‘husband’ [ple ] ‘pleasure’
[asn'd] ‘thousand’ [rivi n] ‘revision’
(b) Voicing
Contrary to the tendencies in (a) above, there is also a tendency to voicing of /s/
and // in certain lexical items. Once again the phenomenon is restricted to final
and medial position. The examples below illustrate final voicing:
[naz] ‘nice’ [pu] ‘push’
[fi z] ‘fierce’ [wç] ‘wash’
[inkriz] ‘increase’ [fi] ‘fish’
In medial position voicing is restricted to //:
[spel'] ‘special’
[pre ] ‘pressure’
[nein'] ‘nation’
1042 Loga Baskaran
(c) Avoidance of dental fricatives:

The dental fricatives // and // are often realised as the corresponding alveolar
stops [t] and [d] respectively:
[tik] ‘thick’ [ænt m] ‘anthem’
[tri] ‘three’ [met d] ‘method’
[ç˘t] ‘thought’
[d ] ‘the’ [fd ] ‘father’
[dis] ‘this’ [eid ] ‘either’
[d m] ‘them’ [rd ] ‘rather’
In final position // is not really substituted by [d], but is devoiced to []. // itself
is frequently realised as [t] word-finally:
[bret] ‘breath’
[w t] ‘worth’
[fç˘t] ‘fourth’
3.3. Glottalisation
Final stops are frequently replaced by glottal stops, especially in lower
sociolects (sometimes referred to as patois or broken English):
[h u] ‘hope’ [m] ‘mud’
[r] ‘rub’ [ç] ‘shock’
[k] ‘cut’ [frç] ‘frog’
3.4. Consonant substitution according to substrate

In lower sociolects, characteristic of speakers with low educational levels and so-
cial status, the influence of the mother tongue is particularly felt in the differential
treatment of consonants. MalE speakers of Malay background frequently produce
[p, b, d] for /f, v, z/:
[pæn] ‘fan’ [bit min] ‘vitamin’
[pilm] ‘film’ [dibr] ‘zebra’
[beri] ‘very’ [dirç] ‘zero’
Speakers of Chinese background frequently turn /r/ into [l], and /z/ into [d]:
[flad] ‘friend’ [dirç] or [dilç] ‘zero’
[læn] ‘ran’ [dibra] or [dibla] ‘zebra’
Speakers of Tamil background are recognisable by the substitution of [w] for /v/
and the deletion of /h/:
[wæn] ‘van’ [as] ‘house’
[new ] ‘never’ [ri] ‘hungry’
4. Suprasegmental features
4.1. Stress
Generally speaking, the stress-patterns of educated MalE speakers are similar to
those in RP but there is still a certain degree of variation in both word- and sen-
tence-stress patterns. This is true of all informal speech and especially of lower
sociolects.
(a) Stress-position
Where RP has ascribed stress-position in disyllabic and polysyllabic words that
have only single stress, MalE differs where such stress-position is concerned:
[eks *saiz] ‘exercise’
[*leften n(t)] ‘lieutenant’
[*int lektu l] ‘intellectual’
[*misnd sten(d)] ‘misunderstand’
In the same vein, the MalE speaker often tends not to produce differential stress on
pairs of words derived from the same root like RP *import (n) versus im*port (v).
Such noun-verb derivatives are homophonous in MalE, as can be seen in an ex-
ample like Malaysia produces a lot of rubber which is the import of many industri-
alised countries. In MalE the realisations of produces and import are [*prçdjusiz]
and [im*pç˘t] respectively.
(b) Stress-quantity
MalE does not necessarily have the same number of stresses in polysyllabic words
as does RP. MalE may reduce or increase the number of stresses in the word:
[*mænju*fækt ] ‘manufacture’
[*denr *lizein] ‘generalisation’
In some cases (as in *misunder*stand, *question*naire, *inter*rupt, and *fare*well)
secondary stress is given equal prominence as primary stress so that the MalE ver-
sion has two equal stresses.
An extension of this feature of stress-quality would be word- and sentence-stress
for emphasis or contrast. MalE speakers may emphasise or contrast a statement by
lengthening and stressing particular syllables:
Speaker 1: “How many years are you going away for?”
Speaker 2: “Three years!” /*ri *ji z/
1044 Loga Baskaran
4.2. Rhythm
Rhythm in MalE is more often one of a syllable-timed nature – where all syl-
lables (stressed as well as unstressed) recur at equal intervals of time. RP has a
stress-timed rhythm instead, which MalE speakers do use, though only in formal
declamatory style or reading style. Even educated MalE speakers use a syllable-
timed rhythm in casual style.
4.3. Intonation and pitch

In RP connected speech (as well as within the word), intonation has a range of
functions, the main ones being to cue in the primary accented words and to dif-
ferentiate the various sentence-types along with indicating the various speaker
attitudes (and emotions) involved within the context of discourse. The various
types of nucleus (falling \, rising /, fall-rise \ /, and rise-fall / \) that are operant
in RP are used to signify the differences in a speech situation, depending on the
position and type of nucleus involved. In MalE however, there are not so many
patterns of intonation and they do not perform so many functions. Thus if any
syllable is to be stressed within the word or any word is to be stressed within
the sentence, loudness is the differentiating factor (i.e. greater breath effort and
muscular energy is effected by the MalE speaker). Change in pitch direction, both
within the word as well as within the sentence, is not common in MalE as it is
considered affected.
In other words pitch direction does not change within the accented (stressed)
word (say as a fall \ or a rise / etc.). Intonation within the word is most often level
intonation, except in a few particles that are used in informal speech as indicators
of intimacy, emotion, acceptance, excitement and the like.
For signifying various sentence-types or for showing the speaker’s attitude or
emotion, MalE does not have as wide a range of intonation as RP. In MalE, there
are such markers of questions and attitudes or emotions as particles – examples of
which are the lah, man, and ah(uh) particles. These are substitutes for intonation
especially in indicating emotions and attitudes.
As for range of pitch in the MalE speakers, it certainly is not as wide as that in
the RP speaker (except for extremely excitable situations).
4.4. Phonotactic features

(a) Gradation
In RP unaccented words show reductions of length of sounds and obscurations of
vowels – e.g. do has the strong form [du] and the weak equivalent [d ]; but has
[bt] and [b t]. In MalE such gradation is not common. The definite and indefi-
nite articles the and a, as well as the preposition of and the conjunction and, are
sometimes reduced in connected informal speech, although the frequency of such

gradation is considerably low.
(b) Liaison
While liaison is a prominent feature of RP connected speech, it is seldom observed
in MalE – except in the official speech of the educated MalE speaker. ‘Linking r’
is more frequently used than ‘intrusive r’ in MalE. This may be because there is
an <r> in the orthography:
here and there /hi r æn(d) /
far and near /far æn(d) ni /
rare opportunity /r r çp tun ti/
(c) Syllabicity
The use of syllabic nasals and laterals in MalE is rare: thus we have [bt n] ‘but-
ton’, [lit l] ‘little’ and [bot l] ‘bottle’. Here schwa takes prominence in syllable
structure, making MalE consistent with the CVC syllable orientation of Bahasa
Malaysia.
5. Conclusion
The degree of phonological variation – be it segmental, suprasegmental or phono-

tactic – depends on variables like the education and socio-economic background
of the MalE speaker – along with register and the style of discourse. Certain fea-
tures are definite enough to be considered diagnostic of MalE – yet it is difficult to
decide to which level of MalE they belong. The MalE speaker, on the whole, has
a competence that is near-native, if not, even native. This competence includes an
ability to `switch levels’ and perform in a lect well below one’s highest level. For
example: the same speaker may use a style which enunciates all three consonants
of a consonant cluster in public speaking, but will use a style that reduces the same
cluster to just one consonant when speaking to, say, his colleague in the office or
a parking attendant at the car park. There are, in addition, the ‘patois’ MalE speak-
ers who can be placed rigidly at a single level, as they are unable to switch lects.
However, the actual phonological variations between the educated speaker’s of-
ficial and unofficial speech have yet to be studied carefully. Patois MalE features,
on the other hand, are predictable and identifiable.
Selected references
ROM.
1046 Loga Baskaran
Baskaran, Loga
1987 Aspects of Malaysian English Syntax. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University
of London, London.
Platt, John and Heidi Weber
1980 English in Singapore and Malaysia: Status, Features, Functions. Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Tay, Mary W. J.
1993 The English Language in Singapore: Issues and Development. Singapore:
Unipress.
Tongue, R.
1974 The English of Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore: Eastern Universities
Press.
Philippine English: phonology
Ma. Lourdes G. Tayao
1. Introduction
The Philippines is a multilingual country, with no less than 87 ethnic languages,

eight of which are considered major in terms of the number of native speakers.
After its annexation from Spain by the United States in the early 1900s, the Phil-
ippines made English its official language to be taught and used as medium of
instruction in Philippine schools and to serve, together with Spanish for some
time, as official medium of communication in other government domains such as
the legislature, the courts, etc. It was likewise used in business transactions and in
religious services and even gave rise to a body of Philippine literature in English.
The language policy then was prompted by a desire to have a common language
for negotiation in a multilingual society since at that time there was no single lin-
gua franca for the entire nation.
However, with the wave of nationalism that resulted ultimately in the gaining of
independence, a clamour arose for a national language based on one of the major
Philippine languages, but drawing from the other Philippine languages as well.
Named Pilipino (now respelled Filipino) the national language shares with Eng-
lish the status of official languages of the country. Initially, the Philippine Bilin-
gual Education Policy sought to develop bilinguals competent in English and Fili-
pino, the national language, with specific domains allocated to the two languages.
Science, mathematics and English were to be taught using English as medium of
instruction while the other subjects were to be taught in Filipino.
The 1987 Revised Philippine Bilingual Education Policy however saw some
modifications made to the policy. It endorsed the use of the regional languages as
auxiliary languages of instruction for beginning literacy. In this it was motivated
by Cummins’ Interdependence Hypothesis (see Cummins and Swain, 1986) as the
rationale for using the child’s native language in teaching cognitively demanding
concepts and thus avoiding cognitive deficit and possible semilingualism on the
part of the learner. A close examination of the policy reveals its goal to be that of
transitional bilingualism with the non-exclusive use of English in the domains that
were previously allocated solely to it.
Subsequent factors have influenced the language policy of the country. On the
one hand, deterioration in English proficiency has been noted even among edu-
cated Filipinos. This phenomenon is attributed in part to the reduced time in the
use of English in school and to the increased exposure and use of Filipino in the
1048 Ma. Lourdes G. Tayao
mass media. Other contributing factors cited by Gonzalez, Jambalos and Romero
(2003) are “the inadequacy of learning resources, and the absence of good models
in English since the teachers are not themselves good models”.
On the other hand, globalisation and the widespread use of English in the global
village and the growing Filipino workforce seeking employment outside the coun-
try necessitate proficiency in English. But with the widening circle of English us-
ers and the rise of different varieties of English, an old issue has resurfaced. What
variety of English should be taught in schools? Should it be Philippine English
(henceforth PhlE) as an evolving local Asian variety, or General American English
(henceforth gAmE) as the influential western medium from which it sprung?
1.1. Philippine English

PhlE is used extensively in different domains by educated Filipinos throughout
the Philippines. As early as 1969, studies were conducted describing Philippine
English as a variety of General American English and recommending that it be
taught instead of gAmE in Philippine schools. T. Llamzon (1997: 43), a pioneer in
establishing the existence of Standard Filipino English and describing it, pointed
out in one of his more recent studies that Filipinos are willing to copy American
English, but only up to a point especially where spoken English is concerned:
… an approximation of the English formal style is what they want. They retain something
of their identity – in their lack of the nasal twang, in the careful articulation of individual
syllables, and in their refusal to use the “reduced signals” of the informal conversational
style of American English. … when educated Filipinos speak to their fellow Filipinos,
they speak English the Filipino way.
The status of Standard Philippine English was also taken up by McKaughan (1993:
52), who pointed out that “Philippine English has emerged as an autonomous va-
riety of English with its own self-contained system. It has its own distinct ac-
cent. The differences in form in Philippine English are not deficiencies but distinct
forms belonging to the Philippine English speech fellowship … As to accent, any
of the varieties, so long as they are from educated Filipino speakers can model
good Philippine English.”
Socio-political developments resulting from changes in language attitudes char-
acterised by objections to a monolithic or single standard of language performance
in English, along with the current emphasis on varieties of English, have brought
to the fore renewed interest in Philippine English which has been evolving through
the years.
In this chapter I describe the phonological features of Philippine English citing
whenever possible, reasons to explain differences between PhlE and its `matrilect’
gAmE.
Philippine English: phonology 1049
1.2. Previous studies on the phonetics of Philippine English

Among the earliest studies is Llamzon’s (1969) Standard Filipino English, which
attempts to establish English spoken in the Philippines as a distinct variety. His
term covers the English spoken by educated Filipinos and considered intelligible
and acceptable not only in educated Filipino circles, but also among native speak-
ers of Canadian English and American English. Where phonology is concerned,
initial objections were raised stipulating that there can be no Standard Philippine
English pronunciation because of regionalisms. Bautista (2000), however, points
out that the existence of regionalisms need not prevent the development and rec-
ognition of a standard variety.
Other synchronic studies of PhlE focused on its phonology, lexicon and syntax
(Casambre 1986) and its use in the mass media (Gonzalez and Alberca 1978). Lla-
mzon’s (1997) study initiated a shift in focus from research on a single standard
used by Filipinos in educated circles to the different varieties of PhlE across the
levels identified as acrolect, basilect, and mesolect.
Among the diachronic studies were the generational studies of Sta. Ana (1983)
which sought to determine the problem sounds and grammatical features of Philip-
pine English spoken across eight generations and that of Gonzalez, Jambalos and
Romero (2003) which described Philippine English spoken across generations in
line with historical landmarks on developments in English language teaching in
the country. The generational studies showed “perduring” features of Philippine
English phonology which have remained stable through the years as well as devel-
opments that took place in the course of time.
1.3. A “lectal” description of the phonetic features of Philippine English

Considering that the Philippines is a multilingual country, different regions with
different indigenous native languages would necessarily have their own distinct
pronunciations of English words resulting from interference from the phonologi-
cal structure of the native tongue. This is the reason for earlier claims made that
there can be no Standard Philippine English pronunciation because of regional-
isms. However, the studies on Philippine English phonology have shown socio-
lectal rather than geographical variables to provide a better account for differences
in pronunciation among the different varieties of PhlE. While differences in the
phonological structure of one’s native language and the target language usually
affect a speaker’s L2 phonology, the three sociolectal varieties of PhlE cut across
the different linguistic regions of the country. Thus, the features of each variety
would be true to all speakers of that variety irrespective of the region from which
they come.
Llamzon’s (1997) study of the phonetic features of Philippine English describes
three distinct sociolinguistic varieties of PhlE as far as pronunciation is concerned.
One is the acrolect, which closely approximates the formal style of gAmE and is
acceptable to educated Filipinos. Llamzon refers to this approximation of gAmE
formal style as the “Filipino English formal style” and he cites well-known figures
in the media and education as speakers of that style. The second is the mesolect,
which exhibits more differences from the phonological structure of gAmE but
is also used by educated Filipinos – notable personages in government, higher
education and in the mass media. The last variety, referred to by Llamzon as the
basilect variety, is one where “the speaker’s ethnic tongue forms the substratum,”
hence more substitutions are evident in it than in the other two varieties
Although the acrolect variety of PhlE closely resembles gAmE, varied studies
of the former (Llamzon 1969, 1997; Gonzalez 1985; Casambre 1986) have noted
that some of its phonetic features which serve to distinguish it from the latter have
remained stable through the years. More differences are notable in the mesolect
variety and are even more pronounced in the basilect.
2. The phonetic features of PhlE

2.1. Vowels
Table 1 summarises the vowels of PhlE in terms of Wells’ lexical sets.
Table 1. The vowels of PhlE in terms of Wells’ lexical sets
KIT i:> i > FLEECE i: > i > NEAR ir

DRESS FACE eI SQUARE er
TRAP A PALM A START Ar
LOT A THOUGHT o NORTH or
STRUT √ GOAT o FORCE or
FOOT u: > u > GOOSE u: > u > CURE ur
BATH A PRICE AI happY I
CLOTH o CHOICE oI lettER Er
NURSE Er MOUTH AU commA A
horSES E POOR ur
Since there is considerable lectal variation further details are provided in Table
2, of the three PhlE varieties alongside those of gAmE. In table 2 a minus sign
(-) represents a set present in gAmE but absent in the PhlE variety. Substitutions
made for those absent phonemes are enclosed in parenthesis in the last column of
the tables. As the U.S. phonological tradition generally classes /e/ and /o/ with
the monophthongs, I have left them in table 2, whilst excluding the other diph-
thongs.
Table 2. Vowel phonemes in the different varieties of PhlE vis-à-vis gAmE
gAmE PhlE PhlE PhlE Substitutions

Phonemes Acrolect Mesolect Basilect
High
Front
/i/ ‘fleece, near, feel’
// ‘kit, pin, fill, happY’ free variation with [i] – (i)
Back
/u/ ‘foot, cure, goose,
pool’
// ‘pull’ free variation with [u] – (u)
Mid
Front
/e/ ‘face, fail, square’ – (i)
// ‘dress, fell, pen,
merry’ – (i)
Central
/ / ‘commA’ free variation with [] – ()
// ‘strut’ – ()
Back
/o/ ‘goat, goal’ free variation with [o] – (u)
/o/‘cloth, thought’ – (u)
Low
Front
/æ/ ‘trap, bath, dance, [] in ‘bath’ versus – ()
hand, marry’ [] in ‘cat’
Central
/a/ ‘lot, palm, start, [] is low
power’ back
The vowels of the acrolect group resemble those of gAmE except for PALM which
is low back in the former but low central in the latter. The de-stressing of vowels
rendering them [ ] or [] in rapid speech also occurs in this group. The genera-
tion study of Gonzalez, Jambalos and Romero (2003) shows the increased use of
schwa in unstressed syllables.
The mesolect group has six stressed vowels plus schwa. [i] (or []) is used for
both KIT and FLEECE. These short vowels are in free variation with [i:]; no words
are distinguished purely by length. Similarly [u] (or []) is used for both FOOT and
PULL; with once again some free variation with the long vowel [u:]. [o] is used
for both CLOTH and THOUGHT; [] for PALM; and schwa in free variation with []
for commA. The other vowels in the inventory of the mesolect variety are [E] in
DRESS; [e] and ‘stressed schwa’ // in STRUT. Some differences from gAmE pro-
nunciations occur as in [o] in model rather than []; and [] in bag instead of [æ].
The vowels of the mesolect group are given full value even in unstressed syllables,
in contrast to acrolectal norms.
The basilect, on the other hand, has three vowels. [i] is used for KIT and FLEECE
as well as DRESS vowels. [] is used for TRAP, NURSE and About. [u] is used for
FOOT and GOOSE as well as for CLOTH and FORCE. Thus, in this variety, trap is
pronounced [trp], north is rendered [nurt] and nurse, [nrs]. Like those of the
mesolect group, vowels in polysyllabic words are not de-stressed in the basilect.
In spontaneous speech, vowel length differences between monophthongs and
diphthongs are not evident in the mesolect and basilect varieties of PhlE. As far as
vowel length in contrastive pairs like feel/fill and pool/pull is concerned, mesolec-
tal speakers do produce them distinctly in focused, deliberate speech. However, in
other styles [i] and [i] and [u] and [u] do not contrast; there is a slight tendency
for the long vowels to be preferred under the influence of Philippine languages.
2.2. Diphthongs
The diphthongs /au/ in MOUTH and /a/ in PRICE are present in all three varieties
of PhlE. On the other hand, whereas the diphthongs /o/ in CHOICE and /e/ in
FACE are present in the phonetic inventory of the acrolect and mesolect groups,
the former is rendered /uj/ and /ij/ by the basilect group. Likewise the GOAT vowel
occurs as [o] in the acrolect; in free variation with [o] in the mesolect; and as [u]
in the basilect.
PhlE is rhotic, that is /r/ is preserved after the vowels. Hence, the vowel in NEAR
is pronounced [ir]; in SQUARE [er]; in START [r]; in NORTH and FORCE [or]; in
LETTER and NURSE [r] and in CURE and POOR [ur].
2.3. Consonants
Given in Table 3 are the consonant phonemes of the three varieties of PhlE pre-
sented also alongside those of gAmE. As in the vowel chart, categories present in
gAmE, but absent in the PhlE variety, are marked by a minus sign (-) as indicated in
the table and substitutions made for those absent phonemes are enclosed in parenthe-
sis in the last column of the table.
Table 3. Consonant phonemes in the different varieties of PhlE vis-à-vis gAmE
gAmE PhlE PhlE PhlE Substitutions

Phonemes Acrolect Mesolect Basilect
Stops
[p t k]
[b d g]
Fricatives
[f v] – [p b]
[T D] [T ~ t; ð ~ d] [T ~ t; ð ~ d] – [t d]
[s z] – [s]
[S Z] – [sij] in initial,
[s] in final position
[h]
Affricates
[t ] – (ts)
[d] – (dj) in initial,

(ds) in final posi-
tion
Nasals
[m n ]
Lateral
[l]
Retroflex liquid
[r] rolled/one-tap rolled/one-tap
Glides
[w j]
Stops
P, T, K and B, D, G resemble gAmE articulation. However, though aspiration of
voiceless stops in syllable-initial, stressed position is present, it is rare among
the acrolect group and not evident in the mesolect and basilect varieties. Some
linguists believe that the Philippine languages’ tendency to avoid syllables having
just a vowel is carried over into L2 English. A glottal stop is therefore used to cre-
ate a CV syllable; hence [but] ‘about’.
Fricatives
F and V are present in the acrolect and mesolect but absent in the basilect, except
among speakers of Philippine languages like Ibanag, which has these two frica-
tives in its phonetic inventory. Amongst basilectal speakers the voiceless [p] and
[b] are substituted for [f] and [v] respectively. In the mesolectal group the substitu-
tion of [p] for [f] is not as frequent as of [b] for [v]. Some inconsistencies from the
point of view of gAmE occur – for example, there is no distinction in the pronun-
ciation of the prepositions of and off in PhlE, although the former calls for the use
of [v] and the latter [f] in many varieties of AmE.
The interdental fricatives [] and [] are likewise absent in the basilect (and in
most Philippine languages). They are substituted with the alveolar stops [t] for []
and [d] for [] in the basilect; but, as Table 3 indicates, are in free variation in the
other two varieties. Acrolect and mesolect speakers produce /T/ and // sounds in
focused and deliberate speech.
Of the sibilants [z], [] and [], are absent in the basilect variety (as in most
Philippine languages). This is an example of a split category where one phoneme
in the native language, /s/, has several different distinct phoneme equivalents in
the target language. Hence, among speakers of the basilect, /z/ is rendered [s], //
and // are pronounced [sij] in initial position and [ts] and [ds] in final position.
Examples of the former are [sijur] for sure, and [sijor] for shore. Examples of the
latter are [rds] for garage and [bus] for bush.
All of the sibilants are present in the acrolect. Among the mesolect group of
speakers, [z], [], or [] are pronounced as in gAmE in word-initial, but not in
word-medial or word-final position. Thus, initial /z/ in zoo is pronounced as [z]
but is rendered [s] in final position as in buzz. The phoneme // in word-medial
and word-final positions occur as [sj] and [s] respectively; thus [lisjur] for leisure
and [bs] for bash.
There is final devoicing of [] in all three varieties of PhlE. This applies even
to the noun plural and 3rd singular verb morphemes. Thus plays, birds and runs all
have [s], rather than the voicing assimilation rule of gAmE, which would result in
[z]. The same applies to the /z/ allophone of noun plurals, which occurs as [is] or
[Es] – thus [bsEs] for buses, rather than [bsz] in the target language.
Affricates
/t/ and /d/ are to be found in the mesolect and acrolect, but not in the basilect.
Basilectal speakers produce [ts] in initial and final positions for [t] – for example
[tsip] for cheap and [wts] for watch. /d/ is pronounced [dij] in initial position
and [ds] in final position – thus [dijnitor] for janitor and [wEds] for wedge.
Other consonants
All three varieties of PhlE have the nasals M, N, //, the glides W, /j/ and the lateral
L. R is a retroflex liquid in the acrolect, as in gAmE. In the other lects it has a
different quality. Whereas earlier studies describe it as trilled, it is more accurate

to say that it is rolled, or occurs as a single tap.
3. Syllable structure and stress

3.1. Syllables
Consonant clusters are rare in PhlE because of the influence of speakers L1s which
favour V, CV, VC and CVC syllables. Consonant clusters of the target language
are dealt with in various ways. For initial clusters beginning with /s/ the basilect
group adds a vowel before /s/: [is-trt] for start; [is-t-rt] for strut; and [is-ku-
wir] for square. With final clusters of /s/ + consonant all groups drop the final con-
sonant – thus [ls] for last. An alternate rule of breaking up clusters in the basilect
is via vowel epenthesis: [ku-lut] for cloth; [di-ris] for dress and [t-rp] for trap.
The vowel harmony evident in the choice of epenthetic vowel follows a rule from
Philippine languages.
The syllable structure of most Philippine languages also accounts in part for
the non-existence of syllabic consonants in the mesolect and basilect varieties
of PhlE and for its rare occurrence in the acrolect. Moreover, the absence of the
vowel reduction rule in those two varieties likewise precludes the production of
syllabic consonants. With the first two groups, vowels are given full value even if
they occur in unstressed syllables. This contrasts with the acrolect group, which
observes de-stressing of vowels rendering them [] or [ ] in unstressed syllables.
The absence of vowel reduction has been a stable feature of PhlE. It may be attrib-
uted to the fact that on the whole Philippine languages are syllable-timed and not
stress-timed like gAmE. The basilect and mesolect groups do not produce syllabic
consonants. Instead, full forms are observed [munten] for mountain; [rden]
for garden; [litl] for little; and [bndl] for bundle.
Since Philippine languages are syllable-timed, the individual syllables of words
are generally pronounced distinctly in PhlE and the de-stressing of function words
is usually not observed. This syllable-timed rhythm has in fact been found to be
stable in the basilect and mesolect varieties. Moreover, the stress-timed rhythm of
gAmE is one reason cited for the difficulty of Filipinos to make out what native
speakers of gAmE say.
3.2. Stress
Word, sentence, and emphatic stress in PhlE were also examined to note devia-
tions from gAmE. The findings of the studies reveal that there are words like
baptism, hazardous, pedestal, utensil, dioxide, and percentage, whose word stress
in all three varieties of PhlE differs from that of gAmE. Table 4 gives polysyllabic
words found to be stressed differently from gAmE by all three groups.
Table 4. Sample lexical items stressed differently in PhlE compared to gAmE
gAmE stress pattern PhlE – Acrolect PhlE – Mesolect PhlE – Basilect

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 1st 2nd 3rd 4th
1st Syllable:
colleague * * *
govern * * *
menu * * *
precinct * * *
ancestors * * *
baptism * * *
hazardous * * * *
pedestal * * *
subsequent * * *
formidable * * *
2nd Syllable:
bamboo * * *
throughout * * *
centennial * * *
committee * * *
dioxide * * *
lieutenant * * *
percentage * * *
semester * * *
utensil * * *
1st and 3rd Syllables:
adolescence * * *
antecedent * * *
rehabilitate * * *
commentary * * *
complimentary * * * *
documentary * * * *
2nd and 4th Syllables:
hereditary * * * *
interpretative * * * * *
itinerary * * * * * *
pronunciation * * * * * *
The table shows that of the ten words (colleague, govern, menu, precinct, ances-
tors, baptism, hazardous, pedestal, subsequent, and formidable) stressed on the
1st syllable in gAmE, only ancestors and subsequent were stressed by the acrolect
group on the 1st syllable. The others were stressed by all three groups on the sec-
ond syllable.
On the other hand, nine words stressed on the second syllable in gAmE (bam-
boo, throughout, centennial, committee, dioxide, lieutenant, percentage, semester,
and utensil) were stressed by the basilect group on the first syllable with the other
two groups likewise stressing the last four words on the same syllable. The first
five were stressed by the acrolect group on the second syllable while the mesolect
group did so only with the words lieutenant and centennial.
Regarding the six words stressed on the first and third syllables in gAmE, with
main stress on the third, (adolescence, antecedent, rehabilitate, commentary, com-
plimentary, and documentary), the first four were stressed on only one syllable
by all three groups in PhlE, the second syllable for the first three words and the
first syllable for the fourth. With the acrolect group, the last two words in the set
– complimentary and documentary – were stressed on the first and third syllables
following gAmE pronunciation but the other two groups stressed them only on
the third.
Concerning the final set of words, hereditary, interpretative, itinerary and
pronunciation, which are stressed on the second and fourth syllables in gAmE,
all three groups stressed the first word on the first syllable. The acrolect group
stressed the next two words following gAmE pronunciation and so did the me-
solect group with the word interpretative, which the basilect group stressed on the
first syllable. The word hereditary was also stressed by the mesolect and basilect
groups on the first syllable. Whereas the basilect group stressed the last word, pro-
nunciation as per gAmE pronunciation, the other two groups stressed the first and
fourth syllables instead.
Other gAmE word stress patterns not found in PhlE are contrasts made between
number words ending in –teen and those ending in –ty (e.g. *thirty vs. thirteen);
between words that may be used as nouns or as verbs (a rebel vs. to re*bel); noun
compounds in contrast to phrasal or compound verbs (a *drop-out vs. to drop out)
noun compounds as contrasted with adjective + noun combinations (*sewing ma-
chine vs. sweet-smelling *flowers).
Some trends concerning word stress in PhlE among the mesolect and basilect
groups may be pointed out, but these will warrant further investigation and veri-
fication. With the addition of affixes to form 4- or 5-syllable words (e.g. com-
mentary and centenary), the mesolect and basilect tend to put the stress on the
penultimate syllable. The two varieties tend to favour stressing the 2nd syllable
in 4- or 5-syllable words (e.g. formidable and rehabilitate). For some words that
have both a primary and secondary stress (e.g. cemetery, commentary), there is
a tendency in the two groups to interchange the two, placing the primary stress
where the secondary should be and vice versa, an observation also noted in previ-
ous studies (e.g. Llamzon 1969).
Where sentence stress is concerned, the acrolect and mesolect more often than
not stress the last content word in breath groups, but this is not apparent in the
basilect group who would stress function words or even two words instead of just
one in a breath group. Also absent from the basilect variety, but present in the
acrolect and mesolect groups is the use of contrastive and emphatic stress.
4. Intonation
The use of three intonation patterns was scrutinised in studies of Philippine pho-
nology. These were the final and non-final 2-3-3 rising intonation, the non-final
2-3-2 rising-falling (back-to-normal) intonation, and the final 2-3-1 rising-fall-
ing (down-to-fade out) intonation. In keeping with the final intonation patterns
in most Philippine languages, one of the stable features noted in PhlE is the use
of the final rising-falling intonation in statements and the final rising intonation
in questions. No distinction is made in the final intonation of wh-questions and
yes-no questions in PhlE, although Gonzalez and Alberca (1978) noted the use of
the rising intonation in the former and the rising-falling in the latter. This stands
in direct contrast to the final intonation patterns of gAmE. In the latter final rising
intonation is generally used in yes-no questions while final rising-falling intona-
tion is used in wh- questions, in yes-no tag questions seeking confirmation, and in
statements. However, it must be conceded that even gAmE norms are in flux here,
with the increase of ‘high rise terminals’ in ordinary statements.
Concerning non-final intonation, three uses of the non-final 2-3-3 rising intona-
tion were examined. These were the obligatory use of the non-final rising intona-
tion on nominatives of address and on the non-final options in alternatives, and
the optional use at the end of subordinate clauses appearing in sentence-initial
position. Gonzalez, Jambalos and Romero’s generational study (2003) noted an
increase in the use of non-final rising intonation in alternatives and in a series, in
line with expectations of Target Language speakers. This, however, has yet to be
established as a stable phonetic feature of PhlE. My own data show the use of non-
final rising intonation in nominatives of address to be non-existent in the basilect
variety, rare in the mesolect and occasional in the acrolect.
5. Conclusion
The study of PhlE phonology is an important one, since its ‘target’ is AmE, rather
than BrE, in contrast to most other ‘New English’ varieties in Africa and Asia.
Furthermore, the substrate languages form an important counter-influence. The
generational studies of Gonzalez, Jambalos and Romero (2003) forms a solid basis
for charting out future developments in PhlE.
Selected references
ROM.
Alberca, Wilfredo L.
1978 The distinctive features of Philippine English in the mass media. Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Santo Tomas, Manila.
Bautista, Ma. Lourdes S.
2000 Studies of Philippine English in the Philippines. Philippine Journal of
Linguistics 31: 39–65.
Casambre, Nelia G.
1986 What is Filipino English? Philippine Journal for Language Teaching 14: 34–
49.
Cummins, Jim and Merril Swain
1986 Bilingualism in Education: Aspects of Theory, Research and Practice. London:
Longman
Gonzalez, Andrew
1985 Studies on Philippine English. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language
Centre.
1997 The history of English in the Philippines. In: Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista (ed.)
English is an Asian Language: The Philippine Context, 25–40. Sydney: The
Macquarie Library.
Gonzalez, Andrew and Alberca, Wilfredo L.
1978 Philippine English of the Mass Media (preliminary edition). Manila: De La
Salle University Research Council.
Gonzalez, Andrew, Thelma V. Jambalos and Ma. Corona S. Romero
2003 Three Studies on Philippine English across Generations: Towards an
Integration and Some Implications, Manila: Linguistic Society of the
Philippines.
Llamzon, Teodoro A.
1969 Standard Filipino English. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
1997 The Phonology of Philippine English. In: Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista (ed.)
English is an Asian Language: The Philippine Context, 41–48. Sydney: The
Macquarie Library.
McKaughan, Howard P.
1993. Towards a Standard Philippine English. Philippine Journal of Linguistics
24: 41–55.
Sta. Ana, Alan
1983 English in the Philippines across generations: A pilot study. Unpublished mas-
ters’ thesis, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City.
Synopses
The editors
Synopsis: phonological variation in the British Isles
Clive Upton
1. Introduction
Drawn together here, in outline, is information central to the phonetic and phono-
logical variation to be found in the varieties of English spoken in the British Isles,
as described in detail in the chapters written by the contributors to this work. All
varieties are taken to be the same in kind. However, whilst most are regional, two
(British Creole and Received Pronunciation) are not in fact to be geographically
placed, and some of those that are regional cover much larger territories than oth-
ers. Treatment is inevitably ‘broad brush’, so that the summary is to be taken more
as an introductory index to the descriptions than as a description in its own right.
Where, as is for example especially the case for the national varieties of Scotland,
Wales, and Ireland, there are marked internal differences to be taken account of,
these are necessarily in large measure masked here. Readers should therefore take
this summary as a starting point, and must refer to the relevant chapters them-
selves in order fully to appreciate the richness of present variation throughout the
region.
Predictably, most phonological differences between varieties concern the vowel
systems and realizations. As is quite customary for the British varieties, both quali-
tative and quantitative vowel distinctions are made, the quantitative ones resulting
in the holding of categories of “short” and “long” vowels, along with diphthongs,
and unstressed vowels. Each of these categories provides a major section of the
summary: the convention of lexical sets, as employed in the chapters themselves
to give order to vocalic variation, is maintained in this summary, and the keywords
for those sets furnish the headings for the various sub-sections in which the vowels
are discussed. Consonants, prosody and intonation will be discussed in the last
two sections.
2. Short vowels
2.1. KIT
Widely throughout the British Isles, the realisation of this vowel is [I]. This feature
occurs in all varieties and is quite usual in all but Orkney and Shetland, where
lowering and centralizing, heard variably also in Northern England and the Chan-
nel Islands, is to be expected. Lowering of the vowel to [e] is a feature of Urban
1064 Clive Upton
Northern Irish, and this or an even lower and more retracted vowel is a feature of
Urban Scots. A tense [i] is characteristic of the West Midlands, and may be heard
in East Anglia and British Creole too.
2.2. DRESS
This vowel is rendered most widely as half open front, [E], the only characteristic
exception occurring in South-east England, where [e] is the norm: [e] can also be
heard in the West Midlands and, retracted, in British Creole. Raising from [E] is
found in the Channel Islands, East Anglia, Urban Scots, and Orkney and Shetland,
and lowering occurs in urban Northern Irish.
2.3. TRAP
Principal variants for TRAP are [a] and [Q], these serving to some extent as mark-
ers of north-south variation. [Q] is most characteristic of Ireland, East Anglia and
the Channel Islands: it is also characteristic of Southern England, although [a] is
becoming widespread in this area also. [a] is usual in Orkney and Shetland, in
most of the accents of Scotland (where retraction is usual for Urban Scots), and
the North of England, with the English Midlands showing some considerable [a]-
[Q] variability. In the non-regional British Creole and RP accents, both [a] and [Q]
occur: in RP, [Q] is traditional, whereas [a] is the usual modern realisation.
2.4. LOT, CLOTH
Quite considerable variability is to be heard with the LOT vowel, both between
and within accent-types. [ç] is widely heard in Orkney, Shetland, Scotland, and
Wales, and is a feature of Fashionable Dublin speech in Ireland, contrasting with
a Colloquial Dublin (and Irish Rural Western) [a], a feature also of British Creole;
[ç] might be found too in Creole, and in the West Midlands. [Å], the sound in RP, is
also usual regionally throughout England outside the South-west and East Anglia,
where [A] is also reported, as it is across southern Ireland as a ‘supraregional’ form.
Besides being found in Ireland, [a] can be heard in Creole too. The same distri-
bution of variants exists essentially for CLOTH as for LOT: [ç˘], formerly widely
heard before fricatives in Southern England, is still to be heard in the speech of
older working-class East Anglians, and is a feature of the most conservative type
of traditional RP. Creole exhibits variability in terms of length of [a], with CLOTH
exhibiting length, and [A] also occurs in CLOTH in this accent.
Synopsis: phonological variation in the British Isles 1065
2.5. STRUT
This vowel exhibits a celebrated variation which is frequently offered as marking

the distinction between the accents of Northern and Southern England: Northern
English typically has [U] (the FOOT vowel) here, whilst Southern and East Anglian
English has somewhat fronted [√] or the centralised [å], this resulting in the North
retaining what is the traditional five-vowel system of short vowels while the South
has six. [√] is typical of RP: an innovation here and in the accents of some English
regional speakers towards a raised and retracted variant at or approaching [F] may
be seen as a move towards a compromise between the two extremes. Illustrative
of its border status between North and South, the West Midlands have consider-
able variation in realisations of this vowel, tending however towards the Northern
[U] and ‘compromise’ [F]. Elsewhere in the British Isles [√], centralised in Ireland
and Wales, is widespread, with [ç] occurring in Orkney and Shetland, the Channel
Islands, and British Creole.
2.6. FOOT
[U] is the very widespread British Isles realisation here, occurring in the varieties
of all regions other than Orkney, Shetland and Scotland, and in Creole and RP.
In Orkney, Shetland, and Scotland, a tensed [u] is heard, central or even fronted
in Scotland according largely to the social profile of the speaker, with FOOT and
GOOSE tending to fall together in these accents. The tensed central [u] is also
found in British Creole, and in Northern Ireland, testimony to the close links of
that area with Scotland. A fronted [Y] is heard in South-west England. Hypercor-
rection resulting from unease about the status of the STRUT [U] seems to underlie
realizations of FOOT as [F] and [´] in Northern and West Midland England.
3. Long vowels
3.1. FLEECE
The underlying quality of the FLEECE vowel is that of [i(˘)] throughout the region.
However, this is not always purely monophthongal, a frequent tendency being
towards a short upgliding diphthong [Ii]. In the North of England, the West Mid-
lands and South-east England, wider diphthongs [Í] or [eI~EI] are found.
3.2. BATH
Like TRAP and STRUT, this vowel creates something of a marker of north-south
distinction. Unlike the latter, however, there is little tendency for speakers to com-
promise in an attempt to move towards a perceived prestige. A consequence of this
1066 Clive Upton
is the existence of RP variability which sees Southern speakers using [A˘] while
Northern speakers use [a] in an otherwise uniform system. [a] is, in fact, the prin-
cipal form from Orkney and Shetland, through Scotland and Northern England
into the West Midlands where, true to the transitional nature of that region, there is
considerable mixing with the longer, backed South-eastern regional norm, [A˘]. In
South-west England [a] categorically has partial or full length, as it does character-
istically in Southern Ireland and in Wales. In something of an inversion of the situ-
ation in England, however, Northern Ireland exhibits [A], with variable length.
3.3. PALM, START
In South-east England and the Channel Islands, as in RP, the vowel of these sets
is [A˘], this being found variably with [a˘] and [Å˘] in the North of England and
with [Å˘] in the West Midlands. [a˘] is the usual variant in South-west England and
Wales (here with [A˘]), and this or a retracted form is usual in East Anglia. Both
[A˘] and [a˘] occur in British Creole and, with variable length, in Irish varieties.
Scottish accents exhibit [a], sometimes retracted, in PALM, and [a˘], sometimes
retracted, or a close variety of [E˘] in START, lengthening in the rhotic environment
according to the ‘Scottish Vowel Length Rule’.
3.4. GOOSE
The dominant realisation of the GOOSE vowel is essentially [u(˘)] everywhere in the
region, with fronting in varying degrees being a very common tendency. [Y] can
be found in Urban Scots and [Y˘] in more conservative rural speech in South-west
England. A tendency towards short diphthongs exists in Northern England ([Uu]),
East Anglia and South-east England ([Uu]), and the West Midlands ([çU~ú]).
3.5. THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE
[ç˘] is a widespread realisation for these vowels, with a short vowel in THOUGHT
in Scotland. [ç˘] is frequently diphthongised to [ç´] in South-east England, where
[o˘] is otherwise usual, as it is in Scotland in FORCE and, variably, in NORTH.
[ç˘] and [o˘] co-occur in the Channel Islands and British Creole, and [ç˘] and [Å˘]
in Northern England for all three vowels (with [a˘] in THOUGHT and [o˘] in NORTH
and FORCE). NORTH and FORCE exhibit the characteristic if recessive feature of
[U´] in North-east England.
There is marked variation within Irish accents. THOUGHT exhibits a range of
rounded and unrounded back vowels and, in popular Dublin speech, [a˘]; NORTH
vowels similarly are [ç˘], [A˘], [Å˘] and [a˘]. FORCE exhibits predominantly [o˘] and
[ç˘], with [Å˘] in popular Dublin. An off-glide is not uncommon with non-rhotic
accents.
3.6. NURSE
Considerable variability occurs in this vowel throughout the British Isles, though
it may be very broadly summed up as consisting of [‘]in rhotic areas of Ireland
and South-west England and [Œ˘/´˘] in the rest of the region, excluding Scotland.
Most notable additions to this broad distinction are [ç], found in Orkney and Shet-
land, and a full NURSE/NORTH merger on this retracted form in the speech of some
older speakers in North-east England, where a fronted variant [O] has recently
been identified in the speech of younger, mainly female, speakers. [ø˘] occurs
in Wales and variably in the West Midlands. Rhotic Scottish accents exhibit [√]
(Scottish Standard English) and either [√] or [E] (Urban Scots).
NURSE and SQUARE also fall together for many speakers in Liverpool, with
words from either set being pronounced with [Œ˘] or [E˘]. [E˘] is also a feature of
Hull and Teesside speech in Northern England, although SQUARE does not allow
of [Œ˘] in those places.
4. Diphthongs
4.1. FACE
The principal distinction here is between monophthongal realisations in the North-

ern British Isles and Ireland and diphthongal realisations from the Midlands south-
wards, though there is variability within this scheme. Whilst [e(˘)] is general in
Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the North of England, as well as being found in the
speech of some speakers of British Creole, it occurs with [eI] in Shetland and, for
some words in the set, in Wales. Diphthongal forms elsewhere range from [eI] in
RP and the Channel Islands to [EI] in South-west and [√I] in South-east England,
[EI/√I/QI] in the West Midlands, and [eI/Qi] in East Anglia. To be compared with
[U´] in GOAT, North-east England has a most distinctive diphthongal FACE vowel,
in [I´].
4.2. PRICE
A wide range of open onsets can be identified for this diphthong, although, with
the exception of British Creole with two diphthongs [AE/Ae], end-points are at the
front close position. [aI], typical of traditional RP, is recorded in Orkney and Shet-
land, Southern Ireland, Wales, Northern and Midland England: a higher onset, at
[Q], occurs in the Rural West of Ireland, and yet higher, at [E], in the Rural North
of Ireland and for some North of England speakers. In Southern England and the
Channel Islands, among younger East Anglian speakers, and in Fashionable Dub-
lin speech, [AI], with a lip-spread back open onset, is heard. A lip-rounded back
open position, [Å], is the start for the diphthong for some West Midland ([ÅI/çI]),
1068 Clive Upton
Cockney (London), and Channel Island speakers, and is a stereotyped feature for
South-west England.
Current RP, along with Standard Scottish English and some Channel Islands
speech, has [√I]. The diphthong begins centrally, with [å/Œ/´], for some speak-
ers on Shetland, in Urban Scots, in Popular Dublin speech, and amongst older
East Anglians. Monophthongal [a˘] has been reported for Devon in South-west
England, and [A˘] is a feature of south and west Yorkshire (as well as the East
Midlands immediately to the south of that area), while [i˘] is characteristic of the
pronunciation of some words in this set, such as right and night in Yorkshire and
North-east England.
4.3. CHOICE
[çI] is very usual for this diphthong, being found in RP and (sometimes with a
more tense high front end-point) in the accents of all areas other than Scotland,
where [çe] occurs, and South-west England, which produces [oI]. [oI] can also
be heard in Fashionable Dublin speech, in the English West Midlands, and in
South-east England. Fully-open back onsets for the diphthongs, giving [ÅI/AI], are
characteristic of a range of accents found in Southern and Western Ireland, in
Northern and West Midland England, and in the Channel Islands. In East Anglia
pronunciations across the range from [çi] to [Ui] can be heard. British Creole, with
[çI/ai], also exhibits [çE].
4.4. MOUTH
South of Scotland, MOUTH is generally represented by a glide from low front to

high back, with an extreme range of [au], taking in onsets from [a] to [E] and end-
points from [U] to [u] and [u]. [aU] is the diphthong in RP, and is found in British
Creole with [çU] and [Q´]. Scotland has [√u], Shetland has [√U], and Orkney [Ú],
while all three share monophthongal [u(˘)] with northernmost Northern England.
Also in the North of England, parts of west and south Yorkshire have [a˘], while in
the South London Cockney exhibits [Q˘].
4.5. GOAT
Somewhat in parallel with the situation in FACE, a basic distinction here is between
monophthongal realisations in the North of the region and diphthongal realisa-
tions in the South. [o(˘)] occurs in Shetland, Scotland, (rural) Ireland, Wales, and
the North of England (where innovative ‘GOAT-fronting’ to [P˘] is occurring), and
in British Creole. Orkney has [ç]. Besides monophthongal realisations, Ireland
has the RP-like [Ú] in Fashionable Dublin and supra-regional Southern accents,
[√U] in Popular Dublin speech, and the traditional RP [oU] also across Southern
accents: this is also a feature shared with many speakers in Northern and West
Midland England, and in Wales. In Northern England, the North-east traditionally
has [U´], to be compared to [I´] in FACE.
Principal vernacular diphthongs in Southern Britain are [√U] in the South-east,
[çU] in the South-west and Channel Islands, and [oU/EU/aU/√U] in the West Mid-
lands. East Anglia has [åu/Uu], and British Creole narrow diphthongs in the range
[uo/U´/ó].
4.6. NEAR
In most rhotic accents of the British Isles, those of Scotland, Ireland, and the South-
west of England, the realisation of NEAR is typically as a high front monophthong,
invariably of a tensed variety. Diphthongisation elsewhere is usually to [i´], with
varying degrees of tenseness for the onset: a relaxed onset at [I] is found in RP
and one of the variants for British Creole (which also has available [ie(r)/iE(r)] in
rhotic variants), while [e´/E´] also occur in the West Midlands. East Anglia has
[e˘/E˘], creating a NEAR/SQUARE merger.
4.7. SQUARE
Rhoticity in Scotland and Ireland is typically on a lengthened half-closed monoph-

thong, [e(˘)] SQUARE vowel, this co-existing with half-open [E] in Orkney and
Shetland and Urban Scots, and being the norm in Popular Dublin speech. [E(˘)] is
also the form in rhotic South-west England. The Irish Rural North differs from the
South in having [´(˘)]. Rhoticity in British Creole is attended by diphthongs [ie/iE].
In other, non-rhotic, accents the most usual regional form is a centring diphthong
with half-open front onset, or a long half-open monophthong, [E´/E˘]. [E˘] is found
also in RP (as distinct from the traditional RP diphthongal [e´]) and, with [e˘], in
the absence of rhoticity in British Creole. Characteristic of Liverpool, and found
more widely in the Lancashire area, is [Œ˘] (compare NURSE), a similar sound be-
ing recorded slightly further south in the west Midlands too.
4.8. CURE
Rhotic accents of Scotland and Ireland and South-west England typically have
[u(˘)], with Orkney and Shetland showing [u´]. [u´/U´] is also usual over much of
non-rhotic Britain, with a tendency to a disyllabic [(I)uw´] in Wales. A compara-
tively recent innovation in RP for the CURE vowel is [ç˘], and this is also found
in accents characteristic of Northern and West Midland England and, with [o˘], in
British Creole.
Unlike other accents of the British Isles, where the phenomenon of ‘yod-de-
letion’ (see section 7.3. below) has only limited application, the accent of East
1070 Clive Upton
Anglia has no [j] before /u˘/ after any consonant: this, together with a realisation of
the CURE vowel as [Œ˘/´˘], results in such homophones as cure/cur.
5. Weak vowels
5.1. happY
Tense [i], in some cases with length, is a feature of most British English accents,
and, having become the norm in RP (as distinct from traditional RP, where [I]
might sometimes be expected), is increasingly found in the North of England,
where the slack vowel to and including [E] has been a feature of vernacular speech.
[e] is the vowel in Scotland and Rural Northern Ireland (in the latter alongside [I]).
Both [I] and [i] are found in British Creole.
5.2. lettER
A central vowel, predominantly [´], occurs in both non-rhotic and rhotic accents
in the British Isles, exceptions being that some speakers of British Creole have [a]
alongside [å], and Scotland exhibits [I/√]. Alongside [´], Wales has [√] and the
Channel Islands [ø].
5.3. horsES
The horsES vowel is mainly [I] in the British Isles, though a central vowel is the
norm in Shetland, Ireland and East Anglia, and both [I] and [´] can be expected in
Northern England.
5.4. commA
The central vowel [´] occurs throughout most of the British Isles for commA. An
open central vowel [å] is heard in Shetland and Popular Dublin, and sometimes in
the North of England, in some cases fronted and lowered to [a] in Orkney and in
British Creole. Scotland and Wales have [√].
6. Vowel distribution
The Scottish Vowel Length Rule, describing lengthening of certain vowels before
/r/, a voiced fricative, or a morpheme boundary, is explained in the chapter on
Scottish phonology. That vowel length is environmentally determined rather than
being intrinsic to the vowel results in the absence from transcriptions of the rel-
evant varieties of that quantitative contrast which is customarily applied in the
description of British English vowel sets. Although a slightly recessive feature, the
Rule operates widely in Scotland itself, in Orkney and Shetland, and in the accents
of England bordering Scotland. It is also a factor in some forms of Northern Irish
English, but not in the English of the Irish Republic.
Undoubtedly the most marked absence of contrast in the British Isles vocalic
system is that of TRAP and BATH in Scotland and Northern England, and in some
instances of accents in Ireland, Wales, and Orkney and Shetland. Both are typi-
cally at the low front position, or slightly retracted from it: so distinct a marker of
northernness is this feature that in Northern and northern West Midland England
those speakers whose accent converges on RP are nevertheless most unlikely to
abandon it, so that it is necessary to include BATH [a] in the RP inventory in order
to avoid any judgement of Southern bias in what is in essence a regionless accent.
FOOT/GOOSE merger is a feature of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland, and of some
Northern Irish accents associated with Scotland through settlement. The merger is
also a feature of Northern and West Midland English accents outside the North-
east, for a very limited set of lexical items and essentially amongst older speakers.
LOT and THOUGHT also merge in Scotland, Orkney and Shetland, and this phe-
nomenon can be found in some conservative Rural Irish accents too. Some merger
of LOT and STRUT on [Å] is encountered in the West Midlands.
In Northern England, homophony occurs between NURSE and SQUARE in Liv-
erpool, where both sets can be rendered with [E˘] or [Œ˘], and, to the extent that
NURSE is variably rendered [E˘], in the Hull and Middlesbrough areas of the east
of the region. Whilst NEAR and SQUARE are distinct sets in the south of the East
Anglia area, they merge on [e˘/E˘] in the northern part, and they are at times ho-
mophonous in the West Midlands on [I´/E´].
7. Consonants
7.1. Stops: /P/T/K/ , /B/D/G
Word-initial voiceless stops are aspirated in the varieties of Ireland and England.
There is some evidence that aspiration is weaker in Scotland. Strong aspiration ap-
proaching affrication is a feature in the whole of Wales, especially the north.
Glottalisation of intervocalic and word-final /t/ occurs everywhere in the British
Isles, with considerable frequency: /p/ and /k/ are also glottalised, though not as
regularly as is /t/.
/t/ and /d/ are generally dental in Shetland, and tend to have fronted or dental
articulation in Scotland. This is also a feature of the English accents of mid and
northern Wales.
Affrication of /t/ is reported as a special feature of Dublin speech in Ireland, and
is, with affrication of /p/ and /k/, very prevalent in the Liverpool area of Northern
England. Affrication of /k/ and /g/ before front vowels is also characteristic of accents
1072 Clive Upton
of limited areas of Orkney and Shetland. Lenicisation of intervocalic /t/ is strongly

evidenced in South-west England and is also found in Ireland and widely in the rest
of England, while strong aspiration of /p, t, k/ is noted for the whole of Wales. A
flap or tap, [R], is part of a complex of allophones of /t/ in Ireland and Northern and
Midland England, and of British Creole, though the sociolinguistics of this feature
varies markedly between regions, as do other likely precise realisations.
There is a tendency towards unvoicing of word-final /d/ in the English of Wales
where Welsh is spoken.
7.2. Fricatives: TH, F/V, S/Z, SH/ZH, H, CH, etc.

Initial Fricative Voicing, in which /f, T, s, S/ are realised as [v, D, z, Z] word-ini-
tially, is a particular feature of South-west England, and is also to be found in
southern, and especially south-western, Wales: it is a highly recessive element in
the accents of both areas. TH-stopping, both voiced and voiceless, rendering this
thing [dIs tIN], occurs in British Creole, and also as a highly stigmatised feature
throughout Ireland: its occasionally reported presence in Glasgow might be as a
result of influence from Ireland. Fronting of /S/ is found in Shetland and Scotland.
Unvoicing of medial and word-final /z/ occurs in the English accents of those
regions of Wales where Welsh is widely spoken. Interference from Welsh phonol-
ogy is the cause.
Initial H-deletion is variable throughout Wales and England, generally taken as
a feature of working-class speech. It is also found in the Channel Islands, in part
perhaps as a result of influence from metropolitan French, and in British Creole,
where, as a recessive feature, presence or absence of syllable-initial [h] can mark
degrees of emphasis.
Characteristically Scottish /x/ in, for example, loch, is increasingly becoming
[k] in Urban Scots, although [x] remains the widespread realisation otherwise in
Scotland, and is also found in Northern Ireland.
Welsh <ll> and <ch> occur only occasionally in Welsh English outside the pro-
nunciation of placenames, but, when they do, they may be expected to have their
Welsh-language values of [¬] and [x] respectively.
7.3. Semi-vowels: W/WH, J

Word-initial WH realised by the voiceless labial-velar fricative [„] is a recognised
feature of Irish and Scottish speech, and of that of the most northerly parts of Eng-
land. There is evidence that this is a recessive feature in all these accents, however.
Its recessive nature in RP is signified by its status as a feature of the Refined and,
variably, the traditional varieties of that accent only.
Apparently due to the influence of Welsh phonology, initial /w/ is occasionally
dropped in Welsh English before close back rounded vowels.
Yod-dropping is one of the most distinctive characteristics of northern East An-

glian speech, where /j/ is absent before /u:/ after all consonants. The feature is
reported in more limited measure in Ireland, Wales, the West Midlands and the
South of England.
7.4. Sonorants: N, L, R
In a feature known as ‘velar nasal plus’, velar nasal /N/ is realised as [Ng] in all
words with <ng> spelling in the English West Midlands, this designation in this
case covering an extended area stretching from Birmingham in the south to Liver-
pool and Sheffield in the north. The feature is by no means categorical, co-exist-
ing with both [N] and, in <-ing>-morpheme representations, [n] realisation: the
alveolar nasal [n] for /N/ is widespread in Northern and West Midland English as
a stigmatised feature. /n/ is fronted in Shetland, Scotland, and mid and northern
Wales.
RP has clear [l] before a vowel and dark […] before a consonant or pause. Whilst
this essential pattern might also be expected to occur in some regional varieties,
considerable complexity does also occur in distributions of clear and dark /l/ re-
gionally, with a general trend being a move from clear to dark as one moves from
North to South within England, and post-vocalic /l/ frequently being vocalised
in the South-east. The clear-to-dark trend is reversed in Wales, where [l] is more
characteristic of the south and […] of the north in all positions. Dark […] is a feature
of Scottish English, and vocalisation exists as both historically- and modern socio-
linguistically-conditioned features.
There is an essential division between the principal rhotic areas of the British
Isles, situated in Scotland, Ireland, South-west England and part of Northern Eng-
land centred on southern Lancashire, and the non-rhotic areas of the majority of
England and Wales. However, rhoticity is not categorical in rhotic regions; Nor-
thumberland in Northern England, the English of Welsh-speaking areas of Wales,
parts of southern Wales with close cultural links with South-west England, and
the Channel Islands also display the feature to varying degrees. Phonetic realisa-
tions of /r/ vary widely: in Scotland postalveolar [®], retroflex [”] and tap or flap
[R] are variably found, their presence determined by phonetic environments and
sociolinguistics, and Ireland has [®] and [”]; /r/ in England is generally postalveolar
or retroflex, with a characteristic uvular variety surviving in Northumberland; and
uvular [“] is also found as a rare form in north Wales. Intrusive /r/ is normal in
non-rhotic areas.
1074 Clive Upton
8. Prosodic and intonational features
Distinctive in the area of East Anglia pronunciation is the tendency for stressed
vowels to be lengthened, with any unstressed vowel being correspondingly re-
duced to [´] or even disappearing. This is in marked contrast to the even syllable
stressing which is characteristic of North-east England.
Especially amongst older Channel Islands speakers, stressing occurs which
presents as being distinctly non-native: this might involve reversal of patterns typ-
ical of RP, or heavier syllable stressing than might otherwise be expected. Stress
shifts are quite usual in polysyllabic verbs (only) in Irish English.
It is frequently remarked that Welsh English has a particularly lilting (or, more
pejoratively, a ‘sing-song’) intonation pattern, an observation that is also made
concerning Orkney speech. Recent observations on an apparent causal post-tonic
rise in pitch in Welsh English ties the feature to a corresponding feature in Welsh.
This high terminal intonation might also regularly be encountered in Ireland and
in Northern and South-eastern England: the extent to which the high tone is ris-
ing or at a plateau is variable across accents, with that of North-eastern England
being recorded as the latter and that of Glasgow as the former. In Scotland out-
side Glasgow, statements in most accents show a falling intonation. The extent to
which the feature of terminal intonational raising is related across different regions
is currently unclear.
Synopsis: phonological variation in the Americas and
the Caribbean
Edgar W. Schneider
1. Introduction
This chapter attempts to survey and systematize the phonetic and phonological
variability that can be observed in North America and the Caribbean. No fun-
damental distinction is drawn between dialectal and creole varieties beforehand
– such a division has been questioned in recent research, and it would seem to
be even less called for on the level of phonetics and phonology than on the level
of morphosyntax, where, based on earlier research, the presupposition of exist-
ing differences seems more justified. In categorizing the wide range of possible
pronunciation phenomena, I start out from the listing of feature categories as
suggested originally to future contributors, and I adopt a categorization scheme
based upon traditional articulatory classifications. Basically, I distinguish between
vowels, consonants, and prosodic features. Given that most of the variability to
be observed concerns vowels, this broad category needs to be further subdivided,
although any such categorization on the basis of observed variation turns out to
be problematic: Given that processes of diphthongization/monophthongization,
lengthening/shortening (or blurring of quantity distinctions), fronting/backing,
and raising/lowering are almost ubiquitous, any categorization is bound to leak.
Hence, for purely practical reasons, to enable comparisons on a global scale in
the present context, I employ an RP-based scheme of vowel types, distinguishing
between “short” vowels (which can also be called “checked”, many of which are
also “lax”), “long” (or free, frequently described as tense) vowels, diphthongs, and
unstressed vowels. As a general reference system in this project context, it was
decided (and authors were instructed) to employ Wells’ (1982) system of “lexi-
cal sets”, meant to identify vowel types in specific contexts without having to go
into the knotty issue of whether or not these are phonemic in any given variety. I
am grateful to the contributors to this volume for having accepted this procedure
despite the fact that in the American academic context this system is less widely
accepted (and perhaps more difficult to accommodate) than in a British-based
perspective. It should also be noted that this system was not imposed slavishly.
Contributors were advised and authorized to adopt and expand it when this was
felt to be necessary for a reliable coverage of their respective variety, i.e. either to
use some of the items which Wells suggests in a “reserve list” or to replace target
words by others of their own choice. This was felt to be necessary especially in the
cases of creole varieties, where some of Wells’ key word are not lexicalized (but
the respective vowel can be identified using an alternative lexical item) or where
the phonological system of sounds, in the perspective of the English superstrate
input, has been restructured substantially.
The following discussion starts out from authors’ responses to a feature list of
possible phonetic processes that I devised and that was provided to the contribu-
tors as a stimulus for these categorizations; this feature list underlies the interac-
tive phonological maps on the accompanying CD-ROM. Further details and com-
parative statements are then based upon the articles in this volume. By necessity,
a survey of the present kind needs to ignore many aspects and to abstract from
idiosyncracies to reach a more global picture. Readers interested in phonetic de-
tails and distributional specifics are warned to be cautious, to take the statements
below with a grain of salt, and to check the original sources for more accurate and
locally relevant information.
2. “Short” vowels
2.1. KIT
Throughout North America and the Caribbean the KIT vowel is a “canonical” high
front short [], with relatively little variability. Most notably, in Southern dialect
(and, consequently, to some extent in AAVE) this vowel can be “drawled” by add-
ing a centralizing offglide, but in the new urban South the drawl, also with this
vowel, is regarded as recessive. Raising and fronting to [i] occurs in SurCs, JamE
and, conditionally, in NfldE and some contact varieties (CajE, ChcE, JamC, and
T&TC [henceforth, this abbreviation is taken to refer to the entire continuum of
Trinidad, usually including the mesolectal and acrolectal forms of Tobago but set
off against basilectal TobC]); this tensing is also a part of the “Southern Shift”.
Centralizing to [] is not the norm anywhere but may occur in the dialects of Phila-
delphia (henceforth abbreviated as PhilE), the inland North (henceforth InlNE), the
South (henceforth SAmE), in JamE, and in T&TC and TobC. Centralization of KIT
is spreading as an element of the “Northern Cities Shift”. Lowering of this vowel to
[] seems to be a recent innovation of California speech and of young Canadians.
2.2. DRESS
Equally generally, the DRESS vowel is a half-open short []. Again, offgliding is
characteristically and exclusively southern, normally centralizing to [] but possi-
bly also raising to []. In InlNE, CanE, AAVE and T&TC the vowel may be backed,
and in California and among young Canadians the vowel may be lowered to [æ].
Synopsis: phonological variation in the Americas and the Caribbean 1077
2.3. TRAP
The TRAP vowel serves to globally distinguish North American dialects, where it
is realized as a slightly raised front [æ], from Caribbean varieties, which have a
low front [a] (except for the Turks and Caicos Islands, apparently). Further rais-
ing to mid-front positions (an element of the “Northern Cities Shift”) may be
observed in some dialects of southern and eastern North America (SAmE, PhilE,
InlNE, New York City [henceforth NYCE], younger speakers of New England
dialect [henceforth NEngE], NfldE, BahE, and ChcE). In contrast, lowering to [a]
and also backing appears in California and also, as the most salient element of a
chain shift labeled “Canadian Shift”, among young Ontario speakers. This vowel
is more prone to diphthongization with a centralizing offglide, normal in SAmE
(though, again, recessive in urban environments) and AAVE and possible in a
wider range of mostly mainland dialects (PhilE, InlNE, NYCE, NEngE, NfldE,
and ChcE, as well as T&TC).
2.4. STRUT
Realizations of the STRUT vowel are highly variable. In North American dialects
(but also Baj), it is typically a relatively back, unrounded and slightly raised [√]
(exclusively in NEngE, CanE and CajE) or a more central [å] or [] (predomi-
nantly in SAmE). A backed realization of this vowel, roughly as [ç], character-
izes the Caribbean (SurC, JamE/C, TobC, BahE, Eastern Caribbean islands, also
T&TC) and Gullah and can also be found in NEngE and, as part of the “Northern
Cities Shift”, InlNE. Except for traces in ChcE and possibly as a recent innova-
tion in PhilE, raising of this vowel to [] (or [u] in PhilE) is not normally heard in
America. A rounded realization, [ç_], is a regional variant within NfldE.
2.5. LOT, CLOTH
AmE LOT is typically a low back unrounded vowel, [A], though rounded [] may
come up in the West and Midwest (henceforth WMwE), in NEngE and CanE, as
well as, in the Caribbean, in JamE, Baj and T&TC. On the other hand, Caribbean
creoles (e.g. JamC, TobC, SurCs) more typically realize this vowel as a front un-
rounded [a], a pronunciation which also characterizes AAVE, ChcE and NfldE and
which can at times also be observed in InlNE and CajE. Offglides with this vowel
are reported as normal in Gullah and possible in NYCE and CanE. The vowel of
CLOTH, on the other hand, is more commonly rounded than unrounded (the latter
variant characterizes NEngE, AAVE, ChcE, parts of the Midwest and TobC). In
this case, [a] is found in CajE and NfldE, with restrictions also in ChcE.
2.6. FOOT
The FOOT vowel shows little variation: the canonical realization as a relatively
high and back [] predominates everywhere. Possible variants are a tensed [u] in
NfldE, ChcE, JamE/C and SurC, or a lowered type, close to [√], in NfldE, ChcE,
and T&TC/TobC. In SAmE, mostly in urban contexts, this vowel may be fronted
(as part of the “Southern Shift”) to [ ].
3. “Long” vowels
3.1. FLEECE
The FLEECE vowel is commonly realized as a relatively high and front, long [i ] ev-
erywhere, but in addition to this there are a number of regional alternatives. These
include the possibility of shortening it (in NfldE, AAVE, ChcE, BahE, T&TC,
TobC and SurC), but more commonly some sort of gliding movement results in
diphthongized types. Ingliding, i.e. [i], occurs in WMwE, NYCE, NfldE, AAVE
and T&TC. Alternatively, upglides can be observed, either with high onsets and
relatively short gliding movements, [i], in CanE and NfldE, or with longer glides
after mid-front or central onsets, i.e. [/ei], in NfldE or TobC.
3.2. BATH
In almost all North American dialects the BATH class is realized as a half-open
front [æ] sound. A low [a] counts as a Boston accent shibboleth and tends to be
associated with NEngE in general, although it is only one of the variants found in
the region and felt to be increasingly conservative; it also predominates in T&TC,
Baj, TobC (together with other realizations), and SurC. CanE and BahE have both
types variably. A low back [A] is possible in T&TC and some regions of New
England. Raising of this vowel, together with TRAP, constitutes an element of the
Northern Cities Shift, supposedly an early stage of this chain shift which may have
spread from northwestern New England to cities of the Inland North. Lengthening
of this vowel is generally found in TobC, JamC/E, Baj, and AAVE, and possible
in PhilE, NYCE, NfldE, and T&TC. Variants with an offglide, e.g. [Q´/QI/E´],
characterize SAmE (less so in younger, urban speech), AAVE, and TobC, and may
be observed in InlNE, PhilE, NYCE, and NEngE.
3.3. PALM, START
The vowel of PALM and START is a low back [A] in practically all North Ameri-
can dialects. A low front [a] in these lexical types is reported as the main vari-
ant in Jam (C and E), T&T (in all lects), Baj, SurC, ChcE and Gullah (primarily
in START), and NEngE in PALM, variably also for NEngE in START, InlNE and
NfldE in both types, CanE in PALM, and CajE in START. An offglide in PALM, e.g.
[A/], is possible in NYCE, CanE and AAVE; in START, this is common in PhilE
and NYCE and possible in the South. Fronting and raising to a realization close to
[æ] may occur in NfldE.
3.4. GOOSE
The main pronunciation of GOOSE, a high, back and long vowel [u ], predominates
in the entire Caribbean (with quantity playing no role in SurCs) and in western and
northern dialects of AmE (including the urban staging cities of NYC and Philadel-
phia) but not in Canada, New England and the South. CanE and SAmE have both
fronted (e.g. [¨(:)]) and diphthongal (e.g. [Uu/Iu/´(:)¨]) variants; in NEngE the
latter predominate. Both types of variants can be found under certain conditions
in PhilE, InlNE, WMwE (with fronting being regularly used there), and NYCE.
NfldE has all three variants. With limitations, fronting can be observed in BahE,
and diphthongization in ChcE. The fronting of this vowel in the South is a crucial
element of the so-called “Southern Shift”.
3.5. THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE
For THOUGHT, the main variant is a back, half-open and rounded vowel, [ç( )], but
there are some varieties in which a low variant [A ] occurs normally (CanE, NfldE,
NEngE, JamC, Baj), with the other one being a possible variant in a number of
instances; the West and Midwest (and also the inland North, where the higher type
is preferred) have both pronunciations. Off-gliding, possibly in combination with
raising of the onset, is also an option with this vowel, resulting in variants such as
[ç´/U´] – regularly in SAmE, conditionally in PhilE, NYCE (where raised monoph-
thongs may also be heard), and AAVE. In many regions of North America, in partic-
ular in the West, this vowel has merged with the LOT class (see below, section 6.).
NORTH is typically realized as a half-open monophthong [ç:] in the Caribbean, in
SAmE, NEngE, NfldE, Gullah and CajE. The South and CanE have a half-closed [o ]
vowel as an equally strong option, a variant which predominates in WMwE, InlNE,
PhilE, NYCE, AAVE, and ChcE. Lowering to [] is a conditional option in WMwE,
NfldE, and T&T (all lects). A diphthongal pronunciation of this vowel, as [Å´/oa], is
characteristic of NYCE and possible in NEngE, SAmE, NfldE, and ChcE.
Realizations of FORCE vary between a half closed [o ], used widely in North
America and the Caribbean, and a more open [ç ], which is strongest in NEngE,
NfldE, CajE, and T&TCs, but also used quite widely. Ingliding diphthongal real-
izations, e.g. [ç´/o´/ao], are given for NYCE, AAVE and JamC, as well as, vari-
ably, for SAmE, NEngE, CanE, CajE, and ChcE. An upglide, e.g. [oU], is typical
of SAmE and possible in AAVE and NEngE.
The SurCs have a low short [a] in these words, homophonous with LOT.
3.6. NURSE
NURSE is a central vowel, [

:/‘], in all North American dialects; CajE has [√]. The
Caribbean displays more variability with this vowel. JamE has mid front [E/e];
JamC, the SurCs (where [a] is also possible) and TobC prefer a backed variant
[o/ç], which is also possible in T&TC, BahE, and NfldE. For Baj, a half-closed
back unrounded vowel [] is cited. The mid-front variant can also be observed in
TobC, BahE, and AAVE, a raised one in InlNE and TobC. Diphthongal realizations
such as [/ç] occur in NYCE (stereotypically associated with the city dialect but
stigmatized nowadays) and SAmE.
4. Diphthongs
4.1. FACE
The FACE vowel serves to set North American pronunciation types off from Ca-
ribbean ones quite clearly. A canonical variant, an upgliding diphthong with a
half-close onset, [e], is the main form of all North American dialects except for
CajE (which has a monophthong) and SAmE, where a diphthong with a front but
lower onset, [/æ], is cited as even more characteristic, as part of the “Southern
Shift” (the low-onset variant may also occur in CanE, AAVE, and ChcE). SAmE
may also have variants with a low-back ([a/√]) or central ([´]) onset. The high-
ly conspicuous main Caribbean variant of this vowel type is a long half-close
monophthong [e ], the characteristic pronunciation of JamE, Baj, the T&TCs, and
also Gullah, found also, as a variant, in AAVE, NfldE, the Upper Midwest, InlNE
and ChcE. The prototypical basilectal pronunciation, however, the main variant of
JamC (and a possibility in Baj, SAmE and NfldE) is an ingliding diphthong, [´]
or []. SurCs have a short vowel, homophonous with DRESS, except in word-final
position, where the diphthong can occur.
4.2. PRICE
For the PRICE vowel, the long upgliding diphthong [a] associated with StE is
found everywhere (with the exception of SurC), and in almost all varieties it is the
main variant. The only dialect in which monophthongization, yielding [a ], pre-
dominates in all phonetic environments is CajE. Elsewhere this is a phonetically
conditioned option: In SAmE, monophthongization is universal before voiced
consonants and possible in other environments; the former, favorable context pro-
motes it also generally in BahE and sometimes in NfldE. Two more variants are
restricted options in some regions: a type with a raised or central onset, [´/
], in
WMwE, InlNE, PhilE, SAmE, NEngE, CanE (before voiceless consonants, a pat-
tern known as “Canadian Raising”), NfldE, AAVE, and T&TCs; and the backed
[ç/] (which work by Wolfram and associates has made widely known as the hoi
toiders’ pronunciation of North Carolina), an option of SAmE, NYCE (spreading)
and NfldE. Baj has a slightly backed and raised [√I] diphthong in these words,
which is distinctive within the Caribbean. SurCs have the short DRESS vowels in
these words, and occasionally, word-finally, the [e] diphthong.
4.3 CHOICE
The pronunciation of the CHOICE vowel is [ç] almost everywhere. JamC prefers
[] with a low onset, and NfldE, BahE and T&TC allow a central onset, i.e. [´/í].
In conservative varieties of SAmE two distinctive variants may occur, namely
triphthongization (resulting in, e.g., [ço]) and glide reduction (to forms like [ç´]
or, especially before /l/, [o]).
4.4. MOUTH
Most North American dialects (though not CanE and AAVE, and not generally
SAmE) have a low to high-back glide [aU/AU] in these words. The T&TCs, Baj,
Gullah and ChcE have a main variant with a raised and backed onset, e.g. [√u/çU],
which is also possible in CanE, NfldE, and JamC/JamE. The process of so-called
“Canadian Raising” (also with PRICE, though perceived more stereotypically in
MOUTH words) implies that the onset is raised to schwa only before voiceless con-
sonants; in addition to CanE and NfldE, this occurs in InlNE and WMwE, SAmE
and BahE dialects. In NEngE, also NfldE, T&TC, and AAVE raising to [Ú] can
be observed without such phonetic conditioning. A pronunciation with a fronted
onset is the main realization of this vowel in rural SAmE (less so, and recessive, in
urban SAmE), AAVE, and BahE, and an alternative possibility in WMwE, PhilE,
NYCE, and NfldE. Older Southerners may have a “drawled” triphthongal realiza-
tion, [æEÅ]. Monophthongizations of this vowel are quite rare, but a low monoph-
thong [a ] uniquely characterizes the speech of Pittsburgh and some of western
Pennsylvania and can also be found in CajE, and a raised back variant, e.g. [o ],
occurs in TobC and, without quantity distinctions, SurC.
4.5. GOAT
It is interesting to see that the FACE and GOAT vowels are not only phonetically
related as something like mirror images of each other in the front and back areas
of the vocalic space, as glides from a mid onset to a high position, front and back
respectively, but they also share a number of regional distribution patterns of their
main, mutually corresponding, phonetic variants. In GOAT, again, the main Carib-
bean realization (of JamE, the T&TCs, SurCs, Baj, and Gullah), shared by CajE
and ChcE, is a half-close (this time back) monophthong, [o ], but JamC prefers an
ingliding type, e.g. [U´], which is also possible in Baj as [o´]. (With restrictions,
the monophthong is also possible in the Upper Midwest, InlNE, NEngE, NfldE
and AAVE, the ingliding version in SAmE and NfldE). AmE and most of its dia-
lectal variants (except for NEngE, and not generally SAmE) are characterized by
a pronunciation with a back and rounded onset, e.g. [oU/ou] (in SurCs this may
occur word-finally only). The pronunciation typically associated with BrE, [Ú]
with a central onset, predominates in varieties where relatively closer cultural and
historical ties with southern British influences are attested, viz. SAmE, NEngE
and BahE, and it may also come up in WMwE, PhilE and NfldE. In the “Southern
Shift” this vowel may be fronted and also lowered to [
] or [æ]. Fronting occurs
in PhilE as well.
4.6. NEAR
In North American dialects of English, the NEAR vowel typically starts at the
high front but non-peripheral position of KIT. In some rhotic dialects this [r] type
may be the only realization before /r/ (predominantly in WMwE and InlNE, also
JamE); in others a diphthongal realization gliding to schwa, [´(r)], is common
(PhilE, NYCE, NfldE, Gullah, ChcE), or the onset of the diphthong may be tensed
to [i] (NEngE, CajE). Some varieties, like SAmE, AAVE, and CanE, have all of
these realizations, with internally differentiating factors, and in most of the oth-
ers the alternative pronunciations are also possible in addition to the main variant.
Conservative American dialects, notably SAmE and NfldE, as well as Caribbean
creoles, have lowered onsets, i.e. realizations with [e] or even [] (before schwa or
/r/ or even as monophthongs), and in “deep” basilects like JamC and the SurCs a
long gliding movement from a high front to a low position, [ia], is found.
4.7. SQUARE
Similarly, the SQUARE vowel is either a half-open, usually lengthened monoph-

thongal [ ] (WMwE, InlNE, SAmE, NEngE, CajE, ChcE, T&TC) or a diphthong
with this onset and a schwa (PhilE, NYCE, CanE, Gullah), or any of these or a
set of less widely used alternative pronunciations, e.g. raised [e´] (NEngE, SAmE,
NfldE) and [´] (NfldE, T&TCs), lowered [æ´] (SAmE, CajE, BahE), or []
(JamC). The monophthongal type may also be realized as a half-close vowel [e ],
mostly in the Caribbean (T&TCs, JamE, Baj, without lengthening also in SurC)
but also in SAmE and, less commonly, NfldE.
4.8. CURE
The CURE vowel, before schwa or /r/, typically is [U] or alternatively, predominat-
ing in SAmE, T&TCs, BahE and AAVE, a raised and tensed [u]. Lowering to [o/ç]
is strong in NfldE, Gullah and Baj and possible in SAmE, TobC, JamE and JamC;
other variants, like [oU] in SAmE or NfldE and [ua/oa] in ChcE, are restricted.
5. Weak vowels
5.1. happY
Both North American and Caribbean varieties realize this unstressed vowel primar-
ily as a relatively high front [i] type; the more central [] is a variant in some places
(SAmE, BahE) and reported to be the primary type only in the T&TCs and CajE.
ChcE may also have a schwa. SurCs have [e] after mid vowels, otherwise [i].
5.2. lettER
A relatively open [a] realization of the word-final unstressed vowel marks JamC,
SurC and TobC, and Eastern Caribbean island varieties, and is possible in NEngE,
NfldE, T&TC, AAVE, and ChcE, but in most cases the expected schwa realization
(with constriction in rhotic dialects) is to be found. For Baj a relatively high and
back [] is reported.
5.3. horsES
Both a central [´] and a high front [] are widely observed as the realizations of the
regular plural suffix. The former is reported to be exclusive to CanE and BahE, the
latter to TobC, Baj and SurC (to the extent that these creoles have traces of this suf-
fix); SAmE, NEngE and NfldE have both variants quite regularly, and in all other
dialects [] is normal but schwa is also possible under specific circumstances.
5.4. commA
JamC, SurC and the T&TCs have a full open vowel, [a], in this lexical set, but
most dialects have a schwa; some (CanE, also AAVE and ChcE) allow both.
6. Vowel distribution
Vocalic mergers affect the set of sounds available in any given dialect, but full pho-
nological analyses of dialects are usually missing, perhaps as a result of the vari-
ability observed and the difficulties involved in any categorization. Thus, pointing
out distributional facts, like the homophonies between certain vowels, will bring
us closer to a systemic perspective.
A number of mergers affect what may be regarded as corresponding pairs of
tense and lax vowels. KIT and FLEECE are mostly kept distinct (except in SurC)
but may collapse in WMwE, CajE, JamE, and the T&TCs, and before laterals
also in innovative urban varieties of SAmE. Similarly, homophony of FOOT and
GOOSE is extremely rare, found occasionally in WMwE and TobC and regularly
in SurC only; before laterals this merger is spreading in urban SAmE, however.
The merger of LOT and THOUGHT, on the other hand, has been widely observed
to be spreading in North American English; it is reported for WMwE, CanE,
NfldE, CajE and ChcE and occurs conditionally also in NEngE, SAmE, AAVE,
and T&TCs. The SurCs also have the merger of these vowels, but their phonetic
realization is quite different, a low front [a]. The speech of St. Louis exhibits a
characteristically local merger, of the NORTH and START vowels.
TRAP and BATH are pronounced identically practically everywhere with the ex-
ception of Jamaica and, with restrictions, T&TCs. TRAP and DRESS may merge
before a lateral consonant in NfldE, BahE, and CajE. The so-called pin/pen-merg-
er, i.e. homophony of KIT and DRESS before nasals, is a hallmark of SAmE, in-
cluding CajE, and a conditioned possibility in WMwE, ChcE, InlNE, NfldE, and
BahE; however, it is said to be recessive in urban centers of SAmE today. DRESS
and FACE are distinct, except possibly for parts of WMwE (and SurC). Mergers of
mid-front vowels before /r/ have been widely observed in North American English
and frequently discussed in the dialectological literature; to some extent they seem
to be lexically conditioned. Mary and merry are homophonous in WMwE, InlNE,
CanE, SAmE (where the two words were kept distinct until late into the nineteenth
century), NfldE, Gullah, AAVE, CajE, and ChcE, possibly so also in NYCE, NE-
ngE, BahE and the T&TCs. The homophony of these vowels also includes marry
in WMwE, InlNE, SAmE (a recent extension of the previous merger, spreading
from urban contexts), AAVE, and ChcE, and potentially a few other dialects as
well.
LOT and STRUT are pronounced identically in JamE and possibly the T&TCs
but not elsewhere. NEAR and SQUARE fall together in much of the Caribbean
(JamE/C, T&TCs), and, with restrictions, SAmE and NfldE.
Vowel nasalization before nasal consonants is the norm almost everywhere. Mu-
tual assimilation phenomena between vowels in the same words occur regularly
in Saramaccan, JamC and ChcE, and are possible in SAmE, NfldE and T&TCs.
Spelling pronunciation of weak vowels is common in JamC and possible in other
Caribbean varieties (T&TCs, BahE) and AAVE.
7. Consonants
7.1. Stops: P/T/K, B/D/G

Word-initial voiceless stops are aspirated in American and Caribbean varieties,
with few exceptions: a lack or weakening of this aspiration is the norm in CajE
and Gullah, and possible in JamE/C. All North American dialects, including BahE
but not the Caribbean varieties, regularly allow the lenisation (flapping, voicing)
of intervocalic /t/ (so that writer sounds like rider); CajE is the only dialect in
which this is found only under specific circumstances. The realization of /t/ as a
glottal stop word-finally or intervocalically is regularly found only in AAVE and,
in the Caribbean, in Baj; in SAmE, NEngE, NfldE and BahE this is a possible
variant. The palatalization of word-initial velar stops (so that can’t and garden
are pronounced with /kj/ and /gj/, respectively) marks Caribbean creoles (JamC,
T&TC, TobC, SurC – where [tj/t /dj/d] are also found in such words). The same
applies to the pronunciation of words with an initial b- with bw- (e.g. bwoy ‘boy’),
documented for the same varieties and, marginally, also for NfldE. Saramaccan is
noteworthy for the existence of implosive voiced stops, /∫, Î/. In Saramaccan and
Ndyuka word-internal /d/ may be replaced by a lateral /l/.
7.2. Fricatives: TH, F/V, S/Z, H/CH, etc.

Voicing of word-initial /s/ and /f/, yielding /z-/ and /v-/, respectively, is rare in
America; it is reported regularly for BahE only and as a highly recessive feature
for NfldE. A stop realization of a word-initial voiced dental fricative, e.g. dis for
‘this’, is normal in Caribbean creoles, BahE, Gullah, AAVE, and CajE, and pos-
sible in all North American dialects except for CanE (it occurs in NfldE, however).
With voiceless dental fricatives (e.g. ting for ‘thing’), the same process occurs in
roughly the same distribution, though not quite as widely: in comparison with the
previous feature, it is reported as conditional rather than universal in BahE and
AAVE, and as not occurring at all in WMwE, InlNE, and SAmE. Realizations of
word-initial dental fricatives as affricates are less common, and also more widely
in use with voiced rather than voiceless variants. In the former case, i.e. [d-] for
[-], we find the feature reported as in regular use for AAVE only, and as used
occasionally in WMwE, InlNE, PhilE, NYCE, SAmE, NfldE, CajE, and T&TCs;
in the latter, i.e. [t-] for [-], in comparison with the previous list the feature is
not mentioned for WMwE, InlNE, SAmE and AAVE. In intervocalic position, the
voiced dental fricative may be labialized (so that, for instance, brother is pro-
nounced with a central [-v-] consonant) in a few dialects, but this is a relatively
exceptional process, reported as a possible variant for CajE, NfldE and BahE only.
Similarly, an intervocalic labial consonant –v– may be rendered as a voiced bi-
labial stop –b– (so that river, never become riba, neba); this occurs regularly in
TobC, SurC and BahE and with restrictions in JamC, T&TC, ChcE, and SAmE.
Word-finally, the devoicing of obstruents (e.g. of a plural –s after a voiced sound)
is a stereotypical feature of Chicago working-class speech.
The only American variety in which a voiceless velar fricative [/x] occurs at
least conditionally is ChcE. Word-initial h-deletion, e.g. ‘eart for ‘heart’, is com-
mon in much of the Caribbean (JamC, TobC, SurC, BahE; but not in the Leeward
Islands) and in CajE, and possible in a few other related dialects (Gullah, AAVE,
T&TC), among Franco-Americans in New England, and in NfldE. The distribu-
tion of the converse feature, word-initial h-insertion, e.g. haxe for ‘axe’, is similar:
regular in JamC, Gullah, and BahE; possible in the T&TCs and NfldE. In word-
initial /hj-/ clusters, i.e. in words like human or huge, the initial h- is omitted regu-
larly in NfldE, among young urban speakers in SAmE, in NYCE, and CajE, and
under specific conditions in PhilE, rural SAmE, ChcE, BahE, and JamC.

In words beginning with wh-, some American dialects have retained a historically
older consonant cluster with an initial velar fricative [x] before the approximant
[w], so that, unlike many mainstream varieties of English, which is not homopho-
nous with witch; this occurs in WMwE, InlNE, CanE, conservative NEngE, SAmE
(though no longer among young urban speakers), ChcE, and JamC. The approxi-
mant [w] itself may be substituted by a labiodental voiced fricative [v] – regularly
in TobC, possibly in T&TC, BahE, NfldE and CajE; both sounds are reported to
have merged in several Eastern Caribbean islands as well.
So-called “jod-dropping”, the omission of /j/ after alveolars and before [u ] in
words such as tune or news, is widely considered a characteristic feature of AmE
as against BrE/RP, although within North America some dialects have retained
the historical pronunciation with /j/. In our data, the feature of “jod-dropping” is
reported as occurring normally in WMwE, InlNE, PhilE, NYCE, NEngE, and
BahE, and as occurring in certain environments in SAmE (notably in new urban
dialects), CanE, NfldE and ChcE.
7.4. Sonorants: N, L, R
Little variation is found concerning nasals in America. The realization of velar
nasals with a velar stop following, i.e. of words spelled with <-ng-> as [], is
reported to occur normally in AAVE and ChcE and sometimes in NYCE (stereo-
typically associated with the city accent) and some Caribbean varieties (T&TCs,
JamC/E). The velarization of word-final alveolar nasals, i.e. the pronunciation
of words like down with a final [-], is characteristic of Caribbean (and related)
creoles , i.e. JamC, T&TC, TobC, Eastern islands, Sranan, Gullah, and possible
also in ChcE.
Post-vocalic /l/ may be vocalized commonly in SAmE (both rural and urban),
NEngE, PhilE and JamC and in some contexts in WMwE, InlNE, NYCE, NfldE,
AAVE, ChcE, BahE, TobC and JamE. A tendency to confuse or neutralize /l/ and
/r/ is documented as occurring regularly in SurC and Gullah and possibly in T&TC
and NfldE, but in general this is not common in AmE.
On the other hand, rhoticity and possible phonetic realizations of /r/ are an
important issue in American and Caribbean types of English. Generally, StAmE
is considered to be fully rhotic; more specifically, this applies to WMwE, InlNE,
PhilE, CanE, most of NfldE and ChcE, and also, as a consequence of recent chang-
es, urban SAmE, whereas NYCE, rural SAmE, NEngE, a small part of NfldE,
AAVE, BahE and JamE/C are variably rhotic. Baj is the only Caribbean variety
which is described as consistently rhotic. This leaves Gullah and CajE in North
America and the Eastern islands dialects as well as T&TCs in the Caribbean as non-
rhotic varieties. Phonetically, postvocalic /r/ tends to be realized as velar retroflex
constriction in AmE, less commonly also as an alveolar flap (in CajE, JamE/C,
and possibly ChcE), not at all as an apical trill and highly exceptionally (possi-
bly in T&TC) as a uvular sound. An intrusive r, e.g. idea-[r]-is, may be heard in
NYCE, NEngE, SAmE, NfldE, JamE/C, and the T&TCs.

The reduction of word-final consonant clusters occurs very widely: regularly and
without functional constraints in Caribbean and creole-related varieties (Eastern
islands, T&TC, TobC, JamC, SurC, BahE, Gullah); generally with monomorphe-
mic clusters (e.g. desk > des’) but variably and less frequently with bimorphe-
mic ones (e.g. helped > help’) in NfldE and AAVE, and variably irrespective of
the functional load of the final sound in WMwE, InlNE, PhilE, NYCE, NEngE,
SAmE, and ChcE. Word-final single consonants (e.g. cut > cu’) are omitted much
less widely: generally in CajE only, variably in NfldE and contact dialects, notably
AAVE, ChcE, BahE, and the T&TCs. Word-final single nasals may be deleted in
JamC, rendering the preceding vowels nasalized. The simplification of word-ini-
tial consonant clusters (in words such as splash or square) is not typical of Ameri-
can varieties; it is attested as occurring variably in SAmE, NfldE, T&TCs, SurCs,
and JamC.
Unstressed word-initial syllables may be omitted, so that about and except result
in ‘bout and ‘cept, respectively. This is common in the T&TCs, Gullah, AAVE,
and NfldE, and occurs variably in JamC, BahE, ChcE, CajE, WMwE, NEngE,
SAmE, and CanE. The shifting of stress from the first to a later syllable, as in
indi»cate or holi»day, is reported as occurring not infrequently in T&TC and TobC

and sometimes in JamE/C, CajE, ChcE, NEngE, and NfldE. In general, a tendency
toward a relatively syllable-timed rather than a stress-timed rhythm is reported for
Caribbean creoles and varieties quite strongly (TobC, T&TC, Baj, JamC, BahE),
and also variably for ChcE, but not at all for all other North American dialects.
In comparison with British-based varieties, AmE is stated to preserve secondary
stress more strongly, a process which tends to result in less vowel reduction and a
characteristically different stress pattern.
Distinctive, perhaps idiosyncratic intonation contours appear to characterize a
number of varieties, although relatively little attention has been paid to such ques-
tions in sociolinguistic research. For some pertinent observations, see the papers
on NfldE, AAVE, ChcE and T&TCs.
High-rising terminal contours, i.e. a rise of intonation at the end of statements,
(sometimes called “HRT” or also “American question intonation”) are said to oc-
cur variably in all American and Caribbean varieties under consideration, with the
sole exceptions of CajE and TobC. Tone distinctions are restricted to creoles; they
are reported as characteristic of TobC and T&TC and possible in JamC. Saramac-
can and Ndyuka are tone languages.
Synopsis: phonetics and phonology of English spoken
in the Pacific and Australasian region
Kate Burridge
1. Introduction
The following discussion describes the most significant phonological features of

the varieties of English spoken in the Pacific and Australasian region. To simplify
the discussion, we have broadly divided the brief descriptions here into those of
native Englishes (Australian and New Zealand English) and of contact Englishes
(Kriol, Cape York Creole, Bislama, Tok Pisin, Solomon Islands Pijin, Hawai‘i
Creole, Fiji English and Norfuk).
The sound system of any language will defy completely uniform and unambigu-
ous description and it is always difficult in a short summary such as this one to do
justice to the rich diversity that inevitably exists. This holds particularly for the
contact languages represented here. These show enormous regional and idiolectal
variation and their phonological inventories differ considerably depending upon
two main factors:
– the influence of local vernacular languages (which may or may not be the first
language of speakers), and
– contact with English – for certain (particularly urban) groups a growing force
of influence.
Typically these languages range from varieties close to standard English in every-
thing but accent (the acrolect) through to so-called heavy creoles that are not mu-
tually intelligible with the standard (the basilect). In between these two extremes
there exists a range of varieties (or mesolects). This kind of variation means that
some phonological aspects of the more extreme varieties of Aboriginal English
will be creole-like. Nonetheless we have decided to consider both Aboriginal Eng-
lish and Maori English under the umbrella of Australian and New Zealand Eng-
lish. For reasons provided in the Introduction, it paints a more accurate picture to
separate these two varieties from the creoles and other contact varieties whose
phonological repertoires pattern more closely the systems of the relevant substrate
languages than that of English.
1090 Kate Burridge
2. Significant features of New Zealand and Australian English – vowels

2.1. Short vowels
Australian and New Zealand varieties of English show an unusual pattern involving
a general raising of short front vowels. Most striking is the raising of the DRESS and
TRAP vowels in NZE. This is less evident in AusE, although it does occur. In some
parts of Australia, particularly on the east coast (for example in Melbourne) the
KIT vowel is also raised. In NZE, however, this vowel is lowered and centralized
(although less centralized in Maori English than in Pakeha English). The pronun-
ciation of the KIT vowel is an outstanding feature of this dialect and has become a
shibboleth for distinguishing New Zealand and Australian speakers. As noted in the
chapters by Bauer and Warren and also Gordon and Maclagan, Australians parody
the New Zealand KIT vowel with their STRUT vowel; in fact, the vowel that most
NZE speakers use here is a central vowel that is slightly more open than schwa.
These two major dialects of Antipodean English have in common a number of
vowel mergers currently underway in prelateral environments. For example, in
both varieties a sociolinguistic variable is the neutralization of DRESS and TRAP
before laterals. For many younger speakers the word shell and shall and Alan
and Ellen are no longer distinguishable. In NZE the neutralized vowel is typically
more open and more retracted than either DRESS or TRAP, although vowels inter-
mediate between DRESS and TRAP are also heard. AusE speakers usually merge
these vowels in favour of [æ]. In Australia this merger is also reported as being
regionally differentiated, occurring in both Melbourne and Brisbane, but generally
absent from the other major cities.
There is a parallel phenomenon occurring with respect to the LOT and GOAT
vowels: for many speakers the words doll and dole are not distinguished. The
GOOSE and FOOT vowels and the FLEECE and KIT vowels are also in the process
of merging in prelateral position, in this case in the direction of the short vowels.
For example, fool is merging on full and feel is merging on fill. Moreover, in NZE
the distinction between the vowels of KIT and FOOT is also frequently lost in this
environment, so that pairs of words like pill and pull become indistinguishable. It
therefore follows from the previous mergers that for some speakers of NZE the KIT
and GOOSE vowels are also indistinguishable (as in fill and fool and pill and pool).
Note that the prelateral lowering of vowels has also been noted as being especially
marked in the Norfolk vernacular, in particular for DRESS. In NZE a merger be-
tween KIT and STRUT is sometimes heard prelaterally (as in kilt and cult).
In both NZE and AusE the FOOT vowel is a typically a mid-high back (slightly
rounded) vowel [U]. However, NZE is showing evidence of a change underway
towards a vowel that is both centralized and unrounded.
The STRUT vowel is a low and central vowel. In both dialects it shares phonetic
qualities with the START vowel. Accordingly, the vowels in pairs of words such as
cut and cart are distinguished largely by length.
Synopsis: phonetics and phonology of English in the Pacific and Australasia 1091
Speakers of Aboriginal English, especially those falling closer to the creole end
of the continuum, may not distinguish between KIT and FLEECE or between DRESS
and TRAP. In this variety the STRUT vowel often alternates with various front or
back vowels from among the following: /√ ~ I ~ Q ~ Å/. Mid back vowels are often
used interchangeably or may, under influence from the creole, alternate with /o/.
2.2. Long vowels

A striking feature of the FLEECE vowel in both AusE and NZE is the evidence of
ongliding; this is most obvious among speakers at the broad end of the spectrum.
In AusE the GOOSE vowel is also diphthongized and in both dialects this vowel is
considerably fronted (markedly so in Maori English). As mentioned earlier, both
the FLEECE and GOOSE vowels are neutralized with other vowels before laterals.
Of particular interest with respect to variation elsewhere in the English-speak-
ing world are the regional differences in the BATH vowel class. In Australia there is
striking social, stylistic and regional variation between the TRAP and PALM vowels.
In NZE the variation is less apparent; most New Zealanders use the PALM vowel
in words such as example and dance (the exceptions are those older South Island
speakers who use the TRAP vowel in the BATH lexical set). Despite the variation
that exists within these two countries, this feature is considered another shibboleth
to distinguish Australian and New Zealand varieties of English.
In both dialects there are diphthong variants with central offglides of the START
and THOUGHT vowels. The NURSE vowel is long mid-high central; it is fairly
stable in both varieties, although fronted for some broad speakers. In Aboriginal
English it is often replaced by a mid front vowel (either /E/ or /e/).
2.3. Diphthongs
The rising diphthongs in AusE and NZE are significantly different from other
dialects of English. They are also important differentiators for the social variants
within these two dialects. This is especially true for the FACE, PRICE and MOUTH
vowels. Compared to their RP equivalents, FACE has a more open starting point;
PRICE a raised and backed first target, especially for broad speakers; the back-ris-
ing diphthong MOUTH has a fronted and first target, again most notably for the
broad end of the spectrum. The other back-rising diphthong GOAT has an open
and central starting position with a closing glide approximating the GOOSE vowel.
CHOICE shows the least variation for these dialects.
One of the most characteristic features of falling diphthongs in Australia and
New Zealand is the monophthongal [ç] pronunciation for the CURE vowel. This is
evident in the pronunciation of lexical items such as poor, moor, sure and tour. If
the CURE vowel occurs it is generally following /j/. In parts of Australia the qual-
ity of the offglide for the NEAR vowel is weak and is often realized as length; in
1092 Kate Burridge
NZE a long monophthongal variant also appears before liquids /l/ and /r/. A more
striking feature of New Zealand is the variable merger that is currently taking place
between the vowels of NEAR and SQUARE. For most young speakers pairs of words
such as rear and rare or cheer and chair are not distinguishable. Although there has
been considerable debate over the years concerning the quality of the neutralized
vowel, most linguists now agree the merger is in favour of a high variant [i´].
2.4. Weak vowels

The unstressed vowels in lettER, horsES and commA are realized with a wide range
of different qualities around the vowel space of [´], depending on the context. The
unstressed vowel in happY is generally realized as [i], although broad variants can
show dipthongization here. In Aboriginal English schwa is typically replaced ei-
ther by the mid central vowel /√/ or by a low central vowel /a/.
Widespread throughout New Zealand and Australia is the pronunciation of the
past participles of the nine verbs – grown, flown, blown, known, mown, sewn, shown,
sown and thrown – as disyllables (hence, for example, [groUń] and [floUń]). In
New Zealand both pronunciations are regarded equally correct; in Australia the
disyllabic variant still attracts widespread condemnation.
3. Significant features of New Zealand and Australian

English – consonants
3.1. Stops
Widely used by Australians and New Zealanders is a flap or tap [R] variant of /t/
in intervocalic final positions (as in get it and sort of ) and medial positions (as in
better and beauty). This variant also occurs commonly preceding syllabic laterals
and nasals (as in bottle and button). There is also a glottalized version of /t/ that
can be heard more usually in medial contexts (such as cutlass) and in end positions
(such as shut), less so intervocalically (as in get out).
These varieties share with many other English dialects the feature of palataliza-
tion of /t, d, s, z/ preceding the GOOSE vowel [u]. There is, however, considerable
variation between the pronunciations with yod and with palatals, as in tune [tjun]
versus [tSun]. The palatalized variants are more likely to occur when the syllable
is unstressed (as in fortune and educate).
A pronunciation of /t/ that has come to be associated with AusE is affrication. It
is most obvious in prepausal positions and has been linked particularly to middle
class and female speech. Both AusE and NZE are also showing evidence of a
complex assimilation taking place in the consonant clusters /tr/ and /str/ – the
affricated realizations [tS®] and [St®] are becoming increasingly frequent in these
varieties. The word tree, for example, is pronounced as [tS®i]. In younger speakers
there are also signs of this affricated pronunciation extending to the /stj/ cluster of
words such as student.
In Aboriginal English the distinction between voiced and voiceless stops is not
strongly maintained. The preference is for voiceless stops, especially in word-final
position. The alveolar stop /t/ is often rhotacized between vowels, as in shut up
[S√R√p]. Maori English shows evidence of a loss of aspiration on voiceless stops.
3.2. Fricatives
Devoicing of voiced fricatives is a general feature of NZE, and is particularly evi-
dent in Maori English. In Aboriginal English there is a preference for stop over
fricative articulation – labio-dental fricatives [f] and [v] are often replaced by stops.
One widespread feature that AusE shares with other English dialects is the sub-
stitution of /f/ and /v/ for dental fricatives /D/ and /T/. This is particularly evident
in frequent words such as with and them. In NZE this is not a major tendency,
although /f/ does occasionally substitute for /T/. This feature is more common in
casual conversation and is still very stigmatised in both dialects. In Aboriginal
English these dental fricatives are often replaced by alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ (oc-
casionally /s/ is substituted for /T/) and in Maori English, surprisingly, by affri-
cates /dD/ and /tT/.
All these varieties share with many others the deletion of [h] in initial position,
especially in unstressed contexts (as in the case of the pronouns him and her).
When deleted in stressed positions it attracts censure. Aboriginal English shows
evidence of hypercorrection; [h] often appears initially in words where it does not
occur in standard English.
In Aboriginal English, sibilants are not always distinguished and affricates are
frequently realized as /S/.
3.3. Glides
As in other parts of the English-speaking world the distinction between /w/ and
/hw/ has virtually disappeared, so that for most speakers pairs of words such as
witch and which are indistinguishable. The /hw/ cluster is preserved only for the
most conservative speakers of these varieties (most notably the older speakers in
the Southland in New Zealand).
Yod-dropping is variable in both New Zealand and Australia. After clusters (as
in blue) and after /r/ (as in rule) /j/ has totally disappeared. It is now also rarely
heard after /l/ (as in lewd), although it is preserved in syllables that do not carry the
primary stress (as in prelude). Following alveolar consonants there is considerable
variation. While yod is usually deleted after [T] in words such as enthusiasm as
well as after /s/ and /z/ (as in assume and presume), speakers vary between pronun-
ciations with yod and those where palatalization has occurred. After /t/ and /d/ the
1094 Kate Burridge
most usual pronunciation is an affricate (cf. discussion above). Following /n/ there
is the sort of lexical variation that is expected of a change in progress; for example,
the yod typically disappears in nude but tends to be retained in news. As is the case
elsewhere in the English-speaking world, yod is best preserved after labials (as in
beauty and fume) and velars (as in cute).
3.4. Sonorants /r/ and /l/

Australian and New Zealand English show the different allophones of /l/ that oc-
cur in RP; namely, a slightly velarized lateral in onset positions and a considerably
darker version in coda position. There is also evidence of increasing vocalization
of /l/ in both dialects (thought not uniformly throughout) – the variant is a back
vowel [u] that may or may not be rounded or labialized. The contexts that promote
vocalized /l/ are: final cluster (as in milk), end position (as in pill) and syllabic
environments (such as buckle).
These varieties are non-rhotic; in other words, /r/ is not pronounced in post-vo-
calic position. Most striking, therefore, is the variable rhoticity found in the South-
ern part of the South Island of New Zealand. In this variety the pronunciation of /r/
is most consistently maintained in the NURSE lexical set, and there is considerable
variation in other contexts.
Australian and New Zealand English have a liaison feature known as linking
R, whereby /r/ is pronounced in final position if there is a following vowel, as in
phrases such as far off. Both varieties also show the so-called intrusive R whereby
/r/ is inserted to link adjacent vowels, as in phrases such as idea(r) of and law(r)
and order. There is also evidence of intrusive R in word-internal environments
such as drawing and however. This liaison rule has also extended to laterals. In
other words, the vocalization of /l/ has triggered a linking L (or, in some cases, a
linking W) where a following word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase feel it.
Throughout NZ and Australia there is evidence of American English influence,
particularly in the realm of vocabulary. Borrowed expressions and catchphrases
are often pronounced with a kind of pseudo-American /r/. Many popular singers
also adopt an American rhotic pronunciation.
The substitution of [n] for [N] in words ending in -ing and [Nk] for final [N] in
the group of indefinite pronouns something, anything and nothing are features
these Antipodean varieties share with many others, most notably those of South
East England. The latter feature, however, is still stigmatized and is typically con-
fined to the broad varieties. It continues to attract fierce criticism.
4. Prosodic features of Australian and New Zealand English
The most striking prosodic feature of these varieties of English is the high rising
contour on declarative clauses. It is especially common in narratives. The feature
goes by various names, but most usually High Rising Tone/Terminal (HRT) or
Australian Questioning Intonation.
Maori English shows a strong tendency to syllable-timing, under the influence
of the mora-based timing of the Maori language. There are also strikingly differ-
ent features within both Maori and Aboriginal English prosody, most notably with
respect to voice quality and rhythm.
5. Significant features of contact languages – vowels
As mentioned above, variation within these speech communities is considerable

and surveying the phonetic and phonological features of these languages is ex-
tremely difficult on account of varying degrees of interference from local vernacu-
lars and from the lexifier language English. These two influences have a signifi-
cant effect on the extent and the nature of the vowel inventories that we find here.
As in the case of pidgins and creoles elsewhere, the contact languages in this
region show vowel systems that are considerably reduced. This means that there
is substantial vowel neutralization and consequently these languages permit much
larger numbers of homophones (words that are pronounced the same) than do other
varieties of English. Bislama, Solomon Islands Pijin, Tok Pisin (with roots in ear-
lier Melanesian Pidgin), Fiji English and the Australian creoles, Cape York Creole
and Kriol, all share a five vowel contrast: /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/, /a/. The phonetic realiza-
tion of these segments is generally close to the cardinal IPA values. Hawai‘i Creole
has a seven vowel inventory, with additional low vowels in front and back position.
With the exception of Kriol, vowel length is not phonemically distinctive.
Where vowel neutralization has occurred, these languages can show a fairly
regular correspondence between the creole words and their corresponding English
etyma. For example, in Bislama the English vowels START, TRAP and STRUT regu-
larly correlate with /a/. However, the correspondences are not always predictable;
the NURSE vowel in Bislama, for example, can correspond to /o/, /a/ and /e/.
Diphthongs are usually monophthongized (FACE is typically realized as [e];
GOAT as [o]). There is, however, considerable variation, especially word-finally.
For example, centering diphthongs with a schwa off-glide (corresponding to post-
vocalic /r/ in rhotic varieties) in words such as more and where vary between
monophthongal variants /o/ and /e/ and vowel sequences of /oa/ and /ea/. Generally
speaking, better-educated speakers are more likely to contrast diphthongized and
monophthongal vowels and have at their disposal a greater range of diphthongs.
1096 Kate Burridge
Some of these varieties have rules of vowel harmony, especially between af-
fixes and stems. For example, the Melanesian Pidgin varieties and the Australian
creoles have in common a transitive verb suffix -Vm where the vowel harmonizes
with the final vowel of the verb root. In Solomon Islands Pijin, vowels that are
inserted within consonant clusters and word finally (see discussion below) also
typically harmonize; for example sukulu ‘school’, tarae ‘try’, bisinisi ‘business’.
6. Significant features of contact languages – consonants
These languages show the basic consonant phonemes of English, but possess a
considerably smaller inventory of sounds. There is also substantial variation re-
lating to the substrate languages. Kriol, for example, has additional lamino-pala-
tal and retroflexed consonants that are not found in standard English. Generally,
phonetic interference from vernaculars is more obvious in the language of older,
especially rural, speakers. The extent of the influence depends on whether or not
these vernaculars are the first language of speakers, as well as on education (which
will inevitably increase contact with English). As in the case of vowels, speakers
with a better command of English usually have expanded consonant inventories.
Consequently, the following are very general tendencies and readers are advised
to revisit the chapters for specific details of each of these languages.
6.1. Stops
The most heavy creole varieties typically do not show contrastive voicing for
stops. They may appear voiced or unvoiced, although there is a general prefer-
ence for voiceless (unaspirated) stops in all environments. Where a contrast is
made between voiced and voiceless stops, the voicing distinction is typically lost
word-finally; hence pairs of words such as dog and dock will be homophonous.
Intervocalic flapping (or tapping) is widespread in these varieties.
Hawai‘i Creole shows both voiced and voiceless stops and there is aspiration
where a force of air follows the release of the voiceless stop. Aspiration is gener-
ally more in evidence than in other varieties of English because of the prevalence
of syllables with secondary stress (for example, it occurs medially in words such
as carton and kitten). Where they occur word-finally, however, voiceless stops are
typically unreleased or glottalized. In addition, Hawai‘i Creole shows affricated
pronunciations of /t/ and /d/ where they occur before /r/.
A particularly striking feature of the varieties of Melanesian Pidgin is the pres-
ence of prenasalized voiced stops; in other words, /b, d, g/ are pronounced as /mb,
m
d and mg/. Fiji English also shows prenasalization, but only of /b/.
6.2. Fricatives
Fricatives are generally absent from the heaviest creole varieties, with the excep-
tion of /s/ – it is usual for stops to substitute for both fricatives and affricates. Sibi-
lant contrasts between /s/, /z/, /S/ and /Z/ are generally merged as /s/.
Where fricatives occur, the voicing contrast is not consistently maintained; de-
voicing is especially common word-finally. The contrast between /f/ and /v/ ap-
pears to be particularly unstable, with /f/ often substituting for /v/. Dental frica-
tives are typically substituted with stops.
Glottal fricative /h/ is variably maintained in these creoles. Examples of hypercor-
rection can also be found; for example Tok Pisin hapinum ~ apinum ‘afternoon’.
6.3. Sonorants
These varieties all show three distinct nasal phonemes. Basilectal Kriol shows an
additional retroflexed and palatalized nasal. Note that Bislama has a palatal nasal
word-finally for words of French origin such as champagne.
The rhotic /r/ is generally realized in these languages as an alveolar flap (or trill).
Post-vocalic /r/ does not occur; however, Hawai‘i Creole shows R-colouring of
the NURSE vowel in stressed syllables.
In Hawai‘i Creole L-vocalization is common in syllable codas and before con-
sonants. In other contact varieties postvocalic /l/ is typically non-velarized.
6.4. Phonotactics
These languages show distinct preference for an open CVCV structure. Consequent-
ly consonants are often dropped from clusters, especially word-finally; e.g. Kriol ek
‘ax’. Speakers will also insert epenthetic vowels to avoid consonant clusters. As de-
scribed earlier, these epenthetic vowels often conform to the rules of vowel harmony.
However, increased contact with English can bring about the loss of these epenthetic
vowels – consonant clusters are therefore more evident in speakers of urban varieties
where English influence is stronger (through schooling, for example).
The open syllable target also means that some speakers will add final vowels.
For example, in the Pijin of older, mostly rural speakers sukul becomes sukulu
‘school’ and bisinis becomes bisinisi ‘business’.
7. Prosodic features of the contact languages
The most distinctive prosodic feature of these languages is their syllabic rhythm;
unlike the stress-timed quality of standard English, in these varieties syllables
show more or less equal force in terms of loudness and of duration.
Synopsis: the phonology of English in Africa and
South and Southeast Asia
Rajend Mesthrie
1. Introduction
This synopsis will provide a very general overview of the phonological character-
istics of varieties of English in Africa and south and Southeast Asia (henceforth
Africa-Asia). The focus will inevitably fall on those characteristics that differ from
varieties that are more or less accepted as a norm in international English: RP and
‘General American’ (however hard the latter may be to define). These two some-
what idealised varieties are chosen as a convenient means of comparison, as well
as for the fact that they do have some prestige in the former colonies, especially
via the media and in newsreading styles (rather than in colloquial speech). RP is
the model promulgated by the British in all territories, but two, covered in this
section of the Handbook. The exception is the Philippines, which, after Spanish
domination, came under the sway of the U.S. and ergo U.S. English. The second is
LibSE, an offshoot of AAVE. As with the synopsis of morphological and syntactic
characteristics, the features identified are unlikely to be used by all L2 speakers in
a given territory at all times. Rather, the principles of variationist sociolinguistics
apply: there is a degree of intra-speaker, inter-speaker and stylistic variation. In
addition the features cited are mainly found in mesolectal and basilectal speech;
acrolectal speakers usually evince accents that are closer to prestige TL norms.
2. Vowels
2.1. The short monophthongs
Varieties in Africa-Asia either retain the 6-vowel system for short monophthongs
or transform it into a 5-vowel system. The latter is exemplified by almost all Afri-
can L2 varieties (except educated varieties of NigE). A 6-vowel system for short
vowels is found among all the L1 varieties (WSAfE, StHE, CFE, InSAfE, LibSE),
the Asian varieties (IndE, PakE, SgE and MalE; PhlE mesolect) and (with several
structural changes) in southern NigE. The 5-vowel short monophthong system is
in fact the core vowel system in its entirety for African varieties (except NigE),
since (a) schwa is marginal in these varieties and (b) length distinction between
vowels is not a general feature. There are two subtypes of the 5-vowel system for
short vowels, depending on particular mergers:
1100 Rajend Mesthrie
KIT FOOT
DRESS LOT
TRAP/STRUT
Figure 1. 5-vowel system – Type 1
KIT FOOT
DRESS LOT/STRUT
TRAP
Figure 2. 5-vowel system – Type 2
Type 1, with merger of TRAP and STRUT is found in BlSAfE, EAfrE, GhE, GhP.
Type 2 with merger of LOT and STRUT is found in CamE, Kamtok and NigP.
In WSAfE and CFE though there is a 6-way distinction amongst the short
monophthongs, there is a chain shift amongst the front vowels, with each vowel
moving one step higher and // becoming centralised (as ]). I now turn to the spe-
cific characteristics of each lexical set in Africa-Asia varieties. In SgE the DRESS
and TRAP classes appear to have merged (to []) (Brown 1988: 134) or in Wee’s
formulation (in this Handbook) there may well be a crossover effect in terms of
vowel height, with [] for TRAP and [æ] for DRESS. Further research is needed
to confirm this crossover of a whole class rather than of individual and isolated
words as sometimes happens in other varieties.
KIT
In several varieties (WSAfE, StHE, CFE, InSAfE) KIT is ‘split’ into a subclass
with [] (in velar and glottal contexts) and a subclass with a centralised vowel []
(in all other contexts). KIT may variably be realised as [i] in StHE, CFE, all L2
African and south-east Asian varieties. In all L2 African and south-east Asian vari-
eties it may also be lengthened in certain contexts (as with all potential long-short
pairs, since length is non-contrastive).
Synopsis: the phonology of English in Africa and South and Southeast Asia 1101
DRESS
[e] is the main variant in WSAfE, StHE, CFE, InSAfE, EAfrE, CamE, Kamtok,
IndE and PakE. [ε] is the main variant in BlSAfE, GhE, LibSE, NigP, GhP and
PhlE. In southern NigE there is free variation between [e] and [ε]. [æ] occurs in
SgE and MalE; [a] is the usual variant in northern NigE.
TRAP
A raised variant [] is usual in WSAfE, CFE, BlSAfE, SgE and to some extent
InSAfE. The usual variant is [æ] in StHE, LibSE, IndE, PakE and MalE. [a] is the
usual realisation in LibSE, NigE, NigP, GhE, GhP, CamE and Kamtok. [] is re-
ported in PhlE. In SgE TRAP and DRESS appear to cross over, as discussed above.
LOT
[] is a major variant in WSAfE, StHE, CFE, InSAfE and southern NigE. [ç] is
found in WSAfE, BlSAfE, GhE, CamE, Kamtok, GhP, NigP, IndE, SgE and MalE.
[ç˘] is reported as a major variant in IndE, PakE and InSAfE. [a] is the usual reali-
sation in northern NigE; [] in LibSE and PhlE.
STRUT
[ç] occurs in CamE, NigP, southern NigE and Kamtok. [] occurs in StHE, In-
SAfE, LibSE, IndE, PakE and PhlE. [a] occurs in CFE, EAfrE, GhE and GhP. []
is the usual variant in northern NigE, SgE and MalE.
FOOT
A weakly rounded [] occurs in WSAfE and StHE. A rounded [] occurs in CFE,
InSAfE, NigE, IndE, PakE, and as a variant in GhE, LibSE and GhP. A short [u] is
the usual realisation in BlSAfE, EAfrE, GhE, CamE, LibSE, Kamtok, GhP, NigP,
SgE, MalE, PhlE, and as a variant in PakE.
2.2 The long monophthongs

In most L2s in Africa and south-east Asia vowel length is not distinctive. In the
sets KIT – FLEECE; FOOT – GOOSE; LOT – THOUGHT the usual realisations are
[i u ç]. There is some variation within these sets (described below), and even more
variation in BATH and NURSE.
FLEECE
[i ] occurs in WSAfE, StHE, CFE, InSAfE, northern NigE, IndE, PakE and occa-
sionally in GhE, GhP and MalE. [i] is reported in BlSAfE, EAfrE, southern NigE,
GhE, CamE, LibSE, NigP, Kamtok, GhP, SgE and MalE. [] is reported as a lesser
variant in IndE. In PhlE there is no distinction between KIT and FLEECE, though
under the influence of Philippine languages there appears to be free variation, with
a tendency towards [i ] rather than [i] or [].
GOOSE
There is symmetry with the FLEECE vowel in all varieties. Thus [u ] occurs in all
the varieties that use [i ]; and [u] in all the varieties that use [i]. In WSAfE a no-
ticeably centralised equivalent [u ] occurs. In PhlE there appears to be free varia-
tion between [u:] and [u] or [], with a tendency towards [u ].
THOUGHT
[ç ] occurs in WSAfE, InSAfE, PakE and as lesser alternatives in GhE, GhP and
IndE. [o ] is used in WSAfE, StHE, CFE and northern NigE. In StHE a diphthongal
variant [ç´] also occurs. Unlengthened [ç] or [o] occurs in BlSAfE, EAfrE, south-
ern NigE, GhE, CamE, LibSE, NigP, GhP, Kamtok, IndE, SgE, MalE and PhlE.
NURSE
There is immense variation in the realisation of the NURSE vowel:
[
] in the non-rhotic varieties, WSAfE, StHE (occasionally), CFE, InSAfE
and in the rhotic IndE, and as an occasional variant in GhE and GhP;
[a ] in northern NigE and StHE and as a lesser alternative in IndE;
[ε] in BlSAfE, southern NigE, GhE, GhP, NigP, in the rhotic PhlE;and as a
lesser alternative in CamE;
[a] in EAfrE and as a lesser alternative in NigE;
[] in LibSE, and PakE (rhotic) and as a lesser alternative in IndE;
[ç] in CamE;
[´] in SgE, MalE and as a lesser alternative in IndE;
[e] in Kamtok;
[ø ] in WSAfE.
BATH
The usual values are as follows:
[ ] in WSAfE, StHE, InSAfE, IndE, PakE, and as an alternative in CFE;
[a] in CFE, EAfrE, southern NigE, GhE, CamE, NigP, Kamtok and GhP;
[] in SgE, MalE, PhlE and as an alternative in CFE;
[ ] in BlSAfE;
[a ] in northern NigE and as a lesser alternative in GhE and GhP;
[æ] in LibSE;
[ç ] or [Å ] in WSAfE and [Å ] in CFE.
2.3. Diphthongs
FACE
[e] occurs in WSAfE, StHE, InSAfE, PakE, and as a lesser alternative in
BlSAfE, GhE, GhP and MalE;
[] or slightly lower or backed equivalents of the nucleus occurs in WSAfE,

CFE and BlSAfE;
[e] occurs in EAfrE, NigE, GhE, CamE, LibSE, NigP, Kamtok, GhP, SgE,
MalE and PhlE;
[e ] occurs as a lesser alternative in PakE and NigP;
[ei] occurs as a lesser variant in GhE and GhP.
PRICE
[a] occurs in WSAfE, StHE (occasionally), InSAfE, NigE, IndE and PakE;
[] occurs in EAfrE and PhlE;
[] occurs in BlSAfE;
[] occurs as an alternative form in WSAfE;
[ai] occurs in GhE, CamE, Kamtok, GhP, SgE, MalE and as an alternative
form in NigE, LibSE and CFE;
[i] occurs in CFE;
[ç] occurs in StHE;
[a ] occurs in LibSE;
[a] occurs as a lesser alternative in Kamtok, GhE and GhP;
[ae] a diphthong, occurs in NigP;
[ ] occurs in WSAfE and StHE.
MOUTH
[a] occurs in CFE (before voiced segments), StHE, EAfrE, NigE, GhE, CamE,
GhP, IndE and PakE. Nuclei with [] or [] are reported in WSAfE, InSAfE and
PhlE. The glide element [u], rather than [], is reported in LibSE (as a lesser alter-
native), Kamtok, SgE and MalE. [æ] is reported in WSAfE; [a] in CFE (before
voiceless segments); [ç] in BlSAfE; [u] in LibSE; and [ao] in NigP.
Monophthongal qualities also occur: [ ] in WSAfE; [o] in BlSAfE; and [a] as
a lesser alternative in GhE and GhP.
CHOICE
[çI] occurs in WSAfE, StHE, CFE, InSAfE, BlSAfE, IndE and PakE, NigE;
[çi] occurs in GhE, CamE, Kamtok, GhP, IndE, SgE and MalE;
[o] occurs in WSAfE, StHE, EAfrE, and PhlE;
[çe] occurs in NigP and as a lesser alternative in IndE;
[], [] or [i] occur in LibSE.
GOAT
[o] occurs in EAfrE, southern NigE, GhE, CamE, LibSE, NigP, Kamtok, GhP,
SgE, MalE and PhlE;
[ç] is reported for BlSAfE;
[o ] occurs in northern NigE, IndE, PakE, and as lesser alternatives in NigP
and MalE;
[o] occurs in StHE, InSAfE and as lesser alternatives in GhE and GhP;
[ç] occurs in BlSAfE;
[] is reported in PakE;
Lowered and fronted nuclei also occur:
[] or [œ] or [] in WSAfE;
[] or [] in CFE.
SQUARE
[e ] occurs in WSAfE, CFE, InSAfE and IndE;
[ ] occurs in WSAfE and IndE;
[] occurs in BlSAfE, GhE, CamE, LibSE, Kamtok, GhP and as a lesser al-
ternative in MalE;
[æ] occurs in SgE, MalE and as a lesser alternative in LibSE;
[e] occurs in Kamtok, PhlE and as a lesser alternative in LibSE;
[ea] or [εa] occur in GhE, NigE, NigP and GhP;
[i] occurs in StHE; [ia] in southern NigE and [e] or [] in PakE.
NEAR
The diphthongal realisations are as follows:
[] in WSAfE, IndE, PakE and (as a lesser alternative) in StHE;
[i] in StHE, LibSE, SgE and MalE;
[iε] in GhE, GhP and CamE, and as [ijε] in InSAfE;
[i] in CFE;
[a] in EAfrE;
[ia] in Kamtok and as a lesser alternative in GhE and GhP, and as [ija] in NigP.
Monophthongal [e] is reported in BlSAfE, and as lesser alternatives, [j ] in WSAfE

and [i ] in MalE.
CURE
There is a great array of variation here. Among the diphthongal realisations are
the following:
[] in WSAfE and PakE;
[] in CFE;
[a] in EAfrE;
[ua] in NigE and Kamtok;
[ua] or [uç] in GhE and GhP;
[uwç] in NigP.
Monophthongal values are reported in the following:
[ç˘] in SAfE;
[o] in BlSAfE and LibSE;
[ç] in CamE, SgE, MalE and as lesser alternatives in GhE, Kamtok and
GhP;
[u] in PhlE (with postvocalic /r/).
2.4. Other vowels

happY
The variants are as follows:
[i ] in InSAfE, and as lesser alternatives in CFE and IndE;
[i>] in WSAfE and CFE;
[i] in GhE, CamE, LibSE, NigP, Kamtok, GhP, SgE and MalE;
[] in BlSAfE, EAfrE, IndE, PakE, PhlE and as lesser alternatives in GhE and
GhP;
[i] in NigE.
lettER
[] in WSAfE, CFE, LibSE, IndE (plus postvocalic /r/), SgE and MalE;
[ε] in PhlE (plus postvocalic /r/) and in InSAfE;
[a] in EAfrE, NigE, GhE, CamE, NigP, Kamtok, GhP;
[] in BlSAfE;
[] in PakE.
commA
[] in WSAfE, CFE, LibSE, SgE and MalE;
[] in WSAfE and CFE;
[a] in NigE, GhE, CamE, NigP, Kamtok, GhP and IndE;
[] in InSAfE and PhlE;
[] in BlSAfE;
[] in PakE and as lesser alternatives in LibSE and MalE.
horsES
[] in InSAfE, LibSE, IndE, SgE, MalE and as lesser alternative in CFE;
[] in CFE;
[i] in BlSAfE;
[] as an alternative in IndE;
[] in PakE;
[ε] in PhlE.
3. Consonants
3.1. Stops
P, T, K may be unaspirated in WSAfE (in some subvarieties), CFE and InSAfE
(variably) and very commonly in IndE, PakE, SgE and PhlE. No such deaspira-
tion is reported in StHE and the African varieties researched. T, D are retroflexed
in IndE and PakE, and occasionally in InSAfE. Glottalising of syllable-final T is
reported for GhE and to a lesser extent GhP. Final stops have glottalised variants
in MalE. P is realised as [p], [f] or [Φ] and B as [b] or [v] in northern NigE. T is
realised as [ts] in some GhE varieties. St Helena B occurs as [ß] occasionally, in
intervocalic position.
3.2. Fricatives
The most striking feature among fricatives is that ALL varieties (except WSAfE)
treat /θ/ and /ð/ as something other than an interdental fricative. /θ ð/ are realised
similarly as a pair as follows:
[t d] in CFE, InSAfE, IndE, PakE;
[t d] in EAfrE, GhE, LibSE (here [t] occurs variably with [θ]), Kamtok, SgE,
MalE, PhlE;
Variably as [t t] for // and [d d] for /ð/ in StHE, BlSAfE, GhE and GhP;
Affricate realisations [t] and [dð] are reported as lesser variants in GhE and
GhP.
/θ/ is realised as [f] word-finally in some words in EAfrE, GhE, LibSE, GhP and
SgE.
In EAfrE /θ/ and /ð/ may be realised as [t s f] and [d z v] respectively.
Other changes to fricatives are less widespread:
Velar fricatives [x] and [] occur in WSAfE and CFE, mainly in borrowings,
place names, proper names etc.
H may be voiced in WSAfE, CFE, BlSAfE, InSAfE, IndE, PakE; it may also be
murmured in the last three varieties. H may also be dropped in InSAfE, IndE and
MalE, especially by Tamil speakers. In IndE it may be dropped in initial position
with tonal adjustments, amongst Panjabi speakers. H may be substituted by [j] in
CFE or by [j] or [w] amongst Tamil speakers of InSAfE, IndE and MalE. It may
be dropped before [j] in CamE (e.g. in human). Hypercorrection may also occur in
those varieties that drop H.
F occurs as an approximant (‘antedental’) in CFE, InSAfE and IndE. In northern
NigE F is realised as [f], [p] or [Φ]; for many speakers of IndE as [ph]; and in
basilectal PhlE as [p].
V has the following realisations:

an approximant [] in InSAfE and IndE;
[v] or [f] in northern NigE;
[b] or [f] in GhP, especially intervocalically;
[bh] amongst Bengali speakers of IndE;
[b] in basilectal PhlE;
[v] or [w] in StHE, IndE and amongst Tamil speakers of MalE.
/ / have the following realisations:
[s z] variably in CFE, BlSAfE, EAfrE and IndE;
[ ] in GhE.
In addition / / may occur as [z] occasionally in CFE, CamE and (in final position)
in MalE. It may occur as [s] occasionally in CFE and GhE.
Z occurs as [d] occasionally in IndE and amongst Malay and Chinese speakers
of MalE.
3.3. Affricates
/t d/ have the following realisations:
[s z] in EAfrE;
[t d] in GhE;
[ts ds] in PhlE;
In addition /t / is realised as [ ] in BlSAfE, EAfrE, occasionally in CamE and
word-finally in LibSE. /d/ is realised as [] in CFE, BlSAfE, EAfrE, among Yo-
ruba speakers of NigE and word-finally in LibSE. It is realised as [z] amongst
Malay speakers of MalE.
3.4. Nasals
N is retroflex before [] and [] in InSAfE, IndE and PakE. Epenthetic [n] occurs
before consonants in EAfrE. Vowels are nasalised before final nasals, with sub-
sequent loss of the nasal consonant in CFE, GhE and LibSE. The suffix –ING is
realised as [n`] in StHE and GhE.
3.5. Liquids
The rhotic varieties are IndE, PakE and PhlE. There is occasional rhoticity in
some varieties of WSAfE, especially with –er suffixes. There is r ~ l alternation
in EAfrE, GhE and GhP, depending on speakers’ home languages. R is regularly
realised as [l] amongst Chinese speakers of MalE. Linking [r] is absent in GhE,
CamE and LibSE, and is rare to non-existent in varieties of South African English.
L-vocalisation is reported in GhE and LibSE. Dark […] is very common in CFE;
whereas light [l] prevails in IndE and amongst older speakers of InSAfE.
3.6. Glides and approximants

[h] occurs in place of [j] or [w] in CFE (and other varieties of Afrikaans-influ-
enced English in South Africa). W is replaced by [hw] in wh- words in GhE. /j/
occurs occasionally as [] in WSAfE. Clusters of /t/ plus /j/ and /d/ plus /j/ occur
as [t d] occasionally in InSAfE and other varieties of South African English.
There is dropping of /j/ (yod-dropping) in NigE, GhE and CamE. W and V occur
interchangeably in StHE (frequently), occasionally in IndE and rarely in InSAfE.
4. Common phonological processes
Two processes are very commonly reported. Final devoicing of obstruents occurs
in StHE, CFE, BlSAfE, NigE, GhE, CamE, Kamtok, SgE and MalE. Consonant-
cluster reduction is reported to varying degrees in CFE, BlSAfE, GhE, LibSE,
NigP, GhP, IndE, PakE, SgE, MalE and PhlE.
5. Stress, tone and intonation
Assuming a continuum between syllable timing and stress timing, the number of
varieties which exhibit tendencies towards syllable timing is impressive: InSAfE,
BlSAfE, EAfrE, NigE, GhE, NigP, GhP, IndE, PakE, SgE, MalE and PhlE. For
these varieties vowel reduction is not as common as in RP and in some of them
[] is rare, or more a feature of fast and connected speech, rather than of citation
forms. On the other hand some of these varieties are reported to avoid syllabic
consonants, in favour of schwa plus consonant: IndE, SgE, MalE and PhlE. All
varieties that were cited in connection with syllable timing also display stress
shifts in individual words or sets of words, in relation to RP norms. These are of-
ten shifts to the right (e.g. realise rather than RP realise); though some words in
some varieties exhibit shifts to the left (e.g. from penultimate to antepenultimate
syllables as in CamE adolescence, rather than RP adolescence). Most of these
varieties do not use stress to differentiate between pairs like absent (adj.) versus
absent (verb).
As far as intonation is concerned most varieties report a smaller range of intona-
tional contours compared to RP. Whilst this area is one that needs closer attention,
statements like the following will illustrate this general claim:
CFE: great use of rising intonation in statements;

BlSAfE: tone and information units are shorter than in RP;
NigE: Sentence stress is rarely used for contrast. Given information is rarely
de-accented;
MalE: less change of intonation (or pitch direction) occurs in sentences com-
pared to RP.
A number of African varieties of English make use of lexical and (sometimes)

grammatical tone, and report an interaction between stress and tone: NigE, GhE,
NigP and Kamtok.
6. Conclusion
It is clear from this synopsis that varieties of English in Africa-Asia, especially the
L2 varieties, share a great deal of phonological similarities. Particularly striking
are the use of a 5-vowel system, plus diphthongs in many varieties; the tendency
towards syllable timing; the non-fricative realisation of // and //. In the interests
of fidelity to the original transcriptions minute differences between vowels were
retained in this summary, rather than attempting to ‘normalise’ some transcriptions
(e.g. [a] versus [] versus []), in the hope of uncovering further broad phonologi-
cal similarities. This synopsis must therefore be taken as a starting rather than
end point of the challenging but stimulating study of the systemic phonological
similarities, as well as of the phonetic differences within those overall similarities
amongst the Englishes of Africa-Asia.
References
Brown, Adam
1988 Vowel differences between Received Pronunciation and the English of
Malaysia and Singapore: which ones really matter? In Joseph Foley (ed.), New
Englishes – the Case of Singapore, 129–147. Singapore: Singapore University
Press.
Global synopsis: phonetic and phonological variation
in English world-wide
Edgar W. Schneider
1. Introduction
Even on the basis of a documentation as rich and extensive as the one in this Hand-
book, cataloguing the pronunciations of English in a global perspective seems
a herculean task, due to several basic problems and pitfalls involved. For one
thing, there is the immense amount of variability that can be observed: While
the range of possible pronunciations is naturally constrained by the conditions
and limitations imposed by articulatory space and organs, the amount of detail of
sound realizations – idiosyncratic, phonologically conditioned or not, socially or
regionally motivated – is extremely difficult to grasp and categorize. Essentially, a
resultant problem of this is the difference in levels of details of phonetic descrip-
tions from one study or description to another, also in this Handbook: it ranges
from minute phonetic analyses with lots of diacritics to essentially broad phone-
mic categorizations. Secondarily, conventional descriptive models, most notably
the structuralist idea of a phoneme system selected by any individual language
(or variety?) from an infinite set of articulatory possibilities, fail in the absence
of phonological analyses of practically all nonstandard varieties of English (the
only attempt at a systematic analysis of the phonological system of a local dialect
that I know of is McDavid 1985; Wells 1982 contains a few sections on regionally
varying phonemic part-systems and many remarks on facets of the phonologies
of many varieties). Essentially, this is the framework in which most descriptions
operate; feature-based theories or other advances of phonological theory are there-
fore largely ignored here. It is clear that the phonemic load of individual phonemes
(as determined by their frequency overall, or the number of minimal pairs that
they enter) varies greatly, even in “Standard” varieties (for instance, in RP, // is
known to be relatively rare), and whether two phonetically observed sounds are to
be credited the status of phonemes or not is a matter of more detailed analysis and
argumentation in many instances (cf. Gleason 1970): take the fact that argumenta-
tion is required to underline the status of affricates as single phonemes in English,
or the observation that /h/ and /ŋ/ always occur in complementary distribution.
Similarly, certain sounds are assumed to have merged in certain varieties, but then
some mergers have turned out to be near-mergers only (a concept which oscillates
fuzzily between a phonological and a phonetic perspective). Some sounds are as-
sumed to have “changed” in certain ways in certain varieties – but then some of
these changes have been found to be a matter of lexical incidence, i.e. to affect
some words in which the sound (i.e. “phoneme”) occurs but not others; so has the
phonetic realization of the phoneme in question been changed, or has a phonemic
split occurred? (Essentially, this relates to the fundamental distinction between
phonetically gradual “neogrammarian change” and abrupt “lexical diffusion”, as
discussed, for instance, by Labov 1981.) Thirdly, it seems equally difficult to tack-
le the most interesting question involved, that for the motivation behind accent
differences. Do natural principles play a role, could it be the case that chain shifts
or other phonemic rotations diffuse globally? Possibly so – but then, the distribu-
tion of vocalic space in many varieties, including RP, is anything but symmetric
(or to be accounted for by a principle of an optimal distribution of the available
vocalic space). Are sociopsychological motivations decisive, like a group’s desire
to express their identity by some phonetic means loaded with symbolic meaning?
Possibly so, but then, which variants are likely to be chosen for such functions,
and why – or does such a selection simply occur haphazardly? Is all variability
barely local? The set of possibly pertinent parameters seems endless.
What the above considerations are meant to imply is that any attempt at a bird’s
eye view, as in this paper, unavoidably is bound to leak: Rich as the documentation
of the accent variability of English in a global perspective is, it seems impossible
to do more than touch upon a few generalizing tendencies and observations. For
more details, and generalizations at different levels, the reader is referred back
to the individual papers and the regional synopses. By necessity, the coverage of
the material in what follows is selective, and abstracting from many other facts
and observations which might be equally interesting but cannot be addressed here.
What follows is a synopsis – it is neither a thorough documentation nor a system-
atic analysis.
2. Methodological background
To provide a uniform basis for the cataloguing of the global pronunciation vari-
ability, I devised a checklist of phonetic features that was to be specified for each
of the varieties under investigation. Essentially, the checklist was meant to an-
ticipate and provide a categorial framework for the major variants that I expected
to come up, based upon my familiarity with the variation of English and a pe-
rusal of some pertinent publications. It is divided into four sections. The first one,
with 121 items by far the most voluminous one, covers the phonetic realization of
vowels, based upon Wells’ (1982) lexical sets. For each of the key words, both one
or two “canonical” realizations (as usually found in the major reference accents
of BrE and AmE) and a few possible types of articulatory modifications (back-
ing / fronting, raising / lowering, monophthongization / diphthongization with
offglides, rounding / unrounding), with sample phonetic symbols, were speci-
Global synopsis: phonetic and phonological variation in English world-wide 1113
fied. The second section, with items numbered 122 through 136, probed into vo-
calic distributions, i.e. asked whether specific mergers or similar phenomena oc-
curred in the respective regions. The third section, consisting of items number 137
through 174, checked the phonetic realization and distributional facts concerning
consonants, and the fourth section, with five items numbered 175–179, asked for
prosodic features and intonation contours. In each case, the informants (i.e. the
authors of the respective articles) were asked to indicate whether the respective
feature occurs normally and is widespread (to be symbolized by an “A”), occurs
with restrictions (“B”), or does not normally occur (“C”). Admittedly, this is a
fairly crude categorization. In particular, category “B” covers a variety of fairly
distinct constellations, namely, as spelled out in the instructions, that the feature
“occurs sometimes / occasionally”, that it is found “with some speakers / groups”,
or that it is restricted “to some environments” – in other words, it encompasses
restricted frequency but also the cases of external, social and internal, linguistic
conditioning. Category C is of course also possibly open to interpretation, given
that it is practically not possible to positively document that a certain phenomenon
does not occur at all in a given region; but the possibility of idiosyncratic occur-
rences should be provided for by the description of the category as “not normally”
occurring. A number of contributors left many cells blank, indicating that these
are cases of non-occurrence, i.e. “C”. Occasionally, some authors felt a need to be
more specific, and they suggested or generated intermediate categories like “BC”.
In such cases, specific details or added comments (which also were provided in
individual cases) were put aside and collected in a separate file; for the table and
mapping procedure itself, the articles themselves were checked for more acccu-
rate information (so that a clear categorization could be achieved), but usually “B”
tended to be the catch-all category for such intermediate instances.
In general, however, the feature listing worked well, and some contributors
stated that they found this preconceived categorization an interesting and useful
tool for comparative analyses. Very rarely did a variant come up which could not
be grasped by the suggested categories. Of course, the variants suggested are not
mutually exclusive: several alternative pronunciations of a given key word may
co-occur in a given region – typically one as the major one (“A”) and others as
group-specific or environment-specific (“B”) variants. In that sense, the various
groups of phenomena suggested for the same key word, especially in the first sec-
tion on vowels, belong together as possible variants of a variable.
The list of features itself, which encompasses a total of 179 items and is thus
fairly long, is made fully accessible, as distributed to all article authors, in the
Appendix to this paper. Regrettably, not all contributors responded, however. I
would like to thank those who did, and also Raj Mesthrie and Kate Burridge, who
practically produced almost all of the feature lists for Africa and Asia and the
Pacific region themselves, based upon the articles. Similarly, a few of the lists for
the Americas and the Caribbean (notably, the ones for the Urban South, Barbados,
and Suriname) were compiled by me.
In the following discussion, vowels are classified into “short” and “long” ones.
The quotation marks are meant to indicate that the labels are conventional cat-
egorizing devices rather than phonetically descriptive statements, given that the
relationship between the phonological “length” and the physical duration of a
sound is a highly complex and problematic one, and that lengthening and short-
ening processes are common in many varieties. Hence, “short” is meant to imply
“classed as short in RP (as a primary reference accent) and short in the majority of
(but not necessarily all) accents”, and vice versa for “long”.
3. Vowels
3.1. “Short” vowels
3.1.1. KIT
Canonical [] occurs throughout the British Isles, North America and the Carib-
bean, in Australia and the Pacific varieties, as well as, occasionally, in Africa and
Asia (IndE, PakE). Tensed [i] is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa and common
in South-East Asia, and a possible variant in some BrE (mostly West Midlands),
AmE and (eastern) AusE dialects, in parts of the Caribbean, South Africa, South
Asia, and occasionally elsewhere. The so-called KIT-Split, with some words of this
class being raised and others centralized, characterizes SAfE but ties in generally
with centralization tendencies of this vowel found mostly in southern hemisphere
Englishes. Centralization to schwa (or a position close to it) counts as a shibboleth
of NZE, and it can also be heard in the very north of the British Isles (e.g. Shetland
and Orkney, Scotland), in some forms of SAfE and StHE, and occasionally in
BrE, AmE (notably urban, northern types) and CarE varieties, but not normally in
WAfE and Asia. Lowering to [e/ε] is found in some urban varieties in Northern Ire-
land and Scotland, and comes up incipiently in California and Canada. Off-gliding,
with this vowel, as a regular characteristic is exclusive to the Southern AmE ac-
cent, and a possibility in a few other dialects of AmE but not found elsewhere.
3.1.2. DRESS
The main variant of this vowel around the globe is a front half-open [ε], to be
heard in the British Isles, America and the Caribbean, most of West Africa, South-
East Asia, and the Pacific region. Raising to [e] is restricted to a small number of
regional dialects in L1 varieties and occurs with some currency in AusE and NZE,
and a few African and Asian countries (EAfE, CamP, some SAfE accents, PakE
and, less commonly, elsewhere in Asia). Other variants are quite restricted, includ-
ing lowering (in South-East Asia), backing (e.g. in northern AmE dialects), and
offgliding (SAmE, again).
3.1.3. TRAP
For the TRAP vowel, two major realizations seem to be competing globally. The
half-open front [Q] is the traditional variant of conservative RP and many L1
dialects, predominant throughout North America, in many BrE accents (mostly
throughout the South), and in the southern hemisphere (SAfE, AusE). However,
even in southern types of BrE and modern RP this seems currently to be giving
way to a lowered [a], the type which has traditionally characterized northern as
against southern BrE dialects and is characteristic of the Caribbean and L2-vari-
eties in West and East Africa (in Asia it is restricted to PhlE). Other variants are
considerably less widespread; they include raising (characteristic of NZE; a pos-
sibility in some BrE and AmE dialects, and fairly common in South African and
South-East Asian accents, AbE, and on Fiji and Hawai’i) and offgliding (regular in
SAmE and AAVE, and possible in some other dialects of AmE as well as BrE).
3.1.4. STRUT
Realizations of the STRUT vowel display a wide range of phonetic variability. In-
terestingly enough, the high back [U] variant which in Britain is perhaps the most
salient one, being a shibboleth of northern as against southern English accents,
seems effectively restricted to the north of the British Isles and not to have been
selected as a major type in any of the colonial varieties. The RP variant [√] is ap-
plied widely and all around the globe, but there are a fairly large number of vari-
ants, occurring also practically everywhere. These include centralization to [´/å]
(especially in NZE and Pacific varieties) or, mostly in BrE, a “compromise” [F]
between central and the high-back northern types, backing and lowering, e.g. to
[ç], in some northern US, Caribbean, and African accents, and also, though less
commonly, fairly front realizations.
3.1.5. LOT, CLOTH

Modern dictionaries tend to present the pronunciation of this sound as distinguish-
ing BrE (with a rounded low back [] realization) from AmE (unrounded [A]), but
in reality this applies only with severe limitations, with the respective lead vari-
ant being broadly predominant but by far not the only one: [A] occurs regionally
in Britain (e.g. in the southwest and in East Anglia) just like [] can be heard in
parts of North America (in the Midwest and West, New England, and Canada) and
of the Caribbean. The “American”, unrounded, variant predominates in varieties
that have historically descended from AmE, in Liberia and in the Philippines, the
“British” one in the antipodean and Pacific region. A back and slightly raised [ç]
can be heard in northern British, Welsh, and Irish varieties as well as, quite widely,
in Africa (West and South) and Asia. A low front [a] in these words is character-
istic of much of the Caribbean and Pacific P&Cs and can also be found in a few
dialects of AmE, in southern Ireland, British Creole, and northern NigE. South
Asian Englishes, and their descendant InSAfE, are marked by the length of their
half-open back vowel realization.
3.1.7. FOOT
A high and back (but not fully peripheral) [U] realization of this vowel is the de-
fault variant in most varieties all around the globe. The tensed and fully high and
back [u] is a regional variant in some dialects of northern Britain, America, the
Caribbean, the Pacific contact varieties, and in all parts of Africa and Asia. Some
dialects of British, American and Caribbean Englishes may also have more cen-
tralized variants. Fronting of the FOOT vowel primarily characterizes southwest-
ern EngE, SAmE, and NZE.
3.2. “Long” vowels

3.2.1. FLEECE
In these words, a long high front [i:] realization is the main variant practically ev-
erywhere. Regional L1-dialects, in many parts of Britain, in AusE (most strongly
in the socially marked Broad type), and also in Canada, in New Zealand and in
TobC, tend to show upgliding, with movements ranging from fairly short [Ii] to
(much less commonly) fairly wide [í/ei] glides. Centralizing offglides ([i´], etc.)
are possible but relatively rare, largely restricted to IrE, WelE and SAmE. Short-
ening of this vowel occurs rarely in L1 contexts (e.g. in Shetland and Orkney, IrE,
and a few American and Caribbean accents) but is common in Africa, South-East
Asia, and the Pacific.
3.2.2. BATH, PALM, START

Simplifying matters a bit, the three main variants of the BATH vowel can be re-
garded as shibboleths of major L1 accents: a low back and long [A˘] of southern
EngE and RP, a low front [a] of northern EngE, and a front and slightly raised [Q]
of AmE. In Britain, transition areas and the south-west show mixed types, in par-
ticular with respect to length. In America, low variants are associated with Boston
and New England, and are common in many parts of the Caribbean; other types
found include raised (mainly in the North) and offgliding (mainly in the South)
pronunciations, as well as forms with varying length. Australia and New Zealand
tend to side with southern England here, although lower-class and eastern accents
of AusE have a widely-noted [Q] in such words, and NZE has a central and slight-
ly raised [å] variant. Most South African and South Asian accents also prefer the
RP variant, as do the South-East Asian varieties with respect to quality but with a
shorter realization. On the other hand, most parts of West and East Africa and the
Pacific varieties prefer the [a] variant, while LibSE follows AmE.
For PALM and START, there is variability between back (predominant in North
America, South Africa and Asia) and front (strong in parts of Britain and dominant
in West and East Africa) realizations; the Caribbean has both, and in Australia and
New Zealand the quality tends to be rather central. The vowels are usually long,
though shortening is possible in some dialects; off-gliding occurs relatively rarely
(in some dialects of AmE and, socially conditioned, AusE).
3.2.3. GOOSE
The main pronunciation of words with the GOOSE vowel is practically the same all
around the globe, a high back, rounded [u]. In addition, there are two interesting
variants with some currency. It seems that the pronunciation of GOOSE is being
fronted, moving to the center of the vocalic space or even beyond, in some social-
ly conditioned varieties in many countries (notably of the southern hemisphere:
WhSAfE, AusE and NZE) and regions (notably SAmE), a regional pattern which
gives the label “Southern Shift” a truly global outreach (Labov 1994: 202) and es-
tablishes interesting sound change parallels between varieties which are geograph-
ically fairly widely apart. While the fronting of [u] seems to have received most
attention in these broadly “southern” accents, it occurs also in some British (from
urban Scots to southwestern English) and American (including CanE, WhMwE,
NEngE) dialects. The second major variant is a gliding movement, with the glide
being usually a fairly short [Uu] movement but the onset occasionally also varying
between [I], [] and even [ç]. This is fairly common in the North of England, in
some varieties of AmE, and also in AusE and NZE, though it does not occur at all
in the Caribbean and in the African and Asian varieties.
3.2.4. THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE

The most widely audible realization of the vowel in these words world-wide is a
low back, rounded [ç˘]. Subject to lexical, regional, social, and stylistic condition-
ing a more closed [o ] is also widely used in most regions; no overall distributional
patterning seems discernible. Other types, including [A˘], [ç˘], [a˘], and various
diphthongal, mostly ingliding, realizations occur as well, usually in more tightly
circumscribed regions. Short forms of one of the two main qualities characterize
African and Asian varieties.
3.2.5. NURSE
In practically all regions the main pronunciation of this vowel is a long and cen-
tral vowel, [Œ:/‘], yet in addition to this there is a great deal of variability, little
of which can be systematized. This includes backing, e.g. to [ç] or [o], e.g. in
northern England, Tobago or Cameroon; [√] in Scotland, CajE, LibSE, or PakE;
fronting to [E] (widespread in West Africa and the Pacific and common also in the
Philippines, in AbE in Australia, in Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, as well
as in Scotland and some urban British accents); fronting and rounding to [ø], e.g.
in Wales or NZE; lowering to [a:] or a short [a] (e.g. in SurCs, EAfrE, or forms of
WAfE); and diphthongization (in some dialects of AmE).
3.3. Diphthongs
3.3.1. FACE
In a global perspective, the pronunciations of FACE words can be categorized into
two distinct types, a diphthongal one (which in turn can be sub-divided according
to the height of the onset) and a monophthongal one, and these serve as fairly good
diagnostics for some main regional accents. The RP variant, [eI], is also the pre-
dominant one throughout North America, in WhSAfE, and in South Asia and the
Cultivated accent of Australia. Interestingly enough, in England itself it tends to
be socially marked, given that practically all regional dialects have alternative or
at least additional pronunciations, usually with lower (e.g. [EI] in the South-west
or [QI] in the West Midlands or East Anglia) or backer (e.g. [√I] in the South-east
or the West Midlands) onsets. Except for Cultivated speakers, a low and usually
also back onset of FACE words constitutes a distinguishing feature of AusE, shared
to some extent with NZE. In North America, slightly lowered (e.g. [EI/QI]) or
also backed ([√I]) onset realizations can also be heard, predominantly in dialects
of SAmE. Conversely, the second major type, a half-close monophthongal [e˘],
characterizes Scotland, Ireland, Wales, northern England, most of the Caribbean,
some North American dialects, and, with a short vowel (which may also come up
in the British Isles), the accents of East and West Africa, South-East Asia, and the
Pacific.
3.3.2. PRICE
The main variant of this vowel, [aI/ai], can be heard almost everywhere in the
English-speaking world, though in addition to it there is a very large number of re-
gional and social variants. The onset may be backed and either round or unround-
ed, yielding [ç], [Å], [A] or [√]; it may be central and raised, to [√], [
] or [´], or
also fronted and raised, i.e. [Q] or even [E]. The offglide may move to [I], [i] or [e].
Conspicuous and widely known forms include pronunciations with fronted and
raised onsets in Ireland or the “Broad” accent of AusE, those with backed onsets
in London (Cockney), south-western England, and the south-eastern United States,
and a central schwa onset in some dialects of BrE and, in prevoiceless contexts, in
Canada. Monophthongization is also possible, e.g. to [a˘] as a stereotypical feature
of SAmE (general in pre-voiced environments), in some English dialects, and, in-
terestingly enough, given the potential American connection, also in LibSE.
3.3.3. CHOICE
In contrast, CHOICE shows relatively little variation, being predominantly [çI] al-
most everywhere. Some regional British dialects in particular (less so American
and Caribbean varieties) exhibit variability of the onset element, which may range
from fully open back realizations (e.g. in parts of Ireland) to centralized ones, rare-
ly also raised ones.
3.3.4. MOUTH
Although the lead variant of MOUTH, [aU], can be found practically all around the
globe and predominates in the vast majority of countries and regions, a wide range
of alternative realizations are also possible. Raised and back onsets, e.g. [√u/çU],
are characteristic of a few varieties in fairly diverse parts of the world (e.g. Scot-
land, BrC, ChcE, T&TC, Liberia, and BlSAfE) and occur in others as well. Central
schwa onsets characterize the North of England, Scotland and Wales, and can
be found under specific conditions (e.g. only before voiceless consonants, as in
“Canadian Raising”) in some North American varieties as well, but not elsewhere.
Fronting is also scattered fairly widely (regular in East Anglia, BrC, AusE and
NZE, SAmE, BahE, CamE, and CFE, and possible also in a few more British and
American varieties). Monophthongization to [a˘] is a possibility in northern Eng-
land, a relatively small region in the eastern US, and CajE, as well as some forms
of West and East African English and Australian contact varieties. A high back [o˘]
monophthong is reported as the main variant of the dialect of the Shetlands and
Orkneys and the SurCs, very rarely from elsewhere.
3.3.5. GOAT
Interesting parallels can be observed between the phonetic and regional distri-
butions of the main variants of GOAT and FACE: both tend to have conspicuous
monophthongal and ingliding pronunciations in roughly the same regions. Among
diphthongal realizations, two main types and a few minor ones can be discerned.
A pronunciation with a central schwa onset, [Ú] or close to it, is characteristic of
RP, AusE/NZE, and a few conservative dialects of North America (NEngE, SAmE,
BahE) and comes up in a few more types of BrE and AmE, very rarely in Africa
and Asia (e.g. PakE). In contrast, [oU], with a back onset, counts as typical of
“General American” and seems generally more widespread, being documented not
only throughout North America but also in Ireland, Wales, Ghana, South Africa,
and in all Pacific P/Cs. A variety of dialectal pronunciations with first elements
from the low, mid and high-back regions of the vocalic space occur in vernacular
English and South African dialects; in America, fronting of the onset as part of the
“Southern shift” seems the most noteworthy dialectal realization. In contrast with
all these diphthongs, and as in the case of FACE, a mid-high monophthong realiza-
tion, [o˘], is remarkably widespread: northern England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
most of the Caribbean, ethnic dialects of AmE, South Asia, all of the Pacific con-
tact varieties including AbE, and, in some cases without quantity conditions, West
and East Africa and South-East Asia have it. The ingliding variant, [U´], character-
izes north-eastern EngE and JamC, as well as its descendant, BrC.
3.3.6. NEAR
This vowel varies primarily by two parameters: rhotic dialects typically (though
not invariably) have monophthongal realizations (and, conversely, non-rhotic vari-
eties tend to have inglides to schwa), and the position of the vowel (or glide onset)
may vary between a tense [i] and a lower and less fronted [I]. The tense monoph-
thong characterizes Scotland, Ireland, south-western England, and NEngE; tense
onsets occur in some African and Asian varieties. Lowered onsets in the [e] or, less
commonly, even [E] regions come up in some British, American and Caribbean
dialects. EAfE, many West and some South African varieties, dialects of northern
England and IrE, and relatively “deep” Caribbean creoles (JamC, SurC) as well
as most Pacific P&Cs have fairly long gliding movements from high and tense to
fully open positions, e.g. [ia].
3.3.7. SQUARE
Monophthongal realizations of SQUARE, predominantly in rhotic dialects, vary be-
tween a half open [E˘], relatively widespread in North America, Africa and Asia (in
South-East Asia even more open qualities can be heard), and a half close [e˘] type,
to be found in some dialects of BrE (notably ScE and IrE), AmE, CarE and also
in Africa, Asia, and Fiji. Diphthongal realizations, typically in non-rhotic dialects
and gliding to schwa, mostly start from one of these two positions, but one can
also hear variants with even higher (e.g. [iE] in JamC and BrC, and also NZE) or
lower (e.g. [Q´] in SAmE of BahE) onsets or more central realizations (e.g. [Œ˘] in
central-western areas of England). In NZE, the vowels of NEAR and SQUARE are
merging among younger speakers, in a position which is essentially intermediate,
possibly a little closer to NEAR.
3.3.8. CURE
Words with CURE have either relatively fronted and lower, [U]-like, realizations
or onsets (preferably, it seems, in North American dialects and IrE, also in PakE
and StHE) or high and back [u] types (strongly in ScE, some American dialects,
T&TCs, SurCs, Ghana, and PhlE); in general, however, there is “a great array of
variation here”, in particular throughout Africa and Asia, as Mesthrie observes in
his regional synopsis in this volume. A low back [ç] is considered a characteristic
realization of AusE and NZE, and also, with distinctive length, a recent innovation
of RP. Monophthongal mid-back realizations are also quite common in Africa and
South-East Asia; on the other hand, some African regions also have long gliding
movements, e.g. [ua] in Nigeria.
3.4. Weak vowels

3.4.1 happY
Throughout the English-speaking world the realization of a word-final high front
vowel tends to be the tense, peripheral [i] type. The more centralized [I] realiza-
tion occurs in some British and, less commonly, American dialects, and rarely in
Africa; as the main variant, it is reported only for the T&TCs, IndE, CajE, and
BrC. Mid-front realizations, like [e], occur in British dialects only, notably in ScE,
also in IrE and northern England. The same applies to a central [´], found in East
Anglia.
3.4.2. lettER
This vowel is usually a central schwa. Relatively open realizations in the range
between [a] and [√] can be found in Scotland (and, less commonly, Wales), in
basilectal CarCs (JamC, TobC, SurCs), and, most consistently, in West and East
Africa and all Pacific contact varieties.
3.4.3. horsES
The vowel of the regular plural suffix is usually a relatively front and raised [I]. A
central schwa occurs as a variant in some British (notably IrE and East Anglia),
American (e.g. CanE, NfldE, NEngE, SAmE) and South African dialects, as well
as in South-East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawai’i.
3.4.4. commA
In addition to the canonical and most widespread realization of this vowel, a schwa,
some dialects have a more open quality. ScE, WelE, and PakE have [√]; a fully
open [a] (sometimes also a central [å]) predominates in some basilectal Caribbean
varieties (JamC, T&TCs, SurCs), in most of West Africa, and in IndE, and occurs
as a dialectal variant in some regions of Britain and America.
3.5. Vowel distribution

Vocalic mergers tend to be regionally restricted. Among a number of ongoing or
recent processes, the following seem noteworthy and have been discussed in the
literature:
– the “Northern Cities Shift”, a chain shift of vowels in urban centers of the
northern US (see Gordon, this volume);
– the “Southern Shift”, a pattern of interrelated vocalic changes that has been
observed in the Southern US and in a few southern hemisphere countries;
– the merger of TRAP and BATH, merging to the low vowel in Scotland and north-
ern England, in parts of the Caribbean, in West African, and in the Pacific, and
to the raised one throughout North America and in the Philippines;
– homophony between FOOT and GOOSE, to be found in Scotland (and, with
restrictions, in other British dialects), in West Africa, South-East Asia, and the
Pacific region:
– the merger of LOT and THOUGHT, spreading in much of inland-northern and
western North America, and also occurring in ScE, some British dialects, West
and East Africa, Asia, and the Pacific;
– STRUT merging with LOT, predominantly in Jamaica, Nigeria, and Cameroon;
– mergers between Mary, merry, and marry in specific regions of the US (fre-
quently discussed in traditional American dialect geography)
– homophony between KIT and FLEECE, to be found in South-East Asia, in all
Pacific contact varieties, and in much of West Africa;
– the merger of NEAR and SQUARE (typically exemplified by ear/air) in New
Zealand, shared with part of East Anglia and restricted occurrences elsewhere.
Pre-nasal and pre-lateral environments tend to strongly promote vocalic mergers
(e.g. pin – pen in SAmE and, less regularly, elsewhere; TRAP – DRESS before /l/ in
South Africa, Australia and New Zealand). The same applies to positions before
/r/, though in this case the issue of rhoticity plays an even more prominent role.
Nasalization of vowels before nasals is reported mainly from North America and
some countries in West Africa. Vowel harmony phenomena are uncommon but
documented for some Caribbean and West African contact varieties, notably in
Jamaica and Cameroon. The “Scottish Vowel Length Rule”, specifying the length-
ening of certain vowels in some environments, can also be found in Orkney and
Shetland as well as in Newfoundland. The effect of spelling pronunciation in the
phonetic realization of unstressed vowels shows in some African and Asian, Ca-
ribbean, and even British varieties.
4. Consonants
4.1. Stops: P/T/K, B/D/G
A weakened aspiration in word-initial voiceless stops is most characteristic of the
South Asian varieties of English (IndE and PakE; also SgE and PhlE), and also re-
ported for CajE and, in weaker form, some dialects in Britain, America, and South
Africa; conversely, aspiration is said to be particularly strong in Wales (but largely
missing from Maori English and FijE as well as the Pacific contact varieties ex-
cept for HawC). The lenisation and voicing of intervocalic /t/ characterizes North
America, IrE, south-western English dialects, and antipodean accents, but is rare
elsewhere. Replacing a word-final or intervocalic /t/ by a glottal stop is a process
which is common throughout the British Isles and in Malaysia and sometimes
found in dialects of AmE, AusE and NZE. The palatalization of word-initial velar
stops (e.g. kyan’t ‘can’t’, gyarden ‘garden’) as well as the emergence of /w/ after
initial /b/, as in bwoy ‘boy’, is distinctive of the Caribbean and only very rarely
noted elsewhere. Affricate realizations of /t/ are reported for Dublin, the Liverpool
area, and, most characteristically, certain strata of AusE; GhE may have /ts/. South
Asian Englishes have retroflexed realizations of /t/ and /d/, and Saramaccan has
implosive voiced stops.
4.2. Fricatives: TH, F/V, S/Z, SH, H/CH, etc.

Word-initial dental fricatives are realized as stops very widely, practically all
around the globe. This applies even more strongly to the voiced /D/ than to the
voiceless /T/. [d] for /D/, especially in function words, is the rule rather than the
exception throughout most of the Caribbean, in the Pacific contact varieties, in
Africa and Asia (in South Asia the stop tends to be dental rather than alveolar) as
well as in some dialects in America (notably AAVE, NfldE, and CajE) and Britain
(IrE, BrC); in other British and American dialects it may also occur (but tends to
be stigmatized). The distribution of [t] for /T/ is very similar. Affricate realizations,
on the other hand ([tT] for /t/, [dD] for /d/), are fairly restricted, being possible in
some American and Caribbean varieties and in Ghana. In word-central position
the voiced dental fricative may be labialized, i.e. replaced by [v], although this is
relatively rare (reported from a few British, American, and Caribbean varieties and
Maori English). Word-final [f] for /T/ may come up in AAVE, BahE, BrC, Ghana,
SgE, and a few more British, American, Caribbean and antipodean dialects.
The voicing of word-initial fricatives is characteristic of south-western England
but exceptional elsewhere (some evidence is provided for southern Wales, New-
foundland, and the Bahamas). The replacement of word-central labial fricatives by
stops, e.g. riba ‘river’, is primarily characteristic of the Caribbean and reported as
a rare possibility in a few African and Asian Englishes.
A voiceless velar fricative exists in ScE, WelE, and Northern Ireland, as well as,
mostly in borrowings, WhSAfE and CFE.
The deletion of word-initial /h/ occurs variably in England, Wales, NfldE, IndE,
MalE, AusE, NZE, and some forms of SAfE; typically it is associated with lower
sociolinguistic status and informality. This feature occurs most regularly in the
Caribbean (JamE/C, TobC, SurC, and elsewhere) and in the Pacific Pidgins, as
well as, not surprisingly (given the possibility of transfer from French), CajE. The
opposite process, /h/-insertion as in haxe ‘axe’, is even less widespread and also
largely restricted to the Caribbean (with very few possible exceptions). In word-
initial /hj/-clusters /h/ may be deleted in a fairly widely scattered array of variet-
ies: This is reported as occurring regularly in East Anglia, New York City, urban
SAmE, CajE, and CamE, and as a conditioned possibility in a few more dialects
in Britain, America, the Caribbean, and South Africa. In South Africa, India and
Pakistan /h/ may be voiced or murmured, according to our correspondents.
Further replacement processes have been observed primarily in specific African
and Asian varieties, e.g. [s, z] for /S, Z/, or the substitution of palatal fricatives for
affricates. These processes seem to be more restricted and results of language
contact.

In some regions an older pronunciation of words beginning with wh- with a velar
fricative onset has been retained, though this seems to be recessive almost every-
where; a lack of homophony between which and witch is still found in Ireland,
Scotland, the very north of England, some American dialects, Ghana and Camer-
oon, and conservative varieties of AusE and NZE. Replacement of the semi-vowel
/w/ by a labiodental fricative /v/ seems fairly common in T&TCs and South Asia
and a relatively rare possibility in IrE, NfldE, BahE and CajE.
So-called jod-dropping, the pronunciation of words like news, tune, with /u:/
after alveolars, without an intervening /j/, is mainly an essential characteristic of
AmE, though even within North America the feature is far from general; in Britain,
this feature is associated primarily with northern East Anglia speech, but it comes
up also in southern and West Midland dialects, in IrE and WelE. In Australia and
New Zealand it is highly variable; occasional reports also come from parts of West
Africa.
4.4. Sonorants: M/N/NG, L, R

In words ending in –ing the realization of the final consonant as an alveolar nasal
is practically universal. The velarization of alveolar nasals in word-final position
and certain words, e.g. /-ŋ/ in down, is practically exclusive to the Caribbean (and
BrC, its daughter variety). The pronunciation of words spelled with <ng> as [Ng]
can be heard in the English West Midlands, a small number of American and some
Caribbean varieties, in IndE, CamE, and a few more West African varieties.
The vocalization of /l/ in postvocalic positions occurs fairly generally in some
dialects of AmE (especially in Philadelphia, New England, and the South), and
variably in several others, as well as in AusE and NZE. In BrE this is less common,
and typically regionally (concentrated in the south-east) and sociolinguistically
conditioned. It is also reported for SgE, EAfrE, and a few West African varieties.
The distribution of the light and dark allophones of /l/ is highly complex, depend-
ing upon regional and positional constraints, and frequently quite different from
that of RP. Upton (this volume) observers a trend for dark /l/ variants to increase
in frequency further to the south in England, while ScE prefers dark /l/, as does
northern Wales. In onset positions, a clear /l/ occurs almost exclusively in Africa
and Asia, while America and the Caribbean show a great deal of variability. A light
/l/ in coda position characterizes IndE and a few more varieties on all continents.
Alternation between /l/ and /r/, which can be heard in a few varieties in America,
the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, seems induced by relatively strong contact ef-
fects.
Rhoticity, i.e. the pronunciation of /r/ in postvocalic and preconsonantal or
word-final position, is generally considered one of the major features distinguish-
ing varieties of the English-speaking world, with non-rhotic pronunciations being
considered British and rhotic realizations American – but then, distributional pat-
terns turn out not to be that simple. Essentially, it is true that RP and most dialects
of southern and eastern England as well as Wales are non-rhotic, and so are variet-
ies derived from British English in fairly recent history, i.e. practically all of Africa
and almost all of the Asian and Pacific accents. Conversely, AmE, particularly in
the North and West, is rhotic, as is its daughter variety in Asia, PhlE. However,
large parts of the British Isles are in fact rhotic (ScE, IrE, southwestern EngE,
and much of northern EngE), and some conservative American accents, stemming
from longer and more intense cultural ties with southern England, used to be non-
rhotic (like New England, New York City, and the South) and are variably rhotic
now, with younger speakers adopting newly-prestigious rhotic pronunciations (it
is noteworthy, however, that AAVE has largely retained its lack of rhoticity). The
Caribbean is strongly mixed, with some island accents (e.g. Bajan) being rhotic,
others (e.g. T&T) non-rhotic, and many variably rhotic (e.g. Jamaica). AusE and
NZE are essentially also non-rhotic, but the Otago region on the South Island of
NZ has traditionally been rhotic (presumably due to strong Scottish settlement
in the 19th century), and in Australia prestigious American accents seem to be
exerting some influence. The phonetic realizations of /r/ vary widely. The realiza-
tion of an intrusive /r/ characterizes non-rhotic areas of Britain and the antipodes
and, variably, America and the Caribbean, but it occurs hardly at all in Africa and
Asia.

English is fairly unique among the world’s major languages in allowing complex
consonant clusters, with sequences of up to four consonants in a row, and so the
reduction of such clusters conforms to a natural tendency towards simplification
and less marked phonotactic patterns. It is therefore not a surprise that such sim-
plification tendencies are fairly widespread. Omitting a non-functional word-final
consonant preceded by another one (e.g. wasp > was’) is the norm in the Carib-
bean, in ethnic dialects and contact forms of AmE, in LSE and Cameroon, and in
South-East Asia, and it also occurs variably in all dialects of AmE, all non-white
dialects of SAfE, and also in northern England. If the last consonant is the sole
realization of an inflectional morpheme (e.g. helped > help’), the ensuing loss of
information inhibits the process, which thus occurs less frequently but is neverthe-
less documented in roughly the same regions. Word-final single consonants (e.g.
cut > cu’) are deleted much more reluctantly. In comparison, the simplification
of word-initial consonant clusters (e.g. splash > ‘plash) is much more restricted,
mostly to contact-induced varieties, including BrC, JamC, T&TC, and a few West
African and Asian varieties.
The deletion of word-initial unstressed syllables (as in ‘bout, ‘cept) is reported as a

regular feature of EAfE, AAVE, Gullah, NfldE, and all antipodean varieties and as
occurring variably in several British and a few more American dialects as well as
StHE and InSAfE. Shifting of word stress to late syllables in a polysyllabic word
is reported for IrE, the T&TCs and a few more Caribbean and American contact
varieties, and, most generally, several West African, South African, and Asian va-
rieties. While BrE, AmE, AusE and NZE are stress-timed, the Caribbean Creoles,
most West African varieties, most dialects of SAfE, StHE, and all Asian Englishes
and Pacific contact varieties (including Maori English and AbE) display a strong
tendency toward a syllable-timed rhythm.
While it seems quite clear that different intonation contours characterize many
varieties of English, and possibly play a major role in accent identification, little
systematic research has been devoted to this aspect. One such feature that has
been frequently observed and addressed in recent years is the use of a high-rising
terminal contour (“HRT”) at the end of affirmative statements. This occurs fairly
generally in British, American, Caribbean, Australian and New Zealand dialects
and occasionally in Africa and Asia; in general, the phenomenon is assumed to be
spreading globally among the young.
Whether even some varieties of English can count as tone languages is disputed,
but it is clear that in Caribbean Creoles and African varieties tonal distinctions
play a major role. Distinctive tone is claimed to occur regularly in the SurCs and
T&TCs, in all Nigerian varieties, and in CamPE.
6. Conclusion
The variability of the pronunciation(s) of English(es) around the globe tends to

be highly complex, multi-faceted and multidimensional, and strongly conditioned
by regionality and sociolinguistic factors. Hence, generalizations are problematic,
and unavoidably face the difficulty of simplifying an apparently chaotic reality
too radically – in this context the emphasis needs to be on details, individual dis-
tributions, and local or regional patterns. Nevertheless, I conclude by suggesting
a few general patterns and observations that the data summarized above seem to
imply and that should deserve more thorough investigation and possibly substan-
tiation.
– The amount of variability found in a given area seems to correlate with the
“historical depth” of the independent evolution of the respective variety of Eng-
lish. A very large amount of minute detail characterizes the dialectal landscape
of England, and the British Isles in general. In North America, there is still a
fairly wide range of pronunciation details to be observed. In contrast, the pro-
nunciations of AusE and NZE are relatively homogeneous (though marked by
substantial social class distinctions), and differences within SAfE are primar-
ily socially and ethnically conditioned. African and Asian varieties seem to be
relatively more homogeneous – although the amount of variability to be found
should not be underestimated.
– While British English varieties are characterized by an elaborate system of
diphthongs, and long vowels have commonly tended to develop glides, this
does not hold for many of the "younger" varieties. African and Asian varieties
functioning as or derived from L2's tend to be marked by more uses of monoph-
thongs; they have considerably fewer vowels with offglides than, say, British,
American, or "Broad" Australian dialects.
– Some varieties display a tendency to reduce the fairly rich system of RP lax
("short") vowels. One cause of this may be to avoidance of schwa (possibly due
to a tendency toward syllable-timing rather than stress-timing) and hence the
replacement of schwa by some other, fully stressed vowel. Another reason may
be the fact that the system of short front vowels of RP and StAmE is relatively
crowded, with the vocalic space being divided by as many as four vowels ([I,
E, Q, a]). In West African varieties, for instance, the tendency is to have a five-
vowel system. The exact arrangement patterns are regional: For example, in
CamE and NigP STRUT merges with LOT; elsewhere STRUT tends to join the
TRAP class.
– The importance of length in distinguishing phonemes is definitely waning.

Even in RP corresponding "long" and "short" vowels (like KIT and FLEECE) are
actually distinguished not primarily by their respective duration but rather by
slight qualitative differences. In American English, and even more so in African
and many Asian varieties, the importance of length is considerably reduced; in
some varieties it is simply not contrastive at all. KIT and FLEECE, FOOT and
GOOSE, LOT and THOUGHT tend to merge in quite a number of varieties – un-
conditionally in some, in specific environments (e.g. quite commonly before /l/)
in others.
– A few ongoing sound changes have been described, but there is no globally
uniform process to be observed. The closest thing to a supra-regional sound
change seems the tendency to front back vowels as part of the so-called "South-
ern Shift", to be observed both in southern hemisphere countries and in the
Southern US. Conversely, however, in the northern US "short" (or "checked")
vowels show a tendency toward an up- and backwards rotation.
Basically, it should be possible to categorize sound distributions into some with a
practically global outreach and others with rather strictly local extensions. A pre-
liminary classification along these lines yields the following listings (by necessity,
the listings are tentative and cannot claim to be exhaustive):
(1) Globally predominant sound realizations:
– KIT as [I];
– DRESS as [E];
– FOOT as [U];
– FLEECE as [i:];
– GOOSE as [u:];
– THOUGHT, NORTH as [ç:];
– CHOICE as [çI];
– MOUTH as [aU];
– happY as [i];
– [d] for word-initial /D/; also [t] for initial /T/;
– alveolar for velar nasals in–ing endings.
(2) Distinctive sound realizations that may serve to characterize specific regions::
– [U] in STRUT;
– [a] in LOT, CLOTH;
– [ç], [ø], [a] or [E] in NURSE;
– [I, i] in FLEECE;
– [I´] in FACE and [U´] in GOAT;
– [¨] or [Uu] in GOOSE;
– [Í], [çI], [ae] or monophthongal [a:] in PRICE;
– [Ú] or [QU] in MOUTH;

– [ia] in NEAR;
– [o:, ç:] in CURE;
– homophony of KIT and FLEECE;
– homophony of FOOT and GOOSE;
– homophony of LOT and THOUGHT;
– homophony of LOT and STRUT;
– homophony of NEAR and SQUARE;
– the "Scottish Vowel Length Rule";
– unaspirated word-initial /p/, /t/, /k/;
– glottal stop for word-final /t/;
– word-initial [kj-], [gj-], [bw-] for k-, g-, b-;
– velar fricative onset in wh- words;
– [v] for /w/;
– existence of velar fricative;
– word-initial /h/-deletion and /h/-insertion;
– /r/ realized as apical or uvular trill;
– velarization of word-final nasals (e.g. [-ŋ] in down);
– existence of tonal distinctions.
While global patterns do not serve the purpose of accent discrimination well, local
pronunciations are more useful for determining a speaker's place of origin. For
such a purpose, the features of the third list seem most recommendable:
(3) Features which seem particularly useful for the identification of regional ac-
cents in a global perspective:
– [Q] vs. [a] in TRAP;
– [Å] vs. [A] in LOT;
– [A:] vs. [a] vs. [Q] in BATH;
– [eI] vs. [e:] in FACE, [Ú] vs. [oU] vs. [o:] in GOAT;
– [´] vs. [a, √] in lettER and commA;
– nasalized vowels before nasals;
– lenisation / voicing / flapping of intervocalic /t/ (writer = rider);
– jod-dropping;
– (frequency and conditions of) word-final consonant cluster deletion;
– rhoticity;
– existence of intrusive /r/;
– stress shift;
– tendency towards syllable-timing;
– high-rising terminal contour.
In general, however, no single pronunciation detail will suffice to serve such a

purpose. In other words, distinctive accents are never distinctive because of any
specific feature found there, but always because of the unique mix of pronuncia-
tion choices in a given region.
References
Gleason, H.A. Jr.

1970 An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics. Revised edition. London: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Labov, William
1991 Resolving the Neogrammarian controversy. Language 57: 267–308.
McDavid, Raven I. Jr.
1985 The sound system of a West Midland dialect: Kniveton, Derbyshire. In:
Wolfgang Viereck (ed.), Focus on: England and Wales, 45–77. Amsterdam,
Appendix
List of features: Phonology & phonetics
Edgar W. Schneider
Please indicate whether or to what extent the following features / variants occur in
the variety that you have discussed by inserting A, B or C in the leftmost column
as follows:
A occurs normally / is widespread
B occurs sometimes / occasionally, with some speakers / groups, in some
environments
C does not normally occur.
If you have covered more than one variety, please give your set of responses for
each of them, or give a summary assessment for a group of related varieties as
specified.
Elements in parentheses (../..) are optional; “>” suggests a direction of move-
ment.
Please note that the variants suggested for a single item (e.g. lexical set) are
meant to be relatively exhaustive but not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Phonetic realization: vowels (lexical sets)
1. KIT [I]
2. KIT raised / fronted, > [i]
3. KIT centralized, > [´]
4. KIT with offglide, e.g. [I´/i´]
5. DRESS half-close [e]
6. DRESS raised, > [i]
7. DRESS half-open [E]
8. DRESS backed, > [√/å]
9. DRESS with centralizing offglide, e.g. [e´]
10. DRESS with rising offglide, e.g. [eI]
11. TRAP [Q]
12. TRAP raised, > [E/e]
13. TRAP lowered, > [a]
14. TRAP with offglide, e.g. [Q´/QE/QI/E´]
15. LOT rounded, e.g. [Å]
16. LOT back unrounded, e.g. [A]
17. LOT front unrounded, e.g. [a]
18. LOT with offglide, e.g. [Å´]
19. STRUT [√]
20. STRUT high back, > [U]
21. STRUT central [´/å]
22. STRUT backed, > [ç]
23. FOOT [U]
24. FOOT tensed [u]
25. FOOT back, lower, e.g. [√]
26. BATH half-open front [Q]
27. BATH low front [a]
28. BATH low back [A]
29. BATH long
30. BATH with offglide, e.g. [Q´/QI/E´]
31. CLOTH rounded [ç/Å]

32. CLOTH back unrounded [A]
33. CLOTH front unrounded [a]
34. NURSE central [Œ:/‘]
35. NURSE raised / fronted / rounded, e.g. [O]
36. NURSE mid front [E/e(r)]
37. NURSE [√(r)] (possibly lexically conditioned, e.g. WORD)
38. NURSE backed, e.g. [o/ç]
39. NURSE diphthongal, e.g. [Í/çI]
40. FLEECE [i:]
41. FLEECE with centralizing offglide, e.g. [i´]
42. FLEECE with mid/central onset and upglide, e.g. [Í/ei]
43. FLEECE with high onset and upglide, e.g. [Ii]
44. FLEECE shortened, e.g. [i/I]
45. FACE upgliding diphthong with half-close onset, e.g. [eI]
46. FACE upgliding diphthong with half-open or lower onset, e.g. [EI/QI]
47. FACE upgliding diphthong with low / backed onset, e.g. [a(:)I/√I]
48. FACE upgliding diphthong with central onset, e.g. [Í]
49. FACE monophthong, e.g. [e:]
50. FACE ingliding diphthong, e.g. [I´/IE]
51. PALM low back [A(:)]
52. PALM low front [a(:)]
53. PALM with offglide, e.g. [A´/Å´]
54. THOUGHT [ç(:)]
55. THOUGHT low [a:/A:]
56. THOUGHT with offglide, e.g. [ç´/U´]
57. GOAT with central onset, e.g. [Ú/´¨]
58. GOAT with back rounded onset, e.g. [oU/ou]
59. GOAT with low or back unrounded onset, e.g. [a(:)u/a¨/√U/√¨]
60. GOAT with relatively high back onset [Uu]
61. GOAT ingliding, e.g. [U´/uç/ua]
62. GOAT monophthongal, e.g. [o(:)]

63. GOOSE [u:]
64. GOOSE fronted, > [¨(:)]
65. GOOSE gliding, e.g. [Uu/Iu/´(:)¨]
66. PRICE upgliding diphthong, e.g. [aI/AI/√I]
67. PRICE monophthong [a:] before voiced C
68. PRICE monophthong [a:] in all environments
69. PRICE with raised / central onset, e.g. [Í/ŒI]
70. PRICE with backed onset, e.g. [ç(:)I/ÅI]
71. PRICE with mid-front offglide, e.g. [ae/aE]
72. CHOICE [çI]
73. CHOICE with low onset [ÅI]
74. CHOICE with central onset [Í/í]
75. MOUTH [aU/AU]
76. MOUTH with raised and backed onset, e.g. [√u/çU]
77. MOUTH with raised onset [Ú] only before voiceless C
78. MOUTH with raised onset [Ú] in all environments
79. MOUTH with fronted onset, e.g. [Q¨/QU/Qo/Eo]
80. MOUTH low monophthong, e.g. [a:]
81. MOUTH mid/high back monophthong, e.g. [o:]
82. NEAR [I´(r)]
83. NEAR without offglide, e.g. [Ir]
84. NEAR with tensed / raised onset, e.g. [i(:)´]
85. NEAR with half-closed onset [e(:/´/r)/ea]
86. NEAR with half-open onset [E(:/´/r)]
87. NEAR high-front to low glide, e.g. [ia]
88. SQUARE with half-open onset [E´]
89. SQUARE with half-closed onset [e´/ea]
90. SQUARE with high front onset [I´]
91. SQUARE with relatively open onset, possibly rising [Q´/QI]
92. SQUARE half-closed monophthong, [e(:/r)]
93. SQUARE half-open monophthong, [E(:/r)]

94. START low back unrounded, e.g. [A(:/r)]
95. START central, e.g. [å(:/r)]
96. START low front, e.g. [a(:/r)]
97. START front, raised, e.g. [Q(:/r)]
98. START with offglide, e.g. [A´/Å´)]
99. NORTH half-open monophthong [ç(:/r)]
100. NORTH half-closed monophthong [o(:/r)]
101. NORTH [Å]
102. NORTH with offglide, e.g. [Å´/oa]
103. FORCE half-open monophthong [ç(:/r)]
104. FORCE half-closed monophthong [o(:/r)]
105. FORCE ingliding, e.g. [ç´(r)/o´(r)/oa]
106. FORCE with upglide, e.g.[oU(r)]
107. CURE [U´/Ur]
108. CURE with tensed / raised onset, e.g. [u(:)´/ur]
109. CURE lowered monophthong, e.g. [o:/ç:]
110. CURE with upglide, e.g. [oU(r)]
111. CURE low offglide, e.g. [ua/oa(r)]
112. happY relatively centralized, e.g. [I]
113. happY central, e.g. [´]
114. happY tensed / relatively high front, e.g. [i(:)]
115. happY mid front, e.g. [e/E]
116. lettER [´]
117. lettER (relatively) open, e.g. [a/√]
118. horsES central [´]
119. horsES high front [I]
120. commA [´]
121. commA (relatively) open, e.g. [a/√]
Distribution: vowels
122. homophony of KIT and FLEECE

123. homophony of TRAP and BATH
124. homophony of Mary and merry
125. homophony of Mary, merry and marry
126. homophony of TRAP and DRESS before /l/
127. merger of KIT and DRESS before nasals (pin = pen)
128. homophony of DRESS and FACE
129. homophony of FOOT and GOOSE
130. homophony of LOT and THOUGHT
131. homophony of LOT and STRUT
132. homophony of NEAR and SQUARE
133. vowels nasalized before nasal consonants
134. vowel harmony / cross-syllable assimilation phenomena in some words
135. vowels short unless before /r/, voiced fricative, or in open syllable (SVLR)
136. commA/lettER (etc.): [//i/ç/u], reflecting spelling
Phonetic realization and distribution: consonants
137. P/T/K-: weak or no aspiration of word-initial stops

138. -T-: lenisation / flapping / voicing of intervocalic /t/ (writer = rider)
139. -T: realization of word-final or intervocalic /t/ as glottal stop
140. K-: palatalization of velar stop word-initially: e.g. kj-/gj-in can‘t/garden
141. B-: word-initial bw- for b-: e.g. bw- in boy
142. S-/F-: voiceless initial fricatives voiced: [z-/v-]
143. TH-: realization of word-initial voiced TH as stop, e.g. dis‚ ‘this’
144. TH-: realization of word-initial voiceless TH as stop, e.g. ting‚‘thing’
145. TH-: realization of word-initial voiced TH as affricate [dD]
146. TH-: realization of word-initial voiceless TH as affricate [tT]
147. WH-: velar fricative onset retained, i.e. which is not homophonous with witch
148. CH: voiceless velar fricative [X/x] exists
149. h-deletion (word-initial), e.g.‚ ‘eart‘heart’
150. h-insertion (word-initial), e.g. haxe ‘axe’
151. L-: palatal (clear) variant in syllable onsets

152. L-: velar variant in syllable onsets
153. –L: palatal variant in syllable codas
154. “jod”-dropping: no /j/ after alveolars before /u:/, e.g. in news, tune
155. deletion of word-initial /h/ in /hj-/ clusters, e.g. in human, huge
156. labialization of word-central voiced -TH-, e.g. [-v-] in brother
157. labialization of word-final / word-central voiceless –TH, e.g. [-f] in mouth,
nothing
158. intervocalic /-v-/ > [b], e.g. in river
159. W: substitution of labiodental fricative /v/ for semi-vowel /w/
160. word-final consonant cluster deletion, monomorphemic
161. word-final consonant cluster deletion, bimorphemic
162. deletion of word-final single consonants
163. simplification of word-initial consonant clusters, e.g. in splash, square
164. non-rhotic (no postvocalic –r)
165. rhotic (postvocalic –r realized)
166. phonetic realization of /r/ as velar retroflex constriction
167. phonetic realization of /r/ as alveolar flap
168. phonetic realization of /r/ as apical trill
169. /r/ uvular
170. intrusive –r–, e.g. idea-r-is
171. post-vocalic –l vocalized
172. neutralization / confusion of liquids /l/ and /r/ in some words
173. realization of velar nasals with stop: -NG > [-Ng]
174. velarization of some word-final nasals, e.g. /-ŋ/ in down
Prosodic features and intonation
175. deletion of word-initial unstressed syllables, e.g. 'bout‚ 'cept

176. stress not infrequently shifted from first to later syllable, e.g. indi!cate, holi!day
177. (relatively) syllable-timed rather than stress-timed
178. HRT (High-Rising Terminal) contour: rise at end of statement

179. tone distinctions exist
Index of subjects
A 527, 542, 559, 584, 586–587, 595–596,

599, 635, 641, 644, 677, 764, 788, 791,
accent 25–31, 65 (for specific accents see
797, 820, 838, 851, 858–861, 871, 935–
also Index of varieties and languages)
936, 946–950, 956, 960, 997, 1011, 1013,
dynamic 826
1054, 1072, 1094, 1125
tonal 826
alveolar 45, 60, 63, 71, 74–75, 79, 81–82,
acoustic 57, 60, 62, 64–65, 243, 287, 295,
84, 87, 92–93, 110, 195–196, 212, 228,
307, 312, 319, 343–345, 350, 386, 395,
240, 242, 278–279, 288, 333, 341, 370,
426, 439, 583, 586, 591, 601–602, 616,
376, 378, 385, 397, 398, 401–402, 422,
619, 624–626, 629, 633, 639–640, 643,
424–426, 432, 446, 467–468, 472, 486,
685, 689, 772, 789, 793, 827, 880, 945,
490, 493, 545, 581, 585, 593, 611, 615,
946
618, 660, 665, 680, 684, 696, 698, 706,
acquisition 31, 64, 74, 233–235, 243, 339,
721, 755, 766, 775–776, 833, 854, 858,
479–480, 684, 714, 728, 807–808, 924–
882, 894, 908–910, 925, 950, 959–960,
925, 954, 962, 981
975, 990, 998, 1011–1012, 1025, 1042,
acrolect 239, 253, 383, 438, 445, 480, 486,
1054, 1073, 1086–1087, 1093, 1097,
510, 515–520, 523, 574, 735, 742, 752,
1123–1124, 1128, 1136
780, 782, 785, 807–808, 856–857, 859,
861, 867, 871, 883, 888–890, 893, 944, palato- 42, 432, 559, 755, 767, 859, 910,
947–951, 987, 1010, 1022, 1036, 1049– 998
1058, 1076, 1089, 1099 apico- 62, 84, 93
affix 663, 825, 898–899, 1057, 1096 post- 63, 195, 201, 398, 593, 680, 755,
prefix 142, 268, 645, 675, 708, 886, 822, 859, 940, 950, 1025, 1073
898, 929 amplitude 1014
suffix 155–156, 267, 285, 291, 421, 446, anaptyxis 527, 529, 531–532, 534, 544–
490, 522, 663, 687, 706–707, 713, 725, 546, 559, 561, 563, 999
774–775, 881, 895–896, 898, 927, 929, aphesis 662, 667
940, 990, 1028, 1083, 1096, 1107, 1121 apical 211, 641, 705, 1087, 1129, 1136
affricate 42, 45, 128–129, 288, 293, 370, apocope 431, 662, 667, 702, 886
376, 378, 385, 469–470, 490, 585, 593, approximant 62–63, 110, 195, 211, 402,
597, 609, 612, 618, 661, 666, 680, 696, 442–443, 469, 485, 490, 585, 696, 756,
698, 706, 717, 744, 756, 833, 858–860, 767, 775, 833–834, 838, 858, 860, 862,
881, 909–910, 939, 950, 975–976, 998, 871, 910, 950, 960–961, 976, 990, 998,
1025, 1027, 1053–1054, 1085, 1092– 1012, 1086, 1106–1108
1094, 1096–1097, 1106–1107, 1111, aspect 500, 695, 723, 747, 811, 839, 884
1123–1124, 1135 aspiration 60, 108, 109, 155, 156, 201,
affrication 108, 156, 289, 570, 576, 593, 378, 380, 400, 411, 424, 465–466, 517,
612, 618, 1071, 1092 581, 593, 614–615, 618, 635, 743, 746,
allegro speech 380 766, 939, 949, 950, 959, 961–962, 975,
allophone 41, 43, 58, 73, 79, 93, 127, 130, 990, 997–998, 1013, 1025, 1053, 1071–
155, 174–175, 195, 330, 341, 360–361, 1072, 1085, 1093, 1096, 1123
385, 387, 418, 424, 442–443, 453, 455, non- 400, 411, 466, 581, 593, 599,
460, 465–466, 475, 486, 495, 504, 516, 614–615, 635, 683, 746, 755, 764, 766,
1140 Index of subjects
935, 939, 962, 1013, 1096, 1106, 1129, 881, 908–910, 991, 1012, 1085 (see also
1135 labial)
de- 618, 975, 979, 981, 1106 bilingualism 50, 99, 207, 214, 408, 464,
not pre-aspirated 999 572, 577, 716, 719, 736, 748, 810, 1017,
assimilation 231–233, 237, 240–242, 235, 1020, 1036, 1047, 1059
318, 320, 362, 364, 379–380, 401, 403, blocking 401
423, 425, 442, 457, 463, 551–552, 594, breaking 50, 56, 59, 73–74, 83, 88, 143,
597–599, 616, 667, 686, 774, 852–854, 305, 312–313, 971
888, 892, 894, 949, 1054, 1084, 1092, burr 119–120, 126, 129, 130, 132, 197–
1135 198, 568, 605
B
back vowel (see vowel)
C
backing 143, 274, 286–287, 292, 296, 300, Cajun Renaissance 408, 413–414
312, 347, 356, 362, 385, 423, 441, 704, Canadian Raising (see raising)
970, 972, 979, 981, 1075, 1077, 1112, Canadian Shift 347, 356–357, 361–362,
1115, 1118 370–371, 1077
basilect 187, 189, 191, 237–239, 242, 251, centering (see glide, ingliding)
253, 383, 438, 446, 484, 508, 510–511, central vowel (see vowel)
514–516, 518–523, 574, 576, 578, 659– centralization 102–104, 182, 190–191,
661, 735–736, 739–746, 748, 752–753, 200, 222–225, 275, 296, 308, 341, 357,
777, 807, 859, 867, 870–871, 888, 944, 361–362, 371–375, 421–422, 439, 490,
986, 1010, 1022, 1036, 1049–1058, 1076, 532, 561, 587, 589, 617, 621, 816, 819,
1080, 1082, 1089, 1097, 1099, 1106, 821, 856, 1063, 1076–1077, 1090, 1114–
1107, 1121, 1122
1116, 1119, 1121, 1131, 1134
BATH 41–42, 53, 58–59, 91, 101, 104,
centering diphthong (see diphthong)
106–107, 115, 120–123, 137, 139–143,
145–146, 172, 178, 187–188, 198–199, chain shift 85, 222, 273–274, 281, 286–
209, 220–224, 226, 236–237, 263, 265, 288, 292, 296, 347, 361, 385–386, 391–
270, 273–275, 285, 290, 294–297, 300, 392, 941, 1077, 1078, 1100, 1112, 1122
303, 307, 309–310, 340, 348, 356, 359, (see also Northern Cities Shift/Northern
361, 369–370, 372, 387, 395–397, 402, Cities Chain Shift)
404, 410–411, 419, 439, 454, 460, 504– CHOICE 43, 53, 85, 91, 101, 106, 121,
505, 515, 518, 529, 532, 536, 555, 576, 138, 140, 151–152, 170, 187–189, 198,
582, 590–592, 606, 617, 621, 629, 645, 200, 209, 220–221, 225, 236, 238, 263,
659, 664, 740, 742, 759, 761, 769, 771, 266, 273, 285–287, 290, 295, 304, 312,
819–820, 849–850, 870, 880, 888, 893, 340, 359, 369, 373, 387, 395, 398, 404,
927–928, 935–938, 941, 945, 947, 956, 410–411, 422, 439, 454, 460, 504–505,
968, 970, 979–980, 987, 994–996, 1006, 515, 518, 529, 544–545, 555, 582, 591,
1009, 1024, 1038–1039, 1050, 1065, 628, 630, 632, 659, 664, 677, 740, 742,
1071, 1078, 1084, 1091, 1101–1102, 757, 760–761, 770–771, 819, 821, 849,
1116, 1122, 1129, 1131, 1135 870, 880–881, 890, 893, 928, 936, 938,
Broadening of 115, 139, 178 945–947, 956, 958, 969, 973, 979–981,
bidialectal 37, 383, 615, 753 987, 989, 994, 996, 1006, 1008, 1024,
bilabial 380, 401, 455, 467, 485, 490, 1038, 1050, 1052, 1068, 1081, 1091,
497, 520, 585, 593, 660–661, 665, 854, 1103, 1119, 1128, 1133
Index of subjects 1141
clause 33, 242, 423, 504, 520, 639, 708, 928, 1073, 1080, 1084, 1111, 1117,
724, 732, 784, 811–812, 828, 839, 1001– 1124–1125, 1127, 1132
1002, 1058, 1095 unconditioned 331, 740
clear /l/ (see /l/) consonant
closing (see diphthong) final 155, 239, 321, 390, 409, 411, 425,
CLOTH 43, 53, 58, 101, 104, 121, 137, 491, 517, 532, 521, 545, 559, 563, 650,
144, 146, 159, 172, 187, 188, 198, 209, 700, 703, 745, 748, 777, 823–824, 889,
220–221, 224, 236–237, 264–265, 273– 913–914, 929, 999, 1026, 1028, 1055,
275, 285–286, 288, 290–291, 294–296, 1087, 1124
303, 309–310, 340–341, 359, 368–369, cluster 42, 44, 62, 81, 174, 196, 203,
371–372, 387, 395, 397–398, 404, 410, 240, 293, 320–321, 378–379, 384, 389,
419, 439, 454, 460, 504–505, 515, 518, 412, 424, 455, 462, 467, 470–472, 476,
529, 537, 555, 627–629, 650, 659, 664, 480, 487, 520, 537, 558–559, 563, 571,
740, 742, 759, 761, 769, 771, 819–820, 594, 612, 637, 642, 661, 683, 686, 687,
849–850, 870, 880, 888–889, 893, 928, 699–701, 708, 717–718, 724–725, 756,
945, 947, 956, 968, 970, 980, 987, 994– 767, 777, 792, 834–835, 851, 871–872,
995, 1006, 1009, 1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 898, 910, 929, 961, 999, 1012–1013,
1064, 1077, 1115, 1128, 1132 1029, 1087, 1092–1093
coda 81, 93, 317, 319, 321, 377–379, with /j/ 469, 475, 597, 1108
389, 412, 426, 442, 447, 461, 465–467, with /h/ 201, 289, 333, 1086, 1093,
469–471, 520, 546, 583, 595, 641, 708, 1124, 1136
743–744, 824, 858, 871, 881–883, 895, deletion/reduction/simplification/dis-
950–951, 1025–1026, 1094, 1097, 1125, solution etc. 84, 174, 267, 321, 334,
1136 377, 379, 389–390, 401, 409, 425,
cluster 379, 445, 471–472, 476, 487, 641, 431, 433, 445–446, 449, 487–488,
882 491, 517, 520, 667, 686, 699–702,
commA 43, 54, 91, 102, 121, 138, 154, 745–746, 774, 777, 824, 861, 871,
187, 189, 198, 201, 209, 220–221, 227– 882, 895, 914, 928–929, 944, 950–
228, 236, 238, 264, 267, 273, 285, 290, 951, 977, 979, 981, 990, 999, 1013,
295, 304, 315, 340, 359, 369, 375, 395, 1026, 1040–1041, 1045, 1055, 1087,
400, 404, 410–411, 439, 454, 460, 505, 1097, 1108, 1126, 1129, 1136 (see
515, 518, 529, 553, 585, 587, 601, 622, also coda cluster)
628, 659, 664, 695, 740–742, 761–762, deletion (see deletion)
771, 773, 819, 821, 849, 870, 880, 892, devoicing (see devoicing)
893, 928, 936, 939, 945, 947, 956, 959, substitution 71, 109, 240, 278, 402, 411,
969, 974, 987, 994, 997, 1006, 1008, 424, 635, 637, 661, 665, 697–699, 718,
1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 1070, 1083, 859, 894, 960, 1042, 1054, 1093–1094,
1092, 1105, 1121, 1129, 1134–1135 1124, 1136
competition 104–107, 196, 368, 512, 782, constraints 29, 61, 109, 173, 193, 240,
842 255, 301, 426, 465, 468, 470–472, 517,
complementary distribution (see distri- 650, 702–703, 724, 829, 899, 950, 1026,
bution) 1087, 1125
conditioning 63, 290, 293, 297, 317, 321, constriction 265, 279, 317, 334, 619, 1083,
346, 348, 411, 425–426, 520, 552, 641, 1087, 1136
652, 795, 888, 1081, 1113, 1117 deconstriction 333–334, 654
conditioned 223, 227, 334, 357, 369– contact 27, 31–32, 42, 48, 65, 70–71, 78,
370, 376, 426, 535, 852, 854, 888, 892, 81, 94, 97, 117, 205, 208, 213, 231, 234,
241, 243, 248, 251, 255, 275–276, 302, deletion

313, 329, 347–348, 384, 393, 402–403, consonant 521, 824, 914, 999, 1027–
407, 417, 420–421, 423, 430, 432, 440, 1029
443, 445, 448, 491, 493, 501, 503, 506, /h/ 62, 82, 120, 127, 139, 157–158, 174,
510, 515–516, 567–569, 571–576, 578, 192, 201, 212, 241, 377–378, 441, 444–
580–581, 611, 614, 618–619, 656–657, 445, 486, 490, 494–495, 635, 960, 998,
666, 671–675, 690–692, 700–701, 709– 1086, 1135
712, 720, 726, 750–751, 782–784, 787– jod/yod 62, 72, 84, 157–159, 164, 170,
788, 792, 805–807, 810–812, 814, 831, 172, 175–176, 196, 229, 297, 318–320,
842, 866, 875, 902–903, 905–906, 913, 377, 379–380, 385, 388, 390, 400, 409,
917, 932–933, 942, 953–956, 960, 964– 411–412, 424–426, 443–444, 455, 461–
965, 984, 1003, 1018, 1076, 1087, 1089, 462, 479, 486, 537, 596–597, 636–637,
1095–1097, 1116, 1119–1126 702–703, 706, 775–776, 779, 824,
continuum 27, 30–32, 37, 41–42, 44, 47, 858–859, 861, 895–896, 914, 940, 999,
50–52, 57, 60–61, 63, 185, 253, 255, 263, 1026–1028, 1043, 1069, 1072–1073,
391, 426, 438, 447, 449, 479, 498, 508,
1086–1087, 1093, 1108, 1124, 1126,
523, 574, 608, 627, 633, 635, 637, 663,
1129, 1136
668, 726, 728, 735–736, 752, 789, 807,
dental 37, 43, 45, 60–61, 71–76, 78–82,
816, 818, 827, 847, 867, 871–872, 875,
84, 92, 109, 185, 192, 240, 376, 385, 411,
921, 927, 944–945, 986, 1017, 1022–
1023, 1037, 1076, 1091, 1108 424, 475, 490, 497, 581, 585, 594–595,
lectal 945, 1017, 1022–1023, 1037, 1049 615, 618, 660–661, 665, 705, 755, 766,
post-creole 253, 255, 668, 726 775–776, 858–859, 864, 909–910, 925,
covert prestige (see prestige) 940, 950, 960, 975, 979, 981, 990, 998,
creolization 247, 393–394, 445, 480, 491, 1011, 1025, 1042, 1071, 1085, 1093,
506, 658, 709, 714, 723, 726–728, 786, 1097, 1123
831 (see also decreolization) apico- 424, 755
CURE 43, 53, 91, 101, 107, 121, 138, inter- 73, 278, 288, 293, 298, 388, 397,
153, 172, 187, 189, 198, 201, 209, 213, 402, 411, 415, 424, 441–442, 485, 488,
220–221, 226, 236, 264, 267, 273, 279, 490, 493, 495, 497, 594, 661, 665, 881,
285, 290, 294, 304, 314, 340, 359, 368– 990, 1025, 1054, 1106
369, 374, 387, 395, 399, 404, 410–411, labio- 192, 195, 442, 485, 490, 497, 618,
438, 505, 515, 518, 529, 550–551, 555, 665, 909, 990, 998–999, 1012, 1025,
582–583, 592–593, 628, 630, 632, 649– 1086, 1093, 1124, 1136
650, 659, 663, 740–742, 758, 760, 762, post- 376, 594
770, 772, 819, 821, 880, 888, 891–893, dentalization 79, 88, 1011
927–928, 936, 938, 945- 948, 956, 959, devoicing
969, 974, 979–980, 987, 994, 997, 1006, consonant 156, 298, 379, 388, 447, 593–
1009–1010, 1024, 1038, 1040, 1050, 594, 596, 618, 623, 756, 823, 860–861,
1052, 1069–1070, 1083, 1091, 1104, 881, 894, 913–914, 949–950, 974–975,
1121, 1129, 1134 990–991, 1027–1028, 1041, 1054,
1086, 1097, 1108
vowel 456, 617
D diagnostic 58, 82, 139–140, 253, 436,
dark /l/ (see /l/) 440–441, 483, 606, 1045, 1118
decreolization 253, 481, 498, 503, 514– dialect
515, 524, 658, 736, 748, 884 (see also contact 31, 47, 65, 203, 231, 243, 255,
creolization) 329, 347–348, 421–423, 432, 991
intensification 323 220–222, 236–237, 263–264, 273, 285,

leveling 230, 284, 340, 349, 363 290, 294, 296–297, 303, 307–308, 315,
diffuseness 96, 232, 260, 421, 943 333, 340, 345, 347, 359, 361, 369–370,
diffusion (geolinguistic) 362, 364, 626, 387, 395–396, 404, 410–411, 438, 453,
643, 655 460, 504, 515, 518, 529, 531, 538, 543,
diphthong 555, 582–584, 586–588, 592, 608–609,
centering 56–57, 123–124, 199, 201, 611, 616, 621, 627, 630–631, 649, 651,
226, 236, 238, 505, 608, 757–758, 655, 659, 663, 676, 740, 742, 758, 761,
760, 770, 835, 856, 912, 927, 946, 948, 768, 771, 819–820, 849, 870, 880, 886,
1010, 1069 888, 893, 927–928, 936–937, 940–941,
closing 123, 191, 200, 505, 608, 610– 945, 947, 956, 968, 970, 978, 981, 987–
611, 628, 855, 927, 981–982, 1010, 988, 994–995, 1006–1007, 1024, 1038,
1091 1050, 1052, 1064, 1076, 1080–1081,
shift 189, 237–238, 591 1084, 1090–1091, 1100–1101, 1114,
diphthongization 140, 147–148, 151, 154, 1122, 1128, 1131, 1135
166, 286, 291, 300, 307, 309–310, 314, dropping
316, 347, 370, 386, 397, 490–491, 504– final KIT 886
505, 539, 542, 585, 589–591, 617, 627, /h/ (see deletion, /h/)
648, 685, 740, 760, 855–856, 1040, 1066, initial /w/ 110
1069, 1075, 1077–1079, 1091, 1095, /j/ (see deletion, jod/yod)
1112, 1118 /r/ (see /r/, postvocalic)
dissimilation 318, 960
distribution 61–63, 65, 77, 92, 104–105,
107, 116, 122, 124–125, 129, 174, 193, E
199, 203, 220, 285–286, 298, 306–307,
315, 319, 327, 340, 345–346, 349, 376– ecology 253, 436, 499, 789, 808, 1022
377, 420–421, 440, 458–459, 462, 465– elision 62, 380, 491, 702, 724, 861, 857,
467, 470–471, 473–474, 476, 493, 514, 975, 977, 979, 981
534, 557, 561, 592, 599, 618, 633, 635, enclave 50, 71, 247, 250–251, 254, 351,
637–639, 641, 645–647, 649, 654, 661, 353–354, 384, 412, 436, 444, 449, 489,
665, 684, 697, 791–793, 797, 819, 845, 494, 499–500, 712
854–855, 859, 861, 871, 907, 911, 913, epenthesis 81, 379, 425, 562, 662, 667,
946, 949, 971, 1005, 1009–1013, 1026, 686, 699–700, 702, 707, 914, 1012–1013,
1064, 1070, 1076, 1082–1086, 1112– 1055, 1096
1113, 1117, 1119, 1122–1123, 1125, ethnicity 26, 28, 31, 50, 67, 89–90, 95,
1127–1128, 1135 231–235, 240, 254, 260, 281, 283, 317–
complementary 110, 175, 442, 886, 907, 318, 322–323, 329, 335, 339, 354, 360,
1073, 1111, 1125 367, 408, 416–417, 419, 422–423, 432–
disyllabic 64, 84, 107, 145, 152, 159, 379, 433, 436, 438–441, 444–446, 448–449,
469, 488, 521, 548, 590, 591–592, 595, 483, 486, 499, 502, 504, 512, 514–515,
611, 615, 650, 677, 999, 1043, 1069, 569, 584, 594, 614–615, 624, 633, 690,
1092 692–693, 715, 731, 733, 735, 753, 778,
divergence 30, 94, 113, 318, 363, 436, 810, 813, 816, 817, 847, 852, 853, 856,
818 867–868, 874, 877, 885, 905, 919–920,
DRESS 42–43, 53, 57, 90, 101–102, 121, 926, 928, 935, 941, 964, 1003, 1017–
137, 143, 165–166, 187–188, 198, 209, 1020, 1034–1035, 1047, 1050, 1127
ethnolect 408, 625, 642, 657, 659 1084, 1090–1091, 1101–1102, 1116,
etymon 675, 677, 679–680, 687, 708, 714, 1122, 1128–1129, 1132, 1135
718, 736, 1095 FOOT 42, 53, 58–59, 74, 91, 101, 103,
115, 119–123, 137, 139–40, 144–145,
162, 165–167, 169, 178–179, 187–188,
F 191, 198, 200, 203, 209, 220–221, 223,
FACE 89–91, 138, 148–150, 43, 50, 54, 59, 225–226, 230, 236–237, 263, 265–266,
100–101, 104–106, 120–121, 123–124, 273, 285, 290–291, 295, 298, 301, 303,
127, 138–140, 146, 159, 169–170, 187– 308, 333, 340, 359, 369, 371, 376, 387,
189, 198–199, 209, 220–221, 223–224, 396, 404, 410, 438, 454, 460, 504, 515,
236, 238, 264, 266, 273, 275, 285, 287, 518, 527, 529, 535, 542, 555, 582, 584,
290–291, 295, 301–302, 304, 307, 309– 586, 589–590, 600, 616, 627, 629, 640,
311, 322, 333, 335, 340–341, 346, 359, 649, 659, 663, 675, 740, 742, 759, 761,
368–369, 371–372, 387, 395, 397, 404, 769, 771, 819–821, 849–850, 870, 880,
410–411, 438–439, 454, 460, 484, 504– 888, 890, 893, 908, 927–928, 936–937,
505, 515, 518, 538–540, 543, 555, 582, 945, 947, 956, 968, 970, 972, 979–980,
591, 599, 608–610, 622, 626–627, 630, 987–988, 994–995, 1006, 1009, 1024,
632–633, 640, 648, 653, 659, 663, 676, 1038, 1050–1052, 1065, 1071, 1078,
694, 740, 742, 757, 760–761, 769–771, 1084, 1090, 1101, 1116, 1122, 1128–
797, 819–820, 849, 870, 880, 885–887, 1129, 1131, 1135
889, 891–893, 927–928, 936, 938, 945– FORCE 42–44, 50, 53, 56, 90–91, 101,
947, 956, 958, 968, 971–973, 979–983, 107, 110–111, 121, 138, 153–154, 172,
987, 989, 994, 996, 1006, 1009–1010, 187, 189, 198, 201, 209, 220–221,
1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 1067–1068, 224, 226, 236, 239–240, 264, 267, 273,
1080–1081, 1084, 1091, 1095, 1102, 276–277, 279, 285, 287–288, 290, 292,
1118–1119, 1128–1129, 1132, 1135 294–295, 303–304, 314, 317, 330–331,
fall(ing) (see intonation) 340–341, 348–349, 359–360, 368–369,
fall-rise (see intonation) 374, 387, 395, 399, 404, 410–411, 419,
first language (see L1) 438, 454, 460, 505, 515, 518, 529, 549–
flap(ping) 278, 281, 320, 359, 490, 570, 550, 555, 582, 586, 590, 593, 616–617,
612, 635, 861, 871, 1085, 1096, 1129, 659, 663, 677, 695, 740–742, 759, 762,
1135 769, 772, 819, 821, 849, 870, 880, 887,
FLEECE 53, 91, 101, 104, 121, 137, 147, 889–891, 893, 928, 945, 947, 956, 958,
151, 155, 169, 187–189, 198, 209, 220– 969, 974, 979–980, 994, 996, 1006–1007,
221, 224, 236–237, 264, 266, 273, 275, 1010, 1024, 1038, 1050, 1052, 1066,
285, 290–291, 295, 303, 307, 309, 333, 1079, 1089, 1117, 1134
340–341, 359, 369, 371, 387, 395, 397, frequency 26, 52, 103, 107, 110, 186, 193,
404, 410–411, 438, 504, 515, 518, 529, 195, 213–214, 238, 293, 349, 350, 424–
538–540, 547, 555, 582–583, 585–589, 425, 444–445, 463, 475, 479, 517, 597,
592, 616–617, 621–622, 626–627, 629, 610, 637, 651–63, 701, 717, 791, 799,
632–633, 649, 659, 663, 740, 742, 758, 852–854, 880, 882, 893, 896, 906, 929,
761, 768, 771, 819–820, 849–850, 870, 946, 948, 972, 1014, 1045, 1071, 1111,
880, 885, 888, 893, 927–928, 936–937, 1113, 1125, 1129
941, 945, 947, 956–957, 968, 971, 979– fricative 50, 57, 61–62, 71, 73–75, 78,
980, 987–988, 994–996, 1006–1007, 81–82, 84, 86, 93, 109–110, 129, 167,
1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 1065, 1078, 178, 192, 197–198, 201, 240, 278, 285–
286, 288, 293, 298, 320–321, 348, 370, glide/gliding 73, 104, 190, 196, 209–210,
376, 378–380, 385, 397–398, 401–402, 224–226, 236, 238–240, 264, 266–267,
411, 415, 424, 441–442, 456, 469–470, 276, 279, 287, 291, 293, 300–302, 307,
472, 475, 477, 485–486, 490, 493, 495, 309, 311–314, 322, 332–333, 335, 337,
497, 520, 585, 593–595, 661, 618, 645– 345, 356, 360–361, 373–374, 378, 380,
646, 660, 665–666, 668, 683–684, 696, 386, 401, 410–411, 418, 420, 427–430,
698, 705–706, 717–718, 720, 743, 755, 441, 596–597, 628, 640, 650, 685, 760,
766–767, 792, 822, 833, 858–860, 864, 770, 775, 822, 889, 891, 895, 909, 912,
871, 881–883, 894, 909–910, 925–926, 927, 940, 947, 950, 958, 971–973, 976,
929, 939, 950, 960, 975–976, 979, 981, 982, 989, 996, 1025, 1040, 1053–1054,
990–991, 998–999, 1011–1012, 1025, 1068, 1078–1079, 1081–1082, 1091,
1027, 1041–1042, 1053–1054, 1064, 1093, 1103, 1108, 1114, 1116–1117, 1120–
1070, 1072, 1085–1086, 1093, 1097, 1121, 1127, 1133 (see also diphthong)
1106, 1109, 1123–1124, 1129, 1135–1136 in- 126, 172, 238–239, 276, 285–286,
(see also glottal fricative) 291, 296, 301, 307–308, 310–311, 323,
front vowel raising (see raising) 331, 348, 360, 372–373, 505, 627, 796,
fronted 45, 60, 73, 77, 86, 124, 190, 222, 1078–1080, 1082, 1095, 1117, 1119–
226, 238, 240, 265–266, 276, 287, 291– 1120, 1132, 1134
292, 296, 307–308, 311, 313, 316, 340– off- 80, 226, 329, 332–333, 401, 418,
341, 343–344, 360–361, 368, 370, 374– 420, 441, 484, 491, 505, 626–629, 632–
375, 411, 421, 423, 440, 490, 505, 608, 633, 648, 650–651, 679, 790, 794, 796,
617, 627, 629–632, 640, 680, 794, 860, 855, 938, 979, 981, 1066, 1076–1079,
946, 956–958, 972, 1065, 1067, 1070– 1091, 1095, 1112, 1114–1118, 1127,
1071, 1073, 1078–1079, 1081–1082, 1131–1134,
1091, 1104, 1117–1118, 1120–1121, up- 25, 43, 169, 224, 236, 238, 275–276,
1131–1133 307, 309–311, 314, 329–330, 346, 360,
fronting 58, 73, 75, 78, 81, 86, 151, 159, 371–372, 411, 440, 881, 1065, 1078,
167, 190–191, 200, 225, 238, 291–292, 1080, 1116, 1132–1134
295–296, 300, 302–303, 307–308, 311, Glide Formation Rule 890, 894
313, 316, 322, 333, 343–345, 349, 361, glottal 60–61, 128–129, 173, 228, 240–241,
363, 374, 385–386, 388, 419, 421, 423– 243, 278, 585, 883, 910, 987, 1025, 1100
424, 440, 617, 628, 648, 704, 979, 980, fricative 661, 666, 684, 718, 909–910,
1066, 1068, 1075–1076, 1079, 1112, 950, 960, 998, 1097
onset 977
1116–1120 (see also /th/-fronting)
reinforcement 593, 857
/S/-fronting 1072
stop 60, 84, 93, 128–129, 157, 174,
fudge 139, 140, 144–145, 223
228, 278, 280–281, 378, 388, 424, 490,
586, 593, 622, 743–744, 822, 858, 883,
940, 983, 991, 1028–1029, 1042, 1053,
G 1085, 1123, 1129, 1135
geminates 41, 155, 720, 824, 999, 1012 word-initial 278, 466, 520, 767
gender 26, 33, 36, 62–63, 65, 94, 128, 162, glottalization 60–61, 74, 128–129, 156–
217, 298, 335, 402, 413–415, 423, 571, 157, 173, 185, 192–196, 202, 214, 228,
577, 584, 633, 650–651, 776, 869 240, 243, 289, 378, 424, 503, 622, 635,
General American 252, 257, 262, 294, 636, 743, 858, 870–871, 960, 991, 1027–
298, 338, 340, 349, 356, 396, 504, 739, 1029, 1042, 1071, 1092, 1096, 1106
741–743, 775, 956, 1048, 1099, 1120 pre- 60, 192
GOAL 43, 150, 187–188, 190, 209, H

238, 242, 264, 266, 285, 290, 292, 294–
happY 43, 54, 80, 91, 102, 108, 120–121,
295, 305, 311, 316, 340–341, 395, 398,
126, 128, 131, 138–139, 154, 169, 187,
404, 410, 438, 484, 648, 659, 663, 849,
189–190, 198, 209, 212, 220–221, 226,
870, 889, 893, 968, 1006, 1009–1011, 236, 238–239, 264, 267, 273, 285, 290,
1051 294, 315, 340, 359, 369, 375, 395, 399,
GOAT 43, 50, 54, 59, 91, 100–101, 104– 402, 404, 410–411, 439, 453, 460, 505,
106, 121, 123–124, 127, 139–140, 148, 515, 518, 529, 552, 584–585, 587, 622,
150, 154, 170, 187–190, 198–199, 209, 629, 659, 664, 677, 695, 714, 740, 742,
220–221, 223, 225, 236, 238, 264, 266, 760, 762, 770, 772–773, 797, 819, 821,
273, 275–276, 285, 290–292, 294–295, 849, 870, 880, 892–893, 928, 936, 939,
301–304, 306–309, 311, 315–316, 322– 941, 945, 947, 956, 959, 962, 969, 974,
323, 333, 340–341, 346, 359, 368–369, 979, 980, 987, 994, 997, 1006–1007,
372, 387, 395, 398, 404, 410–411, 438, 1012, 1024, 1038, 1050–1051, 1070,
440, 454, 460, 484, 504–505, 515, 518, 1083, 1092, 1105, 1121, 1128, 1134
529, 540–542, 546, 555, 582, 584, 589– /h/ deletion (see deletion)
590, 592, 599–600, 608–610, 622–623, heterosyllabic 320, 386
626–627, 630, 632–633, 640, 648, 650, hiatus 83, 228, 316–317, 319, 596, 940,
659, 663, 695, 741–742, 757, 760–761, 971–973, 976–977, 979, 981
770–771, 797, 819, 821, 849, 870, 880, High Rising Terminal (HRT) 619, 639,
889–890, 893, 909, 928, 936, 938, 945– 1088, 1095, 1126, 1137
947, 956, 958, 968, 971–972, 979–983, homophony 75, 93, 115, 170, 172, 266,
987, 989, 994, 996, 1006, 1009–1010, 286, 333, 342, 344, 348, 357, 516, 522,
1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 1067–1068, 583–585, 587, 685, 709, 820, 849–850,
1081, 1090–1091, 1095, 1103, 1119, 857, 894, 926, 990, 999, 1070–1071,
1128–1129, 1132–1133 1084, 1095, 1122, 1124, 1129, 1135
GOOSE 43–44, 54, 58–59, 91, 101, horsES 43, 102, 121, 142, 154, 165, 189,
106, 121–122, 138–140, 147, 151–153, 209, 236, 264, 267, 273, 285, 290, 295,
155, 167, 170–172, 187–190, 197–198, 304, 315, 340, 359, 369, 375, 395, 400,
200, 209, 220–221, 225, 236–237, 264, 404, 410–411, 430, 439, 505, 515, 518,
266, 273, 276, 285, 287, 290–292, 295, 529, 552, 567, 585, 587, 601, 622, 628,
302, 304, 307–308, 311, 316, 322, 333, 659, 664, 740–742, 761–762, 771–772,
340–341, 359, 361, 369, 372, 376, 387, 797, 821, 849, 870, 880, 885–886, 928,
395, 398, 404, 410–411, 439–440, 515, 945, 947, 956, 959, 969, 974, 987, 994,
518, 529, 542–543, 555, 582–584, 587, 997, 1006, 1008, 1024, 1038, 1050, 1070,
589–592, 600, 617, 621–622, 626–627, 1083, 1092, 1105, 1121, 1134
629, 631, 636, 640, 648–649, 659, 664, hybridized English 872–873
734, 737, 740, 742, 759, 761, 769, 771,
819, 821, 849–850, 870, 880, 890, 893,
927–928, 936–937, 945, 947, 956–957, I
969, 972, 979–980, 987–988, 994, 996, identity 28, 36, 65, 122, 124, 132, 137,
1006–1007, 1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 161, 231, 233, 235, 252, 272, 278, 280,
1065–1066, 1071, 1079, 1084, 1090– 283, 306, 355, 364, 367, 403, 408–409,
1092, 1101–1102, 1117, 1122, 1128– 413–414, 416–417, 419–420, 422–423,
1129, 1133, 1135 432–433, 463, 504, 506, 523, 569–570,
growen 611 610, 614–615, 673, 692, 735–736, 744,
776, 785–786, 814, 867, 926, 964, 1003, K

1019–1020, 1048, 1112
KIT 42–43, 51–53, 57, 59, 90, 101–102,
implicational scale 253, 668
121, 137, 142–143, 165–166, 169, 187–
implosive 557, 1085
188, 198, 209, 220–222, 224–225, 236–
indigenization 818, 943, 1015, 1036
237, 263–264, 273, 285, 290, 294, 296,
ingliding (see gliding)
303, 307–308, 315–316, 333, 340, 345,
ingressive 380, 465 347, 359, 361, 368–371, 387, 395, 404,
innovation 42, 51, 65, 83, 89–90, 122, 410–411, 438, 504, 515, 518, 529–530,
126, 131, 184, 219, 223, 247, 282, 334, 538, 555, 582, 584–589, 608–609, 611,
335, 340, 355, 362–363, 370, 372–373, 616–617, 621, 627, 629, 631, 640, 649,
409, 448, 491, 560, 810, 812, 876, 941, 651, 659, 663, 740, 742, 758, 761, 768,
1065, 1069, 1076, 1077, 1121 771, 819–820, 849–850, 870, 880, 885–
interdental (see dental) 886, 893, 927–928, 935–936, 940–941,
interference 132, 278, 362, 407, 409, 418, 945, 947–948, 956, 967–970, 978–979,
450, 463, 701, 723, 726, 788, 808, 865, 981, 987, 991, 994–995, 1006–1007,
867, 871, 913, 924–925, 927, 943, 1049, 1013, 1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 1063,
1072, 1095, 1096 1076, 1082, 1084, 1090–1091, 1100–
intonation 45, 50, 64, 66, 74–76, 88–89, 1101, 1114, 1122, 1128–1129, 1131, 1135
111, 130–132, 142, 176, 185, 199, 213, (see also dropping, final KIT)
242, 252, 305, 380, 389–392, 402–403, split 886, 935–936, 956, 967, 969, 979,
406, 426–427, 429, 430, 447–448, 981, 987, 991, 1100, 1114 (see also
487–488, 504, 521–522, 601, 605, 619, split)
639, 643, 662, 666, 687–689, 708, 713,
722–724, 728, 733, 747–748, 763, 773,
798–799, 801, 816–817, 826, 828, 839– L
840, 862, 928, 943, 944, 978, 983, 993,
1000–1002, 1032, 1038, 1044, 1058, /l/ 38, 52, 63, 71, 81, 86, 110, 143, 175,
1063, 1074, 1088, 1095, 1108, 1109, 242, 277, 288, 312, 342, 344, 348, 583,
1113, 1126, 1136 584, 588–590, 592, 594–596, 612, 618,
falling 64, 142, 390, 403, 724, 747, 828, 621–623, 635, 641–642, 644, 650, 655,
839, 856, 915, 1001, 1044, 1074 661, 699, 721, 744, 791, 838, 881, 883,
fall-rise 828, 1044 895, 910, 926, 940, 949, 956, 998, 1026,
rise-fall 828, 1044, 1058 1128, 1135, 1136
rising 142, 402, 403, 504, 521, 666, 724, Bristol 198
747, 773, 828, 839, 915, 978, 1001, clear/palatal/light 38, 45, 50, 63, 71,
1044, 1058, 1074 110, 130, 175, 446, 641, 767, 940, 998,
IPA 527, 677, 680, 717, 719, 745, 789, 1073, 1108, 1125, 1136
961, 1095 coda 584, 588–589, 623, 641–642, 1136
isochrony 827, 840 dark/velarised 63, 71, 87, 110, 130–131,
143, 160, 175, 319, 377, 468, 595, 609,
611, 619, 641, 643, 744, 940, 960, 976,
998, 1011, 1073, 1073, 1094, 1108,
J 1125
jod/yod linking 319, 595–596, 1094
dropping (see deletion, jod/yod) postvocalic 332, 334, 368, 377–378, 388,
jod/yod insertion 380 446, 622, 649, 651, 767, 1097, 1125
vocalization 63, 78, 160, 175, 190, 386, 391, 418, 420–422, 461, 498, 528,
195–196, 201, 238, 241–242, 267, 289, 629–632, 649, 651, 685, 695, 740–741,
293, 299, 319, 342, 377, 388, 425, 576, 756, 789–791, 793, 796–797, 823, 850,
585, 589, 592, 595–596, 609, 611–612, 857, 880, 887, 894, 944–947, 987–988,
622, 626, 635, 640–643, 649, 651–652, 1008–1010, 1026, 1075, 1084, 1127
654–655, 861, 1073, 1094, 1097, 1108, lengthening 74, 86, 108, 111, 122, 125, 167,
1125 (see also coda /l/) 178, 198–199, 225, 237, 265, 273, 286,
L1 99, 407, 515, 572, 577, 578, 674, 714– 331, 346, 357, 370, 410, 426–427, 430–
715, 720–723, 731, 751–753, 767, 776– 431, 516, 519–520, 528, 629, 659, 662,
777, 805–807, 845, 848, 851, 854, 859– 666, 702, 759–760, 769, 792, 800, 862,
860, 862, 871, 918, 924, 931, 933–935, 945, 951, 957, 959, 974–975, 980, 988,
937, 940, 943, 953, 955–957, 967–968, 997, 1032, 1039, 1043, 1066, 1069–1070,
970–973, 975–976, 978–980, 982–984, 1074–1075, 1082, 1100, 1114, 1122
999, 1004–1005, 1010, 1013, 1014, 1036, lenis 975, 983
1040, 1089, 1096, 1099, 1114–1116 lenisation 1085, 1123, 1129, 1135
L2 71, 74–75, 278, 412, 415, 417, 432, lettER 43, 54, 91, 102, 108, 121, 126, 138,
447, 451, 483, 625, 658, 674, 714–715, 154, 187, 189, 198, 201, 209, 220–221,
720, 722–723, 731, 751, 753, 774–777, 226–228, 236, 238, 264, 267, 273, 279,
779, 805–811, 813, 816, 818–819, 845, 285, 290, 294, 304, 315, 317, 340, 359,
848, 921, 924–925, 933–935, 940, 943, 369, 375, 377, 395, 399–400, 402, 404,
953, 966–968, 970–971, 974, 976, 982, 410–412, 439, 454, 460, 485, 505, 515,
984, 992, 997, 1005, 1035–1036, 1049, 518, 529, 552–553, 606–607, 628, 659,
1053, 1099–1101, 1109, 1115, 1127 664, 677, 695, 740–742, 761–762, 770,
labial 43, 57, 92, 319–320, 373, 385, 442, 772–773, 819, 821, 849, 870, 880, 892–
455, 460, 466, 473–474, 535, 546, 585, 893, 927–928, 936, 939, 945, 947, 956,
592, 596, 641–642, 652, 660, 696, 776, 959, 969, 974, 980, 987, 991, 994, 997,
833, 840, 853, 946, 1025, 1072, 1085, 1006, 1008, 1010, 1012, 1024, 1038,
1094, 1123 (see also bilabial) 1050, 1052, 1070, 1083, 1092, 1105,
-velar/labio-velar 78, 293, 401, 833, 466, 1121, 1129, 1134, 1135
473–474, 585, 596, 840, 881, 1072 lexical set 39–43, 53, 75–76, 78–79,
post- 373 84–86, 89–92, 100–101, 123, 165, 167,
labialization 154, 442, 467, 640, 1085, 169, 171–172, 188–189, 198, 199, 201,
1094, 1123, 1136 220, 263–264, 359, 373, 387, 404, 453,
labiodental (see dental) 582–583, 606, 683, 758, 761–762, 771–
language shift 70–71, 81, 96, 413, 806, 772, 880, 885, 888, 892–893, 899, 936,
812, 954, 962, 981, 983 968–969, 1006, 1024, 1040, 1050, 1063,
lateral 89–90, 95, 193, 241, 277, 467–468, 1075, 1083, 1091, 1094, 1100, 1112,
472, 585, 595, 611, 618, 648–649, 654, 1130, 1131
660–661, 696, 833, 838, 881, 910, 946, lexifier 251, 525–526, 555, 560, 573, 671,
1012, 1026, 1045, 1053–1054, 1084– 694, 703, 712, 715–716, 798, 871, 1095
1085, 1090–1092, 1094, 1122 (see also liaison 667, 940, 1029, 1035, 1045, 1094
/l/ vocalization) light /l/ (see /l/)
prelateral 277, 649–650, 1090, 1122 lingua franca 511, 572–573, 657, 672,
lax 126, 239, 273, 276–277, 285–287, 690–692, 711–712, 751, 805–806, 813,
290–291, 294, 307, 330–332, 341, 344, 845, 847, 867–868, 905, 918–922, 934,
347–348, 350, 368, 370–371, 375–376, 954, 965, 1018–1019, 1047
Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE) LOT 42, 53, 58, 75, 85–86, 91, 101–104,
249, 270, 272–273 121, 137, 139, 141, 144, 146, 154, 165,
Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States 167, 187–188, 198, 200, 209, 220–222,
(LAGS) 250, 306 236–237, 263, 265, 273–275, 285–287,
Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South 290, 294, 296, 303, 306–308, 310, 317,
Atlantic States (LAMSAS) 249, 323 329–331, 340–342, 347, 356, 358–359,
Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Coast 361, 368–369, 371–372, 374, 376, 387,
(LAPC) 343 389, 395–396, 404, 410–411, 419, 438,
Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest 440–441, 453, 460, 504–505, 515, 518,
(LAUM) 342, 346 529, 533, 537, 540, 555, 563, 582, 584,
Linguistic Survey of Scotland (LSS) 25, 586, 589, 599, 629–630, 640, 659, 663,
38, 39, 40 740, 742, 759, 761, 769, 771, 819–820,
linking 894 (see also /l/ and /r/) 849, 870, 880, 887, 889, 891, 893, 928,
/g/ 858 936–938, 945, 947, 956–957, 968, 970,
/h/ 983 979–981, 987–988, 994–995, 997, 1006,
/w/ 595–596, 1094 1008–1009, 1024, 1038, 1050, 1064,
liquid 86, 156, 289, 292, 312, 344, 348, 1071, 1077, 1079–1080, 1084, 1090,
379, 385, 487, 520, 542, 553, 562–563, 1100–1101, 1115, 1122, 1127–1129,
618, 661, 680, 682, 743, 853, 881, 909, 1131, 1135
940, 950, 962, 998, 1025, 1053–1054, low back merger (see merger, LOT/
1092, 1107, 1136 (see also /l/) CLOTH/THOUGHT)
loan word 70–71, 109–110, 210, 212, 231, lowering 44, 57, 59, 78, 81, 88, 98, 143,
354, 358, 467, 525, 558, 562, 598, 600, 150, 154, 173, 195, 222–224, 238, 266,
616, 703, 744, 754, 756, 764, 767, 769, 276, 290–291, 296, 302, 309–313, 322,
798, 823, 881, 915 333, 335, 345, 347, 361, 370–374, 385–
long 386, 391, 395–397, 422, 439–440, 490,
half- 43, 80, 758, 768–770, 939, 1066 519, 548, 611, 619, 640, 695, 704, 758–
fully- 43, 1066 761, 768–770, 794–795, 799, 851, 862,
vowel 28, 41, 57, 70–71, 74, 80, 83–84, 937, 941, 951, 956–958, 970, 972, 979–
100, 102, 104, 106, 108, 111, 114, 980, 988, 995, 1063–1064, 1070, 1075–
121–122, 126, 140, 144–146, 148–149, 1079, 1082–1083, 1090, 1104, 1112,
172, 178, 189, 191, 220, 223–226, 1114–1115, 1118, 1120, 1131, 1134
236–237, 239, 266, 295, 371–372,
400, 409, 418–419, 453, 457, 460–461,
463, 471, 484–496, 504–505, 519, 522, M
528, 581, 584, 588–590, 597–598, 601, merger 28, 38, 42, 44, 77, 87, 89, 93,
615, 617, 621, 626–628, 631–632, 641, 102, 125–126, 146–148, 150, 152–153,
650, 660, 664, 685, 695, 702, 704–705, 166, 170, 174,-175, 196, 199, 237, 240,
756, 762, 765, 789, 790, 793, 796, 821, 264–265, 274–275, 277–278, 287–289,
927–928, 937–939, 947, 957–958, 961, 292, 311, 314–317, 321–322, 329–332,
988, 995–996, 1039, 1051–1052, 1063, 340–345, 348–349, 356–358, 360, 363,
1065, 1069, 1075, 1078–1080, 1082, 373–374, 386, 418–419, 421, 442, 449,
1091–1092, 1100–1101, 1114, 1116– 458, 469–470, 485, 490–491, 515–516,
1118, 1127–1128, 1131 591, 599, 621, 649–650, 672, 680, 683,
consonant 41, 104, 111 703–705, 764, 766, 849, 857, 885, 887,
stressed syllable 176 889–894, 911, 913, 918, 926–927, 944,
982–983, 1067, 1071, 1083–1084, 1086, 659, 664, 667, 695–696, 718, 740, 742,
1090, 1092, 1100, 1111, 1113, 1122, 760, 762, 770–771, 794, 797, 819, 821,
1135 849, 859, 870, 880, 890, 893, 927–928,
LOT/CLOTH/THOUGHT 237, 273–275, 935–936, 938, 945–947, 956, 958, 960,
308–310, 330, 340, 342–343, 349, 356– 969, 972–973, 979, 981–983, 987, 989,
357, 361–363, 411, 419, 440–441, 650, 994, 996, 1006, 1008, 1024, 1038, 1050,
742, 850, 887, 889, 893, 927, 1079, 1052, 1068, 1081, 1091, 1103, 1119,
1084, 1100, 1122, 1127–1128 1128–1129, 1133, 1136
MEET/MEAT 147 multilingualism 954
NEAR/SQUARE 152–153, 239, 313,
368, 374, 439, 505, 576, 582–583,
590–592, 610, 617, 621, 623, 890–891, N
1067, 1071, 1120, 1122 nasal 28, 42–43, 73–74, 76, 92, 120, 127,
PIN/PEN 302, 307, 329, 331–332, 345, 130–131, 139, 141–145, 155–156, 178,
347, 411, 1084 202, 223, 238, 274, 285, 297, 308–309,
PRICE/CHOICE 140, 151–152, 238 312, 315–316, 320–321, 331–334, 341,
mesolect 190, 251, 253, 383, 511, 513– 345, 348, 360, 370, 376, 379, 385–386,
514, 516, 518–519, 521, 523, 574, 576, 388–389, 396, 401, 422, 425, 454–455,
680, 736, 742–743, 746, 807, 859, 867, 461, 467–468, 471–472, 476, 486–487,
871, 888, 928, 944–951, 956, 961–962, 490, 497–498, 519, 521, 540, 557–558,
1010, 1022, 1036, 1049–1058, 1076, 585, 645–647, 660–661, 665–667, 683,
1089, 1099 696–697, 792, 822, 833–835, 837–838,
metathesis 201, 380, 516–517, 532, 548, 840, 854, 857–858, 862, 880–882, 889,
662, 756, 777, 824, 1027, 1029 895, 899, 909–911, 926, 940, 950, 957,
minimal pair 286, 466–467, 478, 488, 960, 975, 977, 979, 981, 988, 998, 1025–
583, 588, 611, 759, 797, 838, 849, 907, 1027, 1045, 1048, 1053–1054, 1073,
926, 959, 962, 1111 1084, 1086–1087, 1092, 1097, 1107,
monolingualism 50, 417 1122, 1124, 1128–1129, 1135–1136
monophthongization 266, 311–312, 329, nasalization 50, 321, 389, 391, 407, 412,
332, 346–348, 387, 398, 409, 411, 490, 425, 454–455, 461, 486, 498, 517, 558,
596, 650–651, 660, 664, 766, 849, 855– 619, 698, 720, 765, 837–838, 857–858,
856, 881, 889, 927, 935, 938, 958, 973, 881–882, 910, 977, 1084, 1087, 1107,
979–980, 1010, 1040, 1075, 1080–1081, 1122, 1135
1095, 1112, 1119 pre-nasalized 717–718, 837–838, 910,
mora 581, 601, 615, 619, 762, 828, 1095 1107
MOUTH 43–44, 53, 86, 91, 101, 107, 121, national language 112, 506, 673, 689, 693,
124–125, 138, 142, 152, 172, 187–189, 710, 713, 728, 829, 919, 922, 1005–1006,
191–192, 198, 200, 202, 209, 220–221, 1019, 1035, 1047
225, 236, 238, 241, 263, 266, 273, 276, nativization 358, 572, 597–599, 749, 756,
285, 287, 290, 292, 295, 301, 303–304, 766–767, 769, 943, 1036
313–314, 331, 333, 340–341, 359, 368– naturalness 444, 571, 1126
369, 373–374, 387, 395, 398, 402, 404, NEAR 43, 53, 56, 91, 102, 107, 121,
410–411, 439, 441, 454, 460, 485, 495, 138, 146, 152–153, 172–173, 186–188,
504–505, 515, 518, 529, 542, 545–546, 198, 201, 209, 220–221, 225, 236, 239,
555, 561, 582, 592, 595–596, 600, 606, 263, 266, 273, 285, 290, 295, 304, 313,
608–610, 626, 628, 630, 632–633, 640, 340, 359, 368–369, 374, 387, 395, 399,
402, 404, 410, 438–439, 454, 460, 485, 825–826, 834, 853, 881, 919, 949, 971,
496, 505, 515, 518, 529, 546–548, 576, 1026, 1044, 1103–1104
582–583, 589–592, 599, 606, 608–611, NURSE 42–44, 54, 89, 91, 101, 104, 108,
617, 621, 623, 628, 630, 633, 650–651, 110–111, 121, 125–126, 130, 137, 146–
659, 663, 740–742, 758, 760, 762, 770, 147, 149, 153, 159, 167, 172, 187–188,
772, 819, 821, 849, 870, 880–881, 887, 198, 201, 209, 220–221, 224, 236, 239,
890–893, 927–928, 936, 938, 945–947, 241, 264–266, 273, 285–287, 290, 295,
956, 958, 969, 973, 979–980, 987, 989, 303, 309, 314, 317–318, 340, 359, 369,
994, 996, 1006, 1009–1010, 1024, 1038, 375, 387, 395, 397, 404, 410–411, 439,
1045, 1050–1052, 1069, 1071, 1082, 454, 460, 504, 515, 518, 529, 537–538,
1084, 1091–1092, 1104, 1111, 1120, 555, 568, 582, 587–588, 591, 594, 600,
1122, 1129, 1133, 1135 606–607, 610, 617, 621, 627, 629, 631,
neutralization 144, 151, 195, 344, 472, 640, 659, 664, 676, 694, 740, 769, 771,
485–486, 516, 540, 555, 562, 583–584, 819–820, 849, 850, 870, 880–881, 888,
588–589, 592, 617, 655, 667, 684, 701, 891, 893, 908, 925, 927–928, 936–937,
741–742, 756–757, 768–769, 820, 849, 945, 947, 956–957, 959, 968, 971, 979–
939, 944, 949, 1025, 1087, 1090–1092, 980, 981, 987–988, 994–995, 1006, 1008,
1095, 1136 1024, 1038, 1050, 1052, 1067, 1069,
non-reduction (see vowels, unreduced/ 1071, 1080, 1091, 1094–1095, 1097,
nonreduced) 1101–1102, 1118, 1128, 1132
NORTH 43–44, 53, 56, 90–91, 101, 110–
111, 121, 126, 138, 153–154, 172, 187–
188, 198, 201, 209, 220–221, 224, 226, O
236, 239–241, 264, 266, 273, 277, 279,
285, 287–288, 290, 292, 295, 303–304, obstruent 148, 155, 292, 295, 298, 312,
314, 317, 329–331, 340–341, 348–349, 332, 341, 346, 348, 368, 373, 379, 386,
359–360, 368–369, 374, 387, 395, 397, 389, 447, 469, 472, 487, 503, 583, 645–
399, 402, 404, 410–411, 419, 433, 438, 647, 792, 795, 825, 858–860, 881, 883,
454, 460, 505, 515, 518, 529, 550, 555, 896, 899, 946, 951, 961, 974, 976, 979–
582, 590, 659, 663, 677, 695, 740–742, 980, 981, 1027, 1086, 1108
759, 762, 769, 772, 819, 821, 849, 870, offglide (see glide/gliding)
880, 891, 893, 927–928, 945, 947, 956, onset 64, 74, 76, 150, 152–153, 156, 191,
958, 969, 974, 979–980, 989, 994, 996, 201, 238–239, 241, 267, 273, 317, 319,
1006–1007, 1011, 1024, 1038, 1050, 368, 372–374, 377–379, 426, 431, 442–
1052, 1066–1067, 1079, 1084, 1117, 445, 458, 465–471, 474–475, 486–487,
1128, 1134 497, 520, 560, 589, 595, 596, 611, 621,
Northern Cities Shift/Northern Cities Chain 629, 641–642, 648, 746, 824, 871, 882,
Shift 254, 264, 273, 294–296, 299, 340, 895, 938, 946, 949–950, 971–973, 977,
348–349, 361–362, 385–386, 391–392, 979–983, 989, 1025–1026, 1067–1069,
1076–1078, 1122 1078–1082, 1094, 1117–1121, 1124–
nucleus 40, 88, 274, 276, 286–287, 292, 1125, 1129, 1132–1136 (see also glottal
295, 300–302, 307, 310–313, 316, 326, onset)
333, 343, 345, 348, 351, 359–361, 373– cluster 467, 470–471, 486, 882, 950,
374, 398, 411, 420–421, 439–441, 453– 951
455, 457–460, 467–468, 470–472, 503, oral 173, 370, 379, 424, 452, 466–468,
601, 623, 641–642, 794–795, 799–800, 519, 743, 835, 882, 977
P 742–744, 754–759, 762, 764–769, 772,

788, 792, 796–797, 816–817, 819, 822,
palatal 190, 196, 267, 279, 314, 378, 385,
832, 838, 850, 853–854, 857, 860–861,
400, 465–467, 473–474, 559, 585, 596,
871, 880, 907–909, 926–928, 939, 945–
636, 660–661, 680, 696, 698, 706, 775,
950, 962, 972–973, 975, 982, 997, 1011,
883, 895, 909, 929, 936, 950, 1025, 1092,
1013, 1024–1025, 1031, 1038, 1050–
1097, 1124, 1136
/l/ (see /l/) 1054, 1075, 1095–1097, 1111–1112,
alveo- 62, 370, 378, 470, 559 1128
lamino- 660–661, 665, 1096 phonotactic 109, 263, 377, 384, 389, 411,
pre- 909 472, 525, 662, 686–687, 701–702, 724,
palatalization 37–38, 40, 44–45, 71, 79– 745, 929, 977, 982–983, 1026, 1044–
80, 88, 155, 240, 486, 490, 495, 517, 555, 1045, 1097, 1126
559–560, 635–636, 648–649, 661, 743, pitch 73–74, 88, 111, 242, 305, 389–390,
755, 895–896, 957, 1085, 1092–1093, 427–430, 448, 477, 487–488, 504, 521,
1097, 1123, 1135 601, 605, 619, 662, 666, 723, 747, 763,
PALM 40, 43–44, 54, 59, 101, 106, 121, 772–773, 798–800, 826–828, 838–840,
138, 149, 159, 172, 187–188, 198–199, 862, 915–916, 951, 960, 978, 1014–1015,
209, 220–221, 224, 236–237, 264–265, 1029–1030, 1032, 1044, 1074, 1109
273, 275, 285–287, 290, 294, 296, 304, plosive 37, 60, 71–76, 79–82, 84, 92–93,
310, 340–341, 358–359, 369, 372, 387, 108–109, 128–129, 131, 150, 155–157,
395, 397, 401, 404, 410, 419, 438, 454, 173–174, 192–193, 196, 228, 240–243,
460, 504–505, 515, 518, 529, 540, 582, 278–281, 285–286, 288, 291, 293, 297–
590–591, 621, 642, 645–648, 653–654, 298, 319–320, 333, 348, 370, 376, 378–
659, 663, 694, 740, 742, 759, 761, 769, 380, 385, 388, 400–401, 408, 411, 418,
771, 819–820, 849, 870, 880, 889, 893, 424–426, 432, 445, 456, 462, 465–467,
928, 945, 947, 956, 957, 968, 970, 979– 469–470, 472, 474–475, 480, 486–487,
980, 987, 989, 994, 996–997, 1006–1007, 490, 493, 495, 503, 517, 520, 533, 557,
1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 1066, 1078– 559–560, 563, 581, 585–586, 593,
1079, 1091, 1116–1117, 1132 595, 599, 614–615, 618, 622–623, 635,
paragogue 662, 667, 700702, 706–707 660–661, 665, 667, 683–685, 696–698,
pharyngeal(ization) 63–64, 108, 317, 619, 705–706, 717–718, 720–721, 742–745,
819–821 755–756, 766, 822, 833, 840, 853, 858–
pharyngealized /l/ 110 860, 862, 870, 880, 882–883, 895–896,
phoneme 41, 57–58, 87, 101, 103–104, 908–909, 910, 926, 929, 935, 939–940,
107, 109–110, 122–123, 127, 178, 190, 949–951, 959–960, 975, 977, 979, 981,
218, 220, 222, 226–229, 238, 273–275, 983, 990–991, 997–998, 1011–1013,
280, 285–287, 290–291, 295, 297, 306, 1025, 1027–1029, 1042, 1053–1054,
340–342, 344, 355–357, 359, 368, 376, 1071–1072, 1085–1086, 1092–1093,
384–385, 391, 400, 418–419, 423–424, 1096–1097, 1106, 1123, 1129, 1135–
442, 452–455, 457, 460–461, 465–469, 1136
471, 473–476, 485, 487, 495, 505–516, polysyllabic 426, 600, 650, 769, 773, 857,
525, 527, 531, 533–535, 542, 556–557, 862, 915, 958, 978, 1000, 1043, 1052,
559, 582–589, 591–593, 610, 659–661, 1055, 1074, 1126
663, 665, 667, 676–677, 680–687, 689, post-creole 656, 884 (see continuum)
691, 694, 696–698, 700–701, 705, 707, postvocalic 130, 329, 535, 654, 940, 996,
716–718, 720–722, 724–725, 727, 739, 998, 1010, 1087 (see also /l/, /r/)
prefix (see affix) 682, 684–685, 696, 699, 717, 721, 743,
prelateral (see lateral) 860, 881–882, 894–895, 910, 926–927,
prestige 48, 83, 99, 140–141, 202, 208, 940, 949–953, 957, 961–964, 996–1000,
212, 217, 238, 240–242, 303, 318, 323, 1029, 1070, 1073, 1082–1084, 1087,
364, 383, 515–516, 568, 591, 613, 615, 1092–1097, 1105, 1122, 1125, 1129,
625, 649, 752, 776, 815, 817, 868–869, 1135–1136 (see also rhoticity)
920, 923, 933, 935, 944, 954, 957–958, intrusive 159, 175, 195, 227–228, 241,
969, 1018, 1022, 1065, 1099, 1125 279, 288, 301, 317, 321, 334, 342, 401,
covert 238, 241, 776, 869 595, 860, 940, 961, 1029, 1045, 1073,
PRICE 43–44, 54, 57, 90–91, 101, 106– 1087, 1094, 1125, 1129, 1136
107, 121, 125, 138, 140, 151–152, 170, linking 75, 152, 154–155, 159, 175, 195,
187–189, 198, 200, 209–210, 219–221, 227–228, 241, 279, 317, 595–596, 858,
225, 236, 238, 264, 266, 273, 276, 285, 860, 894, 940, 961, 976, 983, 1029,
287, 290, 292, 295, 300–301, 304, 307, 1045, 1094, 1108
310–312, 314, 329, 332, 335, 340–341, postvocalic 60, 62–63, 67, 196, 259,
359, 368–369, 373, 387, 395, 398, 404, 265–267, 269–270, 277, 279, 285, 317,
410–411, 439, 441, 454, 460, 503–505, 324, 329, 333, 341, 377, 446, 476, 568,
515, 518, 529, 543–545, 555, 582, 591, 606, 940, 957, 996, 998–999, 1010,
599–600, 608–611, 626–627, 630, 632– 1087, 1105, 1125, 1136
633, 640, 659, 664, 677, 695, 740, 742, vocalization 62–64, 265, 279, 356–357,
760–761, 770–771, 819, 821, 849, 870, 362, 446, 596
880–881, 890, 893, 928, 935–936, 938, raising 39, 41, 44, 57, 64–65, 73–74, 76,
945–947, 956, 958, 969, 972–973, 979, 78, 85–88, 92, 102, 107, 131, 142, 144,
981–982, 987, 989, 991, 994, 996, 1006, 152–153, 159, 166, 222–223, 225, 237–
1008, 1024, 1038, 1050, 1052, 1067, 238, 266, 274–276, 286–288, 291–292,
1080–1081, 1091, 1103, 1118, 1128, 295–297, 307–308, 310, 315, 321, 341,
1133 348, 359–362, 364, 368, 370, 371, 373,
prosody 45, 75, 95, 101, 111, 130, 132, 375, 385–386, 391, 398, 413–414, 421–
142, 242, 303, 305–306, 331, 380, 391, 423, 436, 439, 441, 446, 529, 532–533,
419, 426–427, 429–430, 432–433, 436, 541, 548, 591, 599, 611, 630, 632, 640,
438, 447–448, 477–479, 487, 504, 521– 651, 704, 740–742, 758–760, 768–770,
523, 576, 598, 600, 619, 622, 687, 722, 796, 828, 840, 880, 937, 940–941, 956–
726, 746, 749, 789, 798–801, 816, 824, 957, 970, 972–973, 989, 1010, 1039,
883, 907, 915, 944, 951–952, 1000, 1013, 1065, 1074–1077, 1079–1083, 1090–
1029, 1038, 1063, 1074–1075, 1087, 1091, 1101, 1112, 1114–1116, 1118–1119,
1095, 1097, 1113, 1126, 1136 1121–1122, 1131–1134,
prothesis 662, 667, 767, 999 Canadian Raising 276, 292, 295, 341,
351, 356, 359–360, 362, 364, 368, 373,
441, 795, 971–973, 975, 979, 981–982,
R 1081, 1119
/r/ 28, 62, 64, 78–79, 81–82, 84–86, 88, 93, real-time 65, 425
175, 178–179, 195, 197, 200–202, 211– Received Pronunciation [RP] 25, 28, 29,
212, 228, 241, 285, 288–289, 309, 314, 31, 57, 61, 88, 92, 102–106, 109–110,
317, 324, 476, 484–485, 517, 568, 581, 123–126, 128, 130, 142, 144–146, 150–
583, 588–589, 592, 594–596, 599, 606, 151, 154–155, 158, 165–166, 170–172,
610, 612, 615, 618, 660, 666, 679, 680, 175–176, 184–186, 189–191, 193, 198,
200–202, 209–210, 217–230, 235, 240, 309–310, 313–315, 317–318, 322, 334,
252, 309, 354, 504, 530–532, 534–535, 360, 411–412, 446, 485, 491, 493, 495–
584–585, 587–591, 595–596, 598–600, 496, 517, 551, 582, 594–595, 606, 654,
603, 607–608, 619, 626–627, 647, 649, 766, 792, 822, 856, 860–861, 927, 940,
775, 789, 808, 815, 817, 849–861, 863, 961, 976, 989, 997, 1066, 1069–1070,
886–889, 891–896, 899–900, 927–928, 1073, 1087, 1094, 1102, 1120, 1125,
931, 937–938, 940–941, 956–958, 960– 1136
961, 967, 970, 975, 977–978, 988–989, pre- 277
991–993, 996, 998–1001, 1007–1014, semi- 239, 241, 568, 605
1024–1032, 1040, 1043–1045, 1063– rhoticization 158
1075, 1086, 1091, 1094, 1099, 1108– rhythm 64, 176, 268, 306, 380, 504, 576,
1109, 1111–1112, 1114–1119, 1121, 1125, 581, 600–601, 615, 619–620, 623–624,
1127–1128 746, 763, 816–817, 827–830, 840, 884,
Mainstream 72, 83, 86, 190, 219, 227, 893, 918, 928–930, 951, 961, 1001,
255, 384, 437, 576, 578, 720, 913, 967, 1013–1014, 1029–1030, 1044, 1055,
993, 1086 1088, 1095, 1097, 1126
Traditional 25, 189, 219–229, 1064, rise-fall (see intonation)
1067–1070 rising (see intonation)
reduplication 459, 688, 706–708, 1023 rounding 44, 58, 104, 110, 117, 126, 141,
resonant 346, 976
143–146, 150, 167, 170, 172, 191, 199,
restructuring 182, 255, 483, 488–489, 497,
209–210, 222–226, 237, 239, 273, 296,
656, 885–887, 890–891, 894, 899–900,
302, 308, 313, 318–319, 329, 334, 340,
911–913, 1076
343, 371–373, 375, 377, 396–397, 421,
retraction 50, 85–86, 92, 126, 225, 308,
440, 455, 490, 505, 516, 519, 531–535,
310, 333, 335, 360–361, 371, 373, 375,
545, 582–583, 585, 589, 612, 621, 640,
626, 956, 969, 978, 980, 1064
648, 679, 789, 853, 908, 937–938, 956–
retroflex 42, 50, 62–63, 73, 75, 81, 86–87,
958, 970, 972–973, 979–980, 988–989,
93, 130, 197, 200–201, 211, 317, 324,
341, 375, 517, 594, 660–661, 680, 684, 991, 995–996, 1009, 1066–1067, 1072,
766, 860, 940, 959–960, 998, 1011, 1077, 1079, 1082, 1090, 1094, 1101–
1053–1054, 1073, 1087, 1096–1097, 1112, 1115, 1117–1118, 1131–1132
1106–1107, 1123, 1136 rural 27, 29, 47–48, 71, 74, 77, 86, 88,
rhotic(ity) 28, 30, 56, 62, 79, 92, 104, 90–92, 94, 99–101, 104, 112, 120, 130,
107, 110–111, 120, 126, 129–130, 139, 134–136, 155, 175, 177, 180, 184, 190,
159, 175, 180, 195, 197, 200–201, 211, 199–202, 207, 211, 234, 241, 254, 272,
226, 236, 239, 241, 279, 285, 288, 293, 275–276, 278–281, 297, 299–300, 303,
298, 300–301, 309, 313–315, 317–318, 305, 307–308, 310, 312, 314–315, 319,
322, 330, 334, 360, 377, 446, 470, 476, 321–323, 325–326, 328–332, 334–337,
485, 487, 490, 503, 505, 576, 594–595, 342, 345–346, 354, 366–370, 372–377,
605–607, 610, 650, 660–661, 679, 950, 379, 407, 412, 501, 504–505, 511, 513–
974, 1008, 1010, 1052, 1066–1067, 515, 517, 523, 569, 577, 606, 610, 651,
1069–1070, 1073, 1082–1083, 1087, 653–654, 672, 677, 697, 700–701, 715–
1094–1095, 1097, 1102, 1107, 1120, 716, 719–723, 728, 730, 752, 758, 764,
1122, 1125, 1129, 1136 (see also /r/) 787, 813, 844, 845, 847, 892, 895, 904,
hyper- 201, 377 933, 1064, 1066–1071, 1081, 1086–1087,
non- 30, 92, 107, 120, 139, 159, 175, 1096–1097
195, 201, 285, 287–288, 300–301, 303, rural pidgin 715–716, 722–723
S CURE 890, 892–893

DRESS 886
schwa 56, 79, 102, 108, 152, 176, 238,
FOOT-STRUT 115, 119–23, 139–140,
266, 308, 421, 484, 611, 679, 741, 746,
178, 535
768–769, 771, 794, 855, 862, 893, 944–
GOAT-GOAL 190
948, 957, 959, 969, 990, 1008, 1012,
KIT 886, 935–936, 956, 967, 969, 979,
1026, 1040, 1045, 1051, 1081–1083,
981, 991, 1100, 1114
1090, 1092, 1095, 1099, 1108, 1114,
1119–1121, 1127 LOT-CLOTH 537
Scottish Vowel Length Rule 41, 56, 64, NURSE 888, 893
67, 1066, 1070, 1122, 1129 PRICE 989
second language (see L2) TRAP 588
segmental features 74, 131, 376, 390, 479, TRAP-BATH (‘short a’) 285, 290, 356,
525, 753, 798, 662, 816, 900, 955, 968, 362, 536, 792
1013, 1033, 1038, 1045 SQUARE 43–44, 53, 59, 89, 91–92,
selection 56, 59, 254, 259, 463, 468, 525, 101, 107, 110–111, 121, 125, 138, 146,
626, 725, 787-- 788, 806, 992, 1112 152–153, 172–173, 187–188, 198, 201,
semilingualism 1047 209, 219–221, 226, 236, 239, 263, 266,
shortening 122–123, 145, 147–148, 150– 273, 279, 285, 290, 295, 304, 313, 316,
151, 166–167, 223, 276, 332–333, 335, 340, 359, 368–369, 374, 387, 395, 399,
360, 431, 484, 519, 593, 650, 653, 701, 402, 404, 410–411, 435, 438–439, 454,
937, 957–958, 961, 972, 974, 1001, 1039, 460, 505, 515, 518, 529, 547–548, 555,
1075, 1078, 1114, 1117, 1132 558, 576, 582–583, 588, 590–592, 599,
simplicity 753, 784 608–611, 617, 621, 623, 628, 630, 633,
simplification 84, 159, 219, 321, 334, 385, 650, 659, 663, 677, 695, 740–742, 758,
425, 434, 479, 686, 805, 811, 824, 836, 760, 762, 770, 772, 819, 821, 849, 870,
849, 882, 895, 914, 925, 944, 951, 990, 880–881, 885, 890–891, 893, 927–928,
1037, 1087, 1126, 1136 936, 938, 945–947, 956, 958–959, 969,
smoothing 172–174, 226, 856 973, 979–980, 987, 990, 994, 996, 1006,
sociolect 167, 633, 647, 645, 648, 651, 653, 1009–1010, 1024, 1038, 1050–1052,
655, 657, 715, 727, 1042–1043, 1049 1055, 1067, 1069, 1071, 1082, 1084,
sonorant 72, 84, 128, 373, 378–379, 456, 1087, 1092, 1104, 1120, 1122, 1129,
469, 593, 706, 881, 949–950, 1000, 1073, 1133–1135
1086, 1094, 1097, 1124 START 43–44, 53, 55, 91, 101, 107, 110–
sonority 71, 229, 425–426, 434, 469, 702 111, 121, 138, 146, 149, 153, 159, 172,
Southern Drawl 303, 305, 308, 323, 329– 187–188, 198, 201, 209, 220–221, 226,
331 236, 239, 241, 264, 266, 273, 276, 279,
Southern Shift 264, 307–308, 322–323, 285, 287, 290, 292, 295, 302, 304, 309–
329, 333, 335, 337, 386, 391, 1076, 1078– 310, 313–315, 340, 348, 359–360, 368–
1080, 1082, 1117, 1120, 1122, 1128 369, 374, 387, 395, 399, 402, 404, 410,
spelling pronunciation 102–103, 105, 111, 438, 454, 460, 487, 505, 515, 518, 529,
211, 260, 265, 310, 341, 601, 618, 622, 548–549, 555, 582, 586, 588, 590–592,
685, 758–759, 767, 823, 853, 855, 858, 596, 606, 616–617, 621, 626–627, 659,
861–862, 889, 925, 928, 998, 1012, 1084, 663, 677, 695, 740–742, 759, 762, 769,
1122 772, 791, 819, 821, 849, 870, 880, 889,
split 72, 273, 341, 542, 892–893, 899, 891, 893, 928, 945, 947, 956–957, 969,
929, 1060, 1112 973, 979–980, 987, 989, 994, 996, 1004,
1006–1008, 1012, 1024, 1038, 1050– 850, 853, 870, 880, 887, 893, 927–928,
1052, 1055, 1066, 1078–1079, 1084, 936–937, 945, 947, 956, 968, 970, 979–
1090–1091, 1095, 1116–1117, 1134 980, 987–988, 994–995, 1006–1007,
stop (see plosive, glottal stop) 1011, 1024, 1038, 1050–1052, 1055,
stress 41, 63, 70, 73–74, 79–80, 82, 1065, 1071, 1077, 1084, 1090–1091,
100, 102–104, 108–111, 126–127, 130, 1095, 1100–1101, 1115, 1122, 1127–
141–142, 151–156, 158, 165–166, 169– 1129, 1131, 1135
170, 173–176, 192, 196, 200, 212–213, subphonemic level 853, 926
220–226, 228–229, 242, 267–268, 279, substrate 354, 422, 424–425, 427, 430–
285–286, 290, 293, 305–306, 308–309, 432, 445, 482, 503, 556–560, 563, 617,
311, 313, 315, 317–318, 320–322, 329– 657, 684, 688, 694, 706–707, 712, 720–
332, 334, 358, 370, 375–377, 379–380, 721, 723, 749, 808, 812, 840, 871, 955,
388–390, 399–400, 406, 409, 411–412, 1028–1029, 1037, 1042, 1058, 1089,
418–419, 421, 425–428, 446–448, 478, 1096
487, 504, 515–516, 519–521, 528, 541, suffix (see affix)
555, 557, 562, 570, 582, 584, 587, 592– superstrate 503, 510, 657, 706, 839, 1022–
593, 595–601, 619, 623, 636, 650, 662, 1023, 1076
666–667, 687–689, 700–702, 708, 713, supraphonemic level 926, 928
722–725, 740–741, 743–744, 746–747, supraregional(ization) 25, 30, 70–72, 75,
760–763, 770–773, 775–776, 779, 791, 78–80, 84–85, 87, 90–93, 186, 252, 1064,
795, 809–810, 822, 824–827, 830, 839– 1068, 1128
840, 882, 896–900, 907, 911–913, 916, suprasegmental 63, 74, 213, 342, 413,
927–930, 935, 939, 944–946, 950–952, 432, 455, 487–488, 499–500, 521, 523,
961, 963, 971–974, 977–980, 990–991, 662, 666, 739, 753, 763, 809, 862, 882,
995, 1000–1001, 1008, 1012–1014, 1020, 896, 928, 930, 944–945, 950, 961, 977,
1024, 1029–1031, 1038, 1043–1044, 1043, 1045
1051–1053, 1055–1057, 1063, 1074– Survey of English Dialects (SED) 29, 33,
1075, 1083, 1087–1088, 1092–1093, 102, 106, 136, 161–162, 164, 178, 191,
1096–1097, 1108–1109, 1122, 1126– 210, 216, 555
1127, 1129, 1136 svarabhakti 999
-shift 825, 978–980, 1074, 1108, 1129 syllabic
-timing 306, 425–426, 447, 504, 619, consonant 202, 228–229, 241, 467–468,
747, 773, 827, 829, 883, 930, 944, 951, 824, 1000, 1055, 1108
961, 1014, 1030, 1044, 1055, 1088, /l/ 128, 157, 242, 289, 378, 468, 521,
1097, 1108, 1126–1127, 1136 635, 641–642, 652, 744, 861, 1026,
STRUT 28, 42, 44, 53, 91, 101–103, 108, 1045, 1092
115, 119–123, 137, 139–140, 144, 165, nasal 228–229, 378–379, 467–468, 635,
167, 169, 178–179, 187–188, 198–199, 834, 990, 1026, 1045, 1092
209–211, 220–223, 225, 236–237, 239, /r/ 309, 317, 358, 375, 378, 606
263, 265–266, 273, 285, 290–291, 294– syllable structure 38, 41, 434, 458, 467,
297, 303, 307–308, 333, 340, 359, 369, 472, 476, 491, 520, 581, 615, 687, 695,
371, 376, 387, 395–396, 404, 410, 438, 700, 702–703, 724, 824, 827, 834, 882,
440, 485, 504–505, 515, 518, 529, 533– 929, 950, 1002, 1026, 1045, 1055
535, 537, 545, 555, 582, 584–588, 590, syllable timing 306, 447, 666, 1014,
599, 616, 623, 627, 630, 659, 663, 740, 1108–1109
742, 759, 761, 769, 771, 819–820, 849– syncope 553, 662, 667, 886
T tone 45, 50, 64, 88, 130, 142, 176, 213,

242, 390, 402–403, 487–488, 521–523,
/t/ 60, 61, 74, 79, 81, 84, 93, 109, 166,
527, 529, 557, 563, 588, 601, 639, 643,
173–174, 192, 196–197, 228, 242–243,
710, 716, 800, 809, 825–828, 838–841,
278, 288–289, 298, 570, 586, 593, 595,
856, 862, 898, 907, 915–917, 951, 978,
609, 612, 618, 622, 635–636, 644, 661,
665–666, 680, 700, 717–718, 721, 743, 998, 1074, 1088, 1095, 1108–1109,
881–882, 895–896, 915, 926, 948, 998, 1126–1127, 1137
1025–1026, 1071–1072, 1085, 1092– lexical 488, 527, 716, 839
1093, 1096, 1108, 1123, 1129, 1135 (see TRAP 42, 44, 53, 58–59, 90, 101–102,
also glottalization) 104, 106, 121, 137, 139–146, 165–166,
tap 62, 79, 158–159, 267, 317, 320, 355, 169, 187–188, 198–199, 209, 219–223,
465, 487, 581, 593, 615, 618, 623, 635, 226, 228, 236–237, 239, 263–264, 273–
681, 696, 887, 976, 1028, 1053, 1055, 275, 285–286, 290, 294, 296–297, 303,
1072–1073, 1092 308–310, 340, 347–348, 356, 358–359,
tautosyllabic 320, 330, 332, 368, 390, 458, 361, 368–370, 372, 374, 387, 395–396,
460, 471, 476 404, 410, 419, 438–439, 441, 453, 460,
tensing 80, 126, 131, 139, 169, 187, 485, 504–505, 515, 518, 529, 532–533,
274, 285–286, 291, 307–308, 348–349, 536, 555, 582, 584, 586–588, 590, 592,
369–371, 376, 385–386, 421–422, 424, 599, 606, 608–609, 611, 616, 621, 628,
491, 587, 649, 685, 740, 742, 886–891, 630, 640, 645–647–649, 651, 653–655,
945, 951, 1026, 1065, 1069, 1076, 1078, 659, 663, 740, 742, 758, 761, 768, 771,
1082–1083, 1116, 1131, 1133–1134 819–820, 849–851, 870, 880, 887–889,
TH 891, 893, 927–928, 936–937, 940–941,
stopping 37, 42, 240, 486–487, 493, 945, 947, 956, 961, 968, 970, 978, 981,
495, 975, 979, 981, 1072, 1135 987–988, 994–995, 998, 1006, 1024,
fronting 65, 185, 192, 202, 214, 608, 1038, 1050–1052, 1055, 1064–1065,
612 1071, 1077–1078, 1084, 1090–1091,
THOUGHT 43, 54, 58, 75, 84–85, 91, 1095, 1100–1101, 1115, 1122, 1127,
97, 101, 106, 121, 138–139, 144, 146, 1129, 1131, 1135
149–150, 154, 159, 172, 187–188, 198, trill 63, 79, 412, 661, 666, 680, 756, 871,
209, 220–221, 224, 226, 236, 264–265, 909, 940, 950, 957, 976, 996–998, 1055,
273–275, 285–286, 288, 290–291, 294, 1087, 1097, 1129, 1136
296, 300, 304, 306–310, 329–331, 340– triphthong 173, 201,303, 308, 313, 315,
342, 347, 356, 359, 361, 368–369, 371– 790, 822, 912, 997, 1010, 1081
372, 387, 395, 397, 404, 410–411, 419,
438, 440, 454, 460, 504–505, 515, 518,
529, 540, 555, 582, 584, 589–591, 599,
606, 617, 628, 659, 663, 740, 742–743,
U
759, 761, 769, 771, 793, 797, 819–820, unaspirated (see aspiration)
849–850, 870, 880, 887, 889, 891, 893, unreleased 93, 424, 743, 748, 755, 766,
927–928, 936–939, 945, 947, 956–957, 974, 1028–1029, 1096
960, 968, 971, 979–980, 987, 989, 994, unrounding 58, 77, 85, 88, 92, 103, 121,
996–998, 1006–1007, 1024, 1038–1039, 144–146, 167, 190–191, 199, 273, 288,
1042, 1050–1052, 1066, 1071, 1079, 292, 294, 296, 308, 313, 329, 340, 342,
1084, 1091, 1101–1102, 1117, 1122, 358, 361, 371, 374, 377, 396–397, 421,
1128–1129, 1132, 1135 505, 519, 589, 591–592, 651, 908, 938,
956–957, 988, 996, 1066, 1077, 1080, 597, 599–600, 606, 609, 618, 623, 626,
1090, 1112, 1115, 1118, 1131–1132, 1134 637, 640, 644–645, 647–649, 652, 655,
upgliding (see gliding) 663, 679, 697, 714, 723, 777, 827, 861,
uptalk (see High Rising Terminal) 866, 895, 945, 961, 972, 974, 990, 1005,
urban 30–32, 47, 50, 53–55, 58–62, 65, 1028, 1045, 1049, 1066, 1072, 1074,
67, 70–71, 77, 82–83, 85–87, 94, 99–100, 1077, 1092–1094, 1113, 1124
114, 120, 123, 126, 128–130, 134–136, sociolinguistic 192, 201–202, 409, 584,
139, 141, 151, 157, 159, 162, 164, 166, 700, 1090
176, 182, 185, 187, 191, 198–199, 201– variant 32, 42–44, 51–53, 55–59, 61–63,
202, 209, 231–232, 234, 238, 243, 254, 73, 89, 92, 102, 105, 109, 123–129,
261, 265, 270, 273, 282–283, 297–299, 144–146, 151, 154, 156–157, 170, 172,
303, 312–313, 323, 325–336, 339, 345, 184–187, 189–193, 196, 199–200, 214,
347, 353, 359, 367, 370–377, 383–384, 220–221, 223, 225–226, 235–237, 240–
417, 420, 433, 435, 448, 501, 504–505, 241, 253, 260, 262–264, 266, 268, 276,
513, 515, 518, 569, 577, 610, 653, 670, 278, 285–287, 289, 291, 296, 306–311,
673–674, 692–693, 701–702, 707–708, 313–315, 317, 319–320, 332, 334, 341,
715–716, 720–721, 723, 728, 731, 751– 344, 346–348, 356, 368–369, 371–373,
752, 758, 815, 844, 847, 866, 869, 904– 375–376, 378, 384, 400, 407, 409, 414,
906, 917, 954, 1063–1064, 1066–1069, 416, 424, 440–442, 452, 456, 462–464,
1072, 1076–1079, 1081, 1084, 1086– 474–476, 479, 484, 486, 503, 505, 515–
1087, 1089, 1097, 1114, 1117–1118, 518, 535, 544, 551–552, 587–589, 591–
1122, 1124 594, 597, 599, 605, 611, 616–617, 621,
uvular 110, 126, 129, 377, 765, 939, 976, 626–628, 631–633, 635–638, 640, 664,
1073, 1087, 1129, 1136 666, 680, 684, 696–697, 717, 736, 753,
758, 769, 808, 818, 851, 855, 857, 859,
870, 946, 948, 950, 956–959, 962, 969,
V 972–973, 976, 982, 988, 997–998, 1005,
variability 32, 132, 191, 212, 224, 357, 1010, 1064–1067, 1069, 1077–1083,
411, 441, 476, 514–515, 612, 624, 627, 1085, 1091–1092, 1094–1095, 1101–
629, 636, 663, 697, 720–723, 792, 794, 1103, 1105–1106, 1112–1122, 1130,
796, 818, 829, 852–853, 856–857, 1136
860–861, 946–947, 962, 971, 974, 1064, variation 25–26, 28–30, 32, 37, 39–43, 46,
1066–1067, 1075–1076, 1080, 1083- 51, 53, 58–60, 62, 65–66, 94, 101–102,
1084, 1111–1112, 1115, 1117–1119, 104, 107–108, 124, 128, 130, 132–133,
1125, 1127 140–141, 152, 156–157, 170–172, 177,
variable 25, 51, 60, 62–63, 85, 89, 122, 189–190, 193, 203, 208, 215, 218, 223–
128, 130, 132, 146, 148, 150, 155, 180, 224, 226, 231–232, 235, 243, 249–250,
187, 191, 195–197, 199, 209, 211, 213, 252–254, 257, 261, 264, 266, 269, 276,
223, 229, 236, 241, 250, 274–275, 279, 280–281, 283–284, 286, 288, 290, 293–
281, 284, 286, 293, 298, 303, 314–315, 294, 297, 299, 308–310, 312–313, 319,
317, 321, 349, 351, 355–356, 359–362, 321, 324, 329, 335–337, 341, 349–351,
369–370, 372, 374–375, 377–380, 399, 358–359, 364, 381, 386, 400–401, 415,
401, 407, 411–412, 415, 419–420, 422– 430, 433–434, 443, 445, 448–449, 456,
423, 425–426, 432–434, 444, 446, 452, 462–468, 470, 474–475, 477, 480, 483,
461, 463–464, 474–475, 477, 479, 482, 490, 495, 502, 506, 514–515, 517, 536,
485, 515, 517, 522, 536, 576, 583, 593– 543, 568–569, 574–578, 581, 593, 595,
597, 599, 604–608, 613, 617–618, 625– 683, 696–698, 705, 717, 720–721, 743,
626, 630–631, 633, 640, 643–645, 647, 755–756, 765, 767, 853, 859–860, 880–
649–650, 652, 654–655, 664, 668–669, 881, 935, 939, 950, 960, 962, 975, 998,
674, 677, 679–680, 682–684, 687, 693– 1012–1013, 1027, 1070, 1072, 1080,
694, 696–697, 699–703, 705, 707–708, 1085, 1086, 1093, 1096, 1103, 1106,
715–716, 719–721, 724, 727, 736, 740, 1119, 1123–1124, 1133, 1135–1136
742–744, 748–749, 752–753, 758–760, voiceless 41–42, 50, 61, 74, 79, 86,
764, 769, 773, 777, 779, 784, 787–788, 90, 108, 110, 128, 155, 167, 178, 201,
791, 794–797, 818, 820, 825, 827, 829, 228, 276, 285, 292, 295, 310–313, 332,
838–839, 848, 852, 854–858, 871, 881, 335, 341, 348, 351, 359–360, 368, 370,
884–885, 889, 906, 915, 921, 924, 928, 373, 378, 387, 397–398, 400–401, 424,
931, 935–937, 948, 950, 955, 959, 962, 441–442, 447, 456, 466, 469, 472, 475,
975–976, 986–989, 992–993, 995–998, 487, 497, 503, 517, 521, 583, 585, 593,
1002, 1005, 1007–1011, 1013–1015, 595, 599, 607, 614, 618, 660–661, 665,
1017, 1022, 1032, 1038, 1043, 1045, 680, 683–684, 696, 705, 721, 740, 743,
1050–1052, 1054, 1063–1066, 1075, 746, 755, 766, 774, 792, 795, 859, 862,
1078, 1086, 1089, 1091–1096, 1099, 881, 883, 914, 935, 939, 950, 962,
1101, 1102, 1104, 1111–1112, 1119, 974–975, 997–999, 1012–1013, 1025,
1121 1027, 1053–1054, 1071–1072, 1081,
velar 28, 42–43, 73, 79–81, 88, 92, 120, 1085–1086, 1093, 1096, 1103, 1119,
127, 139, 155, 212, 238, 297, 317, 319, 1123–1124, 1133, 1135–1136
360, 370, 377, 385, 466–468, 471, 473– vowel
474, 490, 495, 517, 555, 558–559, 585, back 44, 56, 63, 77–78, 84–86, 124, 170,
592–593, 596, 652, 660–661, 665, 696, 222, 225–226, 235, 264–266, 275, 292,
721, 744, 765, 776, 822, 840, 854, 882, 295, 316–317, 330–331, 333–334, 340,
909–910, 929, 936, 939, 956, 969, 987, 343, 345, 348–349, 358, 380, 409, 412,
998, 1025, 1072–1073, 1085–1087, 1094, 421, 440, 454–455, 495, 521, 540, 596,
1100, 1106, 1123–1124, 1128–1129, 617, 623, 627–628, 640, 642, 649, 664,
1135–1136 (see also labio-velar) 704, 792–793, 796, 850–851, 854,
velarization 63–64,71–72, 75, 87, 131, 858–859, 908, 928, 950, 956–958, 962,
142, 242, 401, 468, 471, 486, 595, 861, 995–996, 998, 1009, 1039, 1066, 1091,
940, 950, 1011, 1129 (see also /l/ 1094, 1116, 1128
velarized) central 108, 125, 224, 270, 330, 358,
vernacularization 72 398–399, 440, 484, 589, 590, 626–629,
vocalization (see /l/, /r/) 632, 648, 664, 677, 679, 704, 789–790,
voicing 64, 109, 156, 197–198, 201–202, 850–851, 927, 937, 944–947, 1008,
267, 380, 389–390, 472, 491, 495, 517, 1070, 1080, 1090, 1092, 1118
593, 665, 683, 685, 696, 860, 862, 894– devoiced (see devoicing, vowel)
895, 949, 1012, 1041, 1054, 1085, 1096– epenthetic 42, 56, 130, 158, 195, 198,
1097, 1123, 1129, 1135 379, 529, 563, 686, 697, 699, 700–701,
voiced 41, 50, 57, 90, 110, 155, 198, 201, 717, 722, 724–725, 727, 756, 767, 777,
228, 240, 266–267, 285–286, 291, 312– 821, 824, 859, 862, 893, 1004, 1055,
313, 320, 332, 335, 342, 348, 360, 370, 1097, 1107
376, 386, 388, 398, 401, 441, 447, 469, front 40, 45, 73, 78, 80–81, 83, 170,
475, 485, 490, 517, 521, 557, 581, 593, 172, 222, 224, 237, 264, 267, 273, 275,
595, 615, 618, 635, 660–661, 665, 680, 277, 295, 307, 317, 319, 330–331,
333–334, 347, 358, 360, 370, 375, 388, W

391, 399, 409, 419, 421, 439, 453–454,
w/v alternation 442–444
457, 485, 490, 530, 533, 538, 543, 546,
word-final 61, 78–79, 93, 108–110, 156–
559, 587–588, 608, 611, 627–628, 642,
157, 166, 173–174, 198, 202, 214, 225,
648, 664, 686–687, 790–791, 851, 854,
228, 267, 275, 286, 288, 293, 313, 317,
858–860, 880, 886, 908, 928, 940–941,
945, 948, 978, 981, 990, 1009, 1071, 348, 375, 378, 389–390, 399, 401–402,
1084, 1090–1091, 1100, 1121, 1127 412, 446, 455, 459, 484–487, 495, 498,
517, 537, 539–540, 543, 544, 558, 586,
harmony 267, 496–497, 527, 663, 699–
593, 596, 606, 679, 680, 682, 684–687,
700, 706–707, 751, 816, 856–857, 892,
700, 724, 740–741, 744, 755, 765–766,
929, 1055, 1096–1097, 1122, 1135
822, 824, 835, 856, 858–859, 889, 929,
length 39, 41, 56, 64, 67, 73–74, 198,
939, 971–976, 982–983, 999, 1011,
235, 516, 588–589, 592, 597, 660, 662,
1025–1027, 1029, 1042, 1054, 1071–
695, 703, 720, 754, 765, 816, 819, 827,
1072, 1080–1083, 1085–1087, 1093,
850, 862, 928, 945, 947, 1025–1026,
1095–1097, 1106–1107, 1121, 1123–
1031, 1039, 1052, 1066, 1070, 1095,
1101, 1122, 1129 1126, 1129, 1135–1136
reduction 222, 418–419, 599, 791, word-initial 108, 110, 156, 158, 174, 201,
827–828, 862, 883, 885, 890–894, 900, 229, 240, 278, 293, 376, 378–379, 390,
1012, 1040, 1055, 1088, 1108, 1126 401–402, 411–412, 445, 466, 486–487,
518, 520, 585, 596, 599, 683–684, 686–
retraction 85–86, 92, 126, 225, 308, 310,
333, 335, 360–361, 371, 373, 375, 626, 687, 724, 744, 767, 858, 935, 949, 961,
956, 969, 978, 980, 1064 977, 990, 999, 1013, 1054, 1071–1072,
1085–1087, 1123–1124, 1126, 1128–
underspecified 455–456, 461–462, 707
1129, 1135–1136
unreduced/nonreduced 239, 484, 485,
504, 911–913, 959, 972, 977, 981,
1012, 1040
untensed 999 Y
weak 619, 1070, 1083–1084, 1092, 1121 yod (see jod)
Index of varieties and languages
A Arabic 511, 813, 920, 954, 965, 966

Perso-Arabic 764
Aboriginal English [AbE] 569, 574–576, Atlantic Creole 393, 499, 575, 578, 662,
578, 656–670, 1089, 1091–1093, 1095, 667, 786
1115, 1118, 1120, 1126 Australian Creoles 575, 656–670, 1095–
Aboriginal languages 569–570, 572–573, 1096
659–661, 664, 666, 670 Australian English [AusE] 569–571, 574–
Aboriginal Pidgin [AbP] 674 577, 588, 602, 608, 611, 625–655, 659,
African American Vernacular English 663–667, 676, 712, 785–786, 789–797,
[AAVE, African American English, 801, 941, 1090–1093, 1114–1119, 1121,
AAE] 232–233, 238, 248, 250–251, 1123–1125, 1127
254–255, 312, 322, 336, 383–392, 417, Australian Vernacular English [AusVE]
423, 425, 439–442, 446, 501, 810–811, 577–578
876, 883–884, 991, 1076–1088, 1099,
1115, 1123, 1125–1126
African Nova Scotian [Nova Scotian] 990 B
Afrikaans 810–812, 933–934, 939–940, Baba Malay 1018
942, 955, 965–968, 977, 980–982, 984, Bahamian English [BahE] 435–449, 490,
986, 1108 1077–1087, 1119–1120, 1123–1124
Afrikaans English [AfkE] 811, 931–942, Bahasa Malaysia 1034–1036, 1039, 1045
965, 968–973, 976–977, 979, 982, 1108 Bajan [Barbadian Creole, Baj, BbdC] 254,
Akan (see also Igbo) 845, 847, 850–851, 256, 393, 406, 484–485, 487–488, 498–
856, 858–861, 863, 866–867, 871 507, 1125
Aluku 526 Balochi 1005
American English [AmE] 163, 248–264, Bantu (see also Twi) 394, 877, 918, 926–
268–269, 273, 277–278, 280–281, 295, 927, 943, 949–951, 964
303, 305, 307–308, 312, 317, 319, 321, Barbadian Creole (see Bajan)
324–325, 333, 336, 338, 348, 350–352, Bay Islands English 986
354–356, 358, 360–361, 363, 383–385, Bazaar Malay 1018 (see also Malay)
391–392, 396, 406, 409, 411–412, 419– Belfast English 30, 72, 87–90, 95, 130
421, 425, 427–430, 432, 436, 439–440, Belizean Creole [BelC] 249, 254–255
443, 446–448, 513, 530–535, 570–571, Bengali 953, 1013, 1034–1035, 1107
577, 600, 741–743, 747, 752, 775, 786, Black Country English [Black Country
811, 815, 823–824, 848, 860, 880, 883– dialect] 30, 134–138, 140–162
884, 929, 946, 956, 1014, 1048–1049, Black South African English [BlSAfE]
1054–1058, 1077, 1079, 1082, 1084, 810–812, 935, 943–952, 1100–1109,
1086–1088, 1094, 1112–1120, 1123– 1119
1126 British Creole [BrC, British Black
Anglo-Indian (see Indian English) English] 31–32, 231–243, 1063–1070,
Anglo-Saxon 28, 48, 113–115, 163, 877 1072, 1116, 1119–1121, 1123–1124,
Anglo-Welsh (see Welsh English) 1126
1162 Index of varieties and languages
British English [BrE] 28, 33, 128, 139, Central American Creoles [CAmC] see
203, 208, 211–212, 214, 219, 222–224, Belize, Miskito Coast Creole
230–235, 237, 239–240, 242, 248, 262, Channel Islands English 204–216, 1067,
268, 281, 351, 355, 358, 393, 443–444, 1069
448, 450, 473, 479, 483, 518–519, 574, Channel Islands French 209–214
577, 637, 751, 786, 780, 808, 811–812, Chicago English 298, 377, 421, 1086
816–818, 824, 826, 828, 848–849, 855, Chicano English [ChcE] 254, 417–434,
857–859, 861–863, 871, 892, 929–930, 1076–1084, 1119
940, 978, 980–981, 983, 991, 997, 999, Chinese Pidgin English [ChnP] 730, 739
1002, 1022, 1037, 1058, 1070–1071, Cincinnati English 341, 348–349
1082, 1086, 1112, 1114–1115, 1119– Cockney 122, 145, 148, 175, 185, 189–
1120, 1125–1127 191, 203, 209, 243, 440, 443–444, 486,
Butler English (India) [ButlE] 811–812 532–533, 548, 555–556, 775, 1068, 1119
Colloquial Singapore(an) English
[CollSgE] 1017–1018, 1021, 1023–
C 1032
Cultivated Australian English 625, 636,
Cajun English [CajE] 255, 407–416,
643
1076–1077, 1079–1088, 1118–1119,
1121, 1123–1124
California English 315, 347, 350, 431,
424, 1076–1077, 1114
D
Cameroon English [CamE] 810–811, 829, Derry English 30, 76, 89–90, 95, 97
885–900, 911, 917, 1100–1108, 1119, Detroit English 297–298, 362, 391–392
1124–1125, 1127 Dravidian languages 750, 810, 954–955,
Cameroon Pidgin [Cameroon Pidgin 960, 962, 993, 1003
English, CamP, Kamtok] 810–811, 885, Dublin English 75, 78, 82–86, 92–94
887, 902–917, 1100–1106, 1108–1109, Dutch 35, 249, 283, 491–493, 499–500,
1114 512, 527, 542, 580, 656, 817, 842, 844,
Canadian English [CanE] 68, 248, 254, 902–903, 931–932, 933, 964–965
347, 351–365, 367, 370–371, 381, 794–
795, 1049, 1076–1088, 1117, 1121
Cantonese 50, 729, 731–733, 748, 1018, E
1034 Early Modern English [EModE] 84, 86,
Cape Flats English [CFE] 808, 810, 812, 372, 530–531, 533, 535, 538, 540–542,
935, 964–984, 1099–1109, 1119, 1124 544–545, 642, 806
Caribbean English [CarE] (see also East African English [EAfE] 811, 918–
Eastern Caribbean English) 231, 233, 930, 1114, 1119–1120, 1126
235, 249, 251, 394, 440, 448, 483, 485– East Anglia(n) English 25, 30, 32, 116–
486, 497, 523, 525, 978, 991, 1114, 1116, 117, 139, 163–177, 775–776, 1064–1071,
1120 1073–1074, 1115, 1118–1119, 1121–
Anglo-Caribbean English 494, 500 1122, 1124
Caribbean English(-lexicon) Creole(s) [CEC, Eastern Caribbean English(es)/Creoles
CarEC] 231–232, 503, 505, 510–513, 712 254, 481–500, 1077, 1083, 1086
French-lexicon Creoles: 510–512 Edinburgh English/Scots 47, 51–53, 57–
Celtic 28, 31, 48, 94–95, 98, 112, 156, 58, 61–62, 64, 66–67
196, 567 Edoid 831, 838
Index of varieties and languages 1163
Emai 813 Fijian 577–578, 750–759

English as Foreign Language [EFL] 30, Filipino [Pilipino] 738, 1047–1050, 1059
805–806, 808, 847, 921 Filipino English (see Philippine English)
English as Native Language [ENL] 805, First Language [L1] variety 99, 407, 515,
810 572, 577–578, 674, 714–715, 720–723,
English as Second Language [ESL] 50, 731, 751–753, 767, 776–777, 805–807,
805–808, 810–811 845, 848, 851, 854, 859–860, 862, 871,
English English [EngE] (see also East
918, 924, 931, 933–935, 937, 940, 943,
Anglian English, West Midlands English)
953, 955–957, 967, 968, 970–973, 975–
32, 45, 47–48, 58–61, 63–64, 106, 109,
173, 231, 233, 240–241, 978, 1049, 1116, 976, 978–980, 982–984, 999, 1004–1005,
1120, 1125 1010, 1013–1014, 1036, 1040, 1089,
northern 28–30, 32, 48, 68, 76, 103, 106, 1096, 1099, 1114–1116
113–133, 139–147, 149, 151–155, 157– French 31, 48, 68, 145, 204–205, 207–215,
158, 178–179, 184, 195, 199, 222–223, 248, 249, 272, 301, 352–353, 367, 378,
248, 1064–1065, 1073–1074 407–409, 412–416, 492–493, 497–498,
southeastern 25, 29, 32, 114, 139, 141, 508, 510–512, 516–517, 521, 525, 573,
147–148, 151–152, 159, 174–175, 178– 600, 672–675, 677–682, 684, 686–688,
196, 200, 203, 217, 234, 237, 239–240, 726, 813, 815, 828, 904–906, 937, 1072,
1064–1069, 1073–1074, 1094, 1118 1097, 1124
southwestern 25, 28, 30, 32, 69, 73, 98, French Creoles (see also Caribbean French-
103, 106, 114, 118, 134–135, 139, 159, lexicon creoles) 249, 511, 516–517, 521
178–182, 190, 195–202, 211, 248, 357,
366, 372, 377, 379–381, 394, 503, 511,
1064–1069, 1072–1073, 1115–1120,
1123, 1125 G
southern 25, 29–30, 32, 48, 59–61, Ga 845, 847, 850–851, 853, 860–861,
63–64, 69, 72, 78, 86, 88, 113–117, 867, 871
121–123, 126, 132, 139, 144, 152, 162, Gaelic (see also Scottish Gaelic) 48, 69
165–167, 169, 172, 175, 178–203, 209, German 354, 573, 596, 653, 672, 711–713,
217, 222–224, 227, 230, 232, 1064– 817, 826
1069, 1071–1073, 1082, 1115–1117, Germanic 28, 36, 98, 163, 212, 426, 574,
1124–1125
929
English in Singapore and Malaysia
Ghanaian English [GhE] 808–809, 811,
[ESM] 806, 1019, 1023, 1032–1037,
1043, 1046, 1109, 1123 842–866, 870–873, 1100–1109, 1123
Estuary English 120, 128, 185–186, 202– Ghanaian Pidgin English [GhPE] 394,
203, 775 811, 864, 866–873, 875, 883–884
European English 925 Ghotuo 838
Glasgow English/Scots 30, 47, 50–55,
57–67, 142, 185, 1072, 1074
F Gujarati 750, 922, 954–955, 1035
Fante 845, 851–852, 858 Gullah 248, 254, 383, 393–406, 436, 440,
Fiji English [FijE] 573, 575, 577, 750– 442–443, 445, 449, 484, 489–490, 499,
779, 1089, 1095–1096, 1115, 1120–1121, 506, 561, 990, 1077, 1079–1087, 1126
1123 Gur 845, 860–861, 871
Fiji Hindi 511, 577, 750–779, 806, 953, Guyanese Creole [GuyC] 254, 481, 487–
955, 957, 998, 1002–1003, 1013–1014 488, 498–500, 521, 526, 533, 748
H Jamaican English [JamE] 440, 450–480,

1076–1078, 1080–1085, 1087–1088,
Hausa 809, 813–814, 816, 822, 828, 832,
845, 847, 850, 854, 867–868, 871 1124
Hausa English 816, 818–822, 824, 852 Japanese 573, 730–731, 733–734, 737–
Hawai’i Creole [HawC, Hawai’i Pidgin] 739, 744, 746, 748, 1001
573, 575, 578, 729–749, 1089, 1095–
1097, 1115, 1121
Hebrew 965–966 K
Hindi 511, 750–751, 764–767, 772–773, Kamtok (see Cameroon Pidgin)
778–779, 806, 953, 955, 957, 998, 1002– Kannada 953
1003, 1013–1014 Konkani 954–955
Hokkien 1018, 1034 Krio [Sierra Lione Krio] 526, 530, 545–
546, 551, 554, 810, 866, 882
Kriol 574–576, 578, 656, 658–662, 666–
I
669, 1089, 1095–1097
Iban 1034–1035 Kru 883
Igbo (see also Akan) 809, 813, 816, 819– Kru Pidgin English [KPE, Kru English]
820, 823, 828, 831–832 866, 875–876, 884
Igbo English 816–822 Kwa (see also Kongo, Wolof) 394, 845,
Indian English [IndE, Anglo-Indian] 766, 860–861
773, 809–810, 812, 954–955, 957, 959–
Kwinti 526
961, 992–1004, 1009, 1014, 1016, 1099–
1108, 1114, 1121–1125
Indian South African English [InSAfE]
806, 810, 812, 953–962, 1099–1108, 1116, L
1126 L1 variety (see First Language variety)
Inland Northern American English [InlNE] Latin 48, 68, 116, 920
293–294, 357, 361–363, 1076–1082, Liberian English [LibE] 851, 884
1084–1087 Liberian Settler English [LibSE] 809–811,
Insular Scots 37, 39, 43, 47 851, 874–884, 1099, 1101–1108, 1117–
Irish [Irish Gaelic] 25–26, 30–31, 48, 59, 1119
62, 64, 68–72, 74–76, 78–79, 81–82, 87, Liberian Vernacular English [LibVE,
89, 95–96, 139, 272, 367–381, 483, 495, Vernacular Liberian English, VLE] 874–
604–605, 1064, 1066, 1069, 1071–1072, 876, 881, 883
1116
London Vernacular English [LonVE] 235,
Irish English [IrE] 29–31, 33, 64, 68–97,
238–242
209, 381, 495, 503, 795, 806, 966, 1071,
1074, 1116, 1120–1121, 1123–1126 Low Country English (US) 300–301,
Island Creole(s) [IslC] 232–234, 240, 786 308–313, 321, 323, 439–440
Italian 352, 569, 652, 828
M
J Malay (see also Bahasa Malaysia, Bazaar
Jamaican Creole [JamC, Patwa] 32, 231– Malay) 572, 657, 675, 806, 812, 965–966,
243, 393, 449–481, 486–487, 490, 496, 1018–1019, 1021, 1029, 1034–1035,
498–499, 511, 523, 526, 530, 533, 545, 1042, 1107
548, 561, 1076–1088, 1120–1122, 1126 Malayalam 750, 953, 1035
Malaysian English [MalE] 810, 812, New Zealand English [NZE] 130, 164,
1034–1046, 1099, 1101–1109, 1124 177, 447, 567–577, 579–622, 624, 642–
Mandarin 50, 1019–1021, 1034–1036 643, 645–646, 649, 651–652, 655, 750–
Mande 394, 845, 860, 883 752, 775, 786–787, 789–790, 806, 810,
Maori 569–570, 572–573, 576, 578, 941, 1022, 1089–1095, 1114–1127
580–581, 594, 597–599, 601, 603, 611, Newfoundland English [NfldE] 254, 352,
614–624, 1095 357, 360–361, 363, 366–382, 1076–1088,
Maori English [MaoE] 569, 575–576, 579, 1121, 1123–1124, 1126
601, 614–624, 1089–1091, 1093, 1095, Nigerian English [NigE] 809, 811–830,
1123, 1126 835, 853–854, 1099, 1101–1109, 1116
Maori Pidgin English 573, 579 Nigerian languages 813–816, 828, 831,
Maori Vernacular English [MVE] 615 840, 851
Marathi English 993 Nigerian Pidgin [NigP] 806, 811, 814,
Melanesian Pidgin 573–575, 578, 656, 831–841, 1100–1105, 1108–1109, 1127
672, 675, 688–691, 708–710, 714–715, Norfolk English (England) 164, 166, 174–
727–728, 730, 752–753, 783, 1095–1096 175, 178, 182
Michigan English 297–299, 361–362 Norfolk English (Australia) [Norfuk] 573–
Middle English [ME] 71–72, 78, 88, 114, 575, 577, 780–801, 990, 1089–1090
116–117, 121, 124, 134–135, 137, 141, Norman French 48, 68, 204, 207–215
143–144, 147–148, 156, 158, 160, 162– Norn 35–38, 41, 44, 46
163, 166–167, 169–172, 178, 237, 312, Northern English dialect (see English
356, 362, 371, 530–533, 535, 538, 540, English)
544, 546–547, 548, 550–551, 792 Nova Scotian (see African Nova Scotian)
Midwestern American English 250, 254, 990
262, 266, 283, 294–295, 308, 315, 330,
338–350, 354, 358, 419, 1077–1082,
1084–1087, 1115 O
Miskito Coast Creole 526, 530
Oceanic 688, 708, 778–779
Old English [OE] 28, 47, 69, 78, 116, 132,
N 134, 141, 143–144, 146, 148, 151, 153,
156–160, 163, 176, 499
Ndjuka [Ndyuka] 526–544, 546–563, Old Norse 38, 156
1085, 1088 Orkney English 25, 28, 30–31, 35–46,
Neo-Melanesian (see Tok Pisin) 1063–1074, 1114, 1116, 1119, 1122
Nevis English 240, 486
New England English [NEngE] 249, 252,
254, 262, 264–265, 270–284, 339, 343–
P
344, 353–354, 357, 362, 380, 1077–1088,
1115–1117, 1119–1121, 1125 Pacific Pidgin 574, 579, 658, 689, 709–
New Guinea Pidgin (see Tok Pisin) 711, 730, 1124
New South Wales English 590, 647, 651– Pakistani English [PakE] 810, 812, 1003–
654 1015, 1099, 1101–1108, 1114, 1118,
New South Wales Pidgin 568, 657–658, 1120–1121, 1123
670–671, 690, 709–710 Panjabi 922, 1004–1005, 1013, 1106
New York City English [NYCE] 282–290, Pashtu 1005
299, 1077–1082, 1084–1087, 1124–1125 Patwa [Patois] (see Jamaican Creole)
Philadelphia English [PhilE] 282–284, 593, 600, 794, 924, 978, 1064, 1066–
289–293, 296–297, 299, 341, 343, 348, 1069, 1072–1073, 1117
359, 649, 654, 1076–1079, 1081–1082, Scottish Gaelic 50
1085–1087, 1125 Scottish Standard English [ScStE] 30,
Philippine English [PhlE] 1047–1059, 47–64, 77, 1067
1099, 1101–1108, 1115, 1121, 1123, Sea Island Creole (see Gullah)
1125 Shetland English 25, 29–31, 35–46, 64,
Pitcairn English [Pitkern] 573–575, 577, 1063–1073, 1114, 1116, 1119, 1122
780–802, 990 Sindhi 955, 1003, 1005
Pittsburgh English 284, 339, 342, 344, Singapore English [SgE] 601, 619, 752,
347–348, 1081 810, 812, 1010, 1015, 1017–1023, 1030,
Portuguese 352, 526, 564, 656, 674, 708, 1032–1033, 1037, 1046, 1099–1106,
710, 730–734, 738, 743, 748, 831, 842, 1108–1109, 1123, 1125
866, 902, 965, 985 Siraiki 1005
Portuguese Pidgin 831, 903 Solomon Islands Pidgin [SolP, Solomon
Providencia Creole 256, 526 Islands Pijin, Pijin] 573, 575–576, 578,
Pure Fiji English 577, 753–764, 766–774, 672, 688, 690–712, 721, 729, 1089,
778 1095–1097
Pushto 1011, 1013 Sotho 965
South African English [SAfE] (see also
Black / Indian / White South African
English) 775, 933, 935, 942, 952, 954–
R 955, 967, 983–984, 1108
Rama Cay Creole 779 South Asian English [SAsE] 1000, 1003–
Rasta Talk [Rastafari(an)] 232, 238 1004, 1011, 1013–1014, 1116, 1123
Received Pronunciation [RP] (see Index of South Seas Jargon 573, 671, 674, 730
subjects) Southern American English [SAmE] 74,
Romance 929 263, 300–337, 409, 412, 440–441, 1076–
Russian 965 1088, 1114–1122, 1124–1125, 1128
Southern English dialect (see English
English)
S Southeastern English dialect (see English
English)
San Andrés Creole 256 Southwestern English dialect (see English
Sanskrit 954, 1035 English)
Saramaccan [Saramakka, Saamakka] 526– Spanish 248, 302, 339, 408, 417–418,
544, 546–564, 1084–1085, 1088, 1123 420–422, 424–426, 429–433, 436, 447,
Scandinavian 31–32, 35–39, 41–42, 44– 508, 516, 521, 828, 1047
45, 48, 117, 339, 347 Sranan 249, 393, 525–528, 530–544, 546–
Scotch-Irish 272, 301, 347 564, 1086
Scots 30–31, 35–37, 39–41, 44, 46–69, St. Eustatius English 483, 486, 490–493,
72, 76–78, 80, 88, 97, 117, 139, 301, 495, 499
347, 378, 492, 494, 568, 794, 924, 1064, St. Helena English [StHE] 806, 812,
1066–1069, 1072, 1117 985–991, 1099–1104, 1106–1108, 1114,
Scottish English [ScE] 30–31, 35–37, 39– 1121, 1126
41, 44, 46–69, 72, 76–78, 80, 88, 97, 117, St. Kitts English/Creole 249, 483, 486,
139, 248, 301, 347, 378, 492, 494, 568, 492, 495–496, 499, 525, 782–783, 786
St. Louis English 284, 297, 302, 339–340, Tok Pisin [New Guinea Pidgin,
343–344, 348–349, 1084 Neomelanesian, TP] 573–578, 672,
Standard British English [StBrE] 450, 688, 690–691, 693, 710–728, 1089, 1095,
473, 479–780, 785, 808, 815–816, 835, 1097
863, 929, 966, 987 Torres Strait Creole 575–576, 578, 643,
Standard English [StE] 26, 30, 41, 47–48, 656, 658–662, 669–670
62, 114, 117, 132, 147–150, 163, 257, Trinidadian Creole [TrnC] 508–524,
278, 370, 376–377, 417, 429, 485, 503, 1076, 1088, 1119, 1121–1122, 1124,
513–516, 518, 520–521, 524–525, 536, 1126–1127
541, 544, 547, 553, 555–556, 574, 623, Turks and Caicos Islands English 484–
657, 660–661, 663–664, 666–668, 680, 485, 488–491, 495, 499, 1077
720, 732, 735–736, 755–756, 758, 760– Twi (see also Bantu) 844–845, 853–854,
761, 763, 767–768, 770–771, 773, 786, 864, 868
788, 796, 807–808, 811, 863, 869, 878,
922, 924, 927, 929, 942–943, 966, 987,
1021, 1080, 1089, 1093, 1096–1097 U
non-standard English 32, 384, 520, 818,
Ulster English 59, 62, 68, 72–73, 76–81,
657
88, 94, 96–97
sub-standard English 525
Ulster Scots 31, 68, 72, 76–78, 97, 301
Standard Ghanaian English [StGhE] 867– Urdu 953, 955, 957, 1003–1006, 1009,
869, 871 1011, 1013–1014, 1035
Standard Jamaican English [StJamE] 235, Utah English 339, 345, 349–350
237–239, 241
Standard Philippine English 1048–1049,
1059
W
Suffolk English 164, 174, 178, 182, 240
Suriname Creole(s) [SurC] 249, 254, 484, Welsh 30–31, 98–112, 521, 1072–1074,
493, 498, 525–564, 953, 1076–1087, 1116
1114, 1119–1122, 1124 Welsh English [WelE] 29, 45, 68, 98–112,
139, 1072, 1074
West African English [WAfE] 500, 812,
T 849–851, 853, 861–862, 875, 928, 1118,
1125–1127
Tahitian 574, 674, 780–783, 785 West African languages 390, 393, 443,
Tamil 511, 750, 812, 953, 955, 960–962, 450, 502, 828–829, 850–851, 873
993, 995, 997, 1002, 1013, 1018–1019, West African Pidgin (English) [WAfPE,
1021, 1034–1036, 1043, 1106–1107 WAP] 393, 805, 809, 811, 866, 902,
Tanzanian English [TanE] 924 916–917, 1122
Telugu 750, 953, 955 West Country English [Southwest English]
Temiar 1034 196–198, 200, 202, 372
Texas English 255, 308–312, 314, 317– West Indian English (see also Caribbean
318, 321, 324, 332, 335, 337, 407, 419, English Creoles) 234, 485, 500, 781
433 West Midlands English 25, 30–31, 74, 114,
Tobagonian Creole [TobC] 508–516, 134–162, 211, 232, 1064–1069, 1071,
518–524, 1076–1078, 1080–1081, 1083– 1073, 1114, 1118, 1124–1125, 1130
1088, 1116, 1119, 1121–1122, 1124, Western American English 248, 254,
1126–1127 259–260, 264–265, 294, 297, 301, 310,
330, 335, 338–350, 356–358, 362–363, Y

1077–1079, 1081–1082, 1084–1087,
Yiddish 965–966
1115, 1122, 1125
Yoruba 511, 809, 813–814, 816, 823,
Western Caribbean English 253, 483–486,
488, 496 827–828, 838, 852
White South African English [WhSAfE] Yoruba English 816, 818–822, 828, 1107
811, 931–942, 1117–1118, 1124
Z
X Zulu 932, 953–955, 958, 965
Xhosa 952, 965 Zulu 959–960, 969

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TITEL$0826 08-11-04 12:21:08 Rev 17.

02x META Systems

A Handbook of Varieties of English

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A handbook of varieties of English : a multimedia reference tool.

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek

The British Isles

The Americas and the Caribbean

Introduction: varieties of English in the Americas and the Caribbean . . . . . 247

Bajan: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501

The Pacific and Australasia

Introduction: varieties of English in the Pacific and Australasia . . . . . . . . . 567

Africa, South and Southeast Asia

Singapore English: phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1017

Synopsis: phonological variation in the British Isles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1063

Index of subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1139

The British Isles

Introduction: varieties of English in the British Isles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

The Americas and the Caribbean

The Pacific and Australasia

Introduction: varieties of English in the Pacific and Australasia . . . . . . . . . 547

Africa, South and Southeast Asia

Ghanaian English: morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854

Index of subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203

AAVE African American Vernacular English

InlNE Inland Northern (American) English

StHE St. Helena English

ESL English as Second Language

2. Organization of the Handbook

number of relevant varieties, their (present and/or past) relatedness, availability

Group III: restricted to relatively few non-standard varieties of English (possibly

3. Nature and structure of the contributions

The chapters are descriptive survey articles providing state-of-the-art reports on

Kortmann, Bernd (ed.)

Bailey, Richard W. and Manfred Görlach (eds.)

D’Costa, Jean and Barbara Lalla

Foley, Joseph A. (ed.)

Kirk, John M. and Dónall P. Ó Baoill

Labov, William, Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg

Montgomery, Michael B. and Guy Bailey (eds.)

Schneider, Edgar W. (ed.)

1994 International English: A Guide to Varieties of Standard English. 3rd edition.

Wolfram, Walt and Natalie Schilling-Estes

1. A note on geopolitical terminology

2. The coverage of British Isles accents and dialects

3. The concept of the ‘dialect area’

4. The distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ dialects

Another often-used notion in dialectology we would like to question is the sepa-

5. Historical and cultural elements in the formation of British accents

7. The chapters on phonology

Melchers’ focus is on distinctions between the phonology of Orkney (“Orcadian”)

8. The chapters on morphology and syntax

Beal provides a survey of features found in the grammars of varieties spoken in

Cheshire, Jenny, Viv Edwards and Pamela Whittle

2. The linguistic background

3. Research and data

There exists as yet no definitive description of the present-day phonology of the

dialect in general as having a “somewhat archaic character”, suggesting that its

4. Orkney and Shetland phonology

4.1. Phonological systems

by which he means qualitative changes in a number of Shetland vowels before

4.2.2. Further comments relating to the lexical sets

PALM AND START

NORTH AND FORCE