Black South African English: A new English? Observations from a phonetic viewpoint

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which users of Black South African English (BSAE) command the vowel system of English. One mother‐tongue speaker each of English, Southern Sotho and Zulu read a set of stimulus words representing various monophthong contrasts in standard South African English. Three groups of subjects participated as listeners in an experiment on English vowel perception. These include (1) 21 Southern Sotho speakers and 21 Zulu speakers, (2) 41 Arabic speakers, and (3) 20 Afrikaans speakers. The Arabic and Afrikaans speakers were used in the experiment for comparative purposes. Overall the results indicate a general lack of command of the vowel contrasts of Standard South African English by the speakers of Bantu languages. The same holds but to a lesser extent for the other two groups of listeners. Further analysis reveals that the Southern Sotho‐ and Zulu‐speaking listeners process the long vowel/short vowel contrast differently from contrasts based on vowel quality differences. In the concluding section, the results are interpreted against the backdrop of current theories of second language acquisition. The evidence supports transfer‐based explanations for phonological acquisition, since the vowels that the first language and target language of the speakers share are perceived more accurately than those that the languages do not share. In addition, the results are discussed in relation to the question whether BSAE is an interlanguage, or a fully‐fledged new English. On the face of current evidence, it seems that the mesolectal form of BSAE could be viewed as an interlanguage rather than as a new English, but one that has as yet to develop into a more stable alternative to the standard variety of South African English.