Black South African English: phonology*

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 ushered 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 making 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/intonation 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 educational 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 indigenized (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 distortions 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 departures from standard English and by exploring the historical and cultural influences on the development of this new variety.

With the exception of work by Hundleby (1963) in the Eastern Cape, the phonology 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. 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 pronunciation 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 different native languages.

The research on BlSAfE offers a picture that is very similar to work done on varieties of African English elsewhere on the continent. Vowel contrasts characteristic of the native varieties of English are reduced by neutralization of the tense/lax contrast and the avoidance of central vowels, particularly schwa. Consonants are realized largely similar to native varieties, although consonant cluster simplification 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 BlSAfE. 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, focusing 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 because 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.

We will offer 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.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.