Phonological Features of English as Spoken by Some Final Year Senior High School Students in Ghana

Abstract

This study was to determine if any trends could be detected in the English spoken by twenty Ga and twenty Asante-Twi final year Senior High School students. The researcher was interested in two things: the first was to use the Accent Phonology theory by Trubetzkoy (1931) to see where similarities. approximations and differences occur between the English spoken by the students and RP: the second was to see if it was possible to identify any respondent as Ga or Asante-Twi by hearing him or her speak English. The data consisted of word~ and sentences which the respondents had to read out. Their readings were recorded. transcribed and their approximations to the RP consonants. vowels. stress and intonational patterns were analyzed. Results showed that out of the 20 RP vowels looked at. the respondents made use of 12: seven pure vowels and five diphthongs. The respondents' use of the voiced dental fricative (IJ). the velar nasal (I}) the glottal fricative (lb/). the alveolar and post-alveolar approximants (Ill and Iri. respectively). registered more variation from the RP than the other consonants. The respondents had some knowledge of stress patterns in English. but failed to make distinctions between weak and strong forms of grammatical words. They also carried the syllable-time rhythm of their Lis into English. Results also revealed that listening to the way a respondent realized the RP vowels was not an adequate method to tell which LI he or she speaks. What is more. with the consonants. the only ones that might be used to identify one group from the other are the glottal fricative I hi, the post-alveolar Irk and the alveolar approximants If, and even with the last two. the differences between the two groups are not significant.