A phonetic description of the varieties of English spoken by native speakers of Payira and Lamogi

Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to explore the phonetic systems of Payira and Lamogi dialects of Acoli to find out if the phonetic systems, particularly consonant inventories, of the two dialects influence the spoken English of their speakers. Secondly, the research is interested in phonetic features that may characterize the main variety of English spoken in Uganda. The claim of earlier studies that native speakers of Acoli fail to pronounce certain English words correctly because of the influence of the phonological structure of their L1 does not sufficiently explain where the problem of individual sound articulation comes from. For a better understanding of pronunciation problem at phonetic level, this study was carried out among native speakers of Payira and Lamogi mainly based on articulatory theory of speech sound production and acoustic theory of speech sound production. The researcher purposefully recruited ten participants from Payira and ten from Lamogi each of whom was subjected to a brief interview which was meant to obtain information about their social and linguistic background. Each participant read a list of English words and a list of Acoli words which were both audio-recorded with Praat 5370_win 32 to elicit the articulation of the target consonants. The results of this investigation show that the consonantal systems of Payira and Lamogi exhibit more similarities than differences. The only difference noticed is the utilization of the retroflex position by Lamogi, where the consonants /ɖ and ɳ/ are produced. Payira speakers do not produce consonant in retroflex position. Hence their consonant inventory excludes /ɖ and ɳ/. However, despite the little difference, native speakers of payira and Lamogi realize English consonants in the same way. The major areas of pronunciation problem for both Payira and Lamogi have been the shift of place of articulation of English consonant to places of articulation familiar to the speaker and deletion of /h/. The study recommends that Acoli phonetics should be taught at higher level of education in order to inspire more researchers to further investigate the phonetics of Acoli and its dialects. The study also suggests that Ministry of Education and Sports includes phonetics in the present Acoli teaching syllabus.