Phonological Contrastive Analysis of Consonant and Vowel Phonemes of Received Pronunciation and General Indian English.

• Main Author: Basima Abdul Jabbar Khadum Ali
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Africa Development and Resources Research Institute (ADRRI) 2020-09-01
• Series: Journal of Arts and Social Sciences
• Online Access: https://journals.adrri.org/index.php/adrrijass/article/view/184

The Study attempts to investigate the similarities and differences in segmental phonology of Received Pronunciation ( R.P ) and General Indian English ( GIE).The analysis takes into consideration peculiar features of both phonologies of ( R.P ) and ( GIE ). The peculiar pronunciation of English heard in India is the result of many factors .English is being used in India by people belonging to different linguistic groups such as Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamilin etc. The sound system of English poses certain problems to the Indian learners of English as some vowels, diphthongs and consonants of (R.P) are not present in Indian languages because of various regional languages with its multilingual and multicultural structure. The number of pure long vowel sounds in ( R.P ) are different from ( GIE ) but both systems contain five short vowels and the number of diphthongs in (GIE) is six while in (R.P ) system is eight so the last two diphthongs in (GIE ) pronounced differently or not like vowels. In comparison to consonants (GIE) vowels have lesser peculiarities when compared to (R.P) vowels. In fact there are some similarities in the vowel system of (R.P) and (GIE). It should be noted that differences are not considered as errors; on the contrary these are taken as the characteristics or features of Indian English. It should be devised a pedagogical strategy. It's advised that pronunciation problems pertaining to segmental phonology could enhance the international intelligibility of GIE.