White South African English phonology

This article covers the phonological system of South African English (SAE) as spoken primarily by White South Africans. While there is some variation among speakers, SAE typically has a number of features in common with English as it is spoken in southern England (in places like London), such as non-rhoticity and the – split.

The two main phonological features that mark South African English as distinct are the behaviour of the vowels in and. The vowel tends to be "split" so that there is a clear allophonic variation between the front  and central  or. The vowel is characteristically back in the General and Broad varieties of SAE. The tendency to monophthongise and  to  and  respectively, are also typical features of General and Broad White South African English.

General South African English features phonemic vowel length (so that ferry and fairy  as well as cot  and cart  differ only in length) as well as phonemic roundedness, so that fairy  is distinguished from furry  by roundedness.

Features involving consonants include the tendency for (as in tune) and  (as in dune) to be realised as  and, respectively (see Yod coalescence), and  has a strong tendency to be voiced initially.

Vowels
The vocalic phonemes of South African English are as follows:


 * The original short front vowels, and  underwent a vowel shift similar to that found in New Zealand English, though not as extreme:
 * The vowel  varies from  to  in General and Cultivated SAE. However, the new prestige value in younger Johannesburg speakers of the General variety (particularly those who live in the wealthy northern suburbs) seems to be open front, the same as in Modern RP. Before , the fully open  is the norm in the General variety, whereas before voiced stops as well as bilabial and alveolar nasals the vowel tends to be centralised and lengthened to , often with slight diphthongisation . Broad  can be as close as mid , encroaching on the Cultivated realisation of.
 * is close-mid or higher  in General, often with centralisation  (it is unclear whether the last allophone is distinct from the front allophone of  in the General variety). Variants above the close-mid height are typical of female speech. General  is similar enough to  in RP and similar accents as to cause perceptual problems for outsiders. Broad variants are very similar to the General ones, but in Cultivated the vowel can be as open as  (within the RP norm). In General and Broad, the vowel can be lowered to  or even  when it occurs before.
 * As indicated in the transcription, the vowel  has a schwa-like quality even in stressed positions, except when in contact with velars and palatals, after  as well as in the word-initial position, where the conservative  quality (further fronted to  in Broad) is retained. Due to weak vowel merger, neither Lenin and Lennon nor except and accept are distinct in SAE: . The quality of the merged vowel is typically  ( in some Broad varieties), even in unstressed closed syllables. This means that all three vowels of limited  are phonetically the same: . These variants are covered by the symbol ⟨ɨ⟩ (without the lowering diacritic) in phonetic transcription. In the word-final position, the vowel is mid  in all varieties, with some lowering to  or even  being possible in the Cultivated variety. These allophones are written with ⟨ə⟩ in phonetic transcription, and the same symbol is used for word-initial and postvocalic instances of word-internal  (, etc.). As far as the phonemic analysis is concerned, the stressed central  has been variously analysed as an allophone of, an allophone of  (making it a stressable vowel), an allophone of a merged / vowel (which is the analysis adopted in this article) or a phoneme of its own that is separate from both  and the front variety of.
 * In the Cultivated variety, Lenin and except  on the one hand and Lennon  and accept  on the other may be distinct, as in RP. In addition, stressed instances of  are consistently front  (as in RP), without any centralisation, whereas the schwa is consistently mid, so that the unstressed vowels of Lenin and Lennon contrast not only by backness but also by height: . The  quality occurs also in happy  and immediately  (cf. General ). For this reason, this variety is analysed as containing an extra  phoneme.
 * The vowel  is a long close front monophthong, either close to cardinal  or slightly mid-centralised. It does not have a tendency to diphthongise, which distinguishes SAE from Australian and New Zealand English.
 * The vowel  is typically a weakly rounded retracted central vowel, somewhat more central than the traditional RP value. Younger speakers of the General variety (especially females) often use a fully central . This vowel is effectively the rounded counterpart of . Backer and sometimes more rounded variants  occur before . Broad SAE can feature a more rounded vowel, but that is more common in Afrikaans English.
 * The vowel  is usually central  or somewhat fronter in White varieties, though in the Cultivated variety, it is closer to  (typically not fully back, thus ), which is also the normal realisation before  in other varieties. Younger (particularly female) speakers of the General variety use an even more front vowel, so that food  may be distinguished from feed  only by rounding. The vowel is often a monophthong, but there is some tendency to diphthongise it before sonorants (as in wounded  and school ).
 * In the General variety,,   and   are commonly monophthongized to ,  (phonetically between  and a monophthongal ) and . Among those, the monophthongal variant of  is the most common. The last monophthong contrasts with the close-mid , which stands for . The monophthonging of  can cause intelligibility problems for outsiders; Roger Lass says that he himself once misunderstood the phrase the total onslaught  for the turtle onslaught . On the other hand,  does not monophthongize. In addition,  is almost monophthongal , resulting in a near-merger of  with , which is normally a close-mid monophthong.

Transcriptions
Sources differ in the way they transcribe South African English. The differences are listed below. The traditional phonemic orthography for the Received Pronunciation as well as the reformed phonemic orthographies for Australian and New Zealand English have been added for the sake of comparison.

Plosives

 * In Broad White South African English, voiceless plosives tend to be unaspirated in all positions, which serves as a marker of this subvariety. This is usually thought to be an Afrikaans influence.
 * General and Cultivated varieties aspirate before a stressed syllable, unless they are followed by an  within the same syllable.
 * Speakers of the General variety can strongly affricate the syllable-final to, so that wanting  can be pronounced.
 * are normally alveolar. In the Broad variety, they tend to be dental . This pronunciation also occurs in older speakers of the Jewish subvariety of General SAE.

Fricatives and affricates

 * occurs only in words borrowed from Afrikaans and Khoisan languages, such as gogga 'insect'. Many speakers realise  as uvular, a sound which is more common in Afrikaans.
 * may be realised as in Broad varieties (see Th-fronting), but it is more accurate to say that it is a feature of Afrikaans English. This is especially common word-finally (as in myth ).
 * In the Indian variety, the labiodental fricatives are realised without audible friction, i.e. as approximants.
 * In General and Cultivated varieties, intervocalic may be voiced, so that ahead can be pronounced.
 * There is not a full agreement about the voicing of in Broad varieties:
 * states that:
 * Voiced is the normal realisation of  in Broad varieties.
 * It is often deleted, e.g. in word-initial stressed syllables (as in house), but at least as often, it is pronounced even if it seems deleted. The vowel that follows the allophone in the word-initial syllable often carries a low or low rising tone, which, in rapid speech, can be the only trace of the deleted . That creates potentially minimal tonal pairs like oh (neutral  or high falling, phonemically ) vs. hoe (low  or low rising , phonemically ). In General, these are normally pronounced  and , without any tonal difference.
 * states that in Broad varieties close to Afrikaans English, is voiced  before a stressed vowel.

Sonorants

 * General and Broad varieties have a wine–whine merger. However, some speakers of Cultivated SAE (particularly the elderly) still distinguish from, so that which  is not homophonous with witch.
 * has two allophones:
 * Clear (neutral or somewhat palatalised) in syllable-initial and intervocalic positions (as in look  and polar ).
 * In Cultivated variety, clear is often also used word-finally when another word begins with a vowel (as in call up, which in General and Broad is pronounced ).
 * Velarised (or uvularised ) in pre-consonantal and word-final positions.
 * One source states that the dark has a "hollow pharyngealised" quality, rather than velarised or uvularised.
 * In the Broad variety, the sequences and  tend not to form syllabic  and, so that button  and middle  are phonetically  and  (compare General  and ). John Wells analyses the broad pronunciation of these words as having a secondarily stressed schwa in the last syllable: ,.
 * In Cultivated and General varieties, is an approximant, usually postalveolar or (less commonly) retroflex. In emphatic speech, Cultivated speakers may realise  as a (often long) trill . Older speakers of the Cultivated variety may realise intervocalic  as a tap  (as in very ), a feature which is becoming increasingly rare.
 * Broad SAE realises as a tap, sometimes even as a trill  - a pronunciation which is at times stigmatised as a marker of this variety. The trill  is more commonly considered a feature of the second language Afrikaans English variety.
 * Another possible realisation of is uvular trill, which has been reported to occur in the Cape Flats dialect.
 * South African English is non-rhotic, except for some Broad varieties spoken in the Cape Province (typically in -er suffixes, as in writer ). It appears that postvocalic is entering the speech of younger people under the influence of American English.
 * Linking (as in for a while ) is used only by some speakers:.
 * There is not a full agreement about intrusive (as in law and order) in South African English:
 * states that it is rare, and some speakers with linking never use the intrusive.
 * states that it is absent from this variety.
 * In contexts where many British and Australian accents use the intrusive, speakers of South African English who do not use the intrusive create an intervocalic hiatus. In these varieties, phrases such as law and order  can be subject to the following processes:
 * Vowel deletion: ;
 * Adding a semivowel corresponding to the preceding vowel: ;
 * Inserting a glottal stop: . This is typical of Broad varieties.
 * Before a high front vowel, undergoes fortition to  in Broad and some of the General varieties, so that yeast can be pronounced.