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GABRIELA BROZBĂ
UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
On the variability of vocalic inventory in Black South
African English
ABSTRACT. Black South African English resembles other African non-native varieties in
that most of the vocalic phonemes have undergone some kind of restructuring or have
disappeared altogether and it resulted in a system which has far less vowels. The current
paper looks at some vocalic features from a phonetic point of view, i.e., the paper is meant to
be an analysis at the interface between phonetics and phonology. Phonetic pieces of evidence
will be provided in support of the phonological assumptions. Although the amount of data at
my disposal is far too limited to allow for the assumptions made to be treated as
generalizations, some facts become obvious by looking into more depth even at the acoustic
results for the samples of a single subject. The results also attest to intra-speaker variation, as
studies have dealt mostly with inter-speaker variation so far.
KEYWORDS. Monophthongs, lexical set, Praat, diphthong trajectory, variation, acrolectal
1. Introduction
Many studies in the past on the varieties of English in South Africa have
dealt only with “white” South African English. In comparison, Black South
African English (henceforth BSAE) has received considerably less attention
regarding its development and phonetic description. Researchers (e.g., Lanham
1985, Mesthrie 1992, Van Rooy 2000, de Klerk and Gough 2002, Wissing
2002) have separated the varieties spoken in South Africa into five main
groups: South African English, Afrikaans English, Colored English, South African
Indian English and Black South African English.
It has been argued that BSAE does not exist as one single entity due to drastic
differences in levels of proficiency among black South Africans, and that
BSAE varieties in South Africa have radically been changing, with access to
English in schools being one of the primary social factors. The elimination of
segregated schools has had a dramatic effect on the varieties of English spoken
in South Africa. Leketi Makalela (2004: 356) points out that there are at least
four reasons for which some distinctive features of BSAE emerged and spread
across the country: (1) the demographic power of the BSAE users; (2) their
dispersion through the educational system; (3) the influence of mother tongues;
(4) the value of English in the new dispensation. In terms of demographics,
since the overwhelming majority of ESL speakers are to date those who are
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