A preliminary description of Ugandan English

Abstract

The present paper aims at describing the English variety spoken in Uganda through a discussion of its main phonological as well as morphological features that can be traced back to contact‐induced change. Luganda as the main lingua franca in Kampala as well as other languages such as Acholi have had a strong impact on speakers’ phonological realizations as well as on certain morphological structures that can be found in Ugandan English today. This does not solely concern borrowing strategies of structural and lexical elements, but also various cases of calquing. Furthermore, insights into syntactic change as well as pragmatics (that reveal Luganda‐like politeness patterns) conclude the brief description of modern Ugandan English.

Homogeneity and heterogeneity in the pronunciation of English among Ugandans

“…If a given variety of English has particular phonemes which another variety of English does not have, then the differences between the two varieties of English are due to what is known as phonemic system (Wells, 1982). As is already evident from many of the transcriptions in the above examples, the Ugandan accent of English lacks the RP phonemes /ɑ:, ʌ, ɜ:, ɒ, əʊ/ (see also Fisher, 2000;Simo-Bobda, 2001;Schmied, 2004;Nassenstein, 2016;Meierkord, 2016). Meierkord (2016: 143), however, shows that while indeed the diphthong /əʊ/ is non-existent in the Ugandan accent of English and to some extent tends towards monophthongization, a variant diphthong is often produced in the Ugandan accent of English, i.e.…”

“…While Simo-Bobda (2001: 274) states that /ɛ/ is sometimes heard in acrolectal speech in Uganda in place of RP /ɜ:/, our data do not show that and neither do our daily observations attest to that. Moreover, neither Fisher (2000) nor Nassenstein (2016) makes mention of /ɛ/ as a substitute of RP /ɜ:/ in the Ugandan accent of English.…”

“…The first description of the phonological features of the variety of English spoken in Uganda is included in Fisher's (2000) seminal paper on this L2 (second language) variety of English. Another description of these features is found in Nassenstein (2016). Both Fisher (2000) and Nassenstein (2016) provide a short section, outlining the features which are similar to the general features of L2 Englishes, notably the restructuring of the phonemic system, e.g.…”

“…Another description of these features is found in Nassenstein (2016). Both Fisher (2000) and Nassenstein (2016) provide a short section, outlining the features which are similar to the general features of L2 Englishes, notably the restructuring of the phonemic system, e.g. /a/ replacing /ɜ:, ɑ:, ʌ, ə/ and the free variation of [l] and [r], although the latter occurs regionally (see similar findings on L2 varieties of English in Bailey & Görlach [eds.]…”

Politeness strategies in Ugandan English: making requests and responding to thanks

“…→ L1 ENGLISH Nassenstein (2016) presented (10a) as a grammatical peculiarity with pragmatic import in Ugandan English, without considering circumstances under which it is used. In order to find out these circumstances, I asked my respondents in the elicitation test (Appendix 1) to select the most appropriate formula, in (10) above, they would use to request someone to pass them a chair in a meeting room, and to give reasons for their choices and why they did not choose the other alternatives.…”