This chapter examines whether Luganda influence on Ugandan English can be
confirmed at the level of phonology or whether Ugandan English is the result of
Interactions across ethnic Englishes in the sense of Meierkord (2012). It presents
the results of spectrographic analyses of the lexical sets face, goat, price,
choice, and mouth, focusing on fifteen speakers who have Acholi-Lango,
Luganda and Runyankore-Rukiga as their first languages. These languages
differ as regards their vowel systems, particularly as regards their tolerance of
diphthongs. The results will be discussed with reference to Uganda’s present-day
sociolinguistic realities, to assess whether ethnic varieties of English exist and
whether Ugandan English is a homogeneous variety primarily influenced by
Luganda or the result of Interactions across Englishes.
Adank, P., Smits, R. & van Hout, R. 2004. A comparison of vowel normalization procedures for language variation research. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116(5): 3099–3107.
Andersen, T. 1989. The Pari vowel system with an internal reconstruction of its historical development. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 11: 1–20.
Andersen, T. (1999). Vowel quality alternation in Mabaan and its Western Nilotic history. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 20: 97–120.
Ball, M.J. 1994. The centring diphthongs in Southern English – A sound change in progress. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 14(1): 38–44.
Ball, M.J. & Müller, N. 2011. Phonetics for Communication Disorders. New York: Routledge.
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. 2016. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer programme]. Version 6.0.13. <[URL]> (3 January 2016).
Cruttenden, A. 2001. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English, 6th edn. Oxford: Arnold.
Deterding, D. 2000. Measurements of the /eɪ/ and /ǝʊ/ vowels of young English speakers in Singapore. In The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, A. Brown, D. Deterding & E.L. Low (eds), 93–99. Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.
Donegan, P. 2013. Normal vowel development. In Handbook of Vowels and Vowel Disorders, M.J. Ball & F.E. Gibbon (eds), 24–60. New York NY: Psychology Press.
Fisher, A.E.C. 2000. Assessing the state of Ugandan English. English Today 16(1): 57–61.
Gimson, A.C. 1962. An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. London: Edward Arnold.
Golston, C. 2006. Diphthongs. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, 2nd edn. Vol. 3, Keith Brown (ed), 601–603. Oxford: Elsevier.
Gut, U. 2009. Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Isingoma, B. 2014. Lexical and grammatical features of Ugandan English. English Today 30(2): 51–56.
Jones, D. 1918. An Outline of English Phonetics. Cambridge: CUP.
Kerswill, P., Togersen, E.N. & Fox, S. 2008. Reversing “drift”: Innovation and diffusion in the London diphthong system. Language Variation and Change 20(3): 451–491.
Ladefoged, P., Glick, R. & Criper, C. 1972. Language in Uganda. London: OUP.
Laver, J. 1994. Principles of Phonetics. Cambridge: CUP.
Lewis, M.P., Simons, G.F. & Fennig, C.D. (eds). 2015. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 18th edn. Dallas TX: SIL International.
Low, E.-L. 2015. Pronunciation for English as an International Language. From Research to Practice. London: Routledge.
Lindau, M., Norlin, K. & Svantesson, J.-O. 1990. Some cross-linguistic differences in diphthongs. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20(1): 10–14.
Maddieson, I. 1984. Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge: CUP.
Maxwell, O. & Fletcher, J. 2010. The acoustic characteristics of diphthongs in Indian English. World Englishes 29(1): 27–44.
Meierkord, C. 2012. Interactions Across Englishes. Linguistic Choices in Local and International Contact Situations. Cambridge: CUP.
Mesthrie, R. 1992. English in Language Shift. The History, Structure and Sociolinguistics of South African Indian English. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand Press.
Mesthrie, R. 2004.Synopsis: The phonology of English in Africa and South and Southeast Asia. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 1: Phonology, E.W. Schneider, K. Burridge, B. Kortmann, R. Mesthrie & C. Upton (eds), 1099–1109. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Morreira, K. 2012. Social Change, Class Formation and English: A Study of Young Black South Africans with “Model C” School Backgrounds. PhD dissertation, University of Cape Town.
Mufwene, S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge. CUP.
Nelson, G. 2015. The circle of English: An exploration of the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ of world Englishes. In The Variability of Current World Englishes, E. Green & C.F. Meyer (eds), 99–119. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Papakyritsis, I. & Granese, A. 2013. Cross-linguistic study of vowel systems. In Handbook of Vowels and Vowel Disorders, M.J. Ball & F.E. Gibbon (eds), 186–206. New York NY: Psychology Press.
Peace Corps Language Archive. no date. Acholi language manual. <[URL]> (18 March 2016).
Sapir, E. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York NY: Harcourt Brace & World.
Schlüter, J. 2012. Early Modern English: Phonology. In Historical Linguistics of English: An International Handbook. [HSK 34.1.], A. Bergs & L. Brinton (eds), 589–604. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Schmied, J. 1991. National and subnational features in Kenyan English. In English Around the World: Sociolinguistics Perspectives, J. Cheshire (ed), 420–432. Cambridge: CUP.
Schmied, J. 2004. East African English (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania): Phonology. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 1: Phonology, E.W. Schneider, K. Burridge, B. Kortmann, R. Mesthrie & C. Upton (eds), 918–930. Berlin: Mouton.
Schmied, J. 2012. Standards of English in East Africa. In Standards of English: Codified Varieties Around the World, R. Hickey (ed), 229–255. Cambridge: CUP.
Schneider, E., Burridge, K., Kortmann, B., Mesthrie, R. & Upton, C. (eds) 2004. Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin: Mouton.
Schneider, E. 2004. Global synopsis: Phonetic and phonological variation in English world-wide. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 1: Phonology, E.W. Schneider, K. Burridge, B. Kortmann, R. Mesthrie & C. Upton (eds), 1111–1137. Berlin: Mouton.
Siegel, J. 2010. Second Dialect Acquisition. Cambridge: CUP.
Stoel-Gammon, C. & Dunn, J. 1985. Normal and Disordered Phonology in Children. Baltimore MD: University Park Press.
Thomas, E.R. 2011. Sociophonetics: An Introduction. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thomas, E.R. & Kendall, T. 2007~2014. NORM’s vowel normalization methods (v.1.1). University of Oregon, LVC Lab. <[URL]> (16 February 2016).
van Rooy, B. & van Huyssteen, G.B. 2000. The vowels of Black South African English: Current knowledge and future prospects. South African Journal of Linguistics, Supplement 38: 35–54.
van Rooy, B. 2004. Black South African English: Phonology. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 1: Phonology, E.W. Schneider, K. Burridge, B. Kortmann, R. Mesthrie & C. Upton (eds), 943–952. Berlin: Mouton.
Wells, J.C. 1982a. Accents of English, 1: An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP.
Wells, J.C. 1982b. Accents of English, 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: CUP.
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Adokorach, Monica & Bebwa Isingoma
2022. Homogeneity and heterogeneity in the pronunciation of English among Ugandans. English Today 38:1 ► pp. 15 ff.
Adokorach, Monica & Bebwa Isingoma
2023. Homogeneity and heterogeneity in lexical stress placement among Ugandan speakers of English as an L2: a view from usage-based perspective. ExELL 11:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Isingoma, Bebwa & Christiane Meierkord
2022. Between exonormative traditions and local acceptance: A corpus-linguistic study of modals of obligation and spatial prepositions in spoken Ugandan English. Open Linguistics 8:1 ► pp. 87 ff.
2020. Playing with accents. Sociolinguistic Studies 14:3
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.