NATIVIZATION IN THE SPOKEN MODE OF COMMUNICATION: A STUDY OF THE INNOVATIONS IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS IN GHANA

The state of English today is that it bears the marks of all the languages and cultures with which it has come into contact. The socio-cultural conditions under which English is used in countries where it is a second language make it inevitable that its forms will depart from that of the native varieties. Research has shown that some innovations in English pronunciation may be due to the contact with languages with which it co-exists. The influence of indigenous languages on English occurs at all levels of linguistic analysis (lexical, morphological, phonological, semantic, syntactic and so on); however, pronunciation deviations are probably the ones most readily attributed to mother-tongue interference. The present paper is on nativization of the English language at the phonological level. The nature of the nativization is the influence of the indigenous Ghanaian languages on the pronunciation of English words by educated Ghanaians. The findings of the current study reveal that in Educated Ghanaian English (EGE) most words are articulated on the basis of their spellings.