Spelling pronunciation and Supra-segmental features

Spelling pronunciation

A number of distinctive features of Indian English are due to "the vagaries of English spelling". Most Indian languages, unlike English, have a nearly phonetic pronunciation with respect to their script, so the spelling of a word is a highly reliable guide to its modern pronunciation. Indians' tendency to pronounce English phonetically as well can cause divergence from Western English. For example, "jewellery" is pronounced /dʒʋeləri:/ and "jewel" as /dʒʋel/ where Western Anglophones might omit the final e, pronouncing them as/dʒʋelri:/ and /dʒʋl/.

§  In words where the digraph <gh> represents a voiced velar plosive (/ɡ/) in other accents, some Indian English speakers supply a murmured version [ɡʱ], for example <ghost>[ɡʱo:st]. No other accent of English admits this voiced aspiration.

§  Similarly, the digraph <wh> may be aspirated as [ʋʱ] or [wʱ], resulting in realizations such as <which> [ʋʱɪtʃ], found in no other English accent (except in certain parts of Scotland).

§  In unstressed syllables, native English varieties will mostly use the schwa while Indian English would use the spelling vowel, making <sanity> sound as [‘sæniti] instead of [‘sænəti]. Similarly, <above> and <ago> can be heard as [e:’bəv] and [e:’ɡo:] instead of [ə’bʌv] and [ə’ɡoʊ].

§  English words ending in grapheme < a > almost always have the < a > being pronounced as schwa /ə/ in native varieties (exceptions include words such as <spa>). But in Indian English, the ending < a > is pronounced as the long open central unrounded vowel /aː/ (as in <spa>) instead of schwa. So, <India> is pronounced as /’ɪnɖɪa:/ instead of /’ɪndɪə/, and <sofa> as /’so:fa:/ instead of /’soʊfə/.

§  The word "of" is usually pronounced with a /f/ instead of a /v/ as in most other accents.

§  Use of [d] instead of [t] for the "-ed" ending of the past tense after voiceless consonants, for example "developed" may be [‘dɛʋləpd] instead of RP /dɪ:vɛləpt/.

§  Use of [s] instead of [z] for the "-s" ending of the plural after voiced consonants, for example <dogs> may be [daɡs] instead of [dɒɡz].

§  Pronunciation of <house> as [hauz] in both the noun and the verb, instead of [haus] as noun and [hauz] as verb.

§  The digraph <tz> is pronounced as [tz] or [tdʒ] instead of [ts] (voicing may be assimilated in the stop too), making <Switzerland> sound like [‘sʋɪtzərlænd] instead of [‘swɪtsəɹlənd].

§  In RP, /r/ occurs only before a vowel. But many speakers of Indian English use /r/ in almost all positions in words as dictated by the spellings. The allophone used is a mild trill or a tap. Indian speakers do not typically use the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ for <r>, which is common for American English speakers.

§  All consonants are distinctly doubled (lengthened) in General Indian English wherever the spelling suggests so. e.g., <drilling> /’drilliŋɡ/.

§  English pronunciation of the grapheme < i > varies from [ɪ] to [aɪ] depending upon the dialect or accent. Indian English will invariably use the British dialect for it. Thus, <tensile> would be pronounced as [‘tɛnsaɪl] like the British, rather than [‘tɛnsɪl] like the American; <anti> would be pronounced as [‘ænti] like the British, rather than [‘æntaɪ] like American.

Supra-segmental features

Any of the native varieties of English produce unique stresses on the language. English is a stress-timed language, and both syllable stress and word stress, where only certain words in a sentence or phrase are stressed, are important features of Received Pronunciation. Indian native languages are actually syllable-timed languages, like Latin and French. Indian-English speakers usually speak with a syllabic rhythm. Further, in some Indian languages, stress is associated with a low pitch, whereas in most English dialects, stressed syllables are generally pronounced with a higher pitch. Thus, when some Indian speakers speak, they appear to put the stress accents at the wrong syllables, or accentuate all the syllables of a long English word. Certain Indian accents are of a "sing-song" nature, a feature seen in a few English dialects in Britain, such as Scouse andWelsh English.