Indian
accents vary greatly. Some Indians speak English with an accent very close to a
Standard British (Received Pronunciation) accent (though not the same); others lean toward a more 'vernacular',
native-tinted, accent for their English speech.
Vowels
In general,
Indian English has fewer peculiarities in its vowel sounds than the consonants,
especially as spoken by native speakers of languages like Hindi, the vowel phoneme system
having some similarities with that of English. Among the distinctive features
of the vowel-sounds employed by some Indian English speakers are:
- Many Indian languages do not
natively possess a separate phoneme /æ/ (as in RP
<trap>). Thus, many speakers do not differentiate between the vowel
sounds /ɛ/ (as in
"dress") and /æ/ (as in
<trap>), except in cases where a minimal
pair such as
<bed>/<bad> exists in the vocabulary of the speaker. Such a speaker
might pronounce "tax" like the first syllable of "Texas".
Speakers of Southern languages and Sinhalese, which do
differentiate /ɛ/ and /æ/, do not have difficulty making this distinction. Eastern IE languages,
notably Bengali does have the /æ/ sound for both the vowels ā আ (hāñcco—the
sneezing sound—pronounced as hæñcco) and /e/ এ
(henglā—greedy—pronounced as hængla). The vowel a অ has two
sound values in Bengali:as au in aura (tatkāl)
and as o ও (Kalikātā).
It lacks the short vowel value for a অ (parāthā). Nowadays
most Indian students learn English from childhood which enables them to produce
almost all phonetics used in English.
- Chiefly in Punjab and Haryana
states and western Uttar Pradesh, the short [ɛ] becomes lengthened
and higher to long [e:], making <pen> sound like <paenn>.
- When a long
vowel is followed by "r", some speakers of Indian English usually use
a monophthong, instead of
the diphthong used for many such words in many other accents. Thus "fear" is pronounced [fir] instead of [fiə].
- Indian English often uses
strong vowels where other accents would have unstressed syllables or words.
Thus "cottage" may be pronounced [‘kate:dʒ] rather than [‘kɒtɪdʒ]. A word
such as "was" in the phrase "I was going" will be
pronounced [ʋɒz] or [ʋas] in Indian
English: in most other accents it would receive the unstressed realization [wəz].Another
example is that many Indian English speakers often pronounce <the> as /d̪iː/,
irrespective of whether the definite
article comes before
a vowel or a consonant, or whether it is stressed or not. In native varieties
of English, <the> is pronounced as [ðə] when it is unstressed and lies
before a consonant, and as [ði:] when it is before a vowel or when stressed
even before a consonant.
- Continuing the above point,
the indefinite article <a> is often pronounced by many Indian English
speakers as [e:], irrespective of whether it is stressed or unstressed. In
native varieties of English, <a> is pronounced as [ə] when unstressed and
as [eɪ] when stressed.
- The RP vowels /ʌ/, /ə/ and /ɜ:/ might be
realized as /ə/ in Indian
English. Bengalis
often pronounce all these vowels as /a/, including
the <r>-colored versions of these vowels. Thus, <firm> may be
pronounced the same as [farm], <van> as [bʰan], etc.
- General
Indian English realizes /eɪ/ (as in
<face>) and /oʊ/ (as in
<goat>) as long monophthongs [e:], [o:].
- Many Indian English speakers
do not make a clear distinction between /ɒ/ and /ɔ:/.
- Unlike British, but like
American English, some Indian speakers don't pronounce the rounded /ɒ/ or /ɔ:/, and
substitute /a/ instead.
This makes <not> sound as [nat]. The phoneme /ɔ:/, if used,
is only semi-rounded at the lips. Similarly in South India "Coffee"
will be pronounced kaafi, "Copy" will be kaapi etc.
- Words such as <class>,
<staff> and <last> would be pronounced with a back <a> as in
British English but unlike American English, i.e., [klɑːs], [stɑːf], and [lɑːst] rather
than American [klæ:s], [stæ:f], and [læ:st] and in South of India
"Parent" is [‘pɑ:rent].
- Most Indians have the Trap–bath split of Received Pronunciation. Those who
aren't usually influenced by American accents; not using the trap–bath split is
often popularly construed as attempting to imitate an American accent.
Consonants
Among the
most distinctive features of consonants in Indian English are:
- Most pronunciations of Indian
English are rhotic, but many speakers with higher education are non-rhotic.
- Standard
Hindi and most other vernaculars (except Punjabi & Bengali) do not
differentiate between /v/ (voiced labiodental fricative) and /w/ (voiced labiovelar approximant). Instead,
many Indians use a frictionless labio-dental approximant [ʋ] for words
with either sound, possibly in free variation with [v] and/or [w]. Thus, wet and vet are homophones.
- Because of the previous
characteristic many Indians pronounce words such as <flower> as [fla:(r)]
instead of [flaʊə(r)], and <our> as
[aː(r)] instead of [aʊə(r)].
- The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /k/ are always unaspirated in
Indian English, whereas in RP, General American and most other English accents
they are aspirated in word-initial or stressed syllables. Thus "pin"
is pronounced [pɪn] in Indian
English but [pʰɪn] in most
other accents. In native Indian languages (except Tamil), the distinction
between aspirated and unaspirated plosives is phonemic, and the English stops
are equated with the unaspirated rather than the aspirated phonemes of the
local languages. The same is true of the voiceless postalveolar afficate /tʃ/.
- The alveolar stops
English /d/, /t/ are often retroflex [ɖ], [ʈ], especially
in the South of India. In Indian
languages there are two entirely distinct sets of coronal plosives: onedental and the other retroflex. To the Indian ears, the English alveolar plosives
sound more retroflex than dental. In the Devanagari script of Hindi, all alveolar plosives of English are transcribed as their
retroflex counterparts. One good reason for this is that unlike most other
native Indian languages, Hindi does not have true retroflex plosives
(Tiwari, [1955] 2001). The so-called retroflexes in Hindi are actually
articulated as apical post-alveolar plosives, sometimes even with a tendency to come down to the alveolar
region. So a Hindi speaker normally cannot distinguish the difference between
their own apical post-alveolar plosives and English's alveolar plosives.
However, languages such as Tamil have true retroflex plosives, wherein the articulation is done with the tongue curved
upwards and backwards at the roof of
the mouth. This also causes (in parts of Uttar
Pradeshand Madhya Pradesh) the /s/ preceding
alveolar /t/ to
allophonically change to [ ʃ ] (<stop> /stɒp/ → / ʃʈap/). Mostly in
south India, some speakers allophonically further change the voiced retroflex
plosive to voiced retroflex
flap, and the nasal /n/ to a
nasalized retroflex flap.
- Many Indians speaking English
do not use the voiced postalveolar fricative (/ʒ/).
Typically, /z/ or /dʒ/ is substituted, e.g. treasure /’trɛzə:r/, and in the south Indian variants, with /ʃ/ as in
<"sh'"ore>, e.g. treasure /’trɛʃər/.
- All major native languages of
India lack the dental fricatives (/θ/ and /ð/; spelled
with th). Usually,
the aspirated voiceless dental plosive [t̪ʰ] is substituted for /θ/ and the unaspirated voiced dental plosive [d̪], or
possibly the aspirated version [d̪ʱ]. is
substituted for /ð/. For example, "thin" would be realized as [t̪ʰɪn] instead of /θɪn/.
- South Indians tend to curl the
tongue (retroflex accentuation) more for /l/ and /n/.
- Most Indian
languages (except Urdu variety) lack the voiced alveolar fricative /z/. While they do have its nearest equivalent: the unvoiced /s/,
strangely, it is not used in substitution. Instead, /z/ is substituted with the
voiced palatal affricate (or postalveolar) /dʒ/, just as
with a Korean accent. This makes words such as <zero> and <rosy> sound as [‘dʒi:ro] and [‘ro:dʒi:]. This replacement is
equally true for Persian and Arabic loanwords into Hindi. The probable reason
is the confusion created by the use of the devanagarigrapheme
< ज > (for
/dʒ/) with a dot beneath it to represent the loaned /z/ (as < ज़ >). This is common among people without
formal English education.
- Many Indians with lower
exposure to English also may pronounce / f / as aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive [pʰ]. Again note that in Hindi (devanagari) the loaned / f / from Persian and
Arabic is written by putting a dot beneath the grapheme for native [pʰ] < फ >: < फ़ >. This substitution is
rarer than that for [z], and in fact in many Hindi-speaking areas /f/ is
replacing /pʰ/ even in its native words.
- Inability to pronounce certain
(especially word-initial) consonant
clusters by people of
rural backgrounds. This is usually dealt with by epenthesis. e.g., school /is’ku:l/, similar to
Spanish.
- Sometimes, Indian speakers
interchange /s/ and /z/, especially when plurals are being formed, as opposed to international
varieties of English, where [s] is used for pluralization of a word ending in a
voiceless consonant, [z] for that ending in a voiced consonant or vowel, and [ɨz] for that
ending in a sibilant.
- Again, in dialects like Bhojpuri, all instances of /ʃ/ are spoken
like [s], a
phenomenon which is also apparent in their English. Exactly the opposite is
seen for manyBengalis.
§- In case of the postalveolar
affricates /tʃ/ /dʒ/, native
languages like Hindi have corresponding affricates articulated from the palatal
region, rather than postalveolar, and they have more of a stop component than
fricative; this is reflected in their English.
- While retaining /ŋ/ in the final position, Indian speakers usually
include the [ɡ] after it.
Hence /’riŋiŋ/ → /’riŋɡiŋɡ/ (ringing).
- Syllabic /l/, /m/ and /n/ are usually
replaced by the VC clusters [əl], [əm] and [ən] (as in button /’buʈʈən/), or if a high vowel precedes, by [il] (as in little /ˈliʈʈil/). Syllable
nuclei in words with the spelling er (a schwa in RP and an r-colored schwa in GA) are also
replaced VC clusters. e.g., meter, /’mi:tər/ → /’mi:ʈər/.
- Indian English uses clear [l]
in all instances like Irish English whereas other varieties use clear [l] in
syllable-initial positions and dark [l] (velarized-L) in coda and syllabic
positions.
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