CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Simply put, language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by which thought is conveyed. Language is often said to be a means of communication among individuals who share a common code (Yule, 2019). The codes that individuals share are in form of elements of a system. In traditional view of language, words are put together to form sentences. Language is arbitrary. There is no intrinsic necessity for any word to mean what it does, or for any language to have the structure it has (Kraft & Kraft, 2013).
The ultimate goal of most second language learners is to attain native like fluency. They want to be indistinguishable from native speakers. However, for many learners, this dream has remained a dream especially in the area of pronunciation as native speakers usually identify individuals as non-native speakers because of their accent. Moreover, a large number of second language learners believe that the main difficulty they encounter when speaking the second language is pronunciation and consider this difficulty as the main source of their communication problems
Phonology is a branch of linguistics that deals with the way in which the sounds of a language work in that particular language (Sani, 2020). Every language of the world has an independent phonological system. Reflecting on different types of sounds that language has, the various possible combinations of these sounds as composed to form a word and the likely changes that may take place in such a process under such circumstances. Phonology is very much related to phonetics as both basically deal with sound, and knowledge of phonetics is the fundamental requirement for the study of any phonology (Sani, 2015).
As indicated, every language has a unique phonology. The phonology of one language will never be the same as that of another language. The perception and the production of non-native sounds is a widely researched subject, as second language learners often have difficulties pronouncing and perceiving the non-native sounds of the target language. Pronunciation plays an important role in communication in a second language (L2). No matter how rich our lexicon in a second language is and how familiar we are with the structures and rules of the L2, it is not possible to convey our messages accurately without proper pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation.
In short, pronunciation is an important aspect of language that makes our speech comprehensible and intelligible to native speakers. Many second language learners desire to speak the target language like a native speakers(Munro & Derwing, 2018). They consider pronunciation of the language to be the main indicator of how much they know about the language itself. The main idea behind this belief is that second language learners are primarily judged by native speakers based on their ability to accurately produce the target language sounds using appropriate intonation and rhythm. Therefore the more similar one’s pronunciation is to that of a native speaker, the more likely a native speaker will label the speech as comprehensive and intelligible (Munro & Derwing, 2012).
Second language learners find it difficult to achieve a native-like pronunciation. The majority of them encounter several embarrassing situations when they are misunderstood due to their pronunciation. Apart from linguistics abilities, there are several factors affecting second language pronunciation accuracy should be engaged into considerations such as exposure to second language, age, and first language influence (Wong, 2017).
Today English is adopted as Nigeria’s official language, and thus considered as a language of instruction, the school, the courts, the national assembly and broadcasting on national radio and television stations. Despite its acceptability and popularity in Nigeria, it remains a second language to Nigerians for every Nigerian has his/her own native language such as Yoruba, Igbo, Yoruba, Tiv, Fulfulde, Kanuri etc. This study is aimed at describing an aspect of the Nigerian English with focus on the Yoruba-English speakers.
The Nigerian Yoruba speakers are found in south-west Nigeria. They occupy the following states, namely; Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ogun, Lagos, Ekiti and some parts of Kogi and Kwara. The Yoruba people are one of the major tribes in West Africa (Biobaku, 2011). Their population is about twenty-six million in Nigeria alone (Ugorji 2010). The Yoruba tribe was immigrants from a place close to Egypt and had Arab influences in their former homeland. They migrated and settled in the present Ile -Ife in Osun State, Nigeria; leaving a portion of settlements which turned-out to be communities in Togo, Ghana, and the Benin Republic as they progressed to their present destination.
Yorubas are also found in Brazil known as the Lucumi people and in Sierra Leone as the Aku people (Biobaku, 2013). According to Dada (2007), in 1821, Yoruba had the first contact with the Europeans during the trade with the Portuguese. Afterward, the missionaries from Britain introduced the English language to the Nigerian Yoruba community by introducing Christianity. This contact brought about Pidgin English. Afterward, Britain decided to colonize present-day Nigeria. During colonization, the British made English the formal language of Nigeria which was retained after independence in 1960.
Nigeria used English as the lingua-franca until it became the official language and the language of education. This brought about the Yoruba variety of English language in Nigeria. According to Muhammad, Ya’u, Aliyu, and Hassan (2018), the Nigerian English was born out of transfer from the first language to the target language which causes interlingual interference. Another factor that influences the learner is that Nigeria is not the target language environment. Based on these submissions from Mohammed et al. (2018), it can be inferred that these errors were transferred from one generation to another.
English, as an imperial language, was introduced to and imposed on the society by the British colonial administration, but today, it has developed to be the language of administration in the country and this status has been responsible for the efforts of many Nigerians to learn the language. Nigeria, to borrow the definition of Fishman, is “a multi-nationality nation” and the individual Nigeria remains a Nigerian because the country is made up of the local Nigerian cultures. Each of the various Nigerian cultures has some languages attached to it and among such languages is Yoruba which is the main language of Oyo, Ogun, Lagos and Ondo States of Nigeria.
Speakers of Yoruba are also found in the Kwara State of Nigeria and in the Republics of Benin (formerly Dahomey) and Togo. All these places mentioned form a continuous stretch of land which is an indication that the Yoruba speech community is a large one with several dialectal sub-groups. It should be noted, of course, that within the defunct Western State alone, there were about twenty dialects of Yoruba spoken in places such as Oyo, Ondo, Abeokuta, Ilesa, Ekiti and Ijebu.
According to Akinlabi (2014), the Yoruba language has seven vowels and eighteen consonant sounds. The seven distinctive vowels are / a e ɛ i o ɔ u / and eighteen distinctive consonants are / b t d k g kp gb f s ʃ h ʧ m n l r j w /. This can be better illustrated using the I.P.A. phonetic chart. There are also five nasal vowels /ã ɛ ĩ ũ ɔ/. When an individual whose mother tongue is Yoruba speaks English that he or she learned as a second language or acquired as a first language (but in Nigeria), there are differences in the pronunciation of some words compared to the pronunciation of native British or American speakers.
This pronunciation makes such words sometimes unintelligible to the native speakers or is perceived as an accent (Banjo, 2015). The question therefore is: Why the difference? According to Rotimi (2014), the hypothesis is that some sounds are not present in the mother tongue of the Yoruba-English learner; therefore, the learner substitutes such sounds in English with the ones available in his/her native language. This may lead to phonological processes such as devoicing, deletion, insertion, etc.
The glottal fricative is a sound that is present in the sound system of Yoruba (Oyebade, 2012). The reason Yoruba speakers delete /h/ while pronouncing an English word with the /h/ sound is a mystery. This is peculiar to this tribe as other major tribes in Nigeria do not do the same (Olaniyi, 2014). This can be further explained with the following excerpt: ‘Whereas the Yoruba have difficulty in articulating those fricatives, mentioned above, the Yoruba do not but have their own difficult sounds that mark them socio-linguistically as stereotypes. Such include the articulation of the voiceless glottal fricative, /h/ and the misplacement of /f/ for /v/and /s/ for /ʃ/ in speech contexts, (Olaniyi, 2014)’.
The importance of investigating pronunciation difficulties stems from the fact that pronunciation stands as an obstacle in communication especially when the meaning of a certain word or an expression is altered because of the incorrect pronunciation of an item as when one says ‘pin’ for ‘pen’, or ‘ship’ for ‘chip’. However, it is necessary, in this research, to see the factors that have a role to play in the acquisition of the phonological system of any non-native language. The pronunciation of any non-native speaker of any language is promoted or impeded by a number of factors including, among others, age, mother tongue influence and personality.
It is worthy to note at this point that Yoruba is a tonal based language while English is stressed based. Also, Yoruba has an open syllabic system while English has a closed syllabic system. It is important to note these differences as Yoruba and English language will be compared in subsequent chapters using mostly prosodic and syllabic features as the basis for comparison. Hence, this study intends to examine phonological analysis of English fricatives as used by Yoruba-English bilingual undergraduates of Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti (EKSU)
Statement of the Problem
Despite the fact that Nigerian English has been for many centuries the language of instruction in the Nigerian schools, Nigerian Yoruba speakers of English still have difficulties in the production of some of the fricative sounds. Yoruba speakers of English tend to mispronounce those English sounds or interchange with those present in their native language. This results in confusing listeners and renders the communication unintelligible.
Fricative sounds of English are not an exception to such problematic phenomena to Yoruba speakers of English. For example, Yoruba speakers of English have problems with the production and perception of /v/, /θ/ and /ð/. A large population of L2 learners is of the opinion that the main difficulty they experience when speaking English is pronunciation. Mostly, they consider articulation as the key source for their communication difficulties (Derwing & Rossiter, 2012; Al-Kahtany, 2011 as cited in Binturki, 2013).
Second language learners often have difficulties in pronouncing and perceiving the non-native sounds of the target language. Thus, this study focused on the phonological analysis of English fricatives as used by Yoruba-English bilingual undergraduates of Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti (EKSU)
Purpose of the Study
The general objective of the study is to investigate phonological analysis of English fricatives as used by Yoruba-English bilingual undergraduates of Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti (EKSU). The study wants to specifically;
i. Examine how the Yoruba-English speakers realize the English fricatives; / z/,/tᶴ/, /ᶴ/,/Ө/, /ᴣ/, /ŋ/, /v/, and /ð/ at the word level?
ii. Examine how the fricatives are realized by the Yoruba-English speakers at sentence level.
iii. Identify the social variables responsible for the how the sounds are relalised.
iv. Suggesting teaching procedures that might help students overcome the areas of difficulty.
Significance of the Study
The importance of this research is to make Nigerian Yoruba students of English aware of the problems that they have in pronouncing the English fricative sounds, and why there are such problems in their production. This study will also be useful to Yoruba speakers since it will draw their attention over an aspect they are deficient so as to work hard and remedy their deficiency.
It is hoped that the findings of this study would offer English students and lecturers better insights on effective teaching strategies in helping their students to master English pronunciation. This can provide a significant understanding into how a language is actually learned by the students. Students and lecturers should be well aware of the fact that the majority of their students have difficulties in producing certain English sounds.
The possible solutions in preventing students from making errors repeatedly should be considered. It is also hoped that the findings of the study will help the students to understand the phonological differences between their native language and target languages. Students should not completely rely on their teachers to recognise the errors for them. It is essential to make the students consciously compare the two languages by themselves and understand the rules of the new language during the learning process
Scope of the study
This study was limited to phonological analysis of English Fricatives as used among the Yoruba speakers of English Language in Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti.. Thus, the study will also consider fricative sounds like /v/, /θ/ and /ð/ in the initial and final positions. This study does not deal with sentences, but only words in isolation. The reason is that we want to pay attention to the target sounds that is, whether the participants produce and perceive the sounds correctly or substitute the target sounds with other sounds.
The target sounds are /v/, /θ/ and /ð/ in initial and final word positions. The study is based on Yoruba speakers who are studying at the Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti. The reason for choosing Yoruba speakers from the Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti is because of the constraints of time.
Research Questions
The research is aimed at answering the following questions:
i. How do Yoruba-English speakers realise the English fricatives; / z/,/tᶴ/, /ᶴ/,/Ө/, /ᴣ/, /ŋ/, /v/, and /ð/ at the word level?
ii. How do Yoruba-English speakers realise the fricatives at sentence level?
iii. What are the social variables responsible for how the sounds are relalised?
iv. What are the suggested teaching procedures that might help students overcome the areas of difficulty?
The ultimate goal of most second language learners is to attain native like fluency. They want to be indistinguishable from native speakers. However, for many learners, this dream has remained a dream especially in the area of pronunciation as native speakers usually identify individuals as non-native speakers because of their accent. Moreover, a large number of second language learners believe that the main difficulty they encounter when speaking the second language is pronunciation and consider this difficulty as the main source of their communication problems
Phonology is a branch of linguistics that deals with the way in which the sounds of a language work in that particular language (Sani, 2020). Every language of the world has an independent phonological system. Reflecting on different types of sounds that language has, the various possible combinations of these sounds as composed to form a word and the likely changes that may take place in such a process under such circumstances. Phonology is very much related to phonetics as both basically deal with sound, and knowledge of phonetics is the fundamental requirement for the study of any phonology (Sani, 2015).
As indicated, every language has a unique phonology. The phonology of one language will never be the same as that of another language. The perception and the production of non-native sounds is a widely researched subject, as second language learners often have difficulties pronouncing and perceiving the non-native sounds of the target language. Pronunciation plays an important role in communication in a second language (L2). No matter how rich our lexicon in a second language is and how familiar we are with the structures and rules of the L2, it is not possible to convey our messages accurately without proper pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation.
In short, pronunciation is an important aspect of language that makes our speech comprehensible and intelligible to native speakers. Many second language learners desire to speak the target language like a native speakers(Munro & Derwing, 2018). They consider pronunciation of the language to be the main indicator of how much they know about the language itself. The main idea behind this belief is that second language learners are primarily judged by native speakers based on their ability to accurately produce the target language sounds using appropriate intonation and rhythm. Therefore the more similar one’s pronunciation is to that of a native speaker, the more likely a native speaker will label the speech as comprehensive and intelligible (Munro & Derwing, 2012).
Second language learners find it difficult to achieve a native-like pronunciation. The majority of them encounter several embarrassing situations when they are misunderstood due to their pronunciation. Apart from linguistics abilities, there are several factors affecting second language pronunciation accuracy should be engaged into considerations such as exposure to second language, age, and first language influence (Wong, 2017).
Today English is adopted as Nigeria’s official language, and thus considered as a language of instruction, the school, the courts, the national assembly and broadcasting on national radio and television stations. Despite its acceptability and popularity in Nigeria, it remains a second language to Nigerians for every Nigerian has his/her own native language such as Yoruba, Igbo, Yoruba, Tiv, Fulfulde, Kanuri etc. This study is aimed at describing an aspect of the Nigerian English with focus on the Yoruba-English speakers.
The Nigerian Yoruba speakers are found in south-west Nigeria. They occupy the following states, namely; Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ogun, Lagos, Ekiti and some parts of Kogi and Kwara. The Yoruba people are one of the major tribes in West Africa (Biobaku, 2011). Their population is about twenty-six million in Nigeria alone (Ugorji 2010). The Yoruba tribe was immigrants from a place close to Egypt and had Arab influences in their former homeland. They migrated and settled in the present Ile -Ife in Osun State, Nigeria; leaving a portion of settlements which turned-out to be communities in Togo, Ghana, and the Benin Republic as they progressed to their present destination.
Yorubas are also found in Brazil known as the Lucumi people and in Sierra Leone as the Aku people (Biobaku, 2013). According to Dada (2007), in 1821, Yoruba had the first contact with the Europeans during the trade with the Portuguese. Afterward, the missionaries from Britain introduced the English language to the Nigerian Yoruba community by introducing Christianity. This contact brought about Pidgin English. Afterward, Britain decided to colonize present-day Nigeria. During colonization, the British made English the formal language of Nigeria which was retained after independence in 1960.
Nigeria used English as the lingua-franca until it became the official language and the language of education. This brought about the Yoruba variety of English language in Nigeria. According to Muhammad, Ya’u, Aliyu, and Hassan (2018), the Nigerian English was born out of transfer from the first language to the target language which causes interlingual interference. Another factor that influences the learner is that Nigeria is not the target language environment. Based on these submissions from Mohammed et al. (2018), it can be inferred that these errors were transferred from one generation to another.
English, as an imperial language, was introduced to and imposed on the society by the British colonial administration, but today, it has developed to be the language of administration in the country and this status has been responsible for the efforts of many Nigerians to learn the language. Nigeria, to borrow the definition of Fishman, is “a multi-nationality nation” and the individual Nigeria remains a Nigerian because the country is made up of the local Nigerian cultures. Each of the various Nigerian cultures has some languages attached to it and among such languages is Yoruba which is the main language of Oyo, Ogun, Lagos and Ondo States of Nigeria.
Speakers of Yoruba are also found in the Kwara State of Nigeria and in the Republics of Benin (formerly Dahomey) and Togo. All these places mentioned form a continuous stretch of land which is an indication that the Yoruba speech community is a large one with several dialectal sub-groups. It should be noted, of course, that within the defunct Western State alone, there were about twenty dialects of Yoruba spoken in places such as Oyo, Ondo, Abeokuta, Ilesa, Ekiti and Ijebu.
According to Akinlabi (2014), the Yoruba language has seven vowels and eighteen consonant sounds. The seven distinctive vowels are / a e ɛ i o ɔ u / and eighteen distinctive consonants are / b t d k g kp gb f s ʃ h ʧ m n l r j w /. This can be better illustrated using the I.P.A. phonetic chart. There are also five nasal vowels /ã ɛ ĩ ũ ɔ/. When an individual whose mother tongue is Yoruba speaks English that he or she learned as a second language or acquired as a first language (but in Nigeria), there are differences in the pronunciation of some words compared to the pronunciation of native British or American speakers.
This pronunciation makes such words sometimes unintelligible to the native speakers or is perceived as an accent (Banjo, 2015). The question therefore is: Why the difference? According to Rotimi (2014), the hypothesis is that some sounds are not present in the mother tongue of the Yoruba-English learner; therefore, the learner substitutes such sounds in English with the ones available in his/her native language. This may lead to phonological processes such as devoicing, deletion, insertion, etc.
The glottal fricative is a sound that is present in the sound system of Yoruba (Oyebade, 2012). The reason Yoruba speakers delete /h/ while pronouncing an English word with the /h/ sound is a mystery. This is peculiar to this tribe as other major tribes in Nigeria do not do the same (Olaniyi, 2014). This can be further explained with the following excerpt: ‘Whereas the Yoruba have difficulty in articulating those fricatives, mentioned above, the Yoruba do not but have their own difficult sounds that mark them socio-linguistically as stereotypes. Such include the articulation of the voiceless glottal fricative, /h/ and the misplacement of /f/ for /v/and /s/ for /ʃ/ in speech contexts, (Olaniyi, 2014)’.
The importance of investigating pronunciation difficulties stems from the fact that pronunciation stands as an obstacle in communication especially when the meaning of a certain word or an expression is altered because of the incorrect pronunciation of an item as when one says ‘pin’ for ‘pen’, or ‘ship’ for ‘chip’. However, it is necessary, in this research, to see the factors that have a role to play in the acquisition of the phonological system of any non-native language. The pronunciation of any non-native speaker of any language is promoted or impeded by a number of factors including, among others, age, mother tongue influence and personality.
It is worthy to note at this point that Yoruba is a tonal based language while English is stressed based. Also, Yoruba has an open syllabic system while English has a closed syllabic system. It is important to note these differences as Yoruba and English language will be compared in subsequent chapters using mostly prosodic and syllabic features as the basis for comparison. Hence, this study intends to examine phonological analysis of English fricatives as used by Yoruba-English bilingual undergraduates of Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti (EKSU)
Statement of the Problem
Despite the fact that Nigerian English has been for many centuries the language of instruction in the Nigerian schools, Nigerian Yoruba speakers of English still have difficulties in the production of some of the fricative sounds. Yoruba speakers of English tend to mispronounce those English sounds or interchange with those present in their native language. This results in confusing listeners and renders the communication unintelligible.
Fricative sounds of English are not an exception to such problematic phenomena to Yoruba speakers of English. For example, Yoruba speakers of English have problems with the production and perception of /v/, /θ/ and /ð/. A large population of L2 learners is of the opinion that the main difficulty they experience when speaking English is pronunciation. Mostly, they consider articulation as the key source for their communication difficulties (Derwing & Rossiter, 2012; Al-Kahtany, 2011 as cited in Binturki, 2013).
Second language learners often have difficulties in pronouncing and perceiving the non-native sounds of the target language. Thus, this study focused on the phonological analysis of English fricatives as used by Yoruba-English bilingual undergraduates of Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti (EKSU)
Purpose of the Study
The general objective of the study is to investigate phonological analysis of English fricatives as used by Yoruba-English bilingual undergraduates of Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti (EKSU). The study wants to specifically;
i. Examine how the Yoruba-English speakers realize the English fricatives; / z/,/tᶴ/, /ᶴ/,/Ө/, /ᴣ/, /ŋ/, /v/, and /ð/ at the word level?
ii. Examine how the fricatives are realized by the Yoruba-English speakers at sentence level.
iii. Identify the social variables responsible for the how the sounds are relalised.
iv. Suggesting teaching procedures that might help students overcome the areas of difficulty.
Significance of the Study
The importance of this research is to make Nigerian Yoruba students of English aware of the problems that they have in pronouncing the English fricative sounds, and why there are such problems in their production. This study will also be useful to Yoruba speakers since it will draw their attention over an aspect they are deficient so as to work hard and remedy their deficiency.
It is hoped that the findings of this study would offer English students and lecturers better insights on effective teaching strategies in helping their students to master English pronunciation. This can provide a significant understanding into how a language is actually learned by the students. Students and lecturers should be well aware of the fact that the majority of their students have difficulties in producing certain English sounds.
The possible solutions in preventing students from making errors repeatedly should be considered. It is also hoped that the findings of the study will help the students to understand the phonological differences between their native language and target languages. Students should not completely rely on their teachers to recognise the errors for them. It is essential to make the students consciously compare the two languages by themselves and understand the rules of the new language during the learning process
Scope of the study
This study was limited to phonological analysis of English Fricatives as used among the Yoruba speakers of English Language in Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti.. Thus, the study will also consider fricative sounds like /v/, /θ/ and /ð/ in the initial and final positions. This study does not deal with sentences, but only words in isolation. The reason is that we want to pay attention to the target sounds that is, whether the participants produce and perceive the sounds correctly or substitute the target sounds with other sounds.
The target sounds are /v/, /θ/ and /ð/ in initial and final word positions. The study is based on Yoruba speakers who are studying at the Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti. The reason for choosing Yoruba speakers from the Ekiti State University Ado Ekiti is because of the constraints of time.
Research Questions
The research is aimed at answering the following questions:
i. How do Yoruba-English speakers realise the English fricatives; / z/,/tᶴ/, /ᶴ/,/Ө/, /ᴣ/, /ŋ/, /v/, and /ð/ at the word level?
ii. How do Yoruba-English speakers realise the fricatives at sentence level?
iii. What are the social variables responsible for how the sounds are relalised?
iv. What are the suggested teaching procedures that might help students overcome the areas of difficulty?
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