White South African English


I’ve created a resource to learn the basic phonemes of South African English. There is a pdf file that you can download, and print if you like.

South African English (White) Features (pdf)

This document accompanies the audio file I have prepared that takes you through all the vowels and consonants of the accent, and gives you practice words and phrases for each phoneme.

Audio File (mp3)

One feature that didn’t make it into the breakdown is something known to linguists as “Yod-coalescence”. This is where words like tune (coming from British ‘tyoon’) and duke (from ‘dyook’) are pronounced as “choon” and “juke”. In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), that would be: /tjun/ is [tʃun], and /djʉk/ is [dʒʉk], with that centralized “oo” vowel that I discuss for the GOOSE lexical set.

A final (really important) feature that I failed to discuss in the audio is the vocal quality of the accent. I would say that South African English (SAE) feels like your mouth is more closed than other accents, especially Canadian speech. The resonance quality of it combines very dark, pulled back sounds (in words like thought, lot, palm) and very bright, forward sounds (in words like fleece, kit, dress, trap). Overall, I’d say that there is a bright, pingy quality to the voice the one can feel behind the cheekbones. Compared to typical North American intonation patters, SAE is more expressive melodically, definitely with higher high notes, and possibly lower lows. This leads SAE to feel more expressive than typical North American, especially when in story-telling mode. SAE speakers are not afraid of popping up into their head voice.

SAMPLES


Once you’ve listened to these files, you can begin to listen with a more “educated” ear to the sound files of Native speakers. Here are a few recommendations to get you started. Some recommendations on what to listen for:
  • the tempo of the speaker (how fast or slow)
  • the speaker’s fluency (any hesitation, pausing; the connection of thought to timing)
  • any unusual stressing of words or phrases
  • vocal quality — where does the voice ‘resonate’ in your head when you imitate the way they talk?
  • pitch — what is the overall “note” that they are speaking on?
  • inflection — how high, how low does the speaker go when emphasizing words with melody, asking questions?
  • variety — is the speech consistent? does the speaker mix it up to shift the nature of the story they’re telling?
The more that you can notice, the more you'll get out of it.

Athol Fugard:
Fugard based the play on himself, so it makes sense to study his speech closely. Of course, he’s a much older man and he quite clearly has had significant dental work done (dentures of some kind, I would guess) that compromises his articulation to a small degree. With videos, I recommend watching for the first time, and then listening without watching thereafter in order to focus on how they are speaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rghTBzoLWHQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk8J7v13_2Y&feature=related

From The International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA)
This one sounds about right. I’d define it as the General grouping discussed in the sidebar to the right.
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/master_harold/southafrica25.mp3
A Transcript of the “unscripted” material is available here.

This male (who was a student of mine at York 3 years ago) does have a few slight North American influences, but also sounds about right.
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/master_harold/southafrica27.mp3
A Transcript of the “unscripted” material is available here.

The next one is perhaps a bit too Cultivated (English) for our purposes. You’ll notice his /o/ sounds are definitely very English.
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/master_harold/southafrica4.mp3

Here’s a female sample, who not only sounds very Cultivated, but also a bit too “radio announcery” for my tastes.
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/master_harold/southafrica9.mp3

This female speaker has some US influences, but her “goose” vowel is very clearly General South African.
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/master_harold/southafrica11.mp3