Zulu English is a variety of
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, spoken almost exclusively in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
among the
Zulu. The variety is heavily influenced by the phonology and lexicon of the
Zulu language
Zulu (), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 12 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal ...
.
Phonology
*The met–mate merger is a phenomenon occurring for some speakers of Zulu English where and are both pronounced . As a result, the words "met" and "mate" are homophonous as .
*The cot–coat merger is a phenomenon occurring for some speakers of Zulu English where the phonemes and are not distinguished.
*Confusion between and also occurs: it is reported that is sometimes replaced by , so ''ship'' may be pronounced like ''chip''.
*Devoicing of certain obstruents, particularly .
References
Bibliography
*
Dialects of English
Languages of South Africa
{{SouthAfrica-stub