Bahamian Creole - Pronunciation

Pronunciation

Though there is variation between black and white speakers, there is a tendency for speakers to drop /h/ or, in an attempt to correct stigmatized speech, to add it to vowel-initial words, so that harm and arm are pronounced the same. This merger occurs most often in the speech of Abaco and north Eleuthera.

Less educated speakers have merged /v/ and /w/ into a single phoneme, pronouncing words with or depending on context (the latter appearing in word-initial position and the former appearing elsewhere). Outside of white acrolectal speech, speakers have no dental fricatives and English cognate words are usually pronounced with or as in dis ('this') and tink ('think'). Other characteristics of Bahamian Creole in comparison to English include:

• Merger of the vowels of fair and fear into
• Free variation of the happy vowel between and .
• The vowel of first merges with that of fuss (into ) in educated speech and with the vowel of foist (into ) in less educated speech.
• Non-rhotic speech; /r/ is not pronounced unless it precedes a vowel.
• Final clusters are often simplified, especially when they share voicing (e.g. gold > gol, but not milk > *mil).
• Pin–pen merger.