Influence of Indigenous Languages
The speech patterns of Ugandan languages strongly influence spoken English. Uganda has a large variety of indigenous languages, and someone familiar with Uganda can readily identify the native language of a person speaking English. Ugandan speakers will alter foreign words to make them sound more euphonic.
The Bantu languages spoken in southern Uganda tend not to have consonants sounded alone without a vowel in the syllable. Indeed, the Luganda word for consonant is "silent letter". Thus the letters l and d in Alfred (/ˈælfrɛd/) will be given sound by the addition of /i/, making the pronunciation of the word /ˈalifuredi/. Similarly, muscular is pronounced /ˈmusicular/.
Luganda never has /r/ starting a word; it only appears following the letters /e/ and /i/ within a word. The /l/ sound, conversely, cannot follow these sounds. Thus the word railway gets its /r/ and its /l/ substituted, giving /leyirwe/.
Luganda does not permit the sequence /kju/; any occurrence of this sound becomes /tʃu/. Thus cute is pronounced /tʃut/.
The initial /r/ is dysphonic to the Luganda speaker but is perfectly natural to the speaker of Runyankole and Rukiga, which have few instances of the /l/ sound. Additionally, /s/ in Runyankole and Rukiga is more often heard as /ʃ/. The combination of the above three rules will transform calcium into /karuʃim/.
Read more about this topic: Ugandan English
Famous quotes containing the words influence of, influence, indigenous and/or languages:
“... so long as the serpent continues to crawl on the ground, the primary influence of woman will be indirect ...”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“... so long as the serpent continues to crawl on the ground, the primary influence of woman will be indirect ...”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.”
—J.G. (James Graham)