SOAS Research Online

Abstract

A number of books on English phonetics for foreign students have been written, equally a number of studies on the sound systems of the Bantu Languages of Zambia have been undertaken, but so far no systematic contrastive study of any specific Bantu Language of Zambia and English, has been undertaken in a community where both English and the Bantu languages play such an important role in the lives of the people. Of particular importance is the use made of English as a medium of instruction in schools, and the fact that the future of every Zambian child lies largely in his performance in the English language both in the written and spoken aspect of it. This work is an attempt to study the spoken performance in the English language of Tonga speaking children at two different stages of their education using a contrastive study of the sound systems of the two languages as a basis. The study aims at finding out firstly, how far the spoken performance of the Tonga children diverges from that of standard English, and whether the diyergencies can be explained in any way by what happens in the two languages. One aspect which this study proposes to deal with, which has not been attempted so far by anyone, is an analysis of Tonga children's performance in English stress and intonation.