EFFECTS OF ORTHO-PHONEMIC CONTRASTS ON THE SPEECHES OF GWANDARA ESL SPEAKERS

The interference of L1 on L2 is a major area of research in the linguistic domain, particularly in phonetics and phonology in recent times. Gwandara language has yet to be explored in this regard. Gwandara speakers of English, like other speakers of English as a second language, are found with different levels of pronunciation difficulties. This is akin partly to the differences between the phonemic features of their mother tongue and that of the English, which show non-correspondence between the orthographic symbols (letters) and phonemic symbols (sounds), a situation that goes in contrast with most, if not all of our African languages. It is this compelling truth that prompted a research into the area so as to identify the similarities and dissimilarities between the two phonemic systems and to identify areas of English phonemic difficulties to the Gwandara speakers of English as a second language. Data were collected primarily from field work (through interviews). A random selection of respondents from the Gwandara population living in Shabu town, Kwandare town and Tudun Gwandara, all in Lafia LGA of Nasarawa State gave us the needed data for the analysis. Using the weak version of the contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH) popularised by Wardhaugh, the study analysed the recorded field data (as transcribed), and found among others that the typical Gwandara natives erroneously articulate some English sounds into the environment they should not be found, for example, backing as ‘backingt’; bracket as ‘branket’; among as ‘amongt’; calculate as ‘canculate’; within as ‘withint’; the as ‘de’; this as ‘dis’ etc. Given the findings of the research, it is concluded that no two languages exhibit the same linguistic properties. As such, Gwandara speakers of English encounter difficulties articulating some English phonemes due to differences in the phonemic systems of the two languages. It is therefore recommended that the Gwandara natives should endeavour to be aware of their inherent English pronunciation problems as explored in this work, so as to improve on them, and to become fully aware that unlike their mother tongue, spellings and pronunciations do not match in English. Learning the rules of spelling does not necessarily mean learning the pronunciation of words in English; one needs to learn the rules of spelling separate from the rules of pronunciation.