Gramley, Stephan; P?tzold, Kurt-Michael. A Survey of Modern English

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Australia as well as aspects of Aboriginal life. Many of these are borrowings from

Aboriginal languages, of which some 40 words are still current in AusE and include: bill-

abong (‘dried out river’), boomerang, budgerigar, dingo, gin ‘Aboriginal woman’, koala

(an animal), kookaburra (a bird), mallee (a tree, scrub), nulla-nulla ‘Aboriginal club’,

wallaby ‘small kangaroo’, wallaroo ‘mountain kangaroo’, wombat ‘burrowing marsupial’,

woomera (‘throwing stick, boomerang’). There are a variety of words for Aboriginal hut:

gunya (Port Jackson), mia-mia (Victoria), humpy (Queensland), wurley (South Australia).

Some of these items have little international currency (except kangaroo, boomerang) and

are not even universally known among Australians.

Other words are general StE, but may be applied somewhat differently in AusE. For

example, early settlement gave AusE station for a farm (from earlier prison station).

Paddocks are ﬁelds. A mob of sheep is a ﬂock or herd. Muster for rounding up cattle is

explained as due to the military arrangement of the convict settlements, as are super-

intendent of the station and huts of the men. Squatter, initially someone with small

holdings but later large ones, took on a connotation of wealth. Further terms from this

period include outback, overlanders ‘cattle drivers’, stockman ‘man in charge of live-

stock’, jackaroo ‘apprentice on a station’ (see vaquero), but also cocky ‘small farmer’.

Mate/mateship grew into its present legendary egalitarian male friendship and inter-

dependence, ﬁrst in the workplace and then more generally. Today an egalitarian

mateyness contributes to the immediate use of ﬁrst names, often abbreviated or given the

Australian diminutive in {-o} as in Stevo from Stephen.

The convicts also contributed ﬂash (or kiddy) language, e.g. old hand, new chum, swag

‘bundle, rolled-up belongings’ (today, ‘a lot’ as in a swag of letters to answer, swagman

‘tramp’, dated). AusE is well known for its slang, for example: cadge, bash, croak, dollop,

grab, job ‘robbery’, judy ‘woman’, fancy woman, frisk, move ‘action’, mug ‘face’, pigs

‘police’, quod ‘prison’, rattler ‘coach, train’, Romany ‘gypsy’, seedy ‘shabby’, sharper,

snooze, stink ‘furore’, swell ‘gentleman’, dressed to the nines, whack ‘share’.

Borrowing was not only from Aboriginal languages and dialects, but also from both

standard BrE and standard AmE. The former gives us railway (AmE railroad), goods

train (AmE freight train), guard’s van (AmE caboose), but AmE cowcatcher (not needed

in Britain). Australians have semi-trailers or semis not BrE articulated lorries; and AusE

has truck, not lorry; station wagon, not estate car. In the political arena we ﬁnd states

and interstate; federalists and state-righters; Senate, House of Representatives – all AmE

in source, but each state upper house is called a Legislative Council and the lower, a

Legislative Assembly (Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia) or

House of Assemby (Southern Australia, Tasmania) – all more BrE. Store has the AmE

meaning; other AmE borrowings include older block ‘area of land for settlement etc.’,

township, bush ‘the countryside as opposed to town’ and more recently french fries,

cookies and movies.

13.1.4 Ethnic groups and language in Australia

With the loosening of immigration policy Australia has ceased to be the almost totally

English speaking country it once was. Immigrants from Asia, America and Europe use

some 140 languages as their mother tongues, many regarded as ‘community languages’.

In her study of Sydney English pronunciation, Horvath found it useful to add to the

302 NATIONAL AND REGIONAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

Cultivated, General and Broad division a further one which she terms Ethnic Broad (1985:

69). However, as is the case in the United States as well, the children of immigrants

switch rapidly not only to English, but to an English virtually indistinguishable from that

of their peers with native born parents (ibid.: 94).

It has already been mentioned that a number of Aboriginal languages are still spoken.

Although about one per cent of the Australian population is aboriginal, only those in the

more remote parts of the interior still speak these languages. Furthermore, in parts of

Queensland and Western Australia as well as in the Northern Territory the mixing

of Aboriginal people with mutually unintelligible mother tongues has led to the adoption

of (Roper) Kriol, Torres Strait Broken (Cape York Creole) and Aboriginal English (see

14.3).

Kriol is spoken by at least 15,000 people in the north of Australia. Like Torres Broken,

which is spoken on many of the islands between Australia and New Guinea and on Cape

York, it is a pidgin for many speakers, but the ﬁrst language, i.e. a creole, for numerous

others. Aboriginal English, spoken especially in remote areas, denotes varieties located

between standard AusE and one of the creoles.

These Creoles are distinct languages. . . . They show an ingenious blend of English

and Australian structural features, producing a language that seems quite appropriate

to the bicultural milieu in which many Aboriginal Australians ﬁnd themselves.

Indeed, in some areas an increasing number of young Aborigines are speaking Kriol

– instead of or as well as an Australian language – and it is coming to be thought

of by them as ‘the Aboriginal language’.

(Dixon 1980: 73f.)

In most Aboriginal communities there is a continuum which runs from standard AusE to

Aboriginal English. However, those Aboriginals who live in urban areas such as Sydney

speak like their non-Aboriginal neighbours, though the variety of AusE they use tends to

be on the non-standard side of GenE.

13.2 NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH (NZE)

The language situation in New Zealand resembles that in Australia in many ways.

Virtually everyone can speak English, and most have it as their native language. The large

minority of Maoris, the native Polynesian people of New Zealand, are rapidly losing their

native tongue. At the end of the 1970s only about 20 per cent of them, which is approx-

imately 3 per cent of the population of the country, were still ﬂuent in it, and few of these

speakers were younger people (Benton 1991: 187). The decision in 1987 to give Maori

the status of ofﬁcial language is unlikely to change anything.

The historical development of New Zealand is closely related to that of Australia.

Before British sovereignty over the territory was ofﬁcially proclaimed in 1840 there were

already some 2,000 English speaking people there. They had come, mostly via Australia,

to establish whaling stations or to work as Christian missionaries to the Maoris.

After 1840 European settlement was more closely regulated (but with no transported

convicts and no penal stations) and grew gradually in the following decades, drawing on

immigration chieﬂy from Great Britain and Australia. It was these people, Australians

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and many English immigrants with a London bias to their speech, who determined the

linguistic character of New Zealand.

The English which the present day New Zealand population of almost 4 million

(including approximately 15 per cent Maoris and 6 per cent other Polynesians) speaks is

very much like AusE, suggesting a single dialect area with two major varieties. Indeed,

it has sometimes been said that, linguistically speaking, New Zealand is to Australia as

Canada is to the United States. The differences within each of the pairs are small, but for

the smaller partner psychologically vital.

The pronunciation and the vocabulary of NZE is noticeably different for non-New

Zealanders, but the grammar is fully standard, differing from other standard varieties only

in preference for use of some forms:

The differences between NZE and other varieties are to be found in matters of degree

rather than in categorical distinctions, but NZE is not just the same as BrE or AmE:

it is a distinct variety, in grammar as well as in lexis and pronunciation.

(Bauer 1989: 82)

304 NATIONAL AND REGIONAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

Map 13.2 New Zealand

13.2.1 The pronunciation of NZE

For all practical purposes New Zealanders sound like Australians, at least to outsiders;

of course, ‘to New Zealanders the Australian accent seems quite different’ (Gordon and

Deverson 1985: 13). There seems to be little or no regional difference in pronuncia-

tion despite the fact that New Zealanders feel there is (but see remarks below on Otago

and Southland). Social or class differences do, however, show up, though less than in

Britain. It may also be the case that RP is still more a model in New Zealand than

in Australia; certainly it is favoured in ‘serious’ broadcasting and the news. Investigations

of attitudes show associations of RP with ambition, education, reliability, intelligence,

higher income and occupational prestige, but association of NZE accents with friendli-

ness and a sense of humour. While RP has high overt prestige, North American accents

show the overall highest covert prestige. In contrast to AusE: ‘A true New Zealand

standard is still evolving’ (Bayard 1990: 67). Note, too, that correction in the direction

of the prestige sometimes results in such hypercorrect forms as /e

/ for /a/ in such words

as I or like.

The explication and ﬁgures presented above for AusE, apply to NZE as well. The

shifts shown there include such items as the growing merger of /e/ and /e

ə/, which com-

pounded with the raising of /

/ to /e/ led to the following misunderstanding. A visiting

American phoning a colleague at his house got one of the man’s children on the line. The

American heard, much to his astonishment, ‘He’s dead’ rather than the intended ‘Here’s

Dad’ (Gordon and Deverson 1985: 82).

While much of NZE pronunciation is the same as in AusE, including the even more

frequent use of the high rising tone, a few points are arguably different and merit pointing

out. One of these is the greater retraction and centralization of /

/ in NZE, a point which

non-New Zealanders have often commented on. Hence the vowel of kit becomes [

1] or

even a stressed schwa [

ə]. This explains the surprise of an American hearing Flight 846

at Wellington Airport announced as follows: ‘Flight ite four sucks’ (Gordon and Deverson

1985: 82).

There is also a very noticeable tendency to vocalize /l/ in NZE. The result has had a

far reaching effect on the vowel system because it has created a number of new diph-

thongs. This occurs more commonly after front than after back vowels and often involves

neutralization (i.e. otherwise different vowels are no longer distinguished when followed

by /l/), e.g. bill = bull, fool = full and kill = cull, or, even more extreme, pool = pull =

pill = pall, all of which might be rendered as pooh. A related phenomenon is the neutral-

ization of the /e/–/

/ opposition in words like helicopter, help, Wellington, which then

sound like hallicopter, halp and Wallington. The centring diphthongs /

ə/ and /εə/ are

merging (beer = bear) for more and more young people, as in AusE and SAE as well.

On the other hand, young people show signs of increasing use of the glottal stop in words

with ﬁnal /t/ (Bayard 1991: 184).

13.2.2 NZE vocabulary

The vocabulary of NZE has been inﬂuenced by new ﬂora, fauna, topography, institutions

and the presence of a non-English speaking people. In addition, it shares many items with

AusE that differ from other national varieties of English. Like AusE there is relatively

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little regionally different vocabulary, but note ‘a certain type of large, smooth sausage’,

which in Auckland is called polony, in Christchurch saveloy, in Southland Belgium,

Belgium roll/sausage (AusE uses polony and saveloy, Adelaide fritz, Brisbane and Sydney,

devon) (Burridge and Mulder 1998: 4).

What distinguishes NZE most from AusE is the existence in NZE of a sizeable number

of borrowings from Maori. Examples include the following: hoot ‘money’, kiwi ‘a kind

of (ﬂightless) bird, the NZ symbol’, ngaio ‘a kind of tree’, Pakeha ‘white New Zealander’,

wahine ‘woman’, whare ‘small house, hut’, yacker ‘work’. The fact that /a

/ as in whare

/wa

ri/ can become /ɒ/ in NZE led one schoolboy to make the following spelling mistake:

‘Dad thought Mum looked tired so he hired a whore for the holidays’ (Turner 1972: 129).

The following excerpt is taken from a newspaper review of the supplement on

Australian and New Zealand vocabulary in The New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary

(1990). The passage makes highly intensive and unauthentically exaggerated use of NZE

and AusE colloquial vocabulary; however, it also offers a little of the ﬂavour of the

language:

Stone the crows, sports, but with no more bobsy-die than a dag-picking bushy

claiming compo from out in the boo-ay, the sticky-beaks of the Oxford University

Press have been taking a squiz at Aussie and Enzed slang. They’ve now published

a beaut new supplement to the Pocket Oxford Dictionary – 1200 dinkydi words and

expressions which are certainly giving the chooms something to chiack at.

(quoted in Gordon and Deverson 1985: 51)

To help out, here is a short glossary:

stone the crows – expression of surprise

sports – ‘guys’

bobsy-die – ‘fuss, panic’

dag-picking – ‘sorting the wool from the dags’

dag – ‘wool around a sheep’s hindquarters,

often dirty with mud and excreta’

bushy – ‘someone from the countryside, from the bush’

compo – ‘worker’s compensation’

boo-ay – ‘backblocks, remote country district’

sticky-beaks – ‘priers, meddlers’

squiz – ‘a look’

beaut – ‘ﬁne, good’

dinkydi – ‘true, honest, genuine’

choom – ‘English person’ (variant of chum)

chiach – ‘jeer, taunt, deride, tease’

13.2.3 Maori English

Although the Maoris (in contrast to the Aborigines of Australia) have a single language,

it has not provided signiﬁcantly more loan words to NZE than Aboriginal languages have

to AusE, and it has been constantly giving way to English. Maori is now spoken by only

306 NATIONAL AND REGIONAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

about 12 per cent of the Maori, who themselves make up about 12.5 per cent of the popu-

lation. These speakers are older (and bilingual) and even the traditional domain of the

marae is giving way to English (Burridge and Mulder 1998: 275). Most Maoris have, in

other words, adopted English, and they speak it virtually indistinguishably from Pakehas

(New Zealand Whites) of the same socio-economic stratum. However, Maori English may

have (marginally) more Maori words in it than NZE, e.g. kai ‘food’. The frequent use of

the high rise terminal intonation among Maori school children has also been remarked

on (see Australian Question Intonation). ‘The use of the tag question eh? [ay] is gener-

ally attributed to Maori and then Maori English as its source, but is today a general feature

of New Zealand English’ (Bauer 1994: 416).

Maori-speakers often transfer terms and rules from the Maori address system to their

English – for example, a three-way distinction in second-person pronouns you

(singular), youse (dual), and youse fullas (plural), and address forms such as cuz, sis,

bro, aunty, and uncle, which reﬂect Maori kinship relationships.

(Burridge and Mulder 1998: 12)

Proportionately more Maoris speak a broad, working class type of NZE than their numbers

would warrant. In an experiment recorded samples of Maori speech were rated lower in

social prestige than samples from High and Middle Status Pakehas, but the Maori record-

ings were given high ratings on the ‘warm’ scale (as opposed to the ‘hard working’ and

‘intelligent’ scales). Overall, Maoris seem to be evaluated ‘as if Low Status Pakehas’

(Huygens and Vaughan 1983: 222).

13.3 SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH (SAE)

In this section only South African English (SAE) will be treated. A similarly oriented

variety is said to be spoken in Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi,

Zimbabwe and Kenya. When the ﬁrst group of English speaking settlers arrived at Cape

Town in 1820 there were not only black Africans living in the colony (principally the

Khoikhoi or Hottentots, the San or Bushmen and the Xhosa), but also the descendants of

Dutch settlers, called Afrikaners, who had begun arriving in 1652 and over whom the

British had established permanent control in 1806. Both the Afrikaners and the British

treated the native Africans much as the Europeans treated the Aborigines in Australia and

the Maoris in New Zealand, for none of the native people were able to offer resistance

to the Europeans or to inﬂuence the technologically signiﬁcantly more advanced culture

they represented. The British and Afrikaners, however, became rivals, and their subse-

quent history has been characterized by political, economic, cultural and linguistic

competition.

After the Afrikaner National Party victory in the 1948 election English was no longer

automatically the favoured language in South Africa. Despite its relatively small number

of native speakers English did, however, retain considerable inﬂuence and prestige. It and

Afrikaans had (and have) numerous advantages over the black African languages:

• they are not divided into dialects;

• they were the exclusive ofﬁcial languages of the country during apartheid;

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• they are spoken by a culturally, politically and economically dominant white

population;

• they offer access to technological and scientiﬁc knowledge (and here English has the

advantage over Afrikaans)

The black population prefers English to Afrikaans both because of its utilitarian value

and because it is more closely identiﬁed with liberal ideas than is Afrikaans. Indeed,

English, in contrast to Afrikaans, is seen less as a group language and more as an ‘out-

group’ language, one shared by various ethnic groups. This function is the result of the

fact that English speaking white South Africans have relatively little group feeling, and

it is strengthened by the fact that English is a widely used second language for all groups

in South Africa including the Afrikaners.

Today about 8.5 per cent of the population of approximately 43 million speak English

as their home language. This ‘group’ is made up of two ﬁfths of the Whites (themselves

one eighth of the population), somewhat more than one tenth of the Coloureds (of mixed

black and white ancestry; one twelfth of the population) and virtually all of the Indian

population (just over 2 per cent of the population), and totals altogether somewhat less

than 5 million people. This makes it the seventh largest language of the country. About

33 million speak a black African language, 5 of which have more speakers than English

308 NATIONAL AND REGIONAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

Map 13.3 South Africa

(Zulu, Xhosa, (South) Sotho, Pedi (North Sotho), Tswana (West Sotho)). Around 6 million

are speakers of Afrikaans, the language of the Afrikaners and the vast majority (between

80 and 90 per cent) of the Coloureds.

The new, post-apartheid constitution of 1996 recognizes 11 languages as ofﬁcial

(Afrikaans, English, the African languages mentioned above plus Tsonga, Swati, Ndebele

and Venda) and further languages are to be promoted and developed (San, Khoi, Nama

and South African Sign Language). A large number of European and Indian languages

spoken by immigrants and their descendants have also been assured promotion and

respect. This is a clear break from the predominant status of Afrikaans in the apartheid

period. According to constitutional principles all the African languages should be avail-

able for use in education and court proceedings. However, there are neither the necessary

teaching materials and trained teachers to conduct multilingual education on a large-scale

basis, nor are there the necessary language skills among judges and lawyers to ensure the

right all South Africans have to be tried in a language they understand. The Pan South

African Language Board, established in 1996, is intended to help remedy this.

English, as a worldwide language of wider communication, offers the best chances for

advancement. For this reason many black Africans are eager to learn it, despite their

resentment of white hegemony in economic and political life. As a result English, with

its generally high prestige and utility, has remained predominant in public life.

13.3.1 White SAE

The white English speaking community of approximately 1.8 million (not counting

numerous Afrikaans-English bilinguals) in South Africa uses a variety of English which

is close to StE in both grammar and vocabulary. Variation within this community is largely

in the dimension of pronunciation: SAE is phonologically virtually identical with the

English of southern England. However, phonetically there are numerous differences, most

noticeably in the variety referred to as Extreme SAE, less so in what is called Respectable

SAE and least so in Conservative SAE. These three distinctions correlate to some extent

with class and, as comments will show, to region and to the gender of the speaker.

Conservative SAE Conservative SAE is very similar to RP, and, indeed, it is said

that most White SAE speakers cannot distinguish the two. Among the few differences

between the two is vowel retraction after /l/ ([t

ʃ%ldrən] for children), centralization of

], especially after /j/ and raising of /ɔ/ almost to [o]. All of these features turn up in

AusE and NZE as well. Conservative SAE correlates with the high socio-economic status

and remains the widely accepted standard of pronunciation in South Africa as seen in its

use in radio and television.

Respectable SAE This is an informal, local standard and enjoys high social prestige

though sometimes faulted for not being ‘correct’. This type of SAE has developed from

Natal English, is recognized as local in Natal and is therefore not so highly regarded there

(Lanham 1985: 246); however, it is representative of ‘upwardly mobile groups elsewhere’

(ibid.: 243). Natal SAE differs from RP because of its tendency to monophthongize /a

/

to [a], especially before /l, m, n, v, z, s/.

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ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND SOUTH AFRICA 309

SAE pronunciation is generally non-rhotic; however, because of the inﬂuence of rhotic

Afrikaans, it is not consistently so. It may be characterized by the following eight features:

•/e

/ starts lower: [ə] (may);

•/

əυ/ starts lower as well: [υ] (go);

•/

ɔ/ raised towards [o] (four = foe);

• /e/ raised to towards [e

] (yes = yace) (see Figure 13.3);

•/

/ likewise raised: [e] (man = RP men) (see Figure 13.3);

•/

/ realized as [i] (kiss) in stressed syllables next to velars, after /h/ and initially;

otherwise as [

1] or [ə] (pin = GenAm pun) (see Figure 13.3);

• ﬁnal /

/ is longer and closer: /i/ (city = citee);

•/e

ə/ is monophthongized: /e/ (shared = shed, except the latter is longer).

All of these characteristics, as well as the occasional occurrence of a ﬂapped and voiced

/t/ (latter = ladder), are reminiscent of AusE and/or NZE. In addition, /dj/ and /tj/ are

palatalized /d

/ (due = Jew) and /tʃ/ (tune = choon).

Extreme SAE Extreme SAE has low social prestige, but is connected with the covert

values of toughness and manliness, independence and lack of regard for what is consid-

ered reﬁned. Its speakers are marked by gregariousness and unselective social relations,

un-Englishness, strong local loyalties and Afrikaner patriotism (Lanham and Macdonald

1979: 25ff.). It shares some features with Afrikaans English and is associated with the

Eastern Cape. These phonetic characteristics include the use of an obstruent, often trilled

/r/, a retracted /

ɑ/ (so that park is like RP pork) and fronted and glide-weakened /aυ/ =

[



] as well as [ɒ] for /a/. Yet even this ‘broadest’ of SAE varieties does not share such

working class variables as /

n/ for <-ing> or H-dropping, which are typical of Cockney.

Although the inﬂuence of Afrikaans on SAE may be called into question, especially

with regard to pronunciation, some evidence of grammatical inﬂuence remains. One such

item is the construction, I’m busy Verb-ing, which is a kind of progressive form. In StE

only an action verb may occur in the blank (e.g. I’m busy working). In SAE non-activity

verbs are possible as well (e.g. I’m busy waiting). This construction seems to be modelled

on the Afrikaans progressive with besig ‘busy’ (Lass and Wright 1986: 219f.). Other

syntactic features include no as a sentence initiator (No, that’ll be ﬁne. We can do that

easily for you.), third person address (Will Doctor [said to this person] lend me two rand?),

310 NATIONAL AND REGIONAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

bat → bet // → /e/

bet → bit /e/ → // or /e/

bit → b1t // → /1/

1



Figure 13.3 The Southern Hemisphere Shift (South Africa)

incomplete predications (e.g. A: I was looking for some shoes in town. B: And did you

ﬁnd?), third person singular present tense without an {-S} (e.g. I’m no musician but the

wife play), prepositions (e.g. to be scared for [= of] something; explain me instead of

explain to me) (examples from Branford 1978: xv).

There are, of course, lexical items speciﬁc to SAE. These are largely loans from

Afrikaans (e.g. brak ‘salty, alkali water or soil’, lekker ‘pleasant, excellent, delicious’,

trek ‘arduous trip’, veld ‘open country’), from Nguni/Zulu or Xhosa (e.g. donga ‘river

bank, gully’, kaross ‘skin blanket’, mamba ‘a type of snake’) or from other languages

(e.g. Portuguese Pidgin brinjal ‘egg plant’, Hindi dhoby ‘washerman’, Portuguese kraal

‘native village’). In addition, there are further words which have entered World English,

usually items reﬂecting South African, e.g. apartheid or its fauna and topography

(meerkat, a kind of mongoose; veld, grassland).

13.3.2 Afrikaans SAE

Since English is recognized as extremely useful in business life and since English culture

is attractive for numerous young Afrikaners, many of them use it widely. More than one

in eight claims to be fully bilingual, while less than 10 per cent of white SAE native

speakers know Afrikaans well enough to make a similar assertion (Lanham 1984: 335f.).

Together with less ﬂuent Afrikaans users of English a large number of white South

Africans speak Afrikaans English. Generally, this variety carries little prestige and is asso-

ciated closely with Extreme SAE, which it also resembles to a large extent. Additional

linguistic features include de-aspiration of stops and /j/ for /h/ as in hill /jil/ or here /j

ə4/

(ibid.: 340).

13.3.3 Black SAE

Black South Africans speak a kind of English which is clearly identiﬁable as a second

language variety. Despite the large number of English native speakers in South Africa,

few teachers in black schools have a sufﬁciently good command of the language to offer

a native speaker-like model. Nevertheless, a large portion, if perhaps less than half of the

black population read, speak or understand English. This means that millions of South

Africans use English, even though this English reﬂects ‘Bantu-language phonology,

idioms and ﬁxed expressions, redeﬁned semantic content, and peculiar grammatical struc-

tures’ (Lanham 1985: 244). These are largely urban dwellers who read English language

newspapers, listen to the English media and need English in education and in their work

lives. Phonetically Black SAE is shaped by the pronunciation patterns of the African

mother tongues of its users. Among other things this means that the long-short contrasts

of English are not maintained (tick = teak; head = haired; pull = pool). Furthermore, there

are no central vowels. This means that bird may be confused with bed and that there is

no schwa. However, the higher a person is on the socio-educational scale, the more likely

her/his English is to resemble White SAE.

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