Phonetic peculiarities of the English language in India

Abstract

In India, English has the status of an official language along with Hindi. According to linguists, the English spoken in India is different from the one spoken in other countries, with it being an independent version of the English language. While working on the research, the general trends of differences between the Indian English pronunciation and the Standard English pronunciation were discovered. In our work, the phonetic peculiarities of Indian English were studied. There is a particular tendency towards assimilation with other indigenous languages of India – softening and reduction of some sounds and the abolition of reduction in others, the appearance of retroflex sounds, the replacement of interdental sounds with dental occlusive sounds, the transposition of stress, etc. Phonetic peculiarities of Indian English are explained by a different structure of the articulation apparatus of people living in India. Despite this, the educated population of India, when using Indian English, strives for a more prestigious pronunciation.