Resumen de The Phonemic Realisations of the Letter "Ii" and "Yy" in Educated Nigerian English Accent and its Implications for ESL Teaching and Learning
This paper examines the phonemic realisations of the letter Ii and Yy inEducated Nigerian English Accent (ENEA) as a second language. It is basedon the concept of intraference. Examples were gathered from 2005 to 2013 ina national survey through interviews, participant observation and the recordingof spontaneous speeches. The method of analysis is eclectic: qualitative textualanalysis and description, and quantitative statistical presentation of data.Ordinal data are presented in percentile and frequency tables and charts andthe linguistic texts are described, explained and compared with RP variants.The study established that educated Nigerians redeploy the various British RPrealisations of the letters i and y indiscriminately to pronounce words inwhich the letters appear in a manner that RP and other native English accentsmay not pronounce them, thereby producing phonological variants. Sincethe variants emanate from the (un)conscious redeployment of underlying RPphonemic realisations of the letters and since they are institutionalised in ENE,the paper proposes that they be treated as variations that characterise ESL andEducated Nigerian English Accent (ENEA).
