THE IDIOSYNCRASY OF EAST AFRICAN ENGLISH

Abstract

World Englishes is a topic of great significance since the English language is spoken by many populations around the world as a developed language that may be secondary to a native tongue. Given the spread of English worldwide, it seems that any discriminative views against speakers of English whose grammar, syntax, or pronunciation are unique, are regarded as feeble or even void nowadays. This article will investigate the idiomorphic character of phonological, lexicon, grammar, syntactic, and pragmatic features of East African English in comparison with Standard British English. In order for this linguistic analysis to be conducted, various examples from East African resources were extracted. Not only does this analysis shed light on the multi-faceted aspects of East African English that is the result of a marriage between the ‘’native’’ nature and the standard inventory lexicon, phonology, grammar and syntax of British English, but it also stresses the importance of treasuring one’s own culture.

Keywords: language attitudes, idiomorphic features, phonology, lexicon, grammar, syntax, pragmatics, unique stylistic elements, nativisation