Coda violation among the Igbo-English speakers in Ilorin, Nigeria

Abstract

The role of English as an official language in Nigeria makes it a necessity for everyone to aspire to learn it as a second language. The Igbo ethnolinguistic group is one of the largest groups in Nigeria. This study sets out to examine the contexts under which Igbo speakers of English violate coda realisation in English words. The objectives of this article are to: examine the patterns of word-final coda violation among the Igbo speakers of English; find out the reason for violating word-final coda; investigate why Igbo speakers of English insert a vowel phoneme and discover the variant vowel phonemes inserted at word-final coda of English words. Findings reveal that the Igbo speakers of English insert a vowel phoneme to open the final closed syllable. The inserted vowel phoneme is not static and the reduction of final complex coda has a specific environment. This article concludes that violation of word-final coda and word-final complex coda among Igbo speakers of English does not render their variety of English unintelligible; rather, it shows that they speak an indigenised form of English which can be referred to as ‘igboglish’ under the umbrella of Nigerian English (‘niglish’).