A CONTRASTIVE OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH AND YORUBA CONSONANTAL SYSTEMS

Abstract

This paper strives to make a contrastive analysis of English and Yoruba consonantal systems. It aims at showing areas where the two languages exhibit similar features and at the same time where they differ. Looking at the variants of consonants in English, one may conclude that the consonantal system of English is more fluid than that of Yoruba. Hence, there is the likelihood of indices of difficulty in the spoken English of typical Yoruba speakers of English. Therefore, this attempt is aimed at highlighting certain consonantal speech sounds which constitute effective spoken English hurdles to average Yoruba speakers of English. It is hoped that this effort would assist teachers of Oral English especially in making informed decisions on instructional packages and strategies. By extension, it would also provide a formidable frontier of closing the gap of the phonostructural disparities between an 'indigenized ' and an 'intelligible' varieties of English.