CHAPTER ONE

1.0 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

To correct the wrong pronunciation of English words in many Nigerian students, particularly among the Ilorin indigenous Yoruba students demands extra effort and great attention. This is because, it is observed that this problem is  the result of the features found in their indigenous languages which are transferred to the sound system of the English language. Their English phonetics reflects the structure of the sound system of their mother tongue (Osisanwo, 2009).  With respect to this, we shall discuss the term phonology.

Phonology is the study of the sound system of a Language. It is the study of the properties of the sound system of a given language. It is the systematic study of how the speech sounds function and are organized in human languages. Hyman (1975, P1) cited by Osisanwo (2009,P3) says that, the goal of phonology is to study the properties of the sound system which speakers must learn and internalize in order to use their language for the purpose of communication. To Oyebade (1998, p2) ‘phonology is the scientific study of the arbitrary vocal symbol used in human speech and the pattern into which these symbols produce intelligent, meaningful utterances’. To summit up, Akmajian et al (2008, p109) said: ‘phonology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the structure and patterning of sound in human language’.

Speakers of Nigerian English are still facing a lot of pronunciation problems as a result of their L1 influence on their spoken English (Alabi, 2007). So many works have been done on the segmental features of the phonology of Nigerian English such as Utin (2009) based on the Anang accent of English language. Jowith (1991) studied the phonology of Nigeria English used Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba languages but this work will pay attention to Ilorin Yoruba accent of English.

STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

This work is set out to find the impact of Yoruba language particularly the Ilorin Yoruba dialect on the phonology of English language. That is, it is to check the influence of the Ilorin Yoruba dialect on the sound system of English language at the segmental level. In other worlds, this work will find out the English phonemes which are mispronounced by the Ilorin indigenous Yoruba students.

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