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This article covers the phonological system of South African English (SAE) as spoken primarily by White South Africans. While there is some variation among speakers, SAE typically has a number of features in common with English as it is spoken in southern England (in places like London), such as non-rhoticity and the TRAP–BATH split.
The two main phonological features that mark South African English as distinct are the behaviour of the vowels in KIT and PALM. The KIT vowel tends to be "split" so that there is a clear allophonic variation between the front [ɪ] and central [ɪ̈] or [ə]. The PALM vowel is characteristically back in the General and Broad varieties of SAE. The tendency to monophthongise /ɐʊ/ and /aɪ/ to [ɐː] and [aː] respectively, are also typical features of General and Broad White South African English.
General South African English features phonemic vowel length (so that ferry/ˈferiː/ and fairy/ˈfeːriː/ as well as cot/kɑt/ and cart/kɑːt/ differ only in length) as well as phonemic roundedness, so that fairy/ˈfeːriː/ is distinguished from furry/ˈføːriː/ by roundedness.[1][2]
Features involving consonants include the tendency for /tj/ (as in tune) and /dj/ (as in dune) to be realised as [tʃ] and [dʒ], respectively (see Yod coalescence), and /h/ has a strong tendency to be voiced initially.
^Wells (1982), pp. 613, 615.
^Bowerman (2004), pp. 936–938.
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