English and Malaysian English Vowels : Theoretical and Applied Perspectives (original) (raw)

This paper sets out to describe the vowels of Malaysian English with reference to those of standard British English and American English accents from a broadly phonemic perspective. More precisely, Malaysian English vowels will be compared with Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA) vowels as used by educated Malaysians. The data is derived from my own participant observations of students, teachers, and administrative staff from diverse ethnic backgrounds in classrooms, offices, meeting rooms, conference halls, corridors, and canteens over a number of years during my professorship at International Islamic University Malaysia betrween 1991-1997. No tape or video recorders or writing tools were used; it is just about my own observations, hearings, and good memory, thank God. The analysis of the results is thus impressionistic, which was the standard practice of leaders in the field like Daniel Jones, D. Abercrombie, and A. C. Gimson and the great Arabic linguists and le...