The Mutual Intelligibility of Cameroon English and Indian English Speakers

Abstract

This study investigates the mutual intelligibility of Cameroon English and Indian English speakers. From the data collected in oral reading on various aspects of English and in free speech by Cameroon English speakers and Indian English speakers, the analysis is done from the New Englishes and Contrastive Analysis frame. The findings show that, contrary to the presupposed mutual intelligibility of native English speech on the one hand, and the mutual intelligibility of non-native English speech on the other, some non-native speakers of English face almost the same difficulty understanding other non-native speakers like the native speakers. Though many new Englishes share a number of common features that differentiate them from native Englishes, each variety of non-native English has some features which prevent it from being fully understood by both native speakers and speakers of other non-native varieties of English.