English in South Africa: Phonetic, Grammar, Lexical Changes in Speech of Black South Africans

The article reveals the specifics of the South African English, which developed in the process of interaction between British English and the local languages and cultures of South Africa. The purpose of the work is to analyze the specifics features of the South African English in its phonetic, grammatical, and lexical structure, mainly of its Black representatives representing the linguistic majority of South Africa. As a result of interference processes on the part of local languages, there is a signifi cant discrepancy with the norm in the English language of Blacks in South Africans.
The most productive changes are: vowel reduction and assimilation; the most frequent grammatical transformation processes are: omission of articles, use of abstract nouns in the plural form; simplifi cation of verb tenses; highly productive lexical transformation processes are borrowings from autochthonous languages. Phonetic, grammatical, and lexical transformation processes are characteristic of the language variants mesolect and basilect. The acrolect variant is subject to transformational changes in exceptional cases.