Het jou mô en jou pô 'n strôndhuis by Hôrtenbos? Feit of fiksie?

Abstract

In this article, I present the findings of a study of the seemingly expanding phenomenon in Afrikaans of rounding of the 'aa' vowel, phonetically transcribed as [a]. A mix between a qualitative and quantitative methodological approach was followed. The hypotheses are based on personal observation of this process, especially as viewed from a phonological perspective. The role of prominence (both word stress and sentence accent) is in the centre of these hypotheses. Prominent long underlying /a:/ vowels will most probably be rounded; even without such stress or accent the chances will be more than 50%, but the short underlyingly /a/ will not be rounded. The method used for testing these hypotheses is the following: a strong 'rounder' of Afrikaans /a/ was identified, and the readers were requested to record a number of carefully-constructed appropriate sentences. The relevant vowels of this speaker, a female student aged 21, were processed digitally. The most important acoustic features (duration, Formants 1 and 2) were extracted, and statistically analysed. The results clearly support the hypotheses posed.