Consonant clusters

1. The Pure Fiji English of Indo-Fijian speakers, like that of Fijians, allows few consonant clusters, especially in final position e.g. last > [las], although /ks/ does frequently occur, especially in [aks] for ask, also as in Fijian English.

2. Consonant clusters, both initial and final, quite commonly receive an epenthetic vowel in Pure Indo-Fijian English, e.g. free > [fari], plate > [pilet], film > [filam], blouse > [bilaus], pliers > [pilaias], etc. Epenthetic vowels are particularly common in older English loans that have been fully nativised in Fiji Hindi, e.g. farāk < ‘frock’, gilās < ‘glass’, kulubāl < ‘crowbar’ (Siegel 1991); however, this tendency is not as strong nowadays.

The regular past tense morpheme {-ed} sometimes receives an [εd] pronunciation when in Standard English it is rendered as [d] or [t], e.g. robbed > [rɔbεd] , asked [askεd], learned (verb) > [lεnεd]. However, this is probably due to a spelling pronunciation.

3. Word initial /s+C/ clusters typically have a syllable initial prothetic /i/, e.g. school > [iskul], foolscaps > [fuliskeps], student > [istudent], sport > [ispot], etc. This is clearly an influence of the first language since Hindi (both standard and Fiji varieties) does not allow such initial consonant clusters. Fiji Hindi has also nativised English loans with a prothetic vowel, e.g. astabal < ‘stable’, isTimā < ‘steamer’ (Siegel 1991).

The consonant phonemes of Pure Indo-Fijian Fiji English and their most common phonetic realizations are shown in Figure 7.