Abstract

Kachru (1994) classifies Pakistani English (PakE) in the outer circle. Spoken in governmental, educational and business institutions, it is influenced by Urdu and various local languages, creating the need to outline their impact on vowels and consonants of Standard British English’s (SBE), resulting in the formation of PakE. Current sociolinguistic use puts PakE in the nativization phase of Schneider’s Dynamic Model of Post-Colonial Englishes (2007). This scoping review aims to compile and critically analyze consonants and vowels of PakE relative to SBE through a thorough literature search, to identify shared consonants between SBE, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Saraiki, and Urdu. Articles (N = 2434) on PakE phonology (consonants and vowels) were limited to studies of bi/multilingual Pakistani adults exposed to English; selected through databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Ebsco Discovery-UKM, access portals Research4Life Hinari-WHO, ResearchGate, and Academia. Results of included articles (n = 83) showed variations of SBE with its phonetic inventories in literature manifesting (1) absence of aspirated stop allophones (2) rhoticity: retroflexion of alveolar stops /t→ʈ;d→ɖ/ and palatalization of approximants/alveolar trills /ɹ→r/ (3) dentalization of fricatives /ð→ḏ,Ө→ṯh/ (4) Alteration of several vowels: diphthongs→monophthongs. This scoping review re-iterates, unique phonological features of PakE influenced by heterogeneity among bi/multilingual Pakistanis. It sets structural standards for PakE phonology, suggesting possible progression into the endonormative phase-four of Schnieder’s dynamic model and it lays the foundation for understanding phonological acquisition and defining educational norms of PakE for Pakistani children. It provides a base for establishing criteria of teaching English and developing norm-referenced clinical assessments for children. 

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