Yesterday’s light-hearted post about African English pronunciations using the example of how Nigerians, Kenyans, and Ghanaians say the word “work” sparked a spirited conversation about the supposed “correct” way to pronounce English words.
After reading through the comments, I’ve concluded that many, perhaps most, Nigerians have been conditioned (brainwashed might be the better word) by Ghanaian teachers who came to Nigeria in large numbers during the 1970s and 1980s to teach in primary and secondary schools.
These teachers, whether consciously or not, often instilled the idea that Nigerian pronunciations were “wrong” or inferior to Ghanaian ones. That belief is deeply flawed.
Let’s begin with a fundamental truth: there is no universally “correct” or “incorrect” pronunciation in English.
Within England alone, pronunciation varies dramatically from region to region. The same holds true for the United States and every other native-English-speaking country.
Every speech community adapts pronunciation to its own linguistic environment and sociocultural peculiarities.
Second, I’ve interacted with native English speakers from different countries for over two decades now, and I can confidently say that Ghanaian English pronunciation isn’t inherently closer to native English accents than Nigerian pronunciation is.
Ghanaian English sounds Ghanaian. Nigerian English sounds Nigerian. That’s all there is to it.
It’s true that dictionaries provide phonetic transcriptions of words, and those who learn English formally often mistake these transcriptions for definitive pronunciation standards.
But dictionaries merely offer approximations—often based on a narrow sliver of upper-class native speakers.
The situation becomes even more complex when you consider the wide variation within native English dialects. What dictionaries present as “standard” is usually just the speech of society’s elites who are, ironically, a small minority even in their own countries.
Standard English pronunciation is not synonymous with the “correct” English pronunciation, just as non-standard varieties aren’t “incorrect.”
For example, take Received Pronunciation (RP), often called the King’s (or Queen’s) English or BBC English. Only about 2 to 3 percent of people in England speak with an RP accent. Some estimates stretch that to 5 or 10 percent, but even then, over 90 percent of Britons don’t speak RP.
So, to call it the only “correct” accent simply because it’s represented in UK dictionaries or on broadcast media is to erase and belittle the speech patterns of the vast majority of English speakers in Britain.
In the United States, the General American (GenAm) accent is more widely used than RP is in the UK, with estimates suggesting that about 40 to 50 percent of Americans speak a variant of it.
Still, the U.S. is teeming with other recognizable accents: Southern, Bostonian, New York, Appalachian, Cajun, and many more.
This is precisely why pronunciation doesn’t factor into what is formally defined as Standard English.
That said, I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t strive to pronounce words in ways that make you intelligible to the widest audience possible. Communicative clarity matters.
But let’s be honest: most English speakers around the world don’t pronounce work as “wek,” nurse as “nes,” or pastor as “pasta,” as Ghanaians do.
In fact, calling a pastor “pasta” might earn you accusations of harboring cannibalistic fantasies. We eat pasta. Pastors preach the gospel. Big difference!
Amusingly, a few hours ago, when I asked my 8-year-old daughter (who has never traveled outside the United States) which of “wok,” “wak,” or “wek” sounded most like work, she picked “wok” without the slightest hesitation.
I swear, she even echoed what our American “referee” said during a similar conversation more than 20 years ago: that “wak” reminds her of whack—as in, to hit someone!