![]() As in-group markers, the varieties are characterized by much slang and lexical variation across versions of the same variety. Data come largely from conversations recorded in Soweto, a major township outside Johannesburg. While many think that Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho lack predictable structure, this paper argues that all versions follow the same type of morphosyntactic constraints that structure code switching as well as playing a part in other language-contact phenomena. This paper examines the structure of two varieties, Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho, that are spoken predominantly by males who live in the Black urban townships of South Africa. That is, speakers who use the more divergent (and by implication more unintelligible to a non-speaker) pronunciations are considered more proficient by the GSP community. ![]() In relation to this, the focus group discussions reveal that the various pronunciation choices that are available to speakers (as a result of phonological variation) create the possibility of levels of proficiency for the speakers. ![]() The findings indicate that free variation happens because the speakers want to create a code that is distinctive to them and as divergent from Ghanaian English (and Town Pidgin) as possible and, by extension, make GSP nearly unintelligible to the non-speaker. The data for the study was collected by recording group conversations, conducting individual interviews and two focus group discussions. This study describes phonological processes (vowel change, deletion and stress/tone variation) which are employed by the speakers of Ghanaian Student Pidgin (GSP) – a Ghanaian youth language – to create variable pronunciations existing in free variation with the original pronunciations and explores the implications of the variation for the GSP speech community.
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