The findings show that the pronunciation of English segments is a way to differentiate between these pupils.

Recordings from pupils from both categories of schools obtained from two regions of Ghana are analysed. The present study seeks to show the English pronunciation difference between public and private basic school pupils and also to show which of them speak better English. There is a general perception that pupils who attend private basic schools speak better English than those in public schools, but there has not been an investigation to ascertain whether indeed there is a distinction between the English language skills of a private basic school pupil and a public basic school pupil. That is, speakers who use the more divergent 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.

How to speak ghanaian pidgin