Sounds Fascinating; Further Observations on English Phonetics and Phonology

Sounds Fascinating; Further Observations on English Phonetics and Phonology

How do you pronounce biopic, synod, and Breughel? – and why? Do our cake and archaic sound the same? Where does the stress go in stalagmite? What’s odd about the word epergne? Pontcysyllte is obviously Welsh, but Penge is Welsh too! How cool is Caol in the Highlands of Scotland? What can Wesley’s hymns tell us about sound change in English? How do people pronounce Wrocław in Poland? How can anyone manage to say Gdynia as just two syllables? Why is the village of Frith in the island of Montserrat usually pronounced as if spelt Frits? What embarrassing faux pas in English did a Russian conglomerate make? Should I bild a cubbard instead of building a cupboard? How should we capitalize an exclamation mark, and why might we need to? What’s a depressor consonant? As a finale, the author writes a letter to his 16-year-old self.

• Covers the pronunciation of particular words (including proper names) and other topics in the phonetics of English, including prosody (stress and intonation) and sociolinguistic variation (accents)
• Engages those who are studying, or who have studied, phonetics or English at university level, because it is based on sound scholarship but is written in an entertaining and informal style
• Discusses topics in general phonetics (with reference to many different languages) and in the description and transcription of speech sounds, both familiar and exotic
• Examines topics in the pronunciation of many different languages around the world, and casts unexpected light on topics of phonetic interest

Language: GB

Level: Native Speaker / Teacher

CFH | 421.58

J. C. Wells – Cambridge University Press