/smuːðd brɪtɪʃ fɑːpɑː/

Listen to this short sound clip taken from a speech by the retired Major General Patrick Cordingley, who speaks about the Iraqi war. (Sorry; I can't use proper IPA symbols in blog titles - or at least I don't know how to do this.)

a chance find

I've been skimming through Johan Storm's 1881 book Englische Philologie - Anleitung zum wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten. I. Die lebende Sprache. 1. Abteilung: Phonetik und Aussprache (Heilbronn) and found this on p. 15
:

 Ein Deutscher wurde in England gefragt, wie alt er und seine Frau wäre. Er antwortete: "I am dirty and my wife is dirty too [thirty-two]"

(A German was asked in England, how old he and his wife were. He replied: "...". Many Germans replace /θ/ and /ð/ by /s/ and /z/ respectively, but a few pronounce /d/ instead.)

vernal messenger

Is spring about to arrive?

IPA 1900 - cont'd no. 2

What were the books recommended to the readers of the Exposé des Principes de l’Association Phonétique Internationale in 1900?
This is a scan of the 2nd page of the booklet with these recommendations:

Here is some additional bibliographical information on some entries:
1 A. W. Burt, A manual of elementary phonetics. Toronto 1898 [available online here]
2 J. Storm, Englische Philologie - Anleitung zum wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten. I. Die lebende Sprache. 1. Abteilung: Phonetik und Aussprache. Heilbronn 1881 [available online here]
3 Elements of phonetics is an adaptation and translation of Vietor's Kleine Phonetik by Walter Rippmann
I forgot to supply additional information on:

• Charles H. Grandgent, Vowel measurements. Deprinted from the PMLA, Suppl. to vol. 5, no. 2, 1890 [available online here]

IPA 1900 - cont'd no. 1

Henry Sweet prepared the transcription of the Southern English version of the text which you can see in my blog entry of the 4th of April. There's also a Northern English version ( = Anglais du Nord) prepared by Richard J Lloyd. Northern English refers to an area roughly between Birmingham and Durham¹. Lloyd was reader in phonetics at the University College, Liverpool. He published a book in 1899 with the title Northern English - phonetics - grammar - texts (Leipzig etc.).
Here's his Northern English version:

---------
¹see p. 8, § 7 of W. Scholle, G. Smith, Elementary phonetics - English, French, German, (Glasgow, Dublin, 1903)

IPA 1900

While preparing my new lecture course on English phonology for the upcoming term I found an online copy of the Exposé des Principes de l’Association Phonétique Internationale published in Bourg-La-Reine in 1900. Here are two short texts to be found on p. 14, one of them transcribed by Henry Sweet in "Anglais du Sud", the other by Wilhelm Viëtor in "Allemand". The symbol set is the one proposed by the API/IPA in that year. 

 

Some of the pronunciations of English words sound fairly old-fashioned and stilted (as do parts of the German text), others haven't changed much - or at all, e.g. your, generally, translation.