Thursday, 15 March 2012
Listening quiz
Monday, 12 March 2012
English Phonetics: Twentieth-Century Development
Routledge announces a phonetics book in six (I repeat: six) volumes to be published in December 2012. The title is English Phonetics: Twentieth-Century Development. It's edited by Beverley S Collins and Inger M Mees. The price is a real bargain: eight hundred pounds. There's a preliminary table of contents available on Routledge's webpages:
Volume I: Afzelius’s pronouncing dictionary
1. J. A. Afzelius, Engelsk Uttalsordbok - A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of Modern English (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1909).
Volume II: Lloyd James: Broadcasting and Spoken English
2. Arthur Lloyd James, The Broadcast Word (London: Kegan Paul, 1935).
3. Arthur Lloyd James, Our Spoken Language (London: Thomas Nelson, 1938).
Volume III: Lloyd James’s Broadcast English
4. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English I: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding Certain Words of Doubtful Pronunciation, 3rd. edn. (London: BBC, 1935).
5. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English II: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some English Place Names, 2nd edn. (London: 1930).
6. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English III: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Scottish Place Names (London: BBC, 1932).
7. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English IV: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Welsh Place Names (London: BBC, 1934).
8. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English V: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Northern-Irish Place-Names (London: BBC, 1935).
9. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English VI: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Foreign Place-Names (London: BBC, 1937).
10. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English VII: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some British Family Names and Titles (London: BBC, 1939).
Volume IV: English phonetics including dialectal varieties
11. Le Maître phonétique, forerunner of the present-day Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA), was the official journal of the International Phonetic Association. Edited by Daniel Jones and Paul Passy, and later by A. C. Gimson. All material appeared in phonetic transcription, which, where appropriate, will also be accompanied by an orthographic transcript.
12. Benjamin Dumville, The Science of Speech: An Elementary Manual of English Phonetics for Teachers (London: W. B. Clive (University Tutorial Press), 1909).
13. Ida Ward, The Phonetics of English, 3rd edn. (Cambridge: Heffer, 1939).[why not the 1st ed.?]
Volume V: Landmarks in the study of English intonation
14. H. O. Coleman, ‘Intonation and Emphasis’, Miscellanea Phonetica (Bourg-la-Reine and London: IPA, 1914), 6-25(?). [available online]
15. Harold E. Palmer, English Intonation with Systematic Exercises (Cambridge: Heffer, 1922) (the first edition is reproduced with annotations by Daniel Jones). [available online]
16. J. D. O’Connor and G. F. Arnold, Intonation of Colloquial English, 2nd edn. (London: Longman, 1973.) [why not the 1st ed.?]
Volume VI: Phonetics of English as a foreign language
17. Etsko Kruisinga, A Handbook of Present-day English, Volume I, part 1 (‘English Sounds’) (Utrecht: Kemink, 1919).
18. Jack Windsor Lewis, A Guide to English Pronunciation: For Users of English as a Foreign Language (Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget, 1969). [I have an autographed edition]
Volume I: Afzelius’s pronouncing dictionary
1. J. A. Afzelius, Engelsk Uttalsordbok - A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of Modern English (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1909).
Volume II: Lloyd James: Broadcasting and Spoken English
2. Arthur Lloyd James, The Broadcast Word (London: Kegan Paul, 1935).
3. Arthur Lloyd James, Our Spoken Language (London: Thomas Nelson, 1938).
Volume III: Lloyd James’s Broadcast English
4. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English I: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding Certain Words of Doubtful Pronunciation, 3rd. edn. (London: BBC, 1935).
5. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English II: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some English Place Names, 2nd edn. (London: 1930).
6. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English III: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Scottish Place Names (London: BBC, 1932).
7. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English IV: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Welsh Place Names (London: BBC, 1934).
8. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English V: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Northern-Irish Place-Names (London: BBC, 1935).
9. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English VI: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some Foreign Place-Names (London: BBC, 1937).
10. Arthur Lloyd James, Broadcast English VII: Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some British Family Names and Titles (London: BBC, 1939).
Volume IV: English phonetics including dialectal varieties
11. Le Maître phonétique, forerunner of the present-day Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA), was the official journal of the International Phonetic Association. Edited by Daniel Jones and Paul Passy, and later by A. C. Gimson. All material appeared in phonetic transcription, which, where appropriate, will also be accompanied by an orthographic transcript.
12. Benjamin Dumville, The Science of Speech: An Elementary Manual of English Phonetics for Teachers (London: W. B. Clive (University Tutorial Press), 1909).
13. Ida Ward, The Phonetics of English, 3rd edn. (Cambridge: Heffer, 1939).[why not the 1st ed.?]
Volume V: Landmarks in the study of English intonation
14. H. O. Coleman, ‘Intonation and Emphasis’, Miscellanea Phonetica (Bourg-la-Reine and London: IPA, 1914), 6-25(?). [available online]
15. Harold E. Palmer, English Intonation with Systematic Exercises (Cambridge: Heffer, 1922) (the first edition is reproduced with annotations by Daniel Jones). [available online]
16. J. D. O’Connor and G. F. Arnold, Intonation of Colloquial English, 2nd edn. (London: Longman, 1973.) [why not the 1st ed.?]
Volume VI: Phonetics of English as a foreign language
17. Etsko Kruisinga, A Handbook of Present-day English, Volume I, part 1 (‘English Sounds’) (Utrecht: Kemink, 1919).
18. Jack Windsor Lewis, A Guide to English Pronunciation: For Users of English as a Foreign Language (Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget, 1969). [I have an autographed edition]
Friday, 9 March 2012
The rahs are amongst us!
You don't know what a rah is? Go to a seminar room at a British redbrick university or at Oxbridge these days and look at the brands some of the students wear. Is it
You're likely to have run into rahs. But it's not clothes alone which turns someone into a rah. You've got to listen to their pronunciation as well. Do they say [klɑː:s] with an extra long and extra dark vowel? Do they monophthongise the word year to yah? Does a student who takes time off call it a [gɑp jɑːː]? Does he use expressions like 'a lash' (drink heavily), 'to chunder' (to vomit). If he does he is most likely a rah.
Where does the word (pronounced /rɑː/) come from? Wikipedia describes it as a slang term "referring to a stereotypical affluent young upper class or upper-middle class person (male or female) in the United Kingdom." OED tells us that rah is a shortening of hurrah, but does not record the meaning described by Wikipedia. Some sources say that rah is an abbreviation of 'rich a***hole'.
A video clip mocking rahs has gained some popularity recently. Watch here on youtube.
| Abercrombie & Fitch | or | ||
| Jack Wills, | or do they wear | ||
| Ugg boots? |
Where does the word (pronounced /rɑː/) come from? Wikipedia describes it as a slang term "referring to a stereotypical affluent young upper class or upper-middle class person (male or female) in the United Kingdom." OED tells us that rah is a shortening of hurrah, but does not record the meaning described by Wikipedia. Some sources say that rah is an abbreviation of 'rich a***hole'.
A video clip mocking rahs has gained some popularity recently. Watch here on youtube.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
My Family
 |
| credit: BBC |
 |
| Daniela Denby-Ashe as Janey Harper |
| credit: BBC |
So Susan says reproachfully: "You should be wearing an outfit that says: 'Take me seriously' not: 'Take me seriously'" (I deliberately left out any punctuation marks). If you're an EFL learner, how would you say these sentences to get the message across?
The answer will be posted here at a later date (including a sound file illustrating how the actress said the two sentences).
Here's how Susan Harper (played by Zoë Wanamaker) said the two sentences:
| Zoë Wanamaker as Susan Harper |
| credit: ?? |
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
AEP
No, AEP does not stand for Auditory Evoked Potential, at least not in this context, but for
Accepted English Pronunciation. It's the title of a book of 123 pages written by Beverley Collins, S. P. den Hollander and Jill Rodd in 1973. What I acquired is the "zevende druk" of 1987. (The eighth impression bears the title Sounding Better with Inger M. Mees as an additional co-author; a CD now comes with the book.) I bought it second-hand (alas, without the cassette, which was not available) because book and cassette are out of print.
The subtitle reveals that the book is directed at NSs of Dutch. It's designed for intermediate and advanced learners of English.
Interestingly, the title contains the adjective 'accepted'. When you replace it by the fairly outdated quasi-synonym 'received', you get Received English Pronunciation. And it was particularly the section on the model of pronunciation this book is based on which I was interested in and which made me buy it.
Paragraph 3 on p. 10 is entitled 'Models for pronunciation'. The accent of English for learners to imitate is called Received Pronunciation and abbreviated to RP. This accent is described as the "speech of the average modern RP speaker" (10) and as "modern English Pronunciation" (7).
More on the contents of this booklet in a future blog entry. There is, by the way, a parallel publication entitled Accepted American Pronunciation by Collins and Mees.
Accepted English Pronunciation. It's the title of a book of 123 pages written by Beverley Collins, S. P. den Hollander and Jill Rodd in 1973. What I acquired is the "zevende druk" of 1987. (The eighth impression bears the title Sounding Better with Inger M. Mees as an additional co-author; a CD now comes with the book.) I bought it second-hand (alas, without the cassette, which was not available) because book and cassette are out of print.
The subtitle reveals that the book is directed at NSs of Dutch. It's designed for intermediate and advanced learners of English.
Interestingly, the title contains the adjective 'accepted'. When you replace it by the fairly outdated quasi-synonym 'received', you get Received English Pronunciation. And it was particularly the section on the model of pronunciation this book is based on which I was interested in and which made me buy it.
Paragraph 3 on p. 10 is entitled 'Models for pronunciation'. The accent of English for learners to imitate is called Received Pronunciation and abbreviated to RP. This accent is described as the "speech of the average modern RP speaker" (10) and as "modern English Pronunciation" (7).
More on the contents of this booklet in a future blog entry. There is, by the way, a parallel publication entitled Accepted American Pronunciation by Collins and Mees.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
search keywords
The software this blog is based on provides the possibility to see which keywords visitors used to search my blog. Among the keywords of today were:
BTW: The query came from Spain.
 |
| credit:www.dailymail.co.uk |
- english idioms have the upper hand
- shifting sands
- narrow transcription examples
- "jack windsor lewis" queen
BTW: The query came from Spain.
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Bell and vowels
Sidney Wood has published some interesting thoughts on A M Bell and his vowel articulation model. It would be worthwhile to do a study on the historical development of articulation-based vowel models from the earliest orthoepists to the Cardinal Vowel zenith. If such a history has already been written, let me know.
Friday, 2 March 2012
new edition on the (distant) horizon
Routledge advertises the 3rd edition of Practical Phonetics and Phonology by Bev Collins and Inger Mees. Here is what Routledge says about the new features:
To be published 1st January 2013 (chuckle!).
The hardback edition will sell like hot cakes for £70.00 (gulp!).
Re: "British Estuary English". Have I missed something here? Are there Estuary Englishes other than the British chimaera? (This comment refers to the second ed.)
It seems I copied the announcements for the 2nd edition. Sorry for that! Here's what I found on the 3rd ed.:New features of this edition include: new readings by Peter Trudgill and John Wells; a section on English orthography; an appendix of websites dealing with phonetics and accents of English; revised and updated activities and examples. The accompanying CD now includes: British Estuary English and New York English.
Section A: Introduction 1. English Worldwide 2. Phoneme and Allophone 3. Connected Speech and Phonemic Transcription 4. How we Produce Speech 5. Consonant Possibilities 6. Vowel Possibilities Section B: Development 1. Phoneme and Syllable Revisited 2. English Consonants 3. English Vowels 4. Features of Connected Speech 5. Stress and Rhythm 6. Speech Melody Section C: Exploration 1. Accent Variation – General American 2. Accents of British Isles 1: England 3. Accents of British Isles 2: Celtic-Influenced Varieties 4. World Accent Varieties 5. Pronunciation Change: Past, Present, Future 6. Teaching and Learning a Foreign Language Section D: Extension 1. RP – R.I.P? David Abercrombie 2. Attitudes to Accents Daniel Jones 3. Pronunciation Worries David Crystal 4. Helping the Deaf to Hear Dennis Fry 5. Making Computers Talk Peter Ladefoged 6. Covert Associations of Speech Sound Steven Pinker 7. Using Phonetics to Fight Crime Maurice Varney 8. The Rise of ‘Upspeak’ Barbara Bradford 9. How Children Learn the Meaning of Intonation David Crystal.
To be published 1st January 2013 (chuckle!).
The hardback edition will sell like hot cakes for £70.00 (gulp!).
 |
| credit: www.texasbasstackle.com |
Re: "British Estuary English". Have I missed something here? Are there Estuary Englishes other than the British chimaera? (This comment refers to the second ed.)
Thursday, 1 March 2012
doodle of the 29th of February
2012 is a leap year. Unlike a common year it contains an additional day (the 29th of February). Google's doodle for this day looks like this:
Frogs? Making music? The association between frog and leap year is easy to form: Frogs leap and 2012 is a leap year (funny ha-ha). The chain of associations between music and 2012 as a leap year is a bit longer: 220 years ago, on the 29th of February of 1792, the Italian composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born. He composed operas in the buffo style, but he is historically more important as a composer of opera seria.
But how is the Italian pronunciation /dʒoaˈkiːno rosˈsiːni/ made palpable to the English tongue? Let's see what LPD3 and EPD18 offer.
If there's no Gioachino in the dictionaries, maybe there are other words starting with <Gio(a)->? One gets Gioconda, Giotto, Giovanni in both LPD and EPD. In Italian (and, please, correct me if I'm wrong because I do not speak Italian) we have /dʒo-/ as a pronunciation of <Gio->. With the added <a> we get /dʒoa-/, and this is what Forvo offers for Gioachino. When it comes to English the situation is not so straightforward.
To quote John Wells: "Usually, when English borrows a word from some other modern language, we keep the spelling used in the source language and hesitate about the pronunciation." Sound observation, innit?
 |
| credit: www.google.co.uk |
But how is the Italian pronunciation /dʒoaˈkiːno rosˈsiːni/ made palpable to the English tongue? Let's see what LPD3 and EPD18 offer.
| LPD3 | EPD18 | |
| Rossini |  |  |
| Gioachino | no entry | no entry |
If there's no Gioachino in the dictionaries, maybe there are other words starting with <Gio(a)->? One gets Gioconda, Giotto, Giovanni in both LPD and EPD. In Italian (and, please, correct me if I'm wrong because I do not speak Italian) we have /dʒo-/ as a pronunciation of <Gio->. With the added <a> we get /dʒoa-/, and this is what Forvo offers for Gioachino. When it comes to English the situation is not so straightforward.
To quote John Wells: "Usually, when English borrows a word from some other modern language, we keep the spelling used in the source language and hesitate about the pronunciation." Sound observation, innit?
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