J. C. Wells

Local accents in England and Wales

1. Dialectologists in England have concentrated on the speech of small and relatively isolated rural communities (see, for example, Orton and Dieth, 1962: Introduction, 14). Other linguists and phoneticians concerned with the English of England have almost without exception described Standard English and the form of pronunciation they call, using an established but less than happy term, ‘Received Pronunciation’ (Jones, 1967:xvii). Yet the English of most English (and English-speaking Welsh) people is neither RP Standard English nor a rural dialect. The vast mass of urban working-class and lower-middle-class speakers use a pronunciation nearer to RP, and lexical and grammatical forms much nearer to Standard English, than the archaic rural dialects recorded by the dialectologists. Yet their speech diverges in many ways from what is described as standard. The purpose of this article, which must be regarded as preliminary and tentative, is to sketch the principal phonetic variables among such local, mainly urban, forms of English. 1 It is the task of anyone concerned with the description of these ‘accents’ of English to investigate whatever phonetic variables can be identified and to establish their correlation with the non-linguistic variables of age, social standing and education, and geographical provenance. (For discussion of some of the problems of urban dialectology, see particularly Wright, 1966.)

British English pronunciation preferences: a changing scene

A poll of BrE pronunciation preferences was carried out in late 1998, based on a self-selected sample of nearly 2000 ‘speech-conscious’ respondents, who answered a hundred questions about words of uncertain or controversial pronunciation. The findings allow us to answer questions about lexical incidence and sound changes in progress. (This is a revised and considerably extended version of the report published as Wells 1999.)

Accents of English: The British Isles

Volume I: An Introduction: Preface Typographical conventions and phonetic symbols Part I. Aspects of Accent: 1. Linguistic and social variability 2. Accent phonology 3. How accents differ 4. Why accents differ Part II. Sets and Systems: 5. The reference accents 6. Standard lexical sets 7. Systems: a typology Part III. Developments and Processes: 8. Residualisms 9. British prestige innovations 10. Some American innovations 11. Some further British innovations Sources and further reading References Index.

Final Voicing and Vowel Length in Welsh

The great majority of Welsh word-final plosives are devoiced lenes (fully voiced before a following vowel or sonorant), with a long vowel preceding. There are also a certain number of words – nearly a

Phonetic Transcription and Analysis

In phonetic transcription, phonetic symbols are used to represent speech sounds. Different transcription systems may be appropriate for different purposes. A transcription may be impressionistic (narrow) or systematic (broad), depending on whether the symbols are simple or comparative, and phonemic or allophonic. Some sounds are conventionally written as digraphs (e.g., double-articulation obstruents, voiced clicks). Diphthongs and affricates may be written with two symbols or sometimes with one. Words in connected speech are often pronounced differently from words in isolation. A phonotypical transcription shows their pronunciation in context. Dictionary entries often involve special abbreviatory conventions. In language teaching, a hybrid reading transcription may be appropriate.

Gimson, A. C.

Professor Alfred Charles (A. C.) Gimson (1917–85) was the most influential British phonetician of the second half of the 20th century. Keywords: 20th century; phonetics; pronunciation

Gimson, Alfred Charles (1917-1985)

Alfred Charles Gimson was the leading British phonetician of British English in the second half of the 20th century and is known throughout the world, particularly for his works on English pronunciation. Gimson also contributed to the theory of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the matter of phonetic transcription.

Fry, Dennis Butler (1907-1983)

Dennis Butler Frys principal interest was experimental phonetics. He was the first to experiment with automatic speech recognizers using not only acoustic but also linguistic cues. He demonstrated the importance of laboratory experimentation to naive linguistic phoneticians. One practical application of Frys work was in relation to the hearing impaired.