Table of Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Audio recordings (on companion website)

Prefaces and acknowledgements

Phonetic symbols

English phonemic transcription key

A Introduction

1 English worldwide

2 Phoneme, allophone and syllable

3 Connected speech and phonemic transcription

4 How we produce speech

5 Consonant possibilities

6 English consonants

7 Vowel possibilities

8 English vowels

9 English spelling

B Development

1 Phoneme and syllable revisited

2 Features of connected speech

3 Stress and rhythm

4 Speech melody

5 Pronunciation change

6 Teaching a foreign language

7 Learning a foreign language

C Exploration

1 Accent variation: General American

2 Accents of the British Isles 1: England

3 Accents of the British Isles 2: Celtic-influenced varieties

4 World accent varieties 1: North America

5 World accent varieties 2: the Southern Hemisphere

6 World accent varieties 3: second-language varieties and creole-influenced speech

D Extension

1 Attitudes to accents (Daniel Jones)

2 Preliminaries to teaching pronunciation (Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich)

3 English accents and their implications for spelling reform (J. C. Wells)

4 Teaching the pronunciation of English (David Crystal)

5 Syllabification and allophony (J. C. Wells)

Glossary

Further reading

References

Index

The International Phonetic Alphabet 307

About the Author

Beverley Collins (1938–2014) held lectureships in phonetics at the universities of Lancaster and Leiden, and was Visiting Professor at Ghent University. He was also a regular lecturer at the UCL Summer Course in English Phonetics.

Inger M. Mees is Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Society and Communication at the Copenhagen Business School. She has also held posts at the universities of Leiden and Copenhagen. She is on the academic staff of the UCL Summer Course in English Phonetics.

Paul Carley has held posts at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and the universities of Bedfordshire and Leicester. He is a regular lecturer on the UCL Summer Course in English Phonetics.

Reviews

Praise for the first edition:'Practical Phonetics and Phonology gathers together a far wider range of topics than other books on English phonetics. Many more accents of English are discussed, and we really learn about English as a world language. Experienced teachers of English and beginning students will all profit from this book.'Peter Ladefoged, University of California, Los Angeles, USAPraise for the fourth edition:'This book cleverly combines the details of English phonetics with a first look at sounds in other languages. Its real strengths are the exercises provided at every step of the way and its brief but unequalled survey of accents of English (using recordings on the companion website). It will remain the best all-round introduction to phonetics.'Alan Cruttenden, The University of Oxford, UK'This classic text just keeps getting better. It is one of very few books that I keep constantly at my side as I author my own materials. It is rich in information, clearly written, easy to read. Most importantly, it is accompanied by audio recordings which exemplify the points made.'Richard Cauldwell, Speech in Action