British English Phonetic Transcription

British English Phonetic Transcription provides an accessible introduction to phonemic, phonetic and intonational transcription with a focus on British English. Featuring exercises, revision tasks and recordings to help students gain hands-on practice, the book takes a learning-by-doing approach and ensures students gain practice using each new symbol or concept introduced before moving on to the next. Consisting of three parts, the book covers:

• transcribing individual words, including consonants, vowels, primary stress, secondary stress, syllabic consonants and inflections;
• transcribing phrases and sentences, including liaison, weak forms, elision and assimilation;
• transcribing intonation, including the structure of English intonation and recognising pitch patterns.

Ideally suited as a standalone workbook or for use alongside American English Phonetic Transcription, British English Phonetic Transcription is key reading for undergraduate students of linguistics as well as anyone teaching or learning English as a foreign language.

Symbols for phonemic transcription

Phonetic symbols and diacritics

The International Phonetic Alphabet

Preface and acknowledgements

Before you start transcribing…

PART A: TRANSCRIBING WORDS

1. The familiar consonants /p b t d k ɡ f v s z h m n w l r/ and the vowels /ɪ æ e ɒ ʌ ʊ/

2. Primary stress, schwa /ə/ and unstressed KIT /ɪ/

3. Consonants with unfamiliar symbols: /ʃ ʒ ʧ ʤ j ŋ θ ð/

4. The FLEECE /iː/ and GOOSE /uː/ vowels

5. The PALM /ɑː/, THOUGHT /ɔː/, NURSE /ɜː/ and SQUARE /ɛː/ vowels

6. The FACE /eɪ/, PRICE /aɪ/ and CHOICE /ɔɪ/ vowels

7. The GOAT /əʊ/ and MOUTH /aʊ/ vowels

8. The NEAR /ɪə/ and CURE /ʊə/ vowels

9. Syllabic consonants

10. Secondary stress

11. Inflections and epenthesis

PART B: TRANSCRIBING CONNECTED SPEECH

12. Connected speech and liaison

13. Stress and weak forms

14. Elision

15. Assimilation

16. Connected speech: extended practice

PART C: TRANSCRIBING INTONATION

17. An introduction to intonation

18. Nucleus and tail

19. Head and pre-head

20. Intonation: Extended practice

APPENDICES

A. Summary of consonant and vowel theory

B. Phonetic transcription

References and suggested reading

Index

Paul Carley has held posts at the University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht, the universities of Bedfordshire and Leicester, UK, and the Fakeeh College for Medical Sciences, Jeddah. He is a regular lecturer on the UCL Summer Course in English Phonetics and examiner for the International Phonetic Association.

Inger M. Mees is Associate Professor Emeritus at the Copenhagen Business School and a part-time lecturer in the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, Copenhagen University. She has formerly held lectureships at the universities of Leiden and Copenhagen. She is on the academic staff of the UCL Summer Course in English Phonetics.