Sounds Interesting Observations on English and General Phonetics

How do you pronounce omega, tortoise and sloth, and why? Do charted and chartered sound the same? How do people pronounce the names Charon, Punjab and Sexwale? In this engaging book, John Wells, a world-renowned phonetician and phonologist, explores these questions and others. Each chapter consists of carefully selected entries from Wells' acclaimed phonetics blog, on which he regularly posted on a range of current and widely researched topics such as pronunciation, teaching, intonation, spelling, and accents. Based on sound scholarship and full of fascinating facts about the pronunciation of Welsh, Swedish, Czech, Zulu, Icelandic and other languages, this book will appeal to scholars and students in phonetics and phonology, as well as general readers wanting to know more about language. Anyone interested in why a poster in Antigua invited cruise ship visitors to enjoy a game of porker, or what hymns can tell us about pronunciation, should read this book.

Preface; 1. How do you say…?; 2. English phonetics: theory and practice; 3. Teaching and examining; 4. Intonation; 5. Symbol shapes, fonts, and spelling; 6. English accents; 7. Phonetics around the world; Postscript; Index of words; General index.

John C. Wells is Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London and a Fellow of the British Academy. His interests centre on the phonetic and phonological description of languages but also extend to lexicography and language teaching.