This volume gives a detailed overview of the varieties of English spoken on the British Isles, including lesser-known varieties such as those spoken in Orkney and Shetland and the Channel Islands. The chapters, written by widely acclaimed specialists, provide concise and comprehensive information on the phonological, morphological and syntactic characteristics of each variety discussed. The articles are followed by exercises and study questions. The exercises are geared towards students and can be used for classroom assignments as well as for self study in preparation for exams. Instructors can use the exercises, sound samples and interactive maps to enhance their classroom presentations and to highlight important language features.
This is a unique introductory survey of the main regional and social varieties of English spoken in the British Isles. In the book, the authors discuss accent and dialect in the broader framework of language variation, including phonetic, phonological, grammatical, lexical, historical and stylistic differences. This is followed by a survey of the speech of twelve different areas of the British Isles. The cassette which accompanies the book consists of edited interviews (all transcribed in the book) with speakers from each of the different areas. The third edition has been thoroughly revised and includes an entirely new chapter on Received Pronunciation. The cassette now includes recordings of three different varieties of RP speech. Entirely new sections, with corresponding recordings, have been added on Lowland Scots, Devon and Dublin speech.
Accents of English is about the way English is pronounced by different people in different places. Volume 1 provides a synthesizing introduction, which shows how accents vary not only geographically, but also with social class, formality, sex and age; and in volumes 2 and 3 the author examines in greater depth the various accents used by people who speak English as their mother tongue: the accents of the regions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland (volume 2), and of the USA, Canada, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Black Africa and the Far East (volume 3). Each volume can be read independently, and together they form a major scholarly survey, of considerable originality, which not only includes descriptions of hitherto neglected accents, but also examines the implications for phonological theory. Readers will find the answers to many questions: Who makes 'good' rhyme with 'mood'? Which accents have no voiced sibilants? How is a Canadian accent different from an American one, a New Zealand one from an Australian one, a Jamaican one from a Barbadian one? What are the historical reasons for British-American pronunciation differences? What sound changes are currently in progress in New York, in London, in Edinburgh? Dr Wells his written principally for students of linguistics, phonetics and English language, but the motivated general reader will also find the study both fascinating and rewarding.
The first comprehensive study of how English is pronounced by different people in different places. It provides an integrated and unified framework for existing scholarly treatments of regional forms of speech and makes many original contributions to the field.
"This practical and informative course book is a fascinating, visual volume which leads the student through the development of the language from Old English, through Middle and Early Modern English to the establishment of Standard English in the eighteenth century." "At the core of this substantially expanded second edition lies a series of nearly 200 historical texts, of which more than half are reproduced in facsimile, and which illustrate the progressive changes in the language. The book is firmly based upon linguistic description, with commentaries which form a series of case studies demonstrating the evidence for language change at every level - handwriting, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, grammar and meaning." "Such a wealth of texts, as well as the structured activities and the various case studies, allow the volume to be used not only as a stimulating course text, guiding students through the analysis of data, but also as a comprehensive resource book and invaluable reference tool for teachers and students at all levels."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Is American English in decline? Are regional dialects dying out? Is there a difference between men and women in how they adapt to linguistic variations? These questions, and more, about our language catapulted Robert MacNeil and William Cran—the authors (with Robert McCrum) of the language classic The Story of English—across the country in search of the answers. Do You Speak American? is the tale of their discoveries, which provocatively show how the standard for American English—if a standard exists—is changing quickly and dramatically. On a journey that takes them from the Northeast, through Appalachia and the Deep South, and west to California, the authors observe everyday verbal interactions and in a host of interviews with native speakers glean the linguistic quirks and traditions characteristic of each area. While examining the histories and controversies surrounding both written and spoken American English, they address anxieties and assumptions that, when explored, are highly emotional, such as the growing influence of Spanish as a threat to American English and the special treatment of African-American vernacular English. And, challenging the purists who think grammatical standards are in serious deterioration and that media saturation of our culture is homogenizing our speech, they surprise us with unpredictable responses. With insight and wit, MacNeil and Cran bring us a compelling book that is at once a celebration and a potent study of our singular language. Each wave of immigration has brought new words to enrich the American language. Do you recognize the origin of 1. blunderbuss, sleigh, stoop, coleslaw, boss, waffle? Or 2. dumb, ouch, shyster, check, kaput, scram, bummer? Or 3. phooey, pastrami, glitch, kibbitz, schnozzle? Or 4. broccoli, espresso, pizza, pasta, macaroni, radio? Or 5. smithereens, lollapalooza, speakeasy, hooligan? Or 6. vamoose, chaps, stampede, mustang, ranch, corral? 1. Dutch 2. German 3. Yiddish 4. Italian 5. Irish 6. Spanish
English Accents and Dialects is an essential guide to contemporary social and regional varieties of English spoken in the British Isles today. Together with invaluable overviews of numerous regional accents and dialects, this fifth edition provides a detailed description of key features of Received Pronounciation (RP) as well as several major non-standard varieties of English. Key features: main regional differences are followed by a survey of speech in over 20 areas of the UK and Ireland, audio samples of which are available to download at www.routledge.com/cw/hughes recent findings on London English, Aberdeen English and Liverpool English contains new entries on Hull, Manchester, Carlisle, Middlesbrough, Southampton, London West Indian, Lancashire and the Shetlands additional exercises with answers online accompany the new varieties clear maps throughout for locating particular accents and dialects. This combination of reference manual and practical guide makes this fifth edition of English Accents and Dialects a highly useful resource providing a comprehensive and contemporary coverage of speech in the UK and Ireland today.
This collection consists of 15 articles by an international group of linguists and 7 essays by the editors, tackling a broad range of issues and representing some of the most authoritative work in English dialect grammar. Individual chapters cover the full international range of English dialects, from the centre of Sydney to the shores of Newfoundland, and from the Scottish borders to the Appalachian Mountains. Soundly based on empirical research, they are rich in data of great interest in itself, but no article is merely descriptive. The editors have selected papers for their value in contributing to the reader's broader understanding of the theoretical issues concerning dialectology as a whole. As a result, dialectology is presented as a major scholarly discipline drawing creatively on such areas as linguistics, sociology, psychology, history, geography and even philosophy. These and other themes are explored in a wide-ranging Introduction by the editors, which sets the individual pieces and the subject in context for the reader.
