Sounds Fascinating
Further Observations on English Phonetics and Phonology

Is that really how people say that? What a fascinating sound!

J. C. Wells (Author)

9781316610367, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 September 2016

284 pages
24.7 x 17.4 x 1.2 cm, 0.39 kg

'Wells continues to draw his readers in with his good humour coupled with authoritativeness when he comments about how words are written and pronounced. In the background, but equally fascinating, is Wells's full life accompanying his phonetics: his childhood in the vicarage in Northern England, his school years, his travels, his work, and his retirement.' Peter K. W. Tan, National University of Singapore

How do you pronounce biopic, synod, and Breughel? - and why? Do our cake and archaic sound the same? Where does the stress go in stalagmite? What's odd about the word epergne? Pontcysyllte is obviously Welsh, but Penge is Welsh too! How cool is Caol in the Highlands of Scotland? What can Wesley's hymns tell us about sound change in English? How do people pronounce Wroc?aw in Poland? How can anyone manage to say Gdynia as just two syllables? Why is the village of Frith in the island of Montserrat usually pronounced as if spelt Frits? What embarrassing faux pas in English did a Russian conglomerate make? Should I bild a cubbard instead of building a cupboard? How should we capitalize an exclamation mark, and why might we need to? What's a depressor consonant? As a finale, the author writes a letter to his 16-year-old self.

Part I. Words, Names, People and Places: 1. Unusual words
2. Food and drink words
3. Interesting words
4. Names
5. People
6. Places
7. Abroad
8. Home from abroad
Part II. Sounds and Letters: 9. Allophones
10. Phonetic processes
11. Spelling
12. Transcription
Part III. Applied Phonetics: 13. Classification
14. EFL
15. Accents
16. Lexical stress
17. Connected speech
18. Texts in transcription
Part IV. Roundup: 19. Rhetoric
20. Language mosaic
21. Postscript.

Subject Areas: Phonetics, phonology [CFH], Dialect, slang & jargon [CFFD], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF], Linguistics [CF]