Accents of English

Abstract

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.

Cross-entropic comparison of formants of British, Australian and American English accents

“…Accent is one of the most fascinating aspects of speech acoustics [1]. Accent variability within a language is a major source of limitation of the accuracy of un-adapted machine (and unaccustomed human) speech recognition systems [2][3][4].…”

“…In Crystal's dictionary of linguistics [10], an accent refers to pronunciation only as "the cumulative auditory effect of those features of pronunciation, which identify where a person is from regionally and socially". Similarly, Wells [1] defines an English accent as a pattern of pronunciation used by a speaker for whom English is the native language or more generally, by the community or social grouping to which he or she belongs.…”

“…The term dialect refers to the whole speech pattern, conventions of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and the usage of speech by a community of people [1] while accent refers to a pattern of pronunciation and the abstract (phonological) representations which can be seen as underlying the actual (phonetic) articulation.…”

“…An accent may rely on the articulation of vowels, co-articulation, consonants, nasalisation, voice quality, melodic clichés, the particular forms of intonation, pitch range, pitch level at phrase boundaries, stress pattern, stress location differences or other shibboleths [1,11].…”

“…Similarly, the English Liverpool accent has been influenced by Irish immigration whereas the Northern Ireland accent has been influenced by Scottish immigration. Wells [1] provides an excellent introduction to the linguistic structures of the accents of English language within and beyond the British Isles.…”