Working with the Phonetics of English and Dutch - Tapa blanda

Working with the Phonetics of English and Dutch is a workbook intended to be used in conjunction with The Phonetics of English and Dutch (Brill, 1996). (An accompanying cassette is available on request from the authors at a nominal charge). The workbook contains twenty-four English and Dutch passages in phonemic transcription. Keys are provided for fifteen dictated passages (recorded on the cassette). An additional fifty passages, printed in conventional orthography, are included (for which transcription keys are obtainable for recognised teachers on request). The book also includes fifteen allophonic descriptions of English words and phrases. These provide a useful exercise for students learning articulatory phonetics in relation to English. Transcripts are provided for twelve representative varieties of British and Irish English (which have been recorded on the accompanying cassette). The accents illustrated are: London (Cockney), Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, West Glamorgan, Southampton, Cardiff and Hartlepool. All the informants are authentic speakers of the variety concerned and the samples are overwhelmingly of genuine conversational language. This set of recordings is one of the best sources presently available for samples of accents of British English. Notes are supplied to accompany the section of the cassette recording which demonstrates the vowels and consonants of the International Phonetic Association's alphabet. A section is included with over 350 questions on phonetics, covering the material dealt with in the textbook The Phonetics of English and Dutch. These will be excellent as a means of testing knowledge, and also for exam preparation.

Beverley Collins, Doctorate in Phonetics, University of Utrecht, 1988, is Lecturer in English at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Inger Mees, Doctorate in Sociolinguistics, University of Leiden, 1983, is Associate Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.