This chapter focuses on other accents of English around the globe. As describing all varieties of English would go far beyond the scope of a single chapter and also as this is still a phonetics textbook, the aim of this chapter is rather to set you up for further studies in this field, and we are going to do so the other way round than you might expect: instead of going through different accents and describing features of their pronunciation, we are going to focus on different phonetic phenomena that you may encounter and for each one give examples of accents in which they can be observed.

Vowels are different from consonants in that the lower articulators are much farther away from the upper articulators. Vowels do not differ from one another considerably in the way they are produced, so there is no straightforward classification into several manners of articulation like for consonants. This chapter introduces the system of cardinal vowels that helps us describe different language-independent vowel qualities that can be used to classify the vowels of any language. Vowels can be subdivided into monophthongs, where the tongue remains in one stable position, and diphthongs, where the tongue performs a gliding movement during articulation. Considering the vowels of English, we focus on monophthongs in this chapter. At this point, IPA symbols become a necessity: there are many more vowels than you may initially think and there is no way to represent them in a satisfactory way orthographically.

The smallest building blocks of languages, if we set sign languages apart, are sounds. In this chapter, you are going to discover which processes are necessary to produce speech sounds. We are going to learn about the speech organs and how they function. The chapter focuses on the anatomy of the larynx and the oral cavity. This knowledge about our anatomy is helpful when trying to understand how consonants and vowels are produced.

In this chapter, we are going to discover that in each word with two or more syllables one syllable stands out from the rest. It differs in pitch, intensity or length or is marked in some other way, so we perceive this syllable as being stressed or accentuated. This phenomenon is called ‘word stress’. Word stress is an integral and essential part of the pronunciation of English words. In your transcriptions, you will have noticed that unstressed syllables often do not contain a full vowel, but that the vowel is shortened or reduced to schwa. Which syllable is stressed hence has an impact on the segmental structure of the word. Stressing another syllable may alter the pronunciation of a word in a way that makes it incomprehensible. In this chapter, we will investigate the nature of word stress in English as well as in other languages. We are going to see cases where stress placement creates a difference in meaning. A look at foreign suffixes helps to explain why related words, such as courage and courageous, may differ greatly in pronunciation.

The syllable is a unit in-between the phoneme and the word. It minimally consists of one phoneme, but usually is consists of more. While even preschool children have no trouble telling you how many syllables a word contains and can clap the syllable structure, we are going to investigate why a word has as many syllables as it does. We will discover the internal structure of syllables and which phonemes combine with one another into syllables and which do not. Finally, we will consider some principles that help us syllabify words and split them into syllables.

Speech sounds can be subdivided into vowels and consonants. This chapter will explain the articulation of consonants in general and of English consonants in particular. The chapter is grouped into the different kinds of consonants and their manner of articulation. The full IPA consonant table is quite extensive. However, the chapters are arranged in a logical order, making it easier to remember them. Many consonants can actually be felt, and it is fun to produce them as you read along. At the end, the chapter deals with letter-to-sound correspondences and provides guidelines for when matching a letter to a consonant sound is not straightforward.

Intonation is the speech melody of an intonation phrase. Speakers produce utterances with a melodic pattern that hinges on tone. The last stressed syllable in an intonation phrase carries the tone and is characterized by a rapid change in pitch that either falls or rises. Syllables before and after that syllable lead up to and continue this pattern. Tones can be falling or non-falling, high or low. We are going to investigate what the effects of these different tones are and how they relate to the different functions of intonation discussed in the previous chapter.

In this chapter, we are going to see that the articulation of consonants and also of vowels may be in fact quite different in connected speech from their articulation in isolation discussed in earlier chapters. Sometimes, a feature can still be heard in the next sound. On other occasions, an acoustic property of a later sound occurs early and can already be heard in the sound that precedes it. All criteria, such as place of articulation and voicing for consonants or length for vowels, may be affected. This means that there are many more sounds than we initially assumed.