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intro01.htm
Daniel Jones. Edited by Peter Roach, James Hartman and Jane Setter. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Scanned by Maung Kan Tun and edited by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR .
Introduction Part 1
1.1
What is the English Pronouncing Dictionary?
1.2
Whose pronunciation is represented?
1.3
How are the pronunciation chosen?
1.4
Regional accents
1.5
Pronunciation of foreign words
1.6
Usage notes
1.7
Syllable divisions
It is strongly recommended that users of this dictionary read the introduction, since a full understanding of the information in it will ensure the most effective use of the dictionary.
This dictionary is designed to provide information on the current pronunciation of approximately 80,000 English words and phrases. For each entry, a British and an American (US) pronunciation is shown (see Whose pronunciation). The pronunciation is given in modified phonemic transcription, and you need to understand the principles of phonemic transcription in order to be able to make proper use of this information (see Section 2.1 ).
The Pronouncing Dictionary provides much essential information that is not available in a general dictionary, such as the pronunciation of proper names, the pronunciation of all inflected forms of each word, and a larger amount of detail about variant pronunciations than is usual in a general dictionary.
A pronouncing dictionary must base its recommendations on one or more models. A pronunciation model is a carefully chosen and defined accent of a language. In the first edition of this dictionary (1917), Daniel Jones described the type of pronunciation recorded as "that most usually heard in everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons whose menfolk have been educated at the great public boarding-schools". Accordingly, he felt able to refer to his model as "Public School Pronunciation" (PSP). In later editions, e.g. that of 1937, he added the remark that boys in boarding-schools tend to lose their markedly local peculiarities, whereas this is not the case for those in day-schools. He had by 1926, however, abandoned the term PSP in favour of "Received Pronunciation" (RP). The type of speech he had in mind had for centuries been regarded as a kind of standard, having its base in the educated pronunciation of London and the Home Counties (the counties surrounding London). Its use was not restricted to this region, however, being characteristic by the nineteenth century of upper-class speech throughout the country. The Editor of the 14th Edition of this dictionary, A. C. Gimson, commented in 1977 "Such a definition of RP is hardly tenable today", and went on "If I have retained the traditional, though imprecise, term 'received pronunciation' , it is because the label has such wide currency in books on present-day English and because it is a convenient name for an accent which remains generally acceptable and intelligible within Britain".
For this edition a more broadly-based and accessible model accent for British English is represented, and pronunciations for one broadly-conceived accent of American English have been added. The time has come to abandon the archaic name Received Pronunciation (RP). The model used for British English is what is referred to as BBC English; this is the pronunciation of professional speakers employed by the BBC as newsreaders and announcers on BBC1 and BBC2 television, the World Service and BBC Radio 3 and 4, as well as many commercial broadcasting organisations such as ITN. Of course, one finds differences between such speakers -- individual broadcasters all have their own personal characteristics, and an increasing number of broadcasters with Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents are employed. However, the accent described here is typical of broadcasters with an English accent, and there is a useful degree of consistency in the broadcast speech of these speakers. Their speech does not carry for most people the connotations of high social class and privilege that PSP and RP have had in the past. An additional advantage in concentrating on the accent of broadcasters is that it is easy to gain access to examples, and the sound quality is usually of a very high standard.
For American (US) English, the selection also follows what is frequently heard from professional voices on national network news and information programmes. It is similar to what has been termed General American (GA), which refers to a geographically (largely non-coastal) and socially based set of pronunciation features. It is important to note that no single dialect -- regional or social -- has been singled out as an American standard. Even national media (radio, television, movies, CD-ROM, etc.), with professionally trained voices have speakers with regionally mixed features. However, "Network English", in its most colourless form, can be described as a relatively homogeneous dialect that reflects the ongoing development of progressive American dialects (Canadian English has several notable differences). This "dialect" itself contains some variant forms. The variants included within this targeted accent involve vowels before /r/ , possible differences in words like <cot> and <caught> and some vowels before /l/ (U006C). It is fully rhotic. These differences largely pass unnoticed by the audiences for Network English, and are also reflective of age differences. What are thought to be the more progressive (used by educated, socially mobile, and younger speakers) variants are listed first in each entry. The intent is to list the variety of pronunciations with the least amount of regional or social marking, while still being sensitive to the traits of the individual word.
It is important to remember that the pronunciation of English words is not governed by a strict set of rules; most words have more than one pronunciation, and the speaker's choice of which to use depends on a wide range of factors. These include the degree of formality, the amount of background noise, the speed of utterance, the speaker's perception of the listener and the frequency with which the speaker uses the word. For example, the two words <virtuous> and <virtuoso> are closely similar in spelling and share a common origin. However, the former is more common than the latter, and for British English /'vɜː.ʧu.əs/ is given as the first pronunciation of the former but /'vɜː.tju.əʊ.səʊ/ for the latter (which in general is typical of more careful speech). If such variation did not exist, most of the work of compiling a pronouncing dictionary could be done easily by means of one of the available computer programs that convert English spelling into a phonemic transcription. Ultimately, however, the decisions about which pronunciation to recommend, which pronunciations have dropped out of use, and so on, have been based on the editors' intuitions as professional phoneticians and observers of the pronunciation of English (particularly broadcast English) over many years. The opinion of many colleagues and acquaintances has also been a valuable source of advice.
In general, a pronunciation typical of a more casual, informal style of speaking is given for common words, and a more careful pronunciation for uncommon words. In real life, speakers tend to articulate most carefully when listeners are likely to have difficulty in recognising the words they hear. When more than one pronunciation of a word is given, the order of the alternatives is important. The first pronunciation given is believed to be the most usual one although the distance between the alternatives may vary, with some alternant forms rivalling the first-given in perceived frequency while others may be a more distant second.
A pronouncing dictionary that systematically presented the pronunciations of a range of regional accents would be very valuable, but it would be very much bigger than the present volume and the job of ensuring an adequate coverage which treated all accents as equally important would have taken many years. In the case of some place-names, information about local pronunciations has been retained or added as well as "official" broadcasting ones, but the other words are given only in the standard accents chosen for British and American English.
UKT: The reader should refer to Accents of English by J.C. Wells, in 3 volumes, Cambridge University Press, digital print 1999. Volume 3 Beyond the British Isles with focus on -- among other regions :
• Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa
• India, Singapore, Philippines and Hawaii.
Many of the words in an English dictionary are of foreign origin, and in previous editions of
this dictionary many such words have been given both in an Anglicised pronunciation used by most
English speakers, and in a broad phonetic transcription of the "authentic" pronunciation
in the original language. This edition does not give detailed phonetic transcriptions of foreign
words; the primary aim of this dictionary is to list pronunciations likely to be used by educated
speakers of English, and an authentic pronunciation would in some circumstances be quite
inappropriate (e.g., pronouncing <Paris> as /pær'iː/
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UKT:
¤ Note that the short <a> is changed into the long <a>.
¤ According to Bur-Myan scholars who have been to France on scholarships, pronouncing French straight from Burmese is easy if one doesn't go through English pronunciations.] - UKT110307
In some cases the information is unnecessary (very few English speakers would attempt, or even recognise, an authentic pronunciation of a word from a non-European language), while in other cases it is difficult to establish the authentic original (many African place-names, for example, have reached us after being adapted by British, French or Portuguese colonists; place-names in Spain may be pronounced in different ways according to their regional affiliation, so that the name of Barcelona might be given a Catalan or a Castilian Spanish pronunciation, while other Spanish names are different according to whether they originate in Spain or South America). Words and names of foreign origin are therefore given in what is felt to be the pronunciation likely to be used among educated speakers of English.
In some cases it is possible to identify an alternative pronunciation which represents an attempt to pronounce in a manner closer to the supposed original. This is marked by first indicating the language which the speaker would be aiming at, then giving the pronunciation, using where necessary additional phonetic symbols not required for the phonemic transcription of English. For example, the word <bolognese> is widely used to refer to a sauce served with pasta. This is given as /ˌbɒl.əˈneɪz/ for British English and as /ˌboʊ.ləˈniːz/ for American; for speakers of both groups, a pronunciation aimed at being nearer to the Italian original would be /ˌbɒl.əˈnjeɪ.zeɪ/ (though this would still be different from the pronunciation that would be produced by an Italian speaker). To indicate that this last pronunciation is aimed at sounding Italian, it is marked in the entry as: as if Italian: /ˌbɒl.əˈnjeɪ.zeɪ/. In a few cases it has been necessary to mark separate British and American pronunciations within this field, as the degree of Anglicisation of any given word may vary between British and American English.
Usage notes are included with some words. In some cases these are needed so that users of the dictionary can understand how alternative pronunciations are to be used. In some cases the rules needed for correct pronunciation are quite complex, most noticeably in the case of the so-called "weak-form words" such as <there>, <her>. Explanations with examples are given in such cases. (UKT: See WEAK FORM).
UKT: What is a syllable? Even if you think you know what it means, it is always advisable to refer to a dictionary such as AHTD which I have included as part of the package.
syllable n. 1. Linguistics a. A unit of spoken language consisting of a single uninterrupted sound formed by a vowel, diphthong, or syllabic consonant alone, or by any of these sounds preceded, followed, or surrounded by one or more consonants. b. One or more letters or phonetic symbols written or printed to approximate a spoken syllable. 2. The slightest bit of spoken or written expression: Do not alter a syllable of this message. - AHTD
Since we are working on Phonetics or Phonemics, we are more interested on the technical meaning , for which look into Information panels given in the DJPD16 section. You will see more information given on "syllable" in the Information Panel infoR-S.htm . However, if you are just going into this course only as an interested person and not as a student, the information given by AHTD is good enough. If you plan to be an instructor you will have to go online and browse the Internet.
The Eng-Lat syllable has the canonical form CVC, where Cs are the consonants and V is the peak or nucleus vowel. VC taken together is the rime. Eng-Lat consonants do not contain any 'inherent' vowels and are therefore not pronounceable. Thus for instance "the sound of <p>" is an oxymoron (a self-contradictory word). I am sure most Bur-Myan in Myanmar would not know this word - the 'oxymoron': it has nothing to do with Chemistry. Why don't we look into AHTD.
oxymoron n. 1. A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist. - AHTD
The Bur-Myan syllable has the canonical form CVÇ, where C is the onset akshara, V the peak vowel akshara, and Ç the "killed" coda akshara. The difference between Eng-Lat and Bur-Myan is due to English uses an alphabet , whilst Burmese uses an abugida (loosely translated as akshara). Note that the akshara
{ak~hka.ra} is not an alphabet. The following definition from MLC Myanmar English Dictionary, 2010 is no longer tenable. MLC has obviously based its entry on the usage before the recognition of the technical term - abugida - introduced by Peter T. Daniels in 1990. The abugida is also known as an alphasyllabary . See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida 110308 .
Earlier editions of this dictionary regularly marked the division between syllables. This practice was largely abandoned in the 14th Edition, but the present edition gives syllable divisions in all cases, since it is felt that foreign learners will find the information useful. Syllable division is marked with the symbol [.] ("Full Stop" U002E) recommended by the International Phonetic Association (IPA). The decision on where to place a syllable division is not always easy, and the rules used in this work are explained later in this Introduction (Section 2.6).
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida 110308
An abugida (pronounced /ˌɑːbuːˈɡiːdə/, from Ge‘ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida), also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system which is based on consonants, and in which vowel notation is obligatory but secondary. This contrasts with an alphabet proper, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent or optional. (In less formal treatments, all three are commonly called alphabets.) Abugidas include the extensive Brahmic family of scripts used in South and Southeast Asia.
The term abugida was suggested by Peter T. Daniels in his 1990 typology of writing systems. It is an Ethiopian name of the Ge‘ez script, ’ä bu gi da, taken from four letters of that script the way abecedary derives from Latin a be ce de. As Daniels used the word, an abugida contrasts with a syllabary, where letters with shared consonants or vowels show no particular resemblance to each another, and with an alphabet proper, where independent letters are used to denote both consonants and vowels. The term alphasyllabary was suggested for the Indic scripts in 1997 by William Bright, following South Asian linguistic usage, to convey the idea that "they share features of both alphabet and syllabary". Abugidas were long considered to be syllabaries or intermediate between syllabaries and alphabets, and the term "syllabics" is retained in the name of Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. Other terms that have been used include neosyllabary (Février 1959), pseudo-alphabet (Householder 1959), semisyllabary (Diringer 1968; a word which has other uses) and syllabic alphabet (Coulmas 1996; this term is also a synonym for syllabary).
UKT: More in the Wikipedia article.
Go back abugida-note-b
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