Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, Appunti di Linguistica Inglese

Scarica Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary e più Appunti in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity! CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY Introduction 1) What is a pronouncing dictionary? English is unreliable. The dictionary presents how native speakers of English actually do pronounce the words. The dictionary is designed to provide information on the current pronunciation of approximately 80000 English words and phrases. For each entry, a british and American pronunciation. All the information on pronunciation is written using special phonetic symbols based on those of the international Phonetic Association. 2) The sounds of English The accent described in the dictionary is called BBC pronunciation, since it is the accent most often heard in the speech of newsreaders and announcers on serious channels of BBC. The corresponding accent of American English is called General American. American accents are rhotic (they pronounce the sound /r/ when it is written), BBc English is not rhotic, though many accents that can be heard in Britain are rhotic Cardinal Vowel Quadrilateral = device used to describe vowels. English has 7 short vowels, 5 long ones and 8 diphthongs. Triphthongs: diphthongs followed by a schwa. Almost all English syllables have a vowel as their central element. A syllable may have an initial consonant followed by a vowel (es. bee), or a vowel followed by a final consonant (es. ought). Many syllables have an initial and a final consonant (es. bat). we find English syllables beginning with two consonants (es. ski) or three (es. straw) and syllables ending with two consonants (es. eats), three (es. risked) or four (es. sixths) 3) How is the dictionary organized The model used for British English is what we referred to as BBC English; this is the pronunciation of professional speakers who are employed by the BBC as newsreaders and announcers. An advantage in concentrating on the accent of broadcasters is that it is easy to gain access to examples, and the quality of the sound that one can record is usually of a