The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English (review)

The ‘current English’ transcribed in this dictionary is that of British English (BR) and United States American English (AM) which, for the most part, would also include Canadian English (CA). The authors have intended it, first, for native or fluent speakers of English for whom it should serve as ‘a guide to the pronunciation of those uncommon words with which they may be unfamiliar and whose pronunciation may not immediately be apparent’ (viii), and second, for learners of English for whom it should provide ‘a comprehensive guide to the pronunciation of the core vocabulary of the two principal international varieties’ (viii).

The design and organization of this dictionary are as pellucid and straightforward as can be. Entries basically consist of a headword in bold type followed on successive lines by an IPA transcription in both dialects, for example:

• afloat

• BR ə'flə℧t

• AM ə'flo℧t

Clarity comes at the expense of economy, however, since this model is followed even when the two transcriptions are identical. More complex entries include: (1) variant pronunciations which are separated by commas, as in /kɑːst, kast/ for BR cast or /kɔt, kɑt/ for AM caught; (2) forms with optional elements which are enclosed in parentheses, for example, AM /'wɪn(t)ər/ winter, BR/'deɪndʒə(r)/ danger; and (3) headwords accompanied by inflectional forms which are either preceded simply by a hyphen, for example, /deɪl, -z/ for dale, dales, or by a vertical bar where they are to be attached to the headword, for example, BR /'iːtər | 'i, -ɪz/ for eater, eatery, eateries.

As for the pronunciation models selected for what has been labeled BR and AM, the authors have eschewed, in the case of the former, the kind of Received Pronunciation (RP) that ‘has long been the norm in British English pronouncing and general dictionaries and in language-teaching classrooms’, one that is now, in their view, ‘the possession of a small minority restricted in terms of age, class, and region’; instead, they have opted for ‘a younger, unmarked RP . . . which is not regionally centered or redolent of class’ (xi). The major points of departure from traditional RP transcription practice are the use of [a] for [æ](had, hand), [ε] for [e] (red, bread), [Λɪ] for [aɪ] (fight, lie), [εː] for [εə](bear, fair), final [i] for [ɪ](lucky, money), and [a] as a variant of [ɑː] (brass, staff) which is characteristic of northern RP speakers.

For AM, ‘[t]he pronunciation model adopted here follows the trend among younger educated speakers of exclusion of regional features’, and this makes it, according to the authors, ‘quite similar to what one hears in the national broadcast media, since broadcasters have long participated in the more general trend of younger educated speakers’ (xiv). A few curious and, some may think, rather infelicitous decisions have been made in the transcription of this variety, however. One is the absence of the generally noted length diacritic on the vowels [iː], [uː], [ɔː], [ɑː], so that we find, for example, that heed is BR /hiːd/ and AM /hid/, something that clearly does not reflect the sort of ‘broadly phonetic’ transcription proclaimed by the authors. Neither does the use of [ə] to represent both [ə] and [Λ], which yields many anomalous notations like BR /sΛn/ and AM /sən/ for sun.

The most unfortunate choice of all, however, is surely that of using [d] to indicate [ɾ], the flapped allophone of [t]. Given that flapping also applies to [d] and [n], not only have they misrepresented this phonological process but they have also given the false impression that forms like ladder ['lædər] and Adam ['ædəm] have undergone no change while their homophones latter ['lædər] and atom [ædəm] have. Since no other allophones are noted, the wisest course of action would probably have been to simply list the environments for the rule in the ‘Introduction’.

In sum, although this...