Re: "Pronunciatiopn Plus" (Cambriidge University Press) What alphabet are they using?
- From: "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 13 Nov 2006 10:03:14 -0800
Jay wrote:
I am teaching English pronunciation in Asia and have a frustrating
situation. I am using Cambridge's 'Pronunciation Plus' text book (North
American English) and audio materials. However, the symbols it uses do
not match the International Phonetic Alphabet. They also don't match
the symbols used in the most common dictionaries sold here - Oxford.
Seems odd to be off-standard.
Anyway, what system ARE they using? For example, the vowel sound in
'see' is written /iy/; the vowel sound in 'say' is written /ey/; 'you'
as /uw/; and 'snow' as /ow/. Most odd of all, the text itself does not
explain what standard it is using. As I see it, it has to be system A,
or B or a proprietary system. Indeed it is annoying for students to not
be able to use their British dictionaries, which, as I recall, write
the vowel sound in 'cap' as /A:/ not a strange combination of 'a' and
'e' that I don't know how to type here.
Those are not phonetic transcriptions at all, but phonemic
transcriptions, using the system named for Henry Lee Smith and George
Trager, who developed it in the 1930s and 1940s; it's the standard
system used by American Descriptivist linguists.
If you're accurate in writing / / and not [ ] or \ \, this is
confirmation.
The clearest exposition of Smith-Trager phonemicization is in H. A.
Gleason's textbook *Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics* (2nd ed.,
1961); with the difference that he uses small-capital H instead of
minuscule h to mark one of the four sets of syllabic nuclei provided
for in this system.
Incidentally, American dictionaries don't use IPA, they use the set of
vowel diacritics that had found favor here well before IPA was
invented, as well as <sh>, <th>, etc., rather than unfamiliar symbols
for consonants.
.
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