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click farewell 22 Apr 2013 | 01:48 pm
How come, you might ask, that a word spelled with -c- comes to be pronounced with an l? Why this gross discrepancy between spelling and sound, orthography and pronunciation? Blame the 1989 Kiel Conve...
Breughel 19 Apr 2013 | 02:06 pm
We can’t agree on how to spell the name of the famous Dutch/Flemish painter(s): were Pieter B. the Elder and his relatives Breughel, Brueghel, Breugel or Bruegel? As is often the case with foreign na...
estuariality 17 Apr 2013 | 03:09 pm
I had a phone call a few days ago from someone trying to get in touch with David Rosewarne. The caller thought I might have his contact details. I was unable to help, since as far as I remember I have...
London place names 15 Apr 2013 | 12:38 pm
Londonist, a website “about London and everything that happens in it” offers a page of advice on London place names. Some of the advice is a little surprising. These names are normally ˈɔːldwɪtʃ, ˈb...
money tree policy 12 Apr 2013 | 12:31 pm
Puns that work for some do not necessarily work for all. Here’s a witticism from a letter-writer to the Guardian a month ago. But I suspect that this pun doesn’t exactly work for anyone at all, thoug...
listen once more 10 Apr 2013 | 08:39 pm
When my three-volume Accents of English (Cambridge University Press, 1982) was published, it was accompanied by a cassette with recorded specimens. The same tape was also published by BBC English unde...
I must haplologize 8 Apr 2013 | 12:14 pm
The other day I noticed a reporter on the BBC TV news pronouncing deteriorate as diˈtɪərieɪt. This pronunciation is a variant to which I attach a warning triangle in LPD (“pronunciation considered inc...
from Toledo to Laredo 5 Apr 2013 | 12:14 pm
In view of one commenter’s indignation this week about the Ohio placename Lima, pronounced differently from the identically spelt capital of Peru (see screenshot above of the LPD entry), I thought it ...
bravo lima oscar golf 3 Apr 2013 | 12:12 pm
In an on-line forum discussion about what language teachers need to know about pronunciation, one unusual suggestion made was this, from David Deterding: We should teach them the Alpha Bravo Charlie ...
a new sound 1 Apr 2013 | 12:40 pm
I thought that for today I’d recycle a blog entry from seven years ago, seeing that it may well still be of interest. _ _ _ My colleague Olaf Lipor tells me that the International Phonetic Asssociat...
