Unit 1

Online English phonetics courses and general resources

The following links offer useful general resources, as well as online courses on English Phonetics and Phonology.

• John Well's home page with daily blog (it contains useful information on fonts, accents, transcription, the spelling reform and phonetics teaching and learning tips, UCLA Phonetics Lab Data.
• Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics (5 th. Ed) and Vowels and Consonants.
• Phonetics links.
• Selected Bibliography.
• David Brett’s course on English Phonetics and Phonology. Interactive exercises (with sound) for the teaching of English pronunciation for ESL students, dealing with the production and classification of sounds, aspects of connected speech, stress and intonation. It also provides you with transcription exercises with a ready online phonetic keyboard.
• John Wells’ blog.
• Compilation of sites on pronunciation. Including listening and speaking skills.
• Rafael Monroy Casas. English Phonetics and Phonology at the University of Murcia (Spain).
• Mª Luisa García Lecumberri. English Phonetics and Phonology at the University of the Basque Country (Spain).

Acoustic Phonetics & Speech Analysis

• Acoustic Phonetics Bibliography.
• Praat: doing phonetics by computer. Very widely used speech analysis program.
• Windows Tool for Fundamental Frequency Analysis.
• Advice on audio equipment for speech recording. Research. Speech data.
• Audio Tools. Most computers come with basic audio hardware and software installed for recording and playback. However, there are hundreds of computer programs available which allow you to do more with your audio - playing, editing, analysing, transcribing and converting sounds.
• Software in Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences. This page provides some information and resources for the use of the International Phonetics Association alphabet of phonetic symbols for the transcription of speech using computers.
• Speech on the brain. Part of Speech, hearing and phonetic sciences at University College London.
• The Ear Institute. Part of the University College London Medical School.

Phonetic Alphabet

• International Phonetic Association. The IPA is the major as well as the oldest representative organisation for phoneticians. It was established in 1886 in Paris. 2011 marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of the IPA.
• The Cardinal Vowels with Daniel Jones. Listen and learn as famed phonetician Daniel Jones narrates the 18 Cardinal Vowels.
• Type IPA. an online IPA keyboard to enable you to type IPA symbols in your computer, which you can then export to a word or powerpoint document.
• IPA symbols for English (J. C. Wells, UCL).
• The International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode.

Phonetic transcription and Automatic Transcription Converters

Here you will find resources to improve your transcription skills, as well as automatic phonemic transcription programs which convert normal spelling into phonetic transcripts.

• English Phonetic Transcription Converter.
• Introduction to phonetic and phonemic transcription.
• Text to Phonetics. Text2Phonetics is a PhoTransEdit Online application that transcribes small English texts into broad phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
• Phonetic transcription and Automatic Transcription Converters. This page is intended to help you get phonetic symbols into a word-processed document.
• Dictation practice. Use these dictations to practice phonetic transcription.

Accents in English

General

• The International Dialects of English Archive. This was created in 1997 as the first online archive of primary-source recordings of English dialects and accents as heard around the world, including English spoken by non- natives.
• Sound maps. Use the interactive maps to find recordings of regional accents and dialect.
• Your accents. The 'Your accents' interactive map displays a collection of recordings created between November 2010 and April 2011 and is a result of the British Library exhibition, ‘Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices.’
• British and American vowels (U. Washington).
• English Dialect Links.
• Speech Accent Archive.
• British Library. Sounds familiar? Accents and dialects of the UK. You can listen to 71 sound recordings and over 600 short audio clips chosen from two collections of the British Library Sound Archive: the Survey of English Dialects and the Millennium Memory Bank.
• Descriptions of English RP. Pronunciation tips, exercises and quizzes from the BBC Learning English site, with free videos and recordings.

Great Britain

• Pronunciation preferences (J. C. Wells, UCL).

USA

• Atlas of North American English (TELSUR Project).
• American Dialect Homepage.

Australia and New Zealand

• Australian English Phonetics.

A Brief Look at Error Analysis

The links below will help you to avoid the most common pronunciation errors of Spanish learners of English

• English pronunciation practice for Spanish speakers.