Vowels And Consonants: An Introduction To The Sounds Of Languages

by Peter Ladefoged

This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics is now available in a fully updated second edition. Peter Ladefoged describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages.

Important topics covered in Vowels and Consonants

* The main forces operating on the sounds of languages

* The acoustic components of speech and speech synthesis

* Computers and Text-To-Speech systems and speech recognition systems

* Descriptions of the sounds of a wide variety of languages that are reproduced on the accompanying CD.

This revised edition includes a new chapter on how we listen to speech and the greatly expanded CD now contains data on 100 languages to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[June]

This was a very interesting read to introduce yourself into Phonetics. The author’s style and explanations made everything super clear, and the little jokes here and there made it very easy to follow. I would recommend this to anyone interested, outside or inside of the academic world.

[isabelle]

very well written and easy to read. my favorite parts were about pitch and tone in english sentences and how vowels and consonants differ in the formants and spectrograms. now anyone outside my window thinks i'm cool and not strange for trying to pronounce funny sounds to myself B)

[Kara Pirko]

I liked this teachers edition to phonics. I think that it would be a nice beginner teachers guide to teaching phonics. It does not have mounds of information but it would be helpful when lesson planning.

[Kourosh]

Although this is an introductory book, it offers quite a lot of detail, and does so in such a simple manner that I often didn't actually realise that they were complicated details. Other authors of linguistics textbooks might want to take note of this writing style.

[Mhizzice]

I one to learn the chart

[Michael Vance]

This book taught a lot but just wasn't fun to look at. Nothing was pleasing and was easy to lose interest in.

[Emperador Spock]

Excellent phonetics introductory book. It may be a bit basic for anyone with some knowledge in the field, but it doesn't dumb down what it tells, includes everything that should be in a book like this, and shows the way for those who are interested.

[Hans Henrik]

Linguistics

[Rasmus Puggaard]

Read this for phonetics course. Fantastic read, and really engaging writing by Ladefoged

[Tigran]

Formants, speech recognition & synthesis insight, sounds around the globe, field techniques, IPA and more... + recorded examples