Institut für Englische Philologie
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
This lecture provides an overview of English orthography and phonology. It starts with a general introduction to writing systems and also introduces the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The first sessions are devoted to different stages of English language history and illustrate the development of spelling and pronunciation through Old, Middle and Early Modern English. Subsequently the Present-Day English sounds of Received Pronunciation are presented and related to their possible spellings. A separate session is devoted to General American. Finally, the emergence of novel English spellings is discussed, as evident, for example, in colloquial English as well as many different types of computer-mediated communication.
There is no single textbook covering all aspects of this lecture. Some particularly useful works are listed below.
Some important publications:
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Cook, Vivian, The English Writing System (Oxford and New York, 2004).
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Cruttenden, Alan, Gimson's Pronunciation of English, 7th ed. (London, 2008).
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Sauer, Walter, A Drillbook of English Phonetics, 3rd ed. (Heidelberg, 2006).
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Upward, Christopher, and George Davidson, The History of English Spelling (Chichester, 2011).
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