Part 2 of the Handbook contains the twenty-nine ‘Illustrations’ which have appeared in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association from 1989 to 1997. These are phonetic analyses of a language, showing how the IPA can be used in the description of its phonological inventory, and in the transcription of a continuous text.

The Illustrations include a transcription of a spoken text, traditionally a translation of the fable ‘The North Wind and the Sun’. Of the Illustrations presented here, only that of Taba uses a different text. The British English text of the fable is given here for reference:

Recordings of the words and text contained in most of the Illustrations are available to accompany the Handbook.

American English

PETER LADEFOGED

Department of Linguistics, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543, USA

There are many different dialects of English spoken in North America, so it is somewhat improper to refer to any one of them simply as ‘American English’. The style of speech illustrated here is that of younger educated Americans in the Far-Western and some of the Mid-Western parts of the United States. The speech in the recording on which the transcription is based is that of a 21-year-old speaker who has lived all her life in Southern California. Speakers from other parts of the United States, such as the East coast and the Northern cities of the Mid-West have different dialects, nearly all of them being more conservative, with a greater number of vowels.

The qualities of the vowels shown in the charts are based on observations of nine speakers of the dialect being described. The unstressed vowel [a] is not shown on the chart as its quality varies considerably.