Rex Wilson has clearly demonstrated that tape recording is a useful technical aid for dialect field interviews, such as those for the Linguistic Atlas. In his own work, Wilson obviously and properly handles the tape as a tool, not as a substitute for the fieldworker. Nevertheless, since the New World too often assumes that the development of a gadget automatically solves a problem, one may justifiably emphasize a few of the pitfalls for the investigator who uses the tape uncritically — and this while being in substantial agreement with Wilson's position.

It is important, however, that such skepticism be not the skepticism of inexperience, which is too often evident in criticisms of tape recordings

0.1 Of the various peoples of continental European origin to be found in the Province of Saskatchewan, the Germans form perhaps the largest group. Found in almost every part of the province, they are actually in the majority in many parts of western and central Saskatchewan where German continues to play an effective role as a medium of communication. This is particularly true of such localities as Macklin, Leader, Tramping Lake and Luseland where large groups of Russo-Germans settled after World War I. The importance, too, of the agricultural character of these communities cannot be overemphasized. Stable, with very little shift in population, children grow up to take over from their parents or to settle on neighboring farms, often vacated by non-Germans.

1. Une prononciation tout à fait singulière et maintes fois entendue dans le milieu étudiant au collège classique de l'Assomption, ville située à quelque 25 milles au nord de Montréal, nous fournit l'occasion d'analyser expérimentalement sa structure et d'établir ses principales caractéristiques.

Tous les gens de cette agglomération dont le parler est le français emploient, à quelques exceptions près, la fricative palato-alvéolaire /ž/ de façon distincte et constante. Cependant, l'observateur quelque peu exercé entendra chez certains individus toute une gamme de variantes du phonème mentionné. Dans des mots comme agi, japper, à jeun, la fricative sonore peut se realiser comme [H], soit [aHi], [Hape], [aHœ], ces réalisations variant également, pour un même individu, selon le contexte phonétique ou suivant des variations individuelles : [aHi], [ahi], [axi].

1. In the studies of Canadian English which have appeared up to date, emphasis has largely been placed been on the social-historical factors which account for the distribution of different groups of English-speaking settlers. This work, of course, provides an indispensable basis for further linguistic investigations, and equally useful are the lexical distributions that have been studied. In the phonological field, however, there is an urgent need for more material based on first-hand phonetic observation.

2. The present article sets out to analyse phonetically the English spoken in the Vancouver area, specifically among the younger generation. Some fifty local students, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-two, have co-operated in this exploratory analysis during the last two years, and the detailed investigation of their speech has been supplemented and checked by further investigation outside the group.