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Bill is one of the founders of Boffins and has been involved in selecting the books we stock since our beginning in 1989. His favourite reading is history, with psychology, current affairs, and business books coming close behind. His hobbies are reading, food, reading, drinking, reading, and sleeping.
Could there be a more contentious subject than “correct pronunciation” ? I think not. Class, education, where we come from – these are all factors that affect our pronunciation of the language. If we don’t speak, say, French – then we’ll listen to someone speaking it without understanding and without judgment. But if we’re listening to someone speaking English in an accent that we dislike, we’ll make judge them unfairly. David Crystal is a linguistics professor who has written many fascinating books, especially one called “The Story of English”. In this new book he focuses on pronunciation, and tell us both why and how we pronounce words the way we do. And I emphasise “how”, because in this book he equips us with knowledge of phonetics, linguistics and physiology to help us understand how language is spoken. He also shows how pronunciation has changed over time, which reminded me of my high school days struggling to read Chaucer, and to understand my teacher reading it with an accent which was almost impossible to understand and may or may not for all I know really have represented the pronunciation of Chaucer’s time. This is a delightful book, revealing, erudite, and full of things you’ll want to discuss with others – whatever your accent.
