John Wells’s phonetic blog

Thanks to all commentators for the very useful responses to yesterday’s posting. I shall now with confidence add to the next edition of LPD ...

Let’s try a bit of crowd sourcing. How do we pronounce uillean or uilleann , as in uillean(n) pipes ? Please do NOT respond if you’re not f...

As regular readers will know, I am always on the lookout for English intonation patterns that are not predictable on the basis of the genera...

What, if anything, do you understand by the term ‘incomplete plosion’? It is a term not to be found, as far as I can see, in any work by Gim...

On Saturday I looked in at the London Language Show : 150 stands and three seminar rooms, exhibitors ranging from language schools to cultur...

Locals know how to pronounce the names of places, because they've often heard other people say them. Outsiders often get them wrong, be...

One of my favourite examples of metathesis is the Modern Greek verb βγάλω vghálo ˈvɣalo ‘I take out’ (aorist form). To see how it came abo...