Accents of English is about the way English is pronounced by different people in different places

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Accents and dialectology can be pursued as a gigantic sequence of unrelated facts. Wells knows his facts, all right, probably better than anyone else, but what really distinguishes this book (the first of a three-volume series) is how Wells rigorously integrates his facts into a systematic pattern, based on the history of the English dialects and their descent from a common ancestor. He also covers synchrony--the linguistic system of the individual at any given time--with great insight.

A delight to study and consult, for any professional linguist or serious amateur. ....


comprising those words, standard lexical sets, equivalent notational variants, phonotactic distribution, lexical incidence, free syllables, unrounded vocoid, taxonomic phonemics, new homophones, many other accents, most accents, reference accents, centring diphthong, rhotic accents, lexical distribution, distinctive length, standard accents, allophonic rule, phonemic split, popular accents, weak vowels, phonetic grounds, underlying phonological representation, phonemic opposition, prestige normMiddle English, United States, New York, Great Vowel Shift, West Indies, General English, North America, New Zealand, New England, West Indian, South Africa, Diphthong Shift, East Anglia, Pre-Fricative Lengthening, American English, Long Mid Diphthonging, Modern English, Glide Cluster Reduction, Irish English, Long Mid Mergers, Pre-Schwa Laxing, Standard English, Early Yod Dropping, Scottish English, General American