Customer Reviews

English Accents and Dialects : An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles (cassette sold separately)

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OK, first the good points about the book. It's superbly organised, providing word lists at the beginning of every chaptre, which gives you a great idea of how different accents compare on identical sets of words. The intro about different styles and registers of Received Pronunciation, including grammatical points, is also of great help to understand how accents may differ. The tape is a must, and the dialogues in it are great, since they were recorded in a very spontaneous manner. OK, so, the sound's quality is not the best around, but you get spontaneous dialogues (and therefore more natural dialectal pronunciations) in exchange. The only problem I'd see is that is that stylistic varieties are not covered more in depth. J.C. Wells' "English Accents: An Introduction" and "English Accents: The Brittish Isles" offer a lot more information, cover more nuances of accent, and are in general more complete that this book. Anyhow, it's still quite a good buy if you're interested in regional varieties of English in the Brittish Isles.

If you notice the Editorial review, it states "in the book" and "the tape which accompanies the book", so I thought I was getting both a tape and a book -- and I was in a hurry. I was surprised to receive only the tape (especially for $29.00). It has some good, if not always very understandable, native speakers of various dialects of Great Britain on it -- and without the transcriptions it is hard to grasp all the changes. I guess now I'll order the book and wait three weeks for that. It is a good resource for samples of some of the regional dialects not easily found in the major dialect source books.

Wonderful introduction into studying dialects and accents. Although not very suitable for a complete course on dialectology, it is nice to grasp the general idea of English variations on the British Isles. The CD is a must. The set will be valuable for students of English as a foreign language to prevent the shock of facing authentic casual speech, which may seem unintelligible to unprepared non-native speakers. Although it is not rich in theoretical issues, the book presents good material organization and easy to read text. The material presented in non-technical manner, lacks nuances, and mainly focuses on sound distinctions, mentioning intonation, stylistic appropriateness, cultural and historical grounds aside. On the other hand, it is one of the best introductory books for enthusiasts and non-linguists to get acquainted with language variations on the British Isles.