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Patterns of Sounds (Cambridge Studies in Speech Science and Communication)

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Ian Maddieson's "Patterns of Sounds" looks 317 of the world's languages and the sound systems thereof in an effort to understand the patterns of phonetics found therein.

The book begins with plosives and moves on through fricatives, nasals, liquids, semivowels, glottalised consonants, and finally to vowels, all in an extremely logical manner. Although none of the conclusions will be remarkable to anybody who has reasonable knowledge of phonology on a worldwide scale, the detail present in "Patterns of Sounds" far more than compensates for this. Nowhere else can one see so close a comparison of the world's languages and their sound systems - and the differences, like the well-known confinement of rounded front vowels to northern Eurasia, are made out extremely clearly. More than that, Maddieson is extremely skilled at explaining why the sounds follow the patterns they do, showing how one sound (like an ejective) always implies another (a corresponding pulmonic obstruent).

This book has been cited by a great many laguage texts since it was published in 1984, but there is nothing like being able to find and read a copy of the original version. It's a pity somebody does not try to have "Patterns of Sounds" properly reissued so that everyone interested can read this classic phonetics reference text.