Vowels and consonants (2nd ed)

This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics is now available in a fully updated second edition.

Peter Ladefoged describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages.

Important topics covered in "Vowels and Consonants" include: the main forces operating on the sounds of languages; the acoustic components of speech and speech synthesis; computers and Text-To-Speech systems and speech recognition systems; and descriptions of the sounds of a wide variety of languages that are reproduced on the accompanying CD.

This revised edition includes a new chapter on how we listen to speech and the greatly expanded CD now contains data on 100 languages to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life.