MODERN AMERICAN ENGLISH PHONETICS THEORY AND APPLICATION

The book is written to simplify the study of American English spelling system; it provides a comprehensive analysis spelling differences between British and American. I link American phonetic symbols with IPA. The book also covers the branches of phonetics, namely, articulatory, acoustic and auditory. I explain the organs of speech and the vital roles they play in the articulation of consonants and vowels at the word level. I give a full-fledged articulatory description of the English consonants; they are classified with reference to both place and manner of articulation and voicing. I provide a chart in which there is a connected relation between a phonetic form of a consonant and letter(s). I provide a detailed analysis about the source of the American vowels; they are derived basically from cardinal vowels proposed by Jones (1986). Vowels are classified into simple/ mono-thongs (tense and lax) and complex (diphthong and triphthong). They are differentiated from each other with reference to broad transcription in terms of state and movement of the tongue, shape of the lips and the state of the nose.