Pronounce English Accurately

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There are three well-known specialist pronunciation dictionaries, two of which I can recommend, one I advise you to avoid.

The one to avoid is the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English edited by Clive Upton.

As the title indicates, this dictionary claims to represent what Upton calls 'current English'. In trying to achieve this, he has departed from the accepted standard transcription.

An example is the most peculiar transcription of the vowel in 'price' as '/ʌɪ/'. Upton has it starting with the vowel in 'cup', which gives us [prʌɪs]. This doesn't even sound English to me, and it certainly isn't standard English as spoken or taught anywhere in the world.

The whole value of the International Phonetic Alphabet is that it is a standard, a clear and widely accepted model, and if different dictionaries start transcribing the same word differently, the IPA loses its purpose.

Professor J.C. Wells, author of one of the dictionaries I'm going to look at next, departs from the normal conventions of academic politeness and etiquette and calls Upton's decision to use this transcription 'bizarre'. I have to agree.

My advice is to give the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English a miss, as it is just confusing. You will continue to pronounce 'price' as /praɪs/ and ignore the inaccurate transcription, so it's pointless.

There are other Oxford titles edited by the same author with same non-standard transcription – avoid them all.

There are two pronunciation dictionaries which I can recommend – the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th Edition by Daniel Jones and Peter Roach, and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd Edition by J.C. Wells.

If you've already bought either of these then either is fine to stick with. They have much the same information and both use the IPA as I use in this course.

The strongest point about the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary – CEPD – is that it has entries for lots of words where you really cannot tell the pronunciation from the spelling at all.

Some of the best examples of this are place names and surnames. These are covered much better in the CEPD than in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.

I like this because once you've mastered the sound system and the pronunciation of ordinary words, these are the sort of words you'll want to look up.

The CEPD is quite fun because it has so many of these wacky spellings.

Because it's a good way of making sure you've learnt the IPA, later in this course I have included lessons specifically on place names and crazy spellings so you can practice reading the IPA for words where the spelling doesn't help or is misleading.

On the other hand, the LPD is useful in another way; it presents the results of a 'pronunciation preferences poll' conducted by J.C. Wells.

In this, he asked informants for their preferred pronunciation of words with variant possible pronunciations, such as 'garage', variously pronounced /ˈgærɑːdʒ/, /ˈgærɑːʒ/, /gəˈrɑːdʒ/, /gəˈrɑːʒ/ and /ˈgærɪdʒ/.

Instead of just listing all the possible variants, as other dictionaries do, Wells gives detailed information on UK vs. US differences, and analyses preferences according to various factors, such as age, which is very useful information for the attentive learner.

So the two dictionaries are similar but have particular strengths of their own.

If you have loads of cash, buy both! If you buy only one, my preference would be for the CEPD because I love its coverage of unpredictable pronunciations.

Once you've got one of these dictionaries, do use it. Look up words you don't know and practise saying them using the methods I teach, and that way you'll get the most out of this course.