THE HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

The present handbook is an excellent collection of twenty-eight chapters showing different approaches to the pronunciation. The authors of this volume have aimed it mainly for teachers of English language as well as for the linguists; however, this book can also be used for the self-study, i.e. by all people willing to improve their pronunciation and to understand the meanings and forms of it.

Note that the book also includes some chapters considered important in understanding the whole role of correct pronunciation in the analysis and description of the language. The handbook is very timely and useful, taking into account that the pronunciation is something that will never go away and something that influences the spoken language directly. A proper knowledge of English pronunciation is critically important.

Of course, getting to the native-like accent is next to impossible for most adult learners, but still the pronunciation is some sort of gateway to spoken intelligibility, as it is so closely tied to social meanings and helps distinguish the language dialects, informal and formal speech registers etc. Well, we cannot say that this book is an easy-reading, but would still recommend it to the learners of English who really need to significantly improve the pronunciation skills.