Following our discussion of English vowels in Chapter 3 and rhoticity in Chapter 4, this chapter introduces you to English consonants, as well as variation in consonant inventories across varieties of English. We begin the chapter with a discussion of the characteristics of consonants, focusing on the classification of consonant sounds by place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. This overview also examines consonant inventories cross-linguistically, to help you understand which consonants – and consonant features – are the most common across languages, and why.

The next two sections of the chapter provide an overview of English consonants by introducing the consonant phonemes common to many varieties of English, with variation in these inventories discussed as relevant. A brief overview of modern-day spelling of English consonants is also given. Consonant variation within varieties of English and phonological rules that govern this variation are then discussed. In the final section of the chapter, you will be guided through exercises designed to check your understanding of the content of the chapter and an analysis of your own English consonant inventory.

This chapter will introduce you to the concepts of stress and rhythm in relation to languages and to varieties of English. The chapter begins by defining stress both acoustically and articulatorily, and then examining stress across varieties. This is examined first at the level of the syllable through a focus on strong vs weak syllables in English, and the relationship between strong/weak syllables and stress. The discussion then focuses on the concept of word stress in varieties of English, after which rhythm and pitch accent are introduced, through an examination of stress- and syllable-timing, in different languages as well as varieties of English. This discussion will also present information about the function of stress and pitch accent in various substrate languages for different varieties - such as Cantonese, Malay, Filipino, Spanish, among others - to help you understand the different stress and rhythm patterns that exist across varieties. In the final section of the chapter, you will be guided through exercises designed to check your understanding of the content of the chapter.

This chapter introduces the concept of accent, particularly in relation to dialects and varieties of English.The chapter first defines the word 'accent', and the relationship among accent, dialect, and variety. The chapter then focuses on how we understand and describe accents, and the social meaning that accents convey in different contexts. The chapter then discusses variation within different regional varieties of English, and the use of umbrella terms such as 'British English' or 'American English' to encompass a range of social, regional, and ethnic varieties. The chapter then describes the features of the book; the final section of the chapter has a series of exercises and tasks to guide you through a revision of the contents of the chapter.

In this chapter, we move from discussing English segmentals – individual consonant and vowel sounds – to suprasegmentals, the units of sound above the level of the segment. This includes stress, pitch, and tone, and extends above individual vowel and consonants to syllables, words, phrases, and sentences. At the core of our discussion of suprasegmentals is the syllable, which can be defined as a unit of organization for sound sequences. Every word is made up of minimally one syllable; in some languages, including English, words often contain multiple syllables.

We begin the chapter by examining what we mean by 'syllable', and the components of a syllable, including the onset, nucleus, and coda. We then examine syllable inventories cross-linguistically, with a special focus on the languages that influence varieties of English. An overview of English syllable structure is then provided, with a focus on how syllable structure varies across varieties. In the final section of the chapter, you will be guided through exercises designed to check your understanding of the content of the chapter and to analyse your own English syllable inventory.

In the previous chapters, we examined the vowel inventories across varieties of English, noting that historical changes in English, as well as the influence of different languages, have resulted in substantial differences in how English is spoken around the world.We also mentioned that rhoticity – the production of the ‘r’ sound after a vowel in words such as car and hear – impacts the number of vowels in different varieties of English.Rhoticity is one of the main phonological features distinguishing different varieties; therefore, in this chapter, we will discuss rhoticity in more depth. The chapter first focuses on defining and measuring rhoticity, particularly in terms of formants, which were introduced in Chapter 2. A detailed discussion of both historical and current patterns of rhoticity in varieties of English is then presented. The chapter also discusses /r/-sandhi in varieties of English, and the relationship between /r/-sandhi and rhoticity.

In the final section of the chapter, you will be guided through exercises designed to check your understanding of the content in the chapter. You will also be guided through an analysis of rhoticity in your own English.

In the final chapter of this book, we return to the concept of accent, by looking at how we develop and use our accent across time and space. The chapter then provides you with resources for more advanced study of English and phonology, by presenting a range of online websites and databases with speech samples, as well as movies and TV series to provide exposure to different varieties of English. The discussion then focuses on pragmatic considerations in data collection, including the use of free software programs such as Audacity and PRAAT to record and analyse speech. The chapter then reviews different types of data that can be collected for phonetic and phonological analysis, including word lists, reading passages, and conversational data, with a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of using each type of data. In the final section of the chapter, you are guided through exercises to check your understanding of the content of the chapter.

This chapter introduces you to English vowels, and variation in vowel inventories across varieties of English. The discussion will first focus on English phonetics – the production of individual speech sounds. We will begin by examining the articulatory features used to classify and describe vowels, namely tongue height, front/backness of tongue articulation (also called advancement), degree of lip rounding/spreading. In this overview, we will also examine vowel inventories across a range of languages to understand which vowels are most common cross-linguistically, and why.

In the next sections of the chapter, we will focus on English vowels by first introducing the types of vowels that exist in different varieties of English. We will then examine the vowel inventories in a range of Englishes, among them OVEs including American, British, Australian, and New Zealand Englishes, and NVEs such as African, Asian, and Caribbean Englishes. We will also discuss the concepts of phoneme, phone, and allophone in this chapter, which sets the stage for exploring the concept of phonology through vowel variation within varieties of English, and phonological rules that govern this variation.