ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the phonology of English together with a certain degree of phonetic detail and the essentials of English orthography. Naturally, a treatment of this length cannot take the place of a textbook in phonetics and phonology or a manual of spelling. Its aim is rather to present fundamental and systematic characteristics of as well as tendencies in the development of English pronunciation (the articulatory phonetics of English, its phonemic system, its phonotactics, and patterning of vowels in lexical sets). As such our survey focuses on important phenomena which effect the language everywhere such as (non)rhoticity as well as more limited changes such as glottaling or T-flapping. The chapter ends with a treatment of the principles of English spelling and punctuation in outline.
