Vowels & Consonants 3rd Ed

This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics has been fully updated for its third edition and now includes an accompanying website. While maintaining Peter Ladefoged's expert writing and knowledge of sounds in language, Sandy Disner brings essential updates on topics such as speech technology.

This popular introduction to phonetics describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages. Peter Ladefoged rightly earned his reputation as one of the world’s leading linguists, and students benefitted from his accessible writing and skill in communicating ideas. The third edition of his accessible introduction to phonetics has now been fully updated to reflect the latest trends in the field. It retains Peter Ladefoged's expert writing and knowledge, and combines them with Sandra Ferrari Disner’s essential updates on topics including speech technology.

Vowels and Consonants explores a wide range of topics, including the main forces operating on the sounds of languages; the acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual components of speech; and the inner workings of the most modern text-to-speech systems and speech recognition systems in use today. The third edition is supported by an accompanying website featuring new data, and even more reproductions of the sounds of a wide variety of languages, to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life, at .

This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics has been fully updated for its third edition, and now includes an accompanying website with sound files, and expanded coverage of topics such as speech technology.

• Describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages
• Written by the late Peter Ladefoged, one of the world's leading phoneticians, with updates by renowned forensic linguist, Sandra Ferrari Disner
• Includes numerous revisions to the discussion of speech technology and additional updates throughout the book
• Explores the acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual components of speech, demonstrates speech synthesis, and explains how speech recognition systems work
• Supported by an accompanying website at featuring additional data and recordings of the sounds of a wide variety of languages, to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life