The International Guide to Speech Acquisition 1st Edition

The editor has compiled a very impressively detailed compendium of analyses of speech patterns throughout much of the world. The many chapters look at various languages and describe the main sound structures. Standard notation of the linguist community is used to describe the sounds. Accompanied often by the map of the vowels of that language.Most of the major languages are covered, with a slight emphasis on the European languages. English gets perhaps the most extensive discussion. With separate chapters on the American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, Irish and Scottish variants, for instance. Given the dominance of American English in international commerce and culture (think Hollywood for the latter), the reader might find its chapter somewhat abbreviated. But it does describe the many regional accents of English inside the US.In contrast, the chapter on Australian English mentions that it has little regional variation; a longstanding characteristic. Though a countervailing opinion is brought up, where it is suggested that some geographic factors might exist. Even so, these are far subtler than you would find by travelling the US or Britain itself. Fittingly perhaps, the Australian chapter is written by the editor, who I assume is Australian. Most interestingly, the chapter opines that Strine might be in flux, due to large immigration, and shifting to a more internationalised form.The chapter also mentions that Strine is close to British English. When I was still living in Australia, I would have disputed this, being able to easily distinguish the two. Indeed, most Australians would agree, I imagine. Yet, after many years of living in the US, I would now agree with the author. I now often confuse these accents; in common with many Americans who have the same issue.There is a very specialised chapter on the mixture of Australian English and Cantonese. Brought about by the recent influx of ethnic Chinese speaking Cantonese to Australia.Speaking of Chinese, the book's coverage of Mandarin [aka. Putonghuang] is rather abbreviated. It really does not delve much into the many regional accents inside China.But as an Internet professional, who is not in the book's readership field, something continually struck me as limiting. The book is all about the spoken form of languages. All the examples are necessarily on the printed page. Like the adage about the difficulty of telling a blind person about colours. As mentioned earlier, the way this field deals with the problem is to have a standard form for describing in text the various pronunciations of words or vowels. I don't know this form. So in frustration I kept wanting to click on the numerous text examples, to hear them played. What this field really needs is to shift to a digital form with accompanying audio snippets accessible in precisely that manner. This would then be accessed via the web, or on a DVD or downloaded to an ebook reader that could play audio.