语音那些事儿

Pronouciation Practice Activities: A Resource Book for Teaching English Pronunciation (Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers)
Martin Hewings
Cambridge University Press

在Introduction中，作者介绍了自己编写此书的三个目的：

First, I wanted to report some of the pronunciation teaching activities I have used in over 25 years of English language teaching with students of many different nationalities and levels of ability, in the hope that other teachers might find some of them interesting and useful.
My second aim, then, was to offer a collection of pronunciation teaching materials that would provide ideas - and, I hope, inspiration - for teachers to go on to devise their own.
My third aim, then, was to write a book which provides a minimum of information about the details of English pronunciation (on the basis that interested teachers can refer to other more detailed sources for further information) but sufficient to make the activities comprehensible.

总的来说，该书首先是为老师们服务的，给教英语的老师提供一些语音教学的方法和建议。

但是对于学习者来说，我们也能够从书中获得一些更详细的关于英语语音的学习指导。

▍一

Introduction的部分，还针对“What is pronunciation?”这个问题，进行了详尽的分析。作者指出英语语音当中的几个特征：Sounds, Syllables, Words, Words in connected speech, strong and weak forms, Intonation, pronunciation and spelling.

Sounds
Key terms: vowel, consonant, phoneme, minimal pair.

需要注意的是，要区分“vowel and consonant letters and vowel and consonant sounds”

Syllables
Key terms: syllable, consonant cluster.

元音和辅音组合有以下几种类型：

vowel only (e.g. in a)

consonant+vowel (e.g. in me)

vowel+consonant (e.g. in eat)

consonant+vowel+consonant (e.g. in bag).

这里还有另外一个问题需要注意，即辅音连缀：

At the beginning of syllables, up to three consonant sounds are possible, as in string or split; while at the end, up to four consonants are possible, as in glimpsed (/-mpst/) and texts (/-ksts). These combinations of consonants are often referred to as consonant clusters.

Words
Key terms: stress, stressed syllable, unstressed syllable, primary stress, secondary stress, main stress, stress shift, compound

当一个单词有多于一个的音节时，就会产生重读音节和非重读音节，而有些词，尤其是含有三个或三个以上音节的词，还会有重音和次重音之分。
但是，重音有时会出现转移的情况，例如Chinese这个词，重音在第二个音节，而在a Chinese company中，重音则转移到第一个音节上。
在合成词当中，组成合成词的前后部分的单个词也会有重音和非重音的区别。
这里还可以参考American Accent Training一书对description phrases和set phrases重读规则的总结：

结合这些重读规则，会对英语语音有一个更真实的了解。

Words in connected speech
Key terms: citation form, connected speech.

仅仅知道词语单独的发音，是不够的。在真实的语言环境中，连读是很常见的语音现象，而单词的发音在连读中往往会发生变化。例如以下几种情形：

First, when certain sounds come into contact at word boundaries, one or both of the sounds may change. In its citation form, the word *ten *is pronounced /ten/, but in It's ten past, influenced by the following /p/ sound, it will be pronounced closer to /tem/.
Second, sounds may be missed out. The citation form of looked is pronounced /lʊkt/ but in It looked bad the /t/ sound may be omitted completely, simplifying the consonant cluster /-ktb-/ and pronounced closer to /ɪt lʊkbæd/.
Third, in other cases, extra sounds are inserted. For example, the citation form of for in accents where /r/ is not normally pronounced at the end of a word (such as in south-east England) is /fɔ:/. However, in *for example *a /r/ sound is inserted between the words.

Strong and weak forms
Key terms: strong form, weak form

这部分提到了语法词（grammatical words），这些词的发音有强读和弱读两种形式。

英语学习者在使用这些词时，常常会在应当使用弱读形式的情形下，错误地用强读形式来表达。

北外李晨老师的弱读连读课程，就对使用弱读形式的词语进行了分析讲解（下面的图片是其中一部分的讲解内容），很值得反复跟读学习。掌握弱读规律，对于语音纠正大有益处。

Intonation
Key terms: intonation, tone unit, tone, tonic word, prominent word.

语调在英语当中是传递信息、表达态度的重要语音现象，在一段话语中，可以划分出一个个小的单元，每个小单元有各自语调的升降，以及各自强调的词语。合理运用语调，结合音高、手势、面部表情等，可以表达丰富的含义。

例如在“British English”中，“a falling-rising tone”可用来礼貌地表达不同意对方观点：

Pronunciation and spelling
英语的拼写和发音之间有着纠缠不清的关系。

一方面，同一个字母在不同的单词中会有不同的读音，而某个发音可以由不同的字母或字母组合形成：

A single written letter might have a number of different pronunciations in different words, a single sound might be represented by a number of letters or letter combinations in different words, and written letters may not have a directly corresponding pronunciation. For example, the letter f can be pronounced /v/ in of but /f/ in roof; the sound /ʃ/ can be represented by a variety of letters and letter combinations including s (sure), sh (shop), ch (machine) and sch(in the usual British pronunciation of Schedule); and the letter e is not sounded in the wordshowed.

另一方面，单词的拼写与其发音可以很不同，可以没有规律：

David Crystal reports the widely cited figure that around 75 percent of English words are spelt according to a regular pattern. But he also notes that, **unfortunately, of the 400 or so words with irregular spellings, most are among the most frequently used in the language! **

然而，英语发音与拼写之间的确存在一定的规律，而掌握这些规律对于语言学习是很有帮助的。

▍二

在谈到教授发音的关键问题时，作者提出了一个老师和学生都会关心的问题：What model of pronunciation should I teach my students? 在学习者的角度，这也是一个“What model of pronunciation should I learn?”的问题。尤其是英语作为一门世界通用的语言，在母语国家和非母语国家，都演化出了不同类型的发音，或者说口音。到底该选取哪种发音作为模版来讲授，或者学习，作者认为，可以从下面这些问题着手：

• In what contexts will your students mainly be using English after the course?

• Are there varieties that have a particularly high or low status in your teaching context?

• Is there a variety that your students have particular exposure to outside the classroom?

• Do your students show an inclination to speak English with a particular pronunciation?

• Does one variety of pronunciation predominate in the teaching materials available to you?

• What accent of English do you have?

最后一个问题，很有意思。北外的李晨老师在他的公众号谈“英语语音学与教”时，谈到Adrian Underhill的的著作Sound Foundations，并介绍了他的一些观点：

• 教语音是不必纠结教的是美音还是英音，因为作为一个老师最后教的就是自己的发音，过度纠结意义不大。

• 教语音的人是不是native speaker也不必纠结，因为即便是native speaker，也不一定了解自己在说话的时候发音器官到底是如何相互配合的。

本书的Introduction还讨论了学生的发音应当达到什么样的程度，一些常见的发音错误，receptive（listening）和productive（speaking）skills之间的关系，以及测试发音的一些方法等。

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