Pronunciation research

It’s not surprising that we quite often talk about pronunciation on the Macmillan blog – see this post, for example, or this one – but it’s not something that the rest of the world is perhaps quite as interested in as we are. Today, though, it’s on the tips of the newsreaders’ tongues, as the British Library prepares to launch an exhibition designed to show how pronunciation in Britain is changing. The ‘script’ it’s using for the experiment is the children’s book Mr Tickle. Linguists at the Library believe pronunciation is largely a matter of fashion, with age being one of the key factors in whether you say, for example, skedule or schedule. It’ll be interesting to see what results they come up with, but don’t forget that if you or your students aren’t sure of the standard pronunciation of a word, get straight onto the Macmillan Dictionary, for free soundfiles.