Pronunciation

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Pronunciation refers to:

• the way a word or a language is usually spoken;
• the manner in which someone utters a word.

Introduction

A word can be spoken in different ways by various individuals or groups, depending on many factors, such as:

1. the area in which they grew up
2. the area in which they now live
3. if they have a speech defect
4. their ethnic group
5. their social class
6. their education

Linguistic terminology

People are counted as units of sound (phones) that they use in their language. The branch of linguistics which studies these units of sound is phonetics. Phones which play the same role are grouped together into classes called phonemes; the study of these is phonemics or phonematics or phonology.

See also

• International Phonetic Alphabet - notational standard for the phonetic representation of all languages
• Language
• English pronunciation
• List of words of disputed pronunciation
• Mispronunciation
• Initial-stress-derived noun
• Back-chaining

External links

• Sounds Familiar? — Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website

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Last updated on Saturday February 23, 2008 at 11:53:40 PST (GMT -0800)
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