Accents and phoneme-grapheme correspondences

If you would like to offer another accent for the collection, please contact Sue Barry.

Introduction

Click here for a general introduction to the web site. This introduction refers to the following DfES publication:

Playing with sounds: A supplement to Progression with phonics (Page 15)

‘Playing with sounds’ is a description of the phoneme-grapheme correspondences in one accent – Received Pronunciation, or RP; a slightly modifed version of this description is summarised here. Our site extends this description to other accents, so it can be seen as a supplement to this supplement.

Click here for an introduction to the site written for linguists.

The accents on this site

The accent-guides on this site have been written by phoneticians specially for this site, and where possible they include a table based on the DfES table in ‘Playing with sounds’.

• A Liverpool accent: Description and Correspondence table
  • by Patrick Honeybone and Kevin Watson
• a Manchester accent: Description and Correspondence table
  • by Sue Barry, Manchester Metropolitan University.
• a Newcastle accent: Description
  • by Dominic Watt, University of Aberdeen.

Related sites

• ‘Linguistic phonics’ (news item 6/6/2007) – a system for teaching initial literacy which “builds on a child’s own language” – but so far without paying attention to accent differences