Phonetics is something that all of us do, every day, every time we open our mouths
and speak. We even do it when we listen to other people speaking. But we do it
all subconsciously. Studying phonetics as a discipline raises this to conscious
awareness.
Phonetic data embraces every sound of every living language – some 5,000 to
8,000 at the present count – and the subject has two distinct sides to it: theory and
practice. These often complement each other, and this book, with its accompanying
website (www.hodderplus.com/linguistics), is designed to give you experience of