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Kenyon and Knott

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'''Kenyon and Knott''' is the informal name for ''A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English'', first published in 1944 by John Samuel Kenyon and Thomas A. Knott. It provides a phoneme phonemic transcription of General American pronunciations of words, using symbols largely corresponding to those of the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA. Kenyon and Knott use a phonetic transcription#Narrow and broad transcription broad transcription rather than a narrow one. For example, the long ''o'' vowel of "toe", which is a diphthong in open syllables in most American accents, is represented by the single symbol [o], rather than {{IPA|[oÊŠ]}} as it would be represented in a narrow transcription. Deviations from the IPA found in Kenyon and Knott are mostly made for typographical convenience: *The symbol {{Unicode|[á´œ]}} (a small capital U) is used instead of {{IPA|[ÊŠ]}} for the vowel of ''foot'' and the second part of the diphthong of ''mouth''. *The "looptail g" Image:Looptail g.PNG 10px is used instead of the "opentail g" Image:Opentail g.PNG 10px of the IPA. *The symbol {{IPA|[r]}} is used instead of {{IPA|[É¹]}} to denote the alveolar approximant of American English. *The markers for primary and secondary stress tilt slightly toward the center rather than being absolutely vertical. In other words, they look more like ^\ and _{/ than like ^| and _|.
*The colon [:] is used in place of IPA {{IPA|[Ë?]}} to indicate length, although length is rarely marked in KK.
*In foreign words, a barred g ({{Unicode|Ç¥}}) is used instead of {{IPA|[É£]}} to indicate a voiced velar fricative.

One principal application of Kenyon and Knott's system is to teach American English pronunciation to non-native speakers of English. It is commonly used for this purpose, not without controversy, in Taiwan.

Reference

*{{cite book | first = John S. | last = Kenyon | authorlink = John Samuel Kenyon | coauthors = Thomas A. Knott | year = 1944/1953 | title = A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English | publisher = Merriam-Webster | location = Springfield, Mass. | id = ISBN 0-87779-047-7}}

Category:1944 books
Category:Dictionaries
Category:English phonology
Category:Phonetic alphabets
Category:Language education}