Sounds Appealing review: David Crystal and the history of English pronunciation

Sounds Appealing

David Crystal

Profile, $29.99

When former British Prime Minister Ted Heath said he couldn't understand a word the Beatles said (Lennon replying "Not gonna vote for Ted"), he was invoking "correct" pronunciation. As grammarian David Crystal points out, in this entertaining study of pronunciation, people get passionate about it. A BBC listener once said Crystal should be sacked for not pronouncing the word "one" correctly. Delving into such things as phonetics, regional accent (the Australian accent is heavily influenced by cockney), American speech, how to pronounce "symmetry" in Blake's poem The Tyger (historically it rhymes with "eye"), and the multiple ways of saying Shakespeare over the years, he gives us a rich tale of the evolution of pronunciation: whether it's the adding of a "y" in Aus-stra-lee-ya or the disappearing dark "l" in the cockney "waw" for "wall". Fun.