Listening to the Past

'This is a broad, ambitious, and enlightening use of previously untapped sources. The collection provides an exciting new dimension to the analysis of variation and change in twentieth-century English.' Donka Minkova, University of California, Los Angeles

'This is the first major publication to tap the wealth of available archival sound recordings for the historical study of spoken English. The editor is to be commended for bringing together a strong line-up of experts and for covering British and American English as well as several New Englishes.' Christian Mair, University of Freiburg

'I am very glad that this book exists. As someone who is interested in all aspects of the phonological history of English, I find it a delight to see so much that is new and appetite-whetting gathered together in one volume, especially given that most of the chapters are discussing varieties that are far from the standard forms of English that have often been (understandably but frustratingly) the focus of much historical research.' Patrick Honeybone, Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics

Raymond Hickey is Professor of English Linguistics at Universitt Duisburg-Essen. His main research interests are varieties of English (especially Irish English and Dublin English) and general questions of language contact, variation and change. Among his recent book publications are Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms (Cambridge, 2007), The Handbook of Language Contact (2010), Eighteenth-Century English (Cambridge, 2010) and The Sound Structure of Modern Irish (2014).

1. Analysing early audio recordings Raymond Hickey; 2. British Library sound recordings of vernacular speech Jonathan Robinson; 3. Twentieth-century received pronunciation: prevocalic /r/ Anne Fabricius; 4. Twentieth-century received pronunciation: stop articulation Raymond Hickey; 5. Early London English Paul Kerswill and Eivind Torgersen; 6. Merseyside Kevin Watson and Lynn Clark; 7. Scotland - Glasgow and the Central Belt Jane Stuart-Smith and Eleanor Lawson; 8. Early recordings of Irish English Raymond Hickey; 9. Evidence of American regional dialects in early recordings Matthew J. Gordon and Christopher Strelluf; 10. New England Daniel Ezra Johnson and David Durian; 11. Upper Midwestern English Thomas Purnell, Eric Raimy and Joseph Salmons; 12. Western United States Valerie Fridland and Tyler Kendall; 13. Analysis of the ex-slave recordings Erik R. Thomas; 14. Archival data on earlier Canadian English Charles Boberg; 15. Canadian raising in Newfoundland? Sandra Clarke, Paul De Decker and Gerard Van Herk; 16. The Caribbean Shelome Gooden and Kathy-Ann Drayton; 17. West Africa Magnus Huber; 18. Earlier South Africa English Ian Bekker; 19. Tristan da Cunha Daniel Schreier; 20. Australia Felicity Cox; 21. Early New Zealand English: the closing diphthongs Mrton Sskuthy, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Katie Drager and Paul Foulkes; 22. The development of recording technology Raymond Hickey.