Let's Talk English [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION This work presents conversations spoken by members of the Brockwill family and their friends in the course of a single day. The family consists of Mr. Brockwill, professor of languages, inspector of schools, and director of a Holiday Course; Mrs. Brockwill, the mother of the family; their son, Richard; and their daughters, Diana, secretary to an author, and Judith, an actress; a third daughter, Anne, is married and lives in Australia. Foreigners learning English should welcome this opportunity to make themselves familiar with good colloquial speech. They are often inclined to be bookish in their mode of expression, and too pedantic in their pronunciation. As regards the latter they should derive much benefit from the phonetic transcription. This contains a large number of "weak forms" in which the speech of foreigners is notoriously deficient, as is shown in the transcription of the foreign teacher's words in Conversation VII. The phonetic text is divided into sense groups, with pauses of three lengths, viz. |, | |, and J-|. Students should practise reading the sense groups fluently with no pauses between the words; to read them slowly would produce an unnatural effect. Thanks are due to Miss Audrey Bullard for her careful revision of the phonetic text. Prices and exchange rates fluctuate so much that the Author has considered it best to leave unchanged all references to them. WALTER RIPMAN. *. Vll