剑桥词典 | RP音标诞生小历史！

Across the world English is one of the most widely spoken languages. For every native speaker, there are around 6 people who speak English as a foreign language. While the standard British or American accent is often the target for English learners. It really doesn’t matter to most as long as they can be understood when it matters. The thing is, English is full of words that either look or sound the same or similar, confusing huh?

英语是全世界使用最为广泛的语言之一。以英语为母语的人，与那些将英语作为外语学习使用的人比例差不多是1比6。虽然标准的英式口音和美式口音常常作为英语学习者的模仿对象，但在很多情况下口音并不是那么重要，只要在关键时刻你说的话能够被人理解就行。但问题在于，英语中有很多单词看起来或者听上去都有点大同小异，是不是很容易弄混淆呢？

So it’s good to have a point of reference, someway you can turn to know exactly how to pronounce things clearly. These days you can find all sorts of English lessons online, clips of people speaking. You can even learn to speak in regional English accents like Geordie or Scouse. But where is the single, consistent pronunciation guide?

因此，找到标准的发音参考还挺重要的。通过查询这些参考明白每个单词到底如何正确发音。如今，你可以在网上找到各种各样的英语课程，人们说英语的小视频，你甚至可以学习世界各地不同的英文口音，比如纽卡斯尔方言或利物浦方言。但有没有一本权威同意的英文发音指南呢？

Well, roll back exactly 100 years, and one man created just that. Daniel Jones was a Cambridge graduate who also studied phonetics in Germany and France. Yes, that’s him. He grew a moustache, became a professor, moved to London, and in 1917, published the first edition of his famous English Pronouncing Dictionary. Over the years, English pronunciation has changed a lot.

让我们回到100年前，有一个人就创造出了这本发音指南。丹尼尔·琼斯，毕业于剑桥大学。之后，他又在德国和法国攻读语音学，对，就是他！随着时间推移，他长出了小胡子，成为了一名教授，又搬去了伦敦。然后在1917年，他出版了第一版的，也就是让他因此闻名遐迩的《英语正音辞典》。数年之后，英语发音又出现了许多变化。

For the introduction of the Advisory Committee on Spoken English in the mid-1920s, happy-looking bunch, to the creation of the BBC’s Pronunciation Unit, to the formal inclusion of American pronunciation in 1997. There have been 18 editions of the English Pronouncing Dictionary, with over 230000 pronunciations added since 1917, making it the single best authority of its kind.

从20年代中叶，英文口语咨询委员会的引入，就是这群满脸幸福的老人，到BBC精准发音小组的创立，再到1997年，正式收录了美式英文发音。如今，《剑桥英语发音词典》一共出版了18版。自1917年起，又有超过23万个发音被收录其中，也让这本词典成为同类图书中最具权威性的代表。