Kenyon and Knott is the informal name for A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, first published by the G. & C. Merriam Company in 1944, and written by John Samuel Kenyon

John Samuel Kenyon

John Samuel Kenyon was an American linguist.Born in Medina, Ohio, he graduated from Hiram College in 1898 and taught there as a professor of English from 1916 to 1944, when he retired and became an emeritus professor until his death. Together with Thomas A...

 and Thomas A. Knott. It provides a phonemic transcription of General American

General American

General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...

 pronunciations of words, using symbols largely corresponding to those of the IPA.

Kenyon and Knott use a broad transcription rather than a narrow one. For example, the long o vowel of "toe", which is a diphthong

Diphthong

A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

 in open syllables in most American accents, is represented by the single symbol [o], rather than [oʊ] 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 (a small capital U) is used instead of [ʊ] for the vowel of foot and the second part of the diphthong of mouth.
• The "looptail g" is used instead of the "opentail g" of the IPA.
• The symbol [r] is used instead of [ɹ]/[ɻ] to denote the alveolar/retroflex 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 [ː] to indicate length, although length is rarely marked in KK.
• In foreign words, a barred g is used instead of [ɣ] to indicate a voiced velar fricative
  Voiced velar fricative
  The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in various spoken languages. It is not found in English today, but did exist in Old English...
  
  .

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 in Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, where it is commonly known as "KK."

Many of the pronunciations in Kenyon and Knott seem antiquated today and dictionaries such as Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, ed. John C. Wells

John C. Wells

John Christopher Wells is a British phonetician and Esperanto teacher. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics....

, Longman Group Ltd. 1990, ISBN 0-582-05383-8, have replaced it, providing more contemporary pronunciations.

External links

• A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English at Archive.org