This paper is to inform not only students but also the general public who is interested in dictionaries about the use of dictionaries, as well as the many different types and kinds of dictionaries that are available to them. Some of them don’t even know that there are different types of dictionaries, although the knowledge of how a term can be best found in the appropriate dictionary is an aid for academic research and will be helpful on their future job. Most students don’t know how different types of dictionaries can be used. Its main qualities can be summed up as follows : it covers a vast range of words (there are approximatively 15,000 more entries than in EPD-14, the fourteenth edition of EPD), it is quite user- friendly - although some readers have reportedly experienced difficulties with the blue ink used for the main pronunciation of each entry -, it offers the reader clear explanations of the main pronunciation phenomena or concepts in boxes distributed throughout the book and arranged alphabetically, and, last but not least, editor John Wells has decided to include both British and American standard pronunciations - to many a user's satisfaction and, we should say, relief.2) A short overview of the history of dictionariesĨ) Different types of specialized dictionaries It may be said from the outset that LPD lives up to most expectations. These are two examples, among a few others, where recourse to the specialist dictionary proves indispensable. This then suggests the extent to which the pronunciation dictionary can also be of use to the native speaker : for instance, the pronunciation of a large proportion of proper names is not self-evident and numerous more common words are controversial because several pronunciations coexist. Moreover, it offers the user a description of the main phonological processes encountered in actual speech, thereby fulfilling an additional pedagogical purpose. It seems to provide them with various types of information that are not, as a rule, found in a general dictionary : it lists possible variants of the main pronunciation, deals comprehensively with all inflected and derived forms and comprises an extended selection of proper names. It is a specialist dictionary and is accordingly aimed in particular at teachers and students of English. Wells and first published in 1990 continues a tradition initiated in 1917 by the first edition of Daniel Jones's English Pronunciation Dictionary (EPD).

The new Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (LPD) compiled by J.

Longman transcription dictionary