An important task of specialists in any field is the elaboration of a clear and adequate terminology. The coining and popularization of well thought out technical terms both reflects theoretical advances and facilitates clarity of thought and expression.

The subject of these notes is the dialect of Mudau, a small market-town in the south-eastern Odenwald, 18 km N.E. of Eberbach (Neckar) and 19 km S.S.W. of Miltenberg (Main). The population numbers around 1700 and the main means of livelihood are shop-keeping, agriculture and local light industry.

Ever since the appearance of the monograph On Defining the Phoneme (Twaddell, 1935), it has become customary to classify the views of the phoneme into the four categories: mentalistic, physical, functional, and abstract. The reader is also referred to Jones (1957, and 1967: 212 ff.) and Fudge (1970) for discussions on that basis. However, we can achieve additional insight into the problem of defining the phoneme if we classify the views of the phoneme, this time, on a populational basis. By this, we mean whether the phoneme is defined as a unit of (1) an idiolect, (2) a dialect, (3) a multidialect, or (4) a supralect.

‘“… there is more near-ambiguity in language than it is always convenient to admit”; and in studying stress and juncture it would be especially valuable, in order to avoid too great a reliance either on introspection or on artificially contrived confrontations, to make a collection of ambiguities in action in the form of fully-documented instances of uncertainty of interpretation or of actual misunderstanding‘ (Sharp, 1960: 112–13).

Windsor Lewis's recent article (1972b) admirably summarizes the case for a Gimson-type transcription as a reference tool for EFL students. As he states, his own ‘CPD’ (Windsor Lewis, 1972a) transcription clearly—and sensibly—derives from the system established by Gimson (1962, 1970) in ‘the standard up-to-date description of Received Pronunciation’. On general principles, there is little that could usefully be added to Windsor Lewis's (1972b) comments on three other transcription types that are increasingly coming to be regarded as inappropriate for EFL purposes:

(i) that used by Abercrombie (1964), which, as Windsor Lewis (1972b: 60–63) shows, has disadvantages in its choice of detail symbols (though in underlying philosophy this system is perhaps closer to ‘CPD’ than is the latter's acknowledged parent);

(ii) the long-established ‘EPD’ (Jones, 1917) system, with its inconsistent treatment of the monophthong phonemes;

(iii) the ‘simplified’ (Jones, 1956: 346 ff.) types of transcription first used in books by Scott (1942) and MacCarthy (1944, 1945) and taken up by Kingdon (West, 1965) and others, which although useful for the Ll speaker are grossly misleading for the EFL student in implying a solely quantitative distinction between such pairs as the vowels of seat and sit.

This article will largely take for granted Windsor Lewis's comments on those types, and will concentrate on some aspects of the system discussed by Windsor Lewis (1972b) and applied in his CPD and the new third edition (1974) of the Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

All common transcriptions of the Russian Cyrillic or Kirillitza [ki'rilitsa] into the Latin alphabet are unsatisfactory. They either have unsightly and untypable diacriticals (the Czech system) or else a superabundance of h's and y's (English systems). Both spoil the dignity of the original while scarcely correcting its notorious shortcomings, and thus they continue to hide the very information which is essential in order to pronounce the words!