Relative Frequency of English Speech Sounds

Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. More about the E-ditions Program »

From the Introduction:

This investigation, based on a sufficient number and variety of modern texts, conducted on sound principles and with scrupulous care, aside from its obvious utility for shorthand and for instruction in reading, is of value to foneticians in that it affords abundant choice material for the study of the adjustment of sound to sound in the sillable. To the linguist it furnishes also a starting point for comparison of one language with another, in respect iether to acoustic effect or to the caracteristic operations of the vocal organs; and it provides, in its word list, a foundation for comparativ estimates of current vocabulary as a index of national civilization. To one interested in the history of speech, or the history of thought, it suggests and facilitates a series of comparisons of present and past aspects of English, whether one consider the language as an aggregate of sound-patterns or as a medium of expression. Multiple are the uses to which these tables may be put. It is to be hoped that many scolar, in many fields, will avail themselves of them.