John Samuel Kenyon

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John Samuel Kenyon (1874-1959) was an American linguist. 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. Knott, he wrote A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English (1944), still regarded as a classic guide to American English pronunciation. Kenyon had also earlier published American Pronunciation (1924) and served as the consulting editor of pronunciation to the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary in his career as a pioneering expert on the study of American English, which earned him the epithet "the dean of American phoneticians". Many of the pronunciations in Kenyon and Knott seem antiquated today and dictionaries such as Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, ed. J. Ch. Wells, Longman Group Ltd. 1995, [ISBN 0-582-05383], have replaced it, providing more contemporary pronunciations.