seeking intro. phonetics text

[Mark A. Mandel]

I've been asked to recommend an introductory text in phonetics and
phonology for someone with, apparently, no linguistics background at all: a
member of another list who saw my pointer to Labov's "The Organization of
Dialect Diversity in North America" on the Web. (The lois-bujold list was
discussing dialect divergence.) This correspondent writes:

#> #That was very interesting!  I understood the first instance perfectly,
#> #but I didn't get the second and third ones at all.  Could you explain
#> #how those charts work?  Are there any books I could read for an
#> #introduction to this?

I was embarrassed to admit that I could not recommend a book offhand. *Is*
there any book that's, so to speak, safe to use without a teacher? :-)\

I was going to post this to the LINGUIST List, but it occurred to me that
this group offers the advantage of a focus on American English. Also, the
LINGUIST List seems to be relegating a lot of queries to the notice board
lately.

-- Mark