In 1877, Sweet published "A Handbook of Phonetics", which attracted international attention among scholars and teachers of English in Europe. He followed up with the "Elementarbuch des gesprochenen Englisch" (1885), which was subsequently adapted as "A Primer of Spoken English" (1890). This included the first scientific description of educated London speech, later known as received pronunciation, with specimens of connected speech represented in phonetic script. In addition, he developed a version of shorthand called Current Shorthand, which had both orthographic and phonetic modes. His emphasis on spoken language and phonetics made him a pioneer in language teaching, a subject which he covered in detail in "The Practical Study of Languages" (1899). In 1901, Sweet was made reader in phonetics at Oxford. "The Sounds of English" (1908) was his last book on English pronunciation.