General American English
Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Pp-move-indef Template:Pp-pc1 Template:Use mdy dates Template:IPA noticeTemplate:Use American EnglishTemplate:Inline audio Template:Listen Template:Listen Template:Listen General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella accent of American English used by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp It is often perceived by Americans themselves as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education,Template:Sfnp or from the (North) Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are the most likely to be perceived as using General American speech.Template:Sfnp<ref>Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (1997). "A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English" and "Map 1". Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. "The North Midland: Approximates the initial position|Absence of any marked features"; "On Map 1, there is no single defining feature of the North Midland given. In fact, the most characteristic sign of North Midland membership on this map is the small black dot that indicates a speaker with none of the defining features given"; "Map 1 shows Western New England as a residual area, surrounded by the marked patterns of Eastern New England, New York City, and the Inland North. [...] No clear pattern of sound change emerges from western New England in the Kurath and McDavid materials or in our present limited data."</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal See also: map.</ref> The precise definition and usefulness of the term continue to be debated,Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Some scholars prefer other names, such as Standard American English.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
Standard Canadian English accents may be considered to fall under General American,Template:Sfnp especially in opposition to the United Kingdom's Received Pronunciation. Noted phonetician John C. Wells, for instance, claimed in 1982 that typical Canadian English accents align with General American in nearly every situation where British and American accents differ.Template:Sfnp
Consonants
[edit]A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:
Pronunciation of R
[edit]Template:Main The phoneme Template:IPA is pronounced as a postalveolar approximant Template:IPAblink or retroflex approximant Template:IPAblink,Template:Sfn but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the sound is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South.Template:Sfn All these variants exhibit various degrees of labialization and pharyngealization.Template:Sfnp
Rhoticity
[edit]Template:Main Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, in which Template:IPA is pronounced in all historical environments spelled with the letter Template:Angbr. This includes in syllable-final position or before a consonant, such as in pearl, car and fort, whereas most speakers in England do not pronounce this Template:Angbr in these environments and so are called non-rhotic.<ref name="Plag">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Sfn Non-rhotic American accents, such as some accents of Eastern New England, New York City, and African-Americans, and a specific few (often older ones) spoken by Southerners, are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived as sounding especially ethnic, regional, or antiquated.<ref name="Plag" />Template:Sfn<ref>Wolchover, Natalie (2012). "Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?" LiveScience. Purch.</ref>
Rhoticity is common in most American accents despite being now rare in England because, during the 17th-century British colonization of the Americas, nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most English in North America simply remained that way.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The North American preservation of rhoticity was also supported by waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century, when this ethnic group eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population, plus smaller waves during the following two centuries. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North, and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic.<ref>Wolfram, Walt; Schilling, Natalie (2015). American English: Dialects and Variation. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 103–104.</ref> While non-rhoticity spread on the East Coast (perhaps first in imitation of early 19th-century London speech), even the East Coast has gradually begun to restore rhoticity, due to it becoming nationally prestigious since the mid-20th century.
Yod dropping after alveolar consonants
[edit]Dropping of Template:IPA after a consonant, known as yod dropping in linguistics, is much more extensive in American accents than in most of England. In most North American accents, Template:IPA is "dropped" or "deleted" after all alveolar and interdental consonants (that is: everywhere except after /p/, /b/, /f/, /h/, /k/, and /m/), so new, Tuesday, assume, duke are pronounced Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA (compare with British Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA.Template:Sfnp
T glottalization
[edit]Template:Main Template:IPA is normally pronounced as a glottal stop Template:IPA when both after a vowel (or a liquid) and before a syllabic Template:IPA or any non-syllabic consonant, as in button Template:IPA and fruitcake Template:IPA. Similarly, in absolute final position after a vowel or liquid, Template:IPA is replaced by, or simultaneously articulated with, glottal constriction:<ref>Seyfarth, Scott; Garellek, Marc (2015). "Coda glottalization in American English". In ICPhS. University of California, San Diego, p. 1.</ref> thus, what may be transcribed as Template:IPA and fruit as Template:IPA. (This innovation of /t/ glottal stopping occurs in many British English dialects as well.)
T and D flapping
[edit]Template:Main Template:Listen Template:Listen
The consonants Template:IPA and Template:IPA become a flap Template:IPAblink both after a vowel or Template:IPA and before an unstressed vowel or a syllabic consonant other than Template:IPA. Common example words include later Template:IPA, party Template:IPA and model Template:IPA. Flapping thus results in pairs of words such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding being pronounced the same. Flapping of Template:IPA or Template:IPA before a full stressed vowel is also possible but only if that vowel begins a new word or morpheme, as in what is it? Template:IPA and twice in not at all Template:IPA. Other rules apply to flapping, to such a complex degree in fact that flapping has been analyzed as being required in certain contexts, prohibited in others, and optional in still others.<ref>Vaux, Bert (2000_. "Flapping in English." Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, IL. p .6.</ref> For instance, flapping is prohibited in words like seduce Template:IPA, retail Template:IPA, and monotone Template:IPA, yet optional in impotence Template:IPA.
Both intervocalic Template:IPA and Template:IPA may commonly be realized as Template:IPAblink (a nasalized alveolar flap) (flapping) or simply Template:IPA, making winter a homophone with winner in fast or informal speech.
Pronunciation of L
[edit]Template:Main England's typical distinction between a "clear L" (i.e. Template:IPAblink) and a "dark L" (i.e. Template:IPAblink) is much less noticeable in nearly all dialects of American English; it is often altogether absent,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> with all "L" sounds tending to be "dark", meaning having some degree of velarization,Template:Sfn perhaps even as dark as Template:IPAblink (though in the initial position, perhaps less dark than elsewhere among some speakers).Template:Sfnp The only notable exceptions to this "dark L" today are in some Spanish-influenced American English varieties (such as East Coast Latino English) which can show a clear "L" in syllable onsets and intervocalically.
Wine–whine merger
[edit]Template:Main Word pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. are homophones, in most cases eliminating Template:IPA, also transcribed Template:IPA, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. However, scatterings of older speakers who do not merge these pairs still exist nationwide, perhaps most strongly in the South.Template:Sfn This merger is also found in most modern varieties of British English.
Vowels
[edit]
The 2006 Atlas of North American English surmises that "if one were to recognize a type of North American English to be called 'General American'" according to data measurements of vowel pronunciations, "it would be the configuration formed by these three" accent regions: (Standard) Canada, the American West, and the American Midland.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref> The following charts present the vowels that converge across these three dialect regions to form an unmarked or generic American English sound system.
Vowel length
[edit]Vowel length is not phonemic in General American, and therefore vowels such as Template:IPA are customarily transcribed without the length mark.<ref>Some British sources, such as the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, use a unified symbol set with the length mark, Template:IPA, for both British and American English. Others, such as The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, do not use the length mark for American English only.</ref> Phonetically, the vowels of GA are short Template:IPA when they precede the fortis consonants Template:IPA within the same syllable and long Template:IPA elsewhere. (Listen to the minimal pair of Template:Audio Template:IPA.) All unstressed vowels are also shorter than the stressed ones, and the more unstressed syllables follow a stressed one, the shorter it is, so that Template:IPA in lead is noticeably longer than in leadership.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp (See Stress and vowel reduction in English.)
Vowel tenseness
[edit]Template:IPA are considered to compose a natural class of tense pure vowels (monophthongs) in General American. All of the tense vowels except Template:IPA and Template:IPA can have either monophthongal or diphthongal pronunciations (i.e. Template:IPA vs Template:IPA). The diphthongs are the most usual realizations of Template:IPA and Template:IPA (as in stay Template:Audio-IPA and row Template:Audio-IPA, hereafter transcribed without the diacritics), which is reflected in the way they are transcribed. Monophthongal realizations are also possible, most commonly in unstressed syllables; here are audio examples for potato Template:Audio-IPA and window Template:Audio-IPA. In the case of Template:IPA and Template:IPA, the monophthongal pronunciations (Template:IPA) are in free variation with diphthongs (Template:IPA).Template:Sfnp As indicated in above phonetic transcriptions, Template:IPA is subject to the same variation (also when monophthongal: Template:IPA),Template:Sfnp but its mean phonetic value is usually somewhat less central than in modern Received Pronunciation (RP).Template:Sfnp Template:IPA varies between back Template:IPAblink and central Template:IPAblink.Template:Sfnp
Assigning of tense vowels to loanwords
[edit]The class of tense pure vowels manifests in how GA speakers treat recent loanwords, particularly borrowed in the last century or two, since in the majority of cases stressed syllables of foreign words are assigned one of these six vowels, regardless of whether the original pronunciation has a tense or a lax vowel. An example of this phenomenon is the Spanish word macho, Middle Eastern (for instance Turkish) word kebab, and German name Hans, which are all pronounced in GA with the tense Template:IPA, the Template:Sc2 vowel, rather than lax Template:IPA, the Template:Sc2 vowel, as in Britain's Received Pronunciation (which approximates the original languages' pronunciation Template:IPA in using a lax vowel).Template:Sfnp
Pre-nasal Template:Sc2 tensing
[edit]Template:Main For most speakers, the short a sound Template:IPA as in Template:Sc2 or Template:Sc2, which is not normally a tense vowel, is pronounced with tensing—the tongue raised, followed by a centering glide—whenever occurring before a nasal consonant (that is, before Template:IPA, Template:IPA and, for many speakers, Template:IPA).<ref>Boberg, Charles (Spring 2001). "Phonological Status of Western New England". American Speech, Volume 76, Number 1. pp. 3–29 (Article). Duke University Press. p. 11: "The vowel Template:IPA is generally tensed and raised [...] only before nasals, a raising environment for most speakers of North American English".</ref> This sound may be broadly phonetically transcribed as Template:IPA (as in Template:Audio and Template:Audio), or, based on one's own unique accent or regional accent, variously as Template:IPA or Template:IPA. In the following audio clip, the first pronunciation is the tensed one for the word camp, much more common in American English than the second, which is more typical of British English Template:Pronunciation. Linguists have variously called this "short a raising", "short a tensing", "pre-nasal /æ/ tensing", etc.
Template:/æ/ raising in North American English
Tense vowels before L
[edit]Before dark Template:Serif in a syllable coda, Template:IPA and sometimes also Template:IPA are realized as centering diphthongs Template:IPA. Therefore, words such as peel Template:IPA and fool Template:IPA are often pronounced Template:IPA and Template:IPA.Template:Sfnp
Template:Sc2, Template:Sc2, Template:Sc2, and Template:Sc2 vowels
[edit]Unrounded Template:Sc2
[edit]The American phenomenon of the Template:Sc2 vowel (often spelled Template:Angbr in words like box, don, clock, notch, pot, etc.) being produced without rounded lips, like the Template:Sc2 vowel, allows the two vowels to unify as a single phoneme. A consequence is that some words, like father and bother, rhyme for most Americans. This father-bother merger is widespread throughout the country, except in northeastern New England English (such as the Boston accent), the Pittsburgh accent, and variably in some older New York accents, which may retain a rounded articulation of bother, keeping it distinct from father.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2 merger in transition
[edit]Template:Main The vowel in a word like Template:Sc2 Template:IPA versus the vowel in Template:Sc2 Template:IPA are undergoing a merger, the cot–caught merger, in many parts of North America, but not in certain regions. American speakers with a completed merger pronounce the two historically separate vowels with the same sound (especially in the West, Great Plains region, northern New England, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania), but other speakers have no trace of a merger at all (especially middle-aged or older speakers in the South, the Great Lakes region, southern New England, and the Philadelphia–Baltimore and New York metropolitan areas) and so pronounce each vowel with distinct sounds Template:Pronunciation.Template:Sfnp Among speakers who distinguish between the two, the vowel of cot is often a central Template:IPAblink or slightly-advanced back Template:IPA, while Template:IPA is pronounced with more rounded lips and phonetically higher in the mouth, close to Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink.Template:Sfnp Among speakers who do not distinguish between them, thus producing a cot–caught merger, Template:IPA usually remains a back vowel, Template:IPAblink, sometimes showing lip rounding as Template:IPA. Therefore, even mainstream Americans vary greatly with this speech feature, with possibilities ranging from a full merger to no merger at all. In the West, for instance, Template:Sc2, Template:Sc2, Template:Sc2, and Template:Sc2 are all typically pronounced the same, falling under one phoneme. A transitional stage of the merger is also common in scatterings throughout the United States, most consistently in 1990s and early 2000s research in the American Midlands lying between the historical dialect regions of the North and the South. Meanwhile, younger Americans, in general, tend to be transitioning toward the merger. According to a 2003 dialect survey carried out across the country, about 61% of participants perceived themselves as keeping the two vowels distinct and 39% do not.<ref>Vaux, Bert; Golder, Scott (2003). "Do you pronounce 'cot' and 'çaught' the same?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.</ref> A 2009 follow-up survey put the percentages at 58% non-merging speakers and 41% merging.<ref>Vaux, Bert; Jøhndal, Marius L. (2009). "Do you pronounce "cot" and "caught" the same?" Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University.</ref>
Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2 split
[edit]American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2) have instead retained a [[Lot-cloth split|Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2 split]]: a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the Template:Sc2 lexical set) separated away from the Template:Sc2 set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent Template:Sc2 set into a merger with the Template:Sc2 (caught) set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the Template:Sc2 vowel in the following environments: before many instances of Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and particularly Template:IPA (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before Template:IPA (as in strong, long, wrong), and variably by region or speaker in gone, on, and certain other words.Template:Sfn
Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2 vowels
[edit]The phonetic quality of Template:IPA (Template:Sc2) varies in General American. It is often an (advanced) open-mid back unrounded vowel Template:IPAblink: Template:Pronunciation.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Many Midland, Southern, African-American, and younger speakers nationwide pronounce it somewhat more centralized in the mouth.
Also, some scholars analyze Template:IPA to be an allophone of Template:IPA (the unstressed vowel in words like Template:Sc2, banana, oblige, etc.), that surfaces when stressed, so Template:IPA and Template:IPA may be considered to be in complementary distribution, comprising only one phoneme.Template:Sfnp
Template:Sc2 in special words
[edit]The Template:Sc2 vowel, rather than the one in Template:Sc2 (as in Britain), is used in function words and certain other words like was, of, from, what, everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody, and, for many speakers because and rarely even want, when stressed.<ref>According to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Pre-voiceless Template:Sc2 raising
[edit]Many speakers split the sound Template:IPA based on whether it occurs before a voiceless consonant or not. Thus, in rider, it is pronounced Template:IPA, but in writer, it is raised and potentially shortened to Template:IPA (because Template:IPA is a voiceless consonant while Template:IPA is not). Thus, words like bright, hike, price, wipe, etc. with a following voiceless consonant (such as Template:IPA) use a raised vowel sound compared to bride, high, prize, wide, etc. Because of this sound change, the words rider and writer Template:Pronunciation, for instance, remain distinct from one another by virtue of their difference in height (and length) of the diphthong's starting point (unrelated to both the letters d and t being pronounced in these words as alveolar flaps Template:IPA). The sound change also applies across word boundaries, though the position of a word or phrase's stress may prevent the raising from taking place. For instance, a high school in the sense of "secondary school" is generally pronounced Template:IPA; however, a high school in the literal sense of "a tall school" would be pronounced Template:IPA. The sound change began in the Northern, New England, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the country,Template:Sfn and is becoming more common across the nation.
Many speakers outside of General American areas in the Inland North, Upper Midwestern, and Philadelphia dialect areas raise Template:IPA before voiced consonants in certain words as well, particularly Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA. Hence, words like tiny, spider, cider, tiger, dinosaur, beside, idle (but sometimes not idol), and fire may contain a raised nucleus. The use of Template:IPA, rather than Template:IPA, in such words is unpredictable from the phonetic environment alone, but it may have to do with their acoustic similarity to other words with Template:IPA before a voiceless consonant, per the traditional Canadian-raising system. Some researchers have argued that there has been a phonemic split in those dialects, and the distribution of the two sounds is becoming more unpredictable among younger speakers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Template:Sc2 variation in final unstressed /ɪŋ/
[edit]General American speakers typically realize final unstressed Template:IPA, like at the end of singing, as Template:IPA or, in a particularly casual style, Template:IPA. However, many speakers from California, other Western states including those in the Pacific Northwest, and the Upper Midwest realize final unstressed Template:IPA as Template:IPA when Template:IPA ("short i") is raised to become Template:IPAblink ("long ee") before the underlying Template:IPA is converted to Template:IPA, so that coding, for example, is pronounced Template:IPA, homophonous with codeine.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Weak vowel merger
[edit]Template:Main The Template:Sc2 vowel Template:IPA in unstressed syllables generally merges with the Template:Sc2 vowel Template:IPA, so that the noun effect is pronounced like verb affect, and abbot and rabbit rhyme. The quality of the merged vowel varies considerably based on the environment but is typically more open, like Template:IPA, in word-final or open-syllable word-initial positions (making salon Template:IPA and comma Template:IPA), but more close and often more fronted, like Template:IPA, in other positions (making patted or padded Template:IPA and minus Template:IPA).Template:Sfnp (Despite phonetic variation within the latter vowel, the symbol Template:Angbr IPA is used consistently on this page.)Template:Refn
Vowels before R
[edit]R-colored vowels
[edit]The lexical sets Template:Sc2 and lettTemplate:Sc2 are merged as the sequence Template:IPA, a schwa vowel plus Template:IPA, which can also be analyzed as a simple syllabic Template:IPA, though often phonetically transcribed as the R-colored schwa Template:IPAblink. Therefore, perturb, pronounced Template:IPA in British Received Pronunciation (RP), is Template:IPA (phonetically Template:Audio-IPA) in General American pronunciation. Similarly, the words forward and foreword, which are phonologically distinguished in RP as Template:IPA and Template:IPA, are homophonous in GA: Template:IPA (or phonetically Template:IPA).Template:Sfnp Moreover, what is historically Template:IPA, as in hurry, merges to Template:IPA in GA as well, so the historical phonemes Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA are all neutralized before Template:IPA. Thus, unlike in most English dialects of England, Template:IPA is not a true phoneme in General American but merely a different notation of Template:IPA for when this phoneme precedes Template:IPA and is stressed—a convention preserved in many sources to facilitate comparisons with other accents.Template:Sfnp
Vowel mergers before R
[edit]Most North American accents are characterized by the mergers of certain vowels when they occur before intervocalic Template:IPA. The only exceptions exist primarily along the East Coast.
- Mary–marry–merry merger in transition: According to the 2003 dialect survey, nearly 57% of participants from around the country self-identified as merging the sounds Template:IPA (as in the first syllable of parish), Template:IPA (as in the first syllable of perish), and Template:IPA (as in pear or pair).<ref>Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder (2003). "How do you pronounce Mary / merry / marry?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.</ref> The merger is largely complete in most regions of the country, the major exceptions being much of the Atlantic Coast and southern Louisiana.Template:Sfnp
- Hurry–furry merger: The pre-Template:IPA vowels in words like hurry Template:IPA and furry Template:IPA are merged in most American accents to Template:IPA or a syllabic consonant Template:IPA. Roughly only 10% of American English speakers acknowledge the distinct hurry vowel before Template:IPA, according to the same dialect survey aforementioned.<ref>Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder (2003). "flourish Template:Webarchive". The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.</ref>
- Mirror–nearer merger in transition: The pre-Template:IPA vowels in words like mirror Template:IPA and nearer Template:IPA are merged or very similar in most American accents. The quality of the historic mirror vowel in the word miracle is quite variable.<ref>Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder (2003). "the first vowel in "miracle"". The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.</ref>
- Americans vary slightly in their pronunciations of R-colored vowels such as those in Template:IPA and Template:IPA, which sometimes monophthongizes towards Template:IPA and Template:IPA or tensing towards Template:IPA and Template:IPA respectively. That causes pronunciations like Template:IPA for pair/pear and Template:IPA for peer/pier.Template:Sfn Also, Template:IPA is often reduced to Template:IPA, so that cure, pure, and mature may all end with the sound Template:IPA, thus rhyming with blur and sir. The word sure is also part of the rhyming set as it is commonly pronounced Template:IPA.
- Horse–hoarse merger: This merger makes the vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA before Template:IPA homophones, with homophonous pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, war/wore, etc. homophones. Many older varieties of American English still keep the sets of words distinct, particularly in the extreme Northeast, the South (especially along the Gulf Coast), and the central Midlands,Template:Sfn but the merger is evidently spreading and younger Americans rarely show the distinction. This merger is also found in most modern varieties of British English.
- "Short o" before r before a vowel: In typical North American accents (both U.S. and Canada), the historical sequence Template:IPA (a short o sound followed by r and then another vowel, as in orange, forest, moral, and warrant) is realized as Template:IPA, thus further merging with the already-merged Template:IPA (horse–hoarse) set. In the U.S., a small number of words (namely, tomTemplate:Underow, sTemplate:Undery, sTemplate:Underow, bTemplate:Underow, and mTemplate:Underow) usually contain the sound Template:IPA instead and thus merge with the Template:IPA set (thus, sorry and sari become homophones, both rhyming with starry).Template:Sfnp
Lists of monophthongs, diphthongs, and R-colored vowels
[edit]| Wikipedia's IPA diaphoneme |
GenAm realization | Example words |
|---|---|---|
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:Pronunciation<ref name="Heggarty" /> | bride, prize, tie |
| Template:IPA Template:Pronunciation<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> | bright, price, tyke (price raising) | |
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:PronunciationTemplate:Sfnp | now, ouch, scout |
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:PronunciationTemplate:Sfnp | boy, choice, moist |
| Wikipedia's IPA diaphoneme |
GenAm realization | Example words |
|---|---|---|
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:Pronunciation | barn, car, park |
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:Pronunciation | bare, bear, there |
| Template:IPA | bearing | |
| Template:IPA | Template:IPAblink Template:Pronunciation | burn, first, murder |
| Template:IPA | murder | |
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:Pronunciation | fear, peer, tier |
| Template:IPA | fearing, peering | |
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:PronunciationTemplate:Sfnp | horse, storm, war |
| hoarse, store, wore | ||
| Template:IPA | Template:IPA Template:Pronunciation | moor, poor, tour |
| Template:IPA | poorer |
Terminology
[edit]History and modern definition
[edit]The term "General American" was first disseminated by American English scholar George Philip Krapp, who in 1925 described it as an American type of speech that was "Western" but "not local in character".Template:Sfnp In 1930, American linguist John Samuel Kenyon, who largely popularized the term, considered it equivalent to the speech of "the North" or "Northern American",Template:Sfnp but, in 1934, "Western and Midwestern".Template:Sfnp Now typically regarded as falling under the General American umbrella are the regional accents of the West,Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Western New England,Template:Sfnp and the North Midland (a band spanning central Ohio, central Indiana, central Illinois, northern Missouri, southern Iowa, and southeastern Nebraska),Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp plus the accents of highly educated Americans nationwide.Template:Sfnp Arguably, all Canadian English accents west of Quebec are also General American,Template:Sfnp though Canadian vowel raising and certain other features may serve to distinguish such accents from U.S. ones.<ref>Harbeck, James (2015). "Why is Canadian English unique?" BBC. BBC.</ref> William Labov et al.'s 2006 Atlas of North American English presented a scattergram based on the formants of vowel sounds, finding the Midland U.S., the Western U.S., Western Pennsylvania, and Central and Western Canada to be closest to the center of the scattergram, and concluding that they had fewer marked dialectical features than other regional accents of North American English, such as New York City or the Southern U.S.
Regarded as having General American accents in the earlier twentieth century, but not by the middle of that century, are the Mid-Atlantic United States,Template:Sfnp the Inland Northern United States,Template:Sfnp and Western Pennsylvania.Template:Sfnp However, many younger speakers within the Inland North, Mid-Atlantic region, and many other areas appear to be retreating from their regional features towards a more General American accent.<ref name="syracuse">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Dinkin, Aaron (2017). "Escaping the TRAP: Losing the Northern Cities Shift in Real Time (with Anja Thiel)". Talk presented at NWAV 46, Madison, Wisc., November 2017.</ref><ref name="lansing">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Fruehwald, Josef (2013). "The Phonological Influence on Phonetic Change". Publicly Accessible University of Pennsylvania Dissertations. p. 48.</ref> Accents that have never been labeled "General American", even since the term's popularization in the 1930s, are the regional accents (especially the r-dropping ones) of Eastern New England, New York City, and the American South.Template:Sfnp In 1982, British phonetician John C. Wells wrote that two-thirds of the American population spoke with a General American accent.Template:Sfnp
Disputed usage
[edit]English-language scholar William A. Kretzschmar Jr. explains in a 2004 article that the term "General American" came to refer to "a presumed most common or 'default' form of American English, especially to be distinguished from marked regional speech of New England or the South" and referring especially to speech associated with the vaguely-defined "Midwest", despite any historical or present evidence supporting this notion. Kretzschmar argues that a General American accent is simply the result of American speakers suppressing regional and social features that have become widely noticed and stigmatized.<ref>Template:Harvp: 'The term "General American" arose as a name for a presumed most common or "default" form of American English, especially to be distinguished from marked regional speech of New England or the South. "General American" has often been considered to be the relatively unmarked speech of "the Midwest", a vague designation for anywhere in the vast midsection of the country from Ohio west to Nebraska, and from the Canadian border as far south as Missouri or Kansas. No historical justification for this term exists, and neither do present circumstances support its use... [I]t implies that there is some exemplary state of American English from which other varieties deviate. On the contrary, [it] can best be characterized as what is left over after speakers suppress the regional and social features that have risen to salience and become noticeable.'</ref>
Since calling one variety of American speech the "general" variety can imply privileging and prejudice, Kretzchmar instead promotes the term Standard American English, which he defines as a level of American English pronunciation "employed by educated speakers in formal settings", while still being variable within the U.S. from place to place, and even from speaker to speaker.Template:Sfnp However, the term "standard" may also be interpreted as problematically implying a superior or "best" form of speech.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "Standard English may be taken to reflect conformance to a set of rules, but its meaning commonly gets bound up with social ideas about how one's character and education are displayed in one's speech".</ref> The terms Standard North American English and General North American English, in an effort to incorporate Canadian speakers under the accent continuum, have also been suggested by sociolinguist Charles Boberg.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Boberg, Charles (2021). Accent in North American film and television. Cambridge University Press.</ref> Since the 2000s, Mainstream American English has also been occasionally used, particularly in scholarly articles that contrast it with African-American English.<ref>Pearson, B. Z., Velleman, S. L., Bryant, T. J., & Charko, T. (2009). Phonological milestones for African American English-speaking children learning mainstream American English as a second dialect.</ref><ref>Blodgett, S. L., Wei, J., & O'Connor, B. (2018, July). Twitter universal dependency parsing for African-American and mainstream American English. In Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (pp. 1415–1425).</ref>
Modern language scholars discredit the original notion of General American as a single unified accent, or a standardized form of EnglishTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp—except perhaps as used by television networks and other mass media.Template:Sfnp<ref>Labov, William (2012). Dialect diversity in America: The politics of language change. University of Virginia Press. pp. 1–2.</ref> Today, the term is understood to refer to a continuum of American speech, with some slight internal variation,Template:Sfnp but otherwise characterized by the absence of "marked" pronunciation features: those perceived by Americans as strongly indicative of a fellow American speaker's regional origin, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Despite confusion arising from the evolving definition and vagueness of the term "General American" and its consequent rejection by some linguists,Template:Sfnp the term persists mainly as a reference point to compare a baseline "typical" American English accent with other Englishes around the world (for instance, see Comparison of General American and Received Pronunciation).Template:Sfnp
Origins
[edit]Regional origins
[edit]Though General American accents are not commonly perceived as associated with any region, their sound system does have traceable regional origins: specifically, the English of the non-coastal Northeastern United States in the very early 20th century, which was relatively stable since that region's original settlement by English speakers in the mid-19th century.Template:Sfnp This includes western New England and the area to its immediate west, settled by members of the same dialect community:Template:Sfnp interior Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, and the adjacent "Midwest" or Great Lakes region. However, since the early to mid-20th century,Template:Sfnp<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> deviance away from General American sounds started occurring, and may be ongoing, in the eastern Great Lakes region due to its Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS) towards a unique Inland Northern accent (often now associated with the region's urban centers, like Chicago and Detroit) and in the western Great Lakes region towards a unique North Central accent (often associated with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota).
Theories about prevalence
[edit]Linguists have proposed multiple factors contributing to the popularity of a rhotic "General American" class of accents throughout the United States, largely focused on the first half of the twentieth century. However, a basic General American pronunciation system existed even before the twentieth century, since most American English dialects have diverged very little from each other anyway, when compared to dialects of single languages in other countries where there has been more time for language change (such as the English dialects of England or German dialects of Germany).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
One factor fueling General American's popularity was the major demographic change of twentieth-century American society: increased suburbanization, leading to less mingling of different social classes and less density and diversity of linguistic interactions. As a result, wealthier and higher-educated Americans' communications became more restricted to their own demographic. This, alongside their new marketplace that transcended regional boundaries (arising from the century's faster transportation methods), reinforced a widespread belief that highly educated Americans should not possess a regional accent.Template:Sfnp A General American sound, then, originated from both suburbanization and suppression of regional accent by highly educated Americans in formal settings. A second factor was a rise in immigration to the Great Lakes area (one native region of supposed "General American" speech) following the region's rapid industrialization period after the American Civil War, when this region's speakers went on to form a successful and highly mobile business elite, who traveled around the country in the mid-twentieth century, spreading the high status of their accents.Template:Sfnp A third factor is that various sociological (often race- and class-based) forces repelled socially-conscious Americans away from accents negatively associated with certain minority groups, such as African Americans and poor white communities in the South and with Southern and Eastern European immigrant groups (for example, Jewish communities) in the coastal Northeast.Template:Sfnp Instead, socially-conscious Americans settled upon accents more prestigiously associated with White Anglo-Saxon Protestant communities in the remainder of the country: namely, the West, the Midwest, and the non-coastal Northeast.Template:Sfnp
Kenyon, author of American Pronunciation (1924) and pronunciation editor for the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary (1934), was influential in codifying General American pronunciation standards in writing. He used as a basis his native Midwestern (specifically, northern Ohio) pronunciation.Template:Sfnp Kenyon's home state of Ohio, however, far from being an area of "non-regional" accents, has emerged now as a crossroads for at least four distinct regional accents, according to late twentieth-century research.<ref>Hunt, Spencer (2012). "Dissecting Ohio's Dialects". The Columbus Dispatch. GateHouse Media, Inc. Archived from the original on September 28, 2021.</ref> Furthermore, Kenyon himself was vocally opposed to the notion of any superior variety of American speech.<ref name="Hampton">Hampton, Marian E. & Barbara Acker (eds.) (1997). The Vocal Vision: Views on Voice. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 163.</ref>
In the media
[edit]General American, like the British Received Pronunciation (RP) and prestige accents of many other societies, has never been the accent of the entire nation, and, unlike RP, does not constitute a homogeneous national standard. Starting in the 1930s, nationwide radio networks adopted non-coastal Northern U.S. rhotic pronunciations for their "General American" standard.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The entertainment industry similarly shifted from a non-rhotic standard to a rhotic one in the late 1940s, after the triumph of the Second World War, with the patriotic incentive for a more wide-ranging and unpretentious "heartland variety" in television and radio.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Newscaster Walter Cronkite exemplified the rise of General American in broadcasting during the mid-20th century.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
General American is thus sometimes associated with the speech of North American radio and television announcers, promoted as prestigious in their industry,<ref name="freshair1" /><ref name="60minutes" /> where it is sometimes called "Broadcast English",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> "Network English",Template:Sfnp<ref name="Cruttenden">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Melchers & Shaw">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> or "Network Standard".Template:SfnpTemplate:R<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Instructional classes in the United States that promise "accent reduction", "accent modification", or "accent neutralization" usually attempt to teach General American patterns.Template:Sfnp Television journalist Linda Ellerbee states that "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere",<ref name="Burner">Template:Cite web</ref> and political comedian Stephen Colbert says he consciously avoided developing a Southern American accent in response to media portrayals of Southerners as stupid and uneducated.<ref name="freshair1">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="60minutes">Template:Cite web</ref>
See also
[edit]- List of dialects of the English language
- List of English words from indigenous languages of the Americas
- Accent reduction
- African-American English
- American English
- California English
- Chicano English
- English phonology
- English-language spelling reform
- Hawaiian Pidgin
- Northern Cities Vowel Shift
- Received Pronunciation
- Regional vocabularies of American English
- Standard Written English
- Transatlantic accent
References
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Further reading
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