General American

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. General American (GA), also known as Standard American English (SAE), is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States. Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English, several Northeastern accents, and other distinct regional accents and social group accents like African American Vernacular English. Contents 1 General American in the media 2 Regional home of General American 3 Phonology 3.1 Consonants 3.2 Vowels 3.3 Characteristics 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links // General American in the media General American, like British Received Pronunciation (RP) and most standard language varieties of many other societies, has never been the accent of the entire nation. However, it has become widely spoken in many American films, TV series, national news, commercial ads, and American radio broadcastscitation needed. The General American accent is most closely related to a generalized Midwestern accent and is spoken particularly by many newscasters. The famous news anchor Walter Cronkite is a good example of a broadcaster using this accent.citation needed This has led the accent to sometimes be referred to as a "newscaster accent." General American is sometimes promoted as preferable to other, regional accents.citation needed In the United States, classes promising "accent reduction" generally attempt to teach speech patterns similar to this accent. The well-known television journalist Linda Ellerbee, who worked hard early in her career to eliminate a Texas accent, stated, "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere"citation needed; political comedian Stephen Colbert worked hard as a child to reduce his South Carolina accent because of the common portrayal of Southerners as stupid on American television.12 General American is also the accent typically taught to people learning English as a second language in the United States, as well as outside the country to anyone who wishes to learn "American English," although in much of Asia and some other places ESL teachers are strongly encouraged to teach American English no matter their own origins or accents.citation needed. Regional home of General American It is commonly believed that General American English evolved as a result of an aggregation of rural and suburban Midwestern dialects, though the English of the Upper Midwest can deviate quite dramatically from what would be considered a "regular" American Accent.citation needed The local accent often gets more distinct the farther north one goes within the Midwest, and the more rural the area, with the Northern Midwest featuring its own dialect North Central American English.citation needed The fact that a Midwestern dialect became the basis of what is General American English is often attributed to the mass migration of Midwestern farmers to California and the Pacific Northwest from where it spread. The area of the United States where the local accent is most similar to General American The Telsur Project3 (of William Labov and others) examines a number of phonetic properties by which regional accents of the U.S. may be identified. The area with Midwestern regional properties is indicated on the map: eastern Nebraska (including Omaha and Lincoln), southern and central Iowa (including Des Moines), and western Illinois (including Peoria and the Quad Cities but not the Chicago area). Since the 1960s, northeastern Ohio and much of the rest of the Inland North have been affected by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (abbreviated "NCS").4 The fact that the NCS is well established in Michigan is particularly interesting in light of the dominant beliefs about local speech. As research by Dennis Preston has shown, Michiganders believe they are “blessed” with a high degree of linguistic security; when surveyed, they rate their own speech as more correct and more pleasant than that of even their fellow Mid-westerners. By contrast Indianans tend to rate the speech of their state on par with that of Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find Michiganders who will claim that the speech of national broadcasters is modeled on their dialect. Even a cursory comparison of the speech of the network news anchors with that of the local news anchors in Detroit will reveal the fallacy of such claims. Nevertheless, the Michiganders' faith that they speak an accentless variety is just an extreme version of the general stereotype of Midwestern English.5 Particularly important in setting standards was John Kenyon, the pronunciation editor of the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary.6 Phonology Consonants A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:   Bilabial Labio- dental Dental Alveolar Post- alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Plosive p  b     t  d     k  ɡ   Affricate         tʃ  dʒ       Fricative   f  v θ  ð s  z ʃ  ʒ     h Nasal m     n     ŋ   Lateral       l         Approximant       ɹ j (ʍ)  w   The phoneme /ʍ/ is present only in varieties that have not undergone the wine-whine merger. /ʍ/ is often analyzed as a consonant cluster of /hw/. Also, many Americans realize the phoneme /ɹ/ (often transcribed as /r/) as postalveolar, with some possible retroflexion.7 /t/ undergoes T-glottalization to produce a glottal stop in words like mutton and sit [ʔ]. Vowels General American has sixteen or seventeen vowel sounds that can be used in stressed syllables as well as two that can be used only in unstressed syllables. Most of the vowel sounds are monophthongs. The monophthongs of General American are shown in the table below: Monophthongs Front Central Back plain rhotacized Close i     u Near-close ɪ     ʊ Close-mid e*     o* Mid   ə ɚ   Open-mid ɛ ʌ** ɝ ɔ~ɒ Near Open æ     ɑ ^* For most speakers, what are often transcribed as /e o/ are realized as [eɪ oʊ], especially in open syllables. ^** The vowel of strut may be more central than back, depending on speaker. For example, speakers from Ohio realize this vowel as an open-mid central unrounded vowel ([ɜ]).8 Depending on one's analysis, people who merge the vowels of cot and caught to /ɑ/ either have no phoneme /ɔ/ at all or have the [ɔ] only before /r/. Words like north and horse are usually transcribed /nɔɹθ/ and /hɔɹs/, but since all accents with cot and caught merged to /kɑt/ have also undergone the horse-hoarse merger, it may be preferable to transcribe north and horse /noɹθ/ and /hoɹs/.9 Thus, in these cases, the [ɔ] before /ɹ/ can be analyzed as an allophone of /o/. [ɝ] and [ɚ] are often analyzed as sequences of /ʌr, ər/, respectively. /ə/ is an indeterminate vowel that occurs only in unstressed syllables. Among speakers who distinguish between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, the vowel of cot (usually transcribed /ɑ/), is sometimes more of a central vowel which may vary from [a̠] to [ɑ̟], while /ɔ/ is phonetically lower, closer to [ɒ].10 Among cot-caught merged speakers, /ɑ/ usually remains a back vowel, [ɑ], sometimes showing lip rounding as [ɑʷ] or [ɒ], and, since these speakers do not distinguish between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, their retracted allophones for /ɑ/ may be identical to the lowered allophones of /ɔ/ among speakers who preserve the contrast. The diphthongs of General American are shown in the next table: Diphthongs Offglide is a front vowel Offglide is a back vowel Opener component is unrounded aɪ eɪ* aʊ Opener component is rounded ɔɪ oʊ* Characteristics While there is not any single formal definition of General American, various features are considered to be part of it, including rhotic pronunciation, which maintains the coda [ɹ] in words like pearl, car, and courtcitation needed. Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like father and bother, flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before [ɹ]citation needed. General American also generally has yod-dropping after alveolar consonantscitation needed. Other phonemic mergers, including the cot-caught merger, the pin-pen merger, the Mary-marry-merry merger and the wine-whine merger, may be found optionally at least in informal and semiformal varietiescitation needed. One phenomenon apparently unique to General American is the behavior of words that in RP have /ɒrV/ where /V/ stands for any vowel. These words are treated differently in different North American accents: in New York-New Jersey English, Philadelphia dialect, and the Carolinas they are all pronounced with /-ɑr-/ and in Canadian English they are all pronounced with /-ɔr-/ (thus a Canadian's sorry sounds like sore-ee to an American). But in General American there is a split: the majority of these words have /-ɔr-/, like Canadian English, but the last four words of the list below have /-ɑr-/, like New York-New Jersey English, for many speakers.11 Words of this class include, among others: RP NY/NJ, Philadelphia, and the Carolinas GA Can. orange ˈɒrɪndʒ ˈɑrəndʒ ˈɔrəndʒ origin ˈɒrədʒɪn ˈɑrədʒɪn ˈɔrədʒɪn Florida ˈflɒrɨdə ˈflɑrədə ˈflɔrədə horrible ˈhɒrɨbl̩ ˈhɑrəbl̩ ˈhɔrəbl̩ quarrel ˈkwɒrəl ˈkwɑrəl ˈkwɔrəl warren ˈwɒrən ˈwɑrən ˈwɔrən borrow ˈbɒrəʊ ˈbɑroʊ ˈbɔroʊ tomorrow təˈmɒrəʊ təˈmɑroʊ təˈmɔroʊ sorry ˈsɒri ˈsɑri ˈsɔri sorrow ˈsɒrəʊ ˈsɑroʊ ˈsɔroʊ See also List of dialects of the English language Accent reduction American English English phonology English spelling reform Northern cities vowel shift Pacific Northwest English Received Pronunciation Regional vocabularies of American English Standard written English Notes ^ Gross, Terry (January 24, 2005), "A Fake Newsman's Fake Newsman: Stephen Colbert", Fresh Air (National Public Radio), http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4464017, retrieved 2007-07-11  ^ Safer, Morley (August 13, 2006), The Colbert Report: Morley Safer Profiles Comedy Central's 'Fake' Newsman, 60 Minutes, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1553506.shtml, retrieved 2006-08-15  ^ Telsur Project home page ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:187–208) ^ http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/midwest/ ^ Seabrook (2005) ^ Hallé, Best & Levitt (1999:283) citing Delattre & Freeman (1968), Zawadzki & Kuehn (1980), and Boyce & Espy-Wilson (1997) ^ Thomas (2001:27–28) ^ Wells (1982:479) ^ Wells (1982:476) ^ Shitara (1993:?) References Boyce, S.; Espy-Wilson, C. (1997), "Coarticulatory stability in American English /r/", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101 (6): 3741–3753, doi:10.1121/1.418333, PMID 9193061  Delattre, P.; Freeman, D.C. (1968), "A dialect study of American R's by x-ray motion picture", Linguistics 44: 29–68  Hallé, Pierre A.; Best, Catherine T.; Levitt; Andrea (1999), "Phonetic vs. phonological influences on French listeners' perception of American English approximants", Journal of Phonetics 27: 281–306, doi:10.1006/jpho.1999.0097  Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006), The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, pp. 187–208, ISBN 3-11-016746-8  Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (1999), Course in Phonology, Blackwell Publishing  Seabrook, John (May 19, 2005), "The Academy: Talking the Tawk", The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/14/051114ta_talk_seabrook, retrieved 2008-05-14  Shitara, Yuko (1993), "A survey of American pronunciation preferences", Speech Hearing and Language 7: 201–232  Silverstein, Bernard (1994), NTC's Dictionary of American English Pronunciation, Lincolnwood, Illinois: NTC Publishing Group, ISBN 0-8442-0726-8  Thomas, Erik R. (2001), An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English, Publication of the American Dialect Society, 85, Duke University Press for the American Dialect Society, ISSN 0002-8207  Wells, John C. (1982a), Accents of English, 1, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-22919-7  Wells, John C. (1982b), Accents of English, 2, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-24224-X  Wells, John C. (1982c), Accents of English, 3, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-24225-8  Wells, John C. (2000), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (2nd ed.), Harlow: Longman, ISBN 0-582-36468-X  Zawadski, P.A.; Kuehn, D.P. (1980), "A cineradiographic study of static and dynamic aspects of American English /r/", Phonetica 37 (4): 253–266, doi:10.1159/000259995, PMID 7443796  External links The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary 'Hover & Hear' pronunciations in a General American accent, and compare side by side with other English accents from the US and around the World. 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