General American English

"General American" redirects here. For other uses, see General American (disambiguation).

Speech example

An example of a black woman from Georgia (Alice Walker).

---

Problems playing this file? See media help.

Speech example

An example of a white man from California (Conrad Anker).

---

Problems playing this file? See media help.

General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, but it encompasses a continuum of accents rather than a single unified accent.^[1][2][3] Americans with high education,^[4] or from the North Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are the most likely to be perceived as having General American accents.^[5][6][7] The precise definition and usefulness of the term General American continue to be debated,^[8][9][10] and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness.^[8][11] Other scholars prefer the term Standard American English.^[12][4]

Standard Canadian English accents are sometimes considered to fall under General American,^[13] especially in opposition to the United Kingdom's Received Pronunciation; in fact, typical Canadian English accents align with General American in nearly every situation where British and American accents differ.^[14]

Terminology

History and modern definition

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".^[15] In 1930, American linguist John Samuel Kenyon, who largely popularized the term, considered it equivalent to the speech of "the North" or "Northern American",^[15] but, in 1934, "Western and Midwestern".^[16] Now typically regarded as falling under the General American umbrella are the regional accents of the West,^[17][18] Western New England,^[19] and the North Midland (a band spanning central Ohio, central Indiana, central Illinois, northern Missouri, southern Iowa, and southeastern Nebraska),^[20][21] plus the accents of highly educated Americans nationwide.^[4] Arguably, all Canadian English accents west of Quebec are also General American,^[13] though Canadian vowel raising and certain newly developing features may serve to increasingly distinguish such accents from American ones.^[22] Similarly, William Labov et al.'s 2006 Atlas of North American English identified these three accent regions—the Western U.S., Midland U.S., and Canada—as sharing those pronunciation features whose convergence would form a hypothetical "General American" accent.

Regarded as having General American accents in the earlier 20th century, but not by the middle of the 20th century, are the Mid-Atlantic United States,^[5] the Inland Northern United States,^[23] and Western Pennsylvania.^[5] However, many younger speakers within these regions have reversed away from mid-20th century accent innovations back towards General American features.^{[24][25][26][27]} 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.^[28] In 1982, British phonetician John C. Wells wrote that two-thirds of the American population spoke with a General American accent.^[12]

Disputed usage

English-language scholar William A. Kretzchmar, 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 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.^[29]

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.^[4] However, the term "standard" may also be interpreted as problematically implying a superior or "best" form of speech.^[30] 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.^[31][32] Since the 2000s, Mainstream American English has also been occasionally used, particularly in scholarly articles that contrast it against African-American English.^[33][34]

Modern language scholars discredit the original notion of General American as a single unified accent, or a standardized form of English^[8][11]—except perhaps as used by television networks and other mass media.^[23][35] Today, the term is understood to refer to a continuum of American speech, with some slight internal variation,^[8] 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,^[36] 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).^[8]

Origins

Regional origins

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 twentieth century.^[37] This includes western New England and the area to its immediate west, settled by members of the same dialect community:^[38] interior Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, and the adjacent "Midwest" or Great Lakes region. However, since the early to middle twentieth century,^[23][39] 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

Linguists have proposed multiple factors contributing to the popularity of a rhotic "General American" class of accents throughout the United States. Most factors focus on the first half of the twentieth century, though a basic General American pronunciation system may have 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).^[40]

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.^[41] 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.^[42] 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.^[43] 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.^[44]

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.^[45] 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.^[46] Furthermore, Kenyon himself was vocally opposed to the notion of any superior variety of American speech.^[47]

In the media

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.^[48] 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.^[49]

General American is thus sometimes associated with the speech of North American radio and television announcers, promoted as prestigious in their industry,^[50][51] where it is sometimes called "Broadcast English"^[52] "Network English",^{[23][53][54][55]} or "Network Standard".^[2][54][56] Instructional classes in the United States that promise "accent reduction", "accent modification", or "accent neutralization" usually attempt to teach General American patterns.^{[citation needed]} Television journalist Linda Ellerbee states that "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere",^[57] 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.^[50][51]

Phonology

Typical General American accent features (for example, in contrast to British English) include features that concern consonants, such as rhoticity (full pronunciation of all /r/ sounds), T-glottalization (with satin pronounced [ˈsæʔn̩], not [ˈsætn̩]), T- and D-flapping (with metal and medal pronounced the same, as [ˈmɛɾɫ̩]), L-velarization (with filling pronounced [ˈfɪɫɪŋ], not [ˈfɪlɪŋ]), yod-dropping after alveolar consonants (with new pronounced /nu/, not /nju/), as well as features that concern vowel sounds, such as various vowel mergers before /r/ (so that, Mary, marry, and merry are all commonly pronounced the same), raising of pre-voiceless /aɪ/ (with price and bright using a higher vowel sound than prize and bride), raising and gliding of pre-nasal /æ/ (with man having a higher and tenser vowel sound than map), the weak vowel merger (with affected and effected often pronounced the same), and at least one of the LOT vowel mergers (the LOT–PALM merger is completed among virtually all Americans and the LOT–THOUGHT merger among nearly half). All of these phenomena are explained in further detail under American English's phonology section. The following provides all the General American consonant and vowel sounds.

Consonants

A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:

Consonant phonemes in General American

	Labial		Dental		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m				n						ŋ
Stop	p	b			t	d					k	ɡ
Affricate							tʃ	dʒ
Fricative	f	v	θ	ð	s	z	ʃ	ʒ					h
Approximant						l		ɹ		j	(ʍ)	w

Vowels

 

Monophthongs of General American without the cot–caught merger, from Wells (1982, p. 486). [e] and [o] are monophthongal allophones of /eɪ/ and /oʊ/.

 

Diphthongs of General American, from Wells (1982, p. 486).

Vowel phonemes in General American

	Front		Central		Back
	lax	tense	lax	tense	lax	tense
Close	ɪ	i			ʊ	u
Mid	ɛ	eɪ	ə			oʊ
Open	æ		(ʌ)	ɑ		(ɔ)
Diphthongs	aɪ   ɔɪ   aʊ

• Vowel length is not phonemic in General American, and therefore vowels such as /i/ are usually transcribed without the length mark. Phonetically, the vowels of GA are short [ɪ, i, ʊ, u, eɪ, oʊ, ɛ, ʌ, ɔ, æ, ɑ, aɪ, ɔɪ, aʊ] when they precede the fortis consonants /p, t, k, tʃ, f, θ, s, ʃ/ within the same syllable and long [ɪː, iː, ʊː, uː, eːɪ, oːʊ, ɛː, ʌː, ɔː, æː, ɑː, aːɪ, ɔːɪ, aːʊ] elsewhere. (Listen to the minimal pair of  kit and kid [ˈkʰɪt, ˈkʰɪːd]) This applies to all vowels but the schwa /ə/ (which is typically very short [ə̆]), so when e.g. /i/ is realized as a diphthong [i̞i] it has the same allophones as the other diphthongs, whereas the sequence /ɜr/ (which corresponds to the NURSE vowel /ɜː/ in RP) has the same allophones as phonemic monophthongs: short [ɚ] before fortis consonants and long [ɚː] elsewhere. The short [ɚ] is also used for the sequence /ər/ (the LETTER vowel). 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 /i/ in lead is noticeably longer than in leadership.^[58][59] (See Stress and vowel reduction in English.)
• /i, u, eɪ, oʊ, ɑ/ are considered to compose a natural class of tense monophthongs in General American, especially for speakers with the cot–caught merger. The class manifests in how GA speakers treat loanwords, as in the majority of cases stressed syllables of foreign words are assigned one of these five vowels, regardless of whether the original pronunciation has a tense or a lax vowel. An example of that is the surname of Thomas Mann, which is pronounced with the tense /ɑ/ rather than lax /æ/ (as in RP, which mirrors the German pronunciation /man/, which also has a lax vowel).^[60] All of the tense vowels except /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ can have either monophthongal or diphthongal pronunciations (i.e. [i, u, e, ö̞] vs [i̞i, u̞u, eɪ, ö̞ʊ]). The diphthongs are the most usual realizations of /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ (as in stay  [steɪ] and row  [ɹö̞ʊ], 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  [pəˈtʰeɪɾö̞] and window  [ˈwɪndö̞]. In the case of /i/ and /u/, the monophthongal pronunciations are in free variation with diphthongs. Even the diphthongal pronunciations themselves vary between the very narrow (i.e. [i̞i, u̞u ~ ʉ̞ʉ]) and somewhat wider (i.e. [ɪi ~ ɪ̈i, ʊu ~ ʊ̈ʉ]), with the former being more common. /ɑ/ varies between back [ɑ] and central [ɑ̈].^[61] As indicated in above phonetic transcriptions, /u/ is subject to the same variation (also when monophthongal: [u ~ ʉ]),^[61] but its mean phonetic value is usually somewhat less central than in modern RP.^[62]
• Before dark l in a syllable coda, /i, u/ and sometimes also /eɪ, oʊ/ are realized as centering diphthongs [iə, uə, eə, oə]. Therefore, words such as peel /pil/ and fool /ful/ are often pronounced [pʰiəɫ] and [fuəɫ].^[63]
• General American does not have the opposition between /ɜr/ and /ər/, which are both rendered [ɚ] ( listen); therefore, the vowels in further /ˈfɜrðər/ are typically realized with the same segmental quality as [ˈfɚðɚ] ( listen).^[64] This also makes homophonous the words forward /ˈfɔrwərd/ and foreword /ˈfɔrwɜrd/ as [ˈfɔɹwɚd], which are distinguished in Received Pronunciation as [ˈfɔːwəd] and [ˈfɔːwɜːd], respectively.^[64] Therefore, /ɜ/ is not a true phoneme in General American but merely a different notation of /ə/ preserved for when this phoneme precedes /r/ and is stressed—a convention adopted in literature to facilitate comparisons with other accents.^[65] What is historically /ʌr/, as in hurry, is also pronounced [ɚ] ( listen), so /ʌ/, /ɜ/ and /ə/ are all neutralized before /r/.^[65] Furthermore, some analyze /ʌ/ as an allophone of /ə/ that surfaces when stressed, so /ʌ/, /ɜ/ and /ə/ may be considered to be in complementary distribution and thus comprising one phoneme.^[66]
• In contemporary General American, the phonetic quality of /ʌ/ (STRUT) may be a back vowel [ʌ],^[67] an advanced back vowel [ʌ̟] ( listen),^[68][69] or the same as in RP, i.e. a central vowel [ɐ].^[70]

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" dialect regions: Canada, the American West, and the American Midland.^[71] The following charts (as well as the one above) present the vowels that these three dialects encompass as a perceived General American sound system.

Pure vowels

Pure vowels (monophthongs)

IPA English diaphoneme	Wells's GenAm phoneme	GenAm realization	Example words
/æ/		[æ] ( listen)^[72]	bath, trap, yak
		[eə~ɛə~æ]^[73]^[74]^[75]	ban, tram, sand (pre-nasal /æ/ tensing)
/ɑː/	/ɑ/	[ɑ~ä] ( listen)^[76]	ah, father, spa
/ɒ/			bother, lot, wasp (father–bother merger)
	/ɔ/	[ɑ~ɔ̞̜] ( listen)^[76]^[77]	boss, cloth, dog, off (lot–cloth split)
/ɔː/			all, bought, flaunt (cot–caught variability)
/oʊ/	/o/	[oʊ~ɔʊ~ʌʊ~o̞] ( listen)^[78]^[79]^[80]	goat, home, toe
/ɛ/		[ɛ] ( listen)^[72]	dress, met, bread
/eɪ/		[e̞ɪ~eɪ] ( listen)^[72]	lake, paid, feint
/ə/		[ɨ]~[ə] ( listen)~[ɐ]^[59]	about, syrup, arena
/ɪ/		[ɪ̞] ( listen)^[81]	kit, pink, tip
/iː/	/i/	[i~ɪi] ( listen)^[72]	beam, chic, fleece
			happy, money, parties (happY tensing)
/ʌ/		[ɐ~ʌ̟~ʌ] ( listen)	bus, flood, what
/ʊ/		[ʊ̞] ( listen)^[81]	book, put, should
/uː/	/u/	[u̟~ʊu~ʉu~ɵu] ( listen)^[82]^[citation not found]^[78]	goose, new, true

• Raising of short a before m and n sounds: For most speakers, the short a sound, transcribed as [æ], is pronounced with the tongue raised in the mouth, followed by a backward glide, whenever occurring before a nasal consonant (that is, before /m/, /n/ and, for some speakers, /ŋ/).^[83] This sound may be narrowly transcribed as [ɛə] (as in  Anne and  am), or, based on a specific dialect, variously as [eə] or [ɪə]. See the chart for comparison to other dialects.

• v
• t
• e

/æ/ raising in North American English^[84]

Following consonant	Example words^[85]	New York City, New Orleans^[86]	Baltimore, Philadelphia^[87]	Midland US, New England, Pittsburgh, Western US	Southern US	Canada, Northern Mountain US	Minnesota, Wisconsin	Great Lakes US
Non-prevocalic /m, n/	fan, lamb, stand	[ɛə]^[88]^[A]^[B]		[ɛə]^[88]	[ɛə~ɛjə]^[91]	[ɛə]^[92]		[ɛə]^[93]
Prevocalic /m, n/	animal, planet, Spanish	[æ]
/ŋ/^[94]	frank, language			[ɛː~eɪ~æ]^[95]	[æ~æɛə]^[91]	[ɛː~ɛj]^[92]	[eː~ej]^[96]
Non-prevocalic /ɡ/	bag, drag	[ɛə]^[A]	[æ]^[C]	[æ]^[88]
Prevocalic /ɡ/	dragon, magazine	[æ]
Non-prevocalic /b, d, ʃ/	grab, flash, sad	[ɛə]^[A]				[æ]^[97]	[ɛə]^[97]
Non-prevocalic /f, θ, s/	ask, bath, half, glass	[ɛə]^[A]
Otherwise	as, back, happy, locality	[æ]^[D]
In New York City and Philadelphia, most function words (am, can, had, etc.) and some learned or less common words (alas, carafe, lad, etc.) have [æ].^[89] In Philadelphia, the irregular verbs began, ran, and swam have [æ].^[90] In Philadelphia, bad, mad, and glad alone in this context have [ɛə].^[89] In New York City, certain lexical exceptions exist (like avenue being tense) and variability is common before /dʒ/ and /z/ as in imagine, magic, and jazz.^[98] In New Orleans, [ɛə] additionally occurs before /v/ and /z/.^[99]

Diphthongs

Diphthongs

English diaphoneme	General American realization	Example words
/aɪ/	[äɪ] ( listen)^[78]	bride, prize, tie
	[äɪ~ɐɪ~ʌ̈ɪ]^[100]	bright, price, tyke
/aʊ/	[aʊ~æʊ] ( listen)^[72]	now, ouch, scout
/ɔɪ/	[ɔɪ~oɪ] ( listen)^[72]	boy, choice, moist

R-colored vowels

R-colored vowels^[101][102]

English diaphoneme	General American realization	Example words
/ɑːr/	[ɑɹ] ( listen)	barn, car, park
/ɛər/	[ɛəɹ] ( listen)	bare, bear, there
	[ɛɹ]	bearing
/ɜːr/	[ɚ] ( listen)	burn, first, murder
/ər/		murder
/ɪər/	[iəɹ~ɪəɹ] ( listen)	fear, peer, tier
	[iɹ~ɪɹ]	fearing, peering
/ɔːr/	[ɔəɹ~oəɹ] ( listen)^[103]	horse, storm, war
		hoarse, store, wore
/ʊər/	[ʊəɹ~oəɹ~ɔəɹ] ( listen)	moor, poor, tour
	[ʊɹ~oɹ~ɔɹ]	poorer

See also

• 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

Citations

1. Van Riper (2014), pp. 123.
2. Kövecses (2000), pp. 81–82.
3. Wells (1982), pp. 34, 470.
4. Kretzschmar (2004), p. 257.
5. Van Riper (2014), pp. 128–9.
6. 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."
7. Clopper, Cynthia G.; Levi, Susannah V.; Pisoni, David B. (2006). "Perceptual similarity of regional dialects of American English". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 119 (1): 566–574. Bibcode:2006ASAJ..119..566C. doi:10.1121/1.2141171. PMC 3319012. PMID 16454310. See also: map.
8. Wells (1982), p. 118.
9. Van Riper (2014), pp. 124, 126.
10. Kretzschmar (2004), p. 262.
11. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 263.
12. Wells (1982), p. 34.
13. Boberg (2004), p. 159.
14. Wells (1982), p. 491.
15. Van Riper (2014), p. 124.
16. Van Riper (2014), p. 125.
17. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 146.
18. Van Riper (2014), p. 130.
19. Van Riper (2014), pp. 128, 130.
20. Van Riper (2014), pp. 129–130.
21. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 268.
22. Harbeck, James (2015). "Why is Canadian English unique?" BBC. BBC.
23. Wells (1982), p. 470.
24. Driscoll, Anna; Lape, Emma (2015). "Reversal of the Northern Cities Shift in Syracuse, New York". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 21 (2).
25. 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.
26. Wagner, S. E.; Mason, A.; Nesbitt, M.; Pevan, E.; Savage, M. (2016). "Reversal and re-organization of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan" (PDF). University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 22.2: Selected Papers from NWAV 44.
27. Fruehwald, Josef (2013). "The Phonological Influence on Phonetic Change". Publicly Accessible University of Pennsylvania Dissertations. p. 48.
28. Van Riper (2014), pp. 123, 129.
29. Kretzschmar (2004), p. 262: '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.'
30. Kretzschmar 2004, p. 257: "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".
31. Boberg (2004)
32. Boberg, Charles (2021). Accent in North American film and television. Cambridge University Press.
33. 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.
34. 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).
35. Labov, William (2012). Dialect diversity in America: The politics of language change. University of Virginia Press. pp. 1-2.
36. Van Riper (2014), p. 129.
37. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 190.
38. Bonfiglio (2002), p. 43.
39. "Talking the Tawk". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. 2005.
40. McWhorter, John H. (2001). Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a "Pure" Standard English. Basic Books. ISBN 9780786731473.
41. Kretzschmar (2004), pp. 260–2.
42. Bonfiglio (2002), pp. 69–70.
43. Bonfiglio (2002), pp. 4, 97–98.
44. Van Riper (2014), pp. 123, 128–130.
45. Seabrook (2005).
46. Hunt, Spencer (2012). "Dissecting Ohio's Dialects". The Columbus Dispatch. GateHouse Media, Inc.
47. Hampton, Marian E. & Barbara Acker (eds.) (1997). The Vocal Vision: Views on Voice. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 163.
48. Fought, John G. (2005). "Do You Speak American? | Sea to Shining Sea | American Varieties | Rful Southern". PBS.
49. McWhorter, John H. (1998). Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a "Pure" Standard English. Basic Books. p. 32. ISBN 0-73-820446-3.
50. Gross, Terry (January 24, 2005). "A Fake Newsman's Fake Newsman: Stephen Colbert". Fresh Air. National Public Radio. Retrieved 2007-07-11.
51. Safer, Morley (August 13, 2006). "The Colbert Report: Morley Safer Profiles Comedy Central's 'Fake' Newsman". 60 Minutes. Retrieved 2006-08-15.
52. Nosowitz, Dan (2016-08-23). "Is There a Place in America Where People Speak Without Accents?". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2019-10-12.
53. Cruttenden, Alan (2014). Gimson's Pronunciation of English. Routledge. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-41-572174-5.
54. Melchers, Gunnel; Shaw, Philip (2013). World Englishes (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 85–86. ISBN 978-1-44-413537-4.
55. Lorenz, Frank (2013). Basics of Phonetics and English Phonology. Logos Verlag Berlin. p. 12. ISBN 978-3-83-253109-6.
56. Benson, Morton; Benson, Evelyn; Ilson, Robert F. (1986). Lexicographic Description of English. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 179–180. ISBN 9-02-723014-5.
57. Tsentserensky, Steve (2011-10-20). "You Know What The Midwest Is?". The News Burner. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
58. Wells (1982), pp. 120, 480–481.
59. Wells (2008).
60. Lindsey (1990).
61. Wells (1982), pp. 476, 487.
62. Jones (2011), p. IX.
63. Wells (1982), p. 487.
64. Wells (1982), p. 121.
65. Wells (1982), pp. 480–1.
66. Wells (1982), p. 132.
67. Kretzschmar (2004), p. 263.
68. Wells (1982), p. 485.
69. Roca & Johnson (1999), p. 190.
70. Jones (2011), pp. VII–IX.
71. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 144
72. Kretzschmar (2004), pp. 263–4.
73. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 180.
74. Thomas (2004), p. 315.
75. Gordon (2004), p. 340.
76. Wells (1982), p. 476.
77. Wells (1982), p. 145.
78. Heggarty, Paul; et al., eds. (2015). . Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 24 September 2016. See under "Std US + ‘up-speak’"{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
79. Gordon (2004), p. 343.
80. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 104.
81. Wells (1982), p. 486.
82. Kortmann & Boberg (2004), pp. 154, 343, 361. sfnp error: no target: CITEREFKortmannBoberg2004 (help)
83. 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 /æ/ is generally tensed and raised [...] only before nasals, a raising environment for most speakers of North American English".
84. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 182.
85. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 173–174.
86. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 173–174, 260–261.
87. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 173–174, 238–239.
88. Duncan (2016), pp. 1–2.
89. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 173.
90. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 238.
91. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 178, 180.
92. Boberg (2008), p. 145.
93. Duncan (2016), pp. 1–2; Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 175–177.
94. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 183.
95. Baker, Mielke & Archangeli (2008).
96. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 181–182.
97. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 82, 123, 177, 179.
98. Labov (2007), p. 359.
99. Labov (2007), p. 373.
100. Boberg, Charles (2010). The English Language in Canada: Status, History and Comparative Analysis. Cambridge University Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-1-139-49144-0.
101. Kretzschmar (2004), pp. 263–4, 266.
102. Wells (1982), pp. 121, 481.
103. Wells (1982), pp. 483.

Bibliography

• Baker, Adam; Mielke, Jeff; Archangeli, Diana (2008). "More velar than /g/: Consonant Coarticulation as a Cause of Diphthongization" (PDF). In Chang, Charles B.; Haynie, Hannah J. (eds.). Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. pp. 60–68. ISBN 978-1-57473-423-2.
• Boberg, Charles (2004). "Standard Canadian English". In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Standards of English: Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521763899.
• Boberg, Charles (2008). "Regional phonetic differentiation in Standard Canadian English". Journal of English Linguistics. 36 (2): 129–154. doi:10.1177/0075424208316648. S2CID 146478485.
• Boyce, S.; Espy-Wilson, C. (1997). "Coarticulatory stability in American English /r/" (PDF). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 101 (6): 3741–3753. Bibcode:1997ASAJ..101.3741B. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.16.4174. doi:10.1121/1.418333. PMID 9193061.
• Bonfiglio, Thomas Paul (2002). Race and the Rise of Standard American. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110171891.
• Delattre, P.; Freeman, D.C. (1968). "A dialect study of American R's by x-ray motion picture". Linguistics. 44: 29–68.
• Duncan, Daniel (2016). "'Tense' /æ/ is still lax: A phonotactics study" (PDF). In Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur; Farris-Trimble, Ashley; McMullin, Kevin; Pulleyblank, Douglas (eds.). Supplemental Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. Vol. 3. Washington, D.C.: Linguistic Society of America. doi:10.3765/amp.v3i0.3653.
• Gordon, Matthew J. (2004). "The West and Midwest: phonology". In Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 338–350. ISBN 3-11-017532-0.
• 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 (3): 281–306. doi:10.1006/jpho.1999.0097.
• Jones, Daniel (2011). Roach, Peter; Setter, Jane; Esling, John (eds.). Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (18th ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-15255-6.
• Kövecses, Zoltan (2000). American English: An Introduction. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press. ISBN 1-55-111229-9.
• Kretzschmar, William A., Jr. (2004). "Standard American English pronunciation". In Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 257–269. ISBN 3-11-017532-0.
• Labov, William (2007). "Transmission and Diffusion" (PDF). Language. 83 (2): 344–387. doi:10.1353/lan.2007.0082. JSTOR 40070845. S2CID 6255506.
• Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 187–208. ISBN 978-3-11-016746-7.
• Lindsey, Geoff (1990). "Quantity and quality in British and American vowel systems". In Ramsaran, Susan (ed.). Studies in the Pronunciation of English: A Commemorative Volume in Honour of A.C. Gimson. Routledge. pp. 106–118. ISBN 978-0-41507180-2.
• Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (1999). A Course in Phonology. Blackwell Publishing.
• Rogers, Henry (2000). The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. ISBN 978-0-582-38182-7.
• Seabrook, John (May 19, 2005). "The Academy: Talking the Tawk". The New Yorker. 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 978-0-8442-0726-1.
• 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. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Thomas, Erik R. (2004). "Rural Southern white accents". In Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 300–324. ISBN 3-11-017532-0.
• Van Riper, William R. (2014) [1973]. "General American: An Ambiguity". In Allen, Harold B.; Linn, Michael D. (eds.). Dialect and Language Variation. Elsevier. ISBN 978-1-4832-9476-6.
• Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Volume 1: An Introduction (pp. i–xx, 1–278), Volume 3: Beyond the British Isles (pp. i–xx, 467–674). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-52129719-2 , 0-52128541-0 .
• Wells, John C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.). Longman. ISBN 978-1-4058-8118-0.
• Zawadzki, 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. S2CID 46760239.

Further reading

• Jilka, Matthias. (PDF). Stuttgart: Institut für Linguistik/Anglistik, University of Stuttgart. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 April 2014.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to General American English.

• Comparison with other English accents around the world