General American English

Accents typical of English in the US

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

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

This article includes inline links to audio files. If you have trouble playing the files, see Wikipedia Media help.

Speech example

An example of a White man from Pennsylvania (Bradley Cooper)

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Speech example

An example of a Black woman from Georgia (Alice Walker)

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Speech example

An example of an Asian woman from Illinois (Michelle Wu)

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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.[1][2][3] It is often perceived by Americans themselves as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though 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 using General American speech.[5][6][7] The precise definition and usefulness of the term 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] Some scholars prefer other names, such as Standard American English.[12][4]

Standard Canadian English accents may be considered to fall under General American,[13] 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.[14]

## Consonants

[edit]

A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:

Consonant phonemes in General American  | Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-
alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal

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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 |  | r |  | j | (ʍ) | w |

### Pronunciation of R

[edit]

Main article: Pronunciation of English /r/

The phoneme /r/ is pronounced as a postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠] ⓘ or retroflex approximant [ɻ] ⓘ,[15] but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the sound is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South.[16] All these variants exhibit various degrees of labialization and pharyngealization.[17]

#### Rhoticity

[edit]

Main article: Rhoticity in English

Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, in which /r/ is pronounced in all historical environments spelled with the letter ⟨r⟩. 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 ⟨r⟩ in these environments and so are called non-rhotic.[18][19] 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.[18][20][21]

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.[22] 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.[23] 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 the consonant /j/ (the sound of the y in yes or you) after another consonant, known as yod dropping in linguistics, is much more extensive in American accents than in most of England. In most North American accents, /j/ is "dropped" or "deleted" in stressed syllables after all alveolar and dental consonants (that is: everywhere except after /p/, /b/, /f/, /h/, /k/, and /m/), so new, Tuesday, assume, duke are pronounced /nu/, /ˈtuzdeɪ/, /əˈsum/, /duk/ ⓘ (compare with British /nju/, /ˈtjuzdeɪ/, /əˈsjum/, /djuk/ ⓘ. This applies also to syllables often transcribed with the secondary stress mark ⟨ˌ⟩ by American linguists, as in avenue /ˈævəˌnu/. In unstressed syllables (as in menu /ˈmɛnju/), however, /j/ is retained, as in most British accents.[24]

### T glottalization

[edit]

Main article: T-glottalization

/t/ is normally pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ], both when after a vowel (or a liquid) and when before a syllabic [n̩] or any non-syllabic consonant, as in button [ˈbʌʔn̩] ⓘ and fruitcake [ˈfɹuʔkʰeɪk] ⓘ. Similarly, in absolute final position after a vowel or liquid, /t/ is replaced by, or simultaneously articulated with, glottal constriction:[25] thus, what may be transcribed as [wʌʔ] and fruit as [fɹuʔ]. (This innovation of /t/ glottal stopping occurs in many British English dialects as well.)

### T and D flapping

[edit]

Main article: Flapping

T-glottalization and flapping

mountain (glottalized t)

[ˈmaʊnʔn̩]

* * *

partner (glottalized t)

[ˈpʰɑɹʔnɚ]

* * *

leader (d-flapping)

[ˈɫiɾɚ]

* * *

cattle (t-flapping)

[ˈkʰæɾɫ̩]

* * *

party (t-flapping)

[ˈpʰɑɹɾi]

Optional flapping in certain contexts

relatively without flapping

[ˈɹɛɫɨtʰɪvɫi]

* * *

relatively with flapping

[ˈɹɛɫɨɾɪvɫi]

The consonants /t/ and /d/ become a flap [ɾ] ⓘ both after a vowel or /r/ and before an unstressed vowel or a syllabic consonant other than [n̩]. Common example words include later [ˈɫeɪɾɚ] ⓘ, party [ˈpʰɑɹɾi] and model [ˈmɑɾɫ̩]. Flapping thus results in pairs of words such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding being pronounced the same. Flapping of /t/ or /d/ before a full stressed vowel is also possible but only if that vowel begins a new word or morpheme, as in what is it? [wʌɾˈɪzɨʔ] and twice in not at all [nɑɾɨɾˈɔɫ]. 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.[26] For instance, flapping is prohibited in words like seduce [sɨˈdus], retail [ˈɹitʰeɪɫ], and monotone [ˈmɑnɨtʰoʊn], yet optional in impotence [ˈɪmpɨɾɨns, ˈɪmpɨtʰɨns].

Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may commonly be realized as [ɾ̃] (a nasalized alveolar flap) (flapping) or simply [n], making winter a homophone with winner in fast or informal speech.

### Pronunciation of L

[edit]

Main article: Velarized alveolar lateral approximant

England's typical distinction between a "clear L" (i.e. [l] ⓘ) and a "dark L" (i.e. [ɫ] ⓘ) is much less noticeable in nearly all dialects of American English; it is often altogether absent,[27] with all "L" sounds tending to be "dark", meaning having some degree of velarization,[28] perhaps even as dark as [ʟ] ⓘ (though in the initial position, perhaps less dark than elsewhere among some speakers).[29] 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]

Main article: Wine–whine merger

Word pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. are homophones, in most cases eliminating /ʍ/, also transcribed /hw/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. However, scatterings of older speakers who do not merge these pairs still exist nationwide, perhaps most strongly in the South.[30] This merger is also found in most modern varieties of British English.

## Vowels

[edit]

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)

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.[31] The following charts present the vowels that converge across these three dialect regions to form an unmarked or generic American English sound system.

Vowel phonemes in General American  | Front | Central | Back

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

### Vowel length

[edit]

Vowel length is not phonemic in General American, and therefore vowels such as /i/ are customarily transcribed without the length mark.[32] 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].) 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.[33][34] (See Stress and vowel reduction in English.)

### Vowel tenseness

[edit]

/i, u, eɪ, oʊ, ɑ, ɔ/ are considered to compose a natural class of tense pure vowels (monophthongs) in General American. All of the tense vowels except /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ can have either monophthongal or diphthongal pronunciations (i.e. [i, u, e, ö̞] vs [ɪi, ʊu, 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 [pʰəˈtʰeɪɾö̞]ⓘ and window [ˈwɪndö̞]ⓘ. In the case of /i/ and /u/, the monophthongal pronunciations ([i, u]) are in free variation with diphthongs ([ɪi~ɪ̈i, ʊu~ʊ̈ʉ]).[35] As indicated in above phonetic transcriptions, /u/ is subject to the same variation (also when monophthongal: [u ~ ʉ]),[36] but its mean phonetic value is usually somewhat less central than in modern Received Pronunciation (RP).[37] /ɑ/ varies between back [ɑ] and central [ɑ̈].[38]

#### 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 /ɑ/, the PALM/LOT vowel, rather than lax /æ/, the TRAP vowel, as in Britain's Received Pronunciation (which approximates the original languages' pronunciation /a/ in using a lax vowel).[39]

#### Pre-nasal TRAP tensing

[edit]

Main article: /æ/ raising

For most speakers, the short a sound /æ/ as in TRAP or BATH, 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 /m/, /n/ and, for many speakers, /ŋ/).[40] This sound may be broadly phonetically transcribed as [ɛə] (as in Anneⓘ and amⓘ), or, based on one's own unique accent or regional accent, variously as [eə] or [ɪə]. 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 (listenⓘ). Linguists have variously called this "short a raising", "short a tensing", "pre-nasal /æ/ tensing", etc.

* v
* t
* e

/æ/ raising in North American English[41] Following
consonant  | Example
words[42] | New York
City, New
Orleans[43] | Baltimore,
Philadelphia[44] | Midland US,
New England,
Pittsburgh,
Western US | Southern
US | Canada,
Northern
Mountain
US  | Minnesota,
Wisconsin | Great
Lakes

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Non-prevocalic
/m, n/ | fan, lamb, stand | [ɛə][45][A][B] | [ɛə][45] | [ɛə~ɛjə][48] | [ɛə][49] | [ɛə][50]
Prevocalic
/m, n/ | animal, planet,
Spanish | [æ]
/ŋ/[51] | frank, language | [ɛː~eɪ~æ][52] | [æ~æɛə][48] | [ɛː~ɛj][49] | [eː~ej][53]
Non-prevocalic
/ɡ/ | bag, drag | [ɛə][A] | [æ][C] | [æ][45][D]
Prevocalic /ɡ/ | dragon, magazine | [æ]
Non-prevocalic
/b, d, ʃ/ | grab, flash, sad | [ɛə][A] | [æ][D][55] | [ɛə][55]
Non-prevocalic
/f, θ, s/ | ask, bath, half,
glass | [ɛə][A]
Otherwise  | as, back, happy,
locality | [æ][E]

1. ^ a b c 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].[46]
2. ^ In Philadelphia, the irregular verbs began, ran, and swam have [æ].[47]
3. ^ In Philadelphia, bad, mad, and glad alone in this context have [ɛə].[46]
4. ^ a b The untensed /æ/ may be lowered and retracted as much as [ä] in varieties affected by the Low-Back-Merger Shift, mainly predominant in Canada and the American West.[54]
5. ^ 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.[56]
In New Orleans, [ɛə] additionally occurs before /v/ and /z/.[57]

#### Tense vowels before L

[edit]

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].[35]

### PALM, LOT, CLOTH, and THOUGHT vowels

[edit]

#### Unrounded LOT

[edit]

The American phenomenon of the LOT vowel (often spelled ⟨o⟩ in words like box, don, clock, notch, pot, etc.) being produced without rounded lips, like the PALM vowel, allows the two vowels to unify as a single phoneme usually transcribed /ɑ/ in IPA. 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.[58][59]

#### LOT–THOUGHT merger in transition

[edit]

Main article: cot–caught merger

The vowel in a word like LOT /ɑ/ versus the vowel in THOUGHT /ɔ/ 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 listenⓘ.[60] Among speakers who distinguish between the two, the vowel of cot is often a central [ɑ̈] ⓘ or slightly advanced back [ɑ̟], while /ɔ/ is pronounced with more rounded lips and possibly phonetically higher in the mouth, close to [ɒ] ⓘ or [ɔ] ⓘ. Furthermore, there are dialectal differences regarding the amount of rounding of /ɔ/, with speakers from Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia having a more rounded vowel [ɔ̹] than other dialects.[38] Among speakers who do not distinguish between them, thus producing a cot–caught merger, /ɑ/ usually remains a back vowel, [ɑ] ⓘ, sometimes showing lip rounding as [ɒ]. 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, PALM, LOT, CLOTH, and THOUGHT 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.[61] A 2009 follow-up survey put the percentages at 58% non-merging speakers and 41% merging.[62]

#### LOT–CLOTH split

[edit]

American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT) have instead retained a LOT–CLOTH split: a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into a merger with the THOUGHT (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 THOUGHT vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/, /θ/, and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong), and variably by region or speaker in gone, on, and certain other words.[63]

### STRUT and COMMA vowels

[edit]

The phonetic quality of /ʌ/ (STRUT) varies in General American. It is often an (advanced) open-mid back unrounded vowel [ʌ̟]: (listenⓘ).[64][65] Many Midland, Southern, African-American, and younger speakers nationwide pronounce it somewhat more centralized in the mouth.

Also, some scholars analyze [ʌ] to be an allophone of /ə/ (the unstressed vowel in words like COMMA, banana, oblige, etc.), that surfaces when stressed, so /ʌ/ and /ə/ may be considered to be in complementary distribution, comprising only one phoneme.[66]

#### STRUT in special words

[edit]

The STRUT vowel, rather than the one in LOT (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.[67][68][69][70]

### Pre-voiceless PRICE raising

[edit]

Many speakers split the sound /aɪ/ based on whether it occurs before a voiceless consonant or not. Thus, in rider, it is pronounced [ä(ː)ɪ], but in writer, it is raised and potentially shortened to [ʌɪ] (because /t/ is a voiceless consonant while /d/ is not). Thus, words like bright, hike, price, wipe, etc. with a following voiceless consonant (such as /t, k, θ, s/) use a raised vowel sound compared to bride, high, prize, wide, etc. Because of this sound change, the words rider and writer (listenⓘ), 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 [ɾ]). 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 [ˈhɐɪskuɫ]; however, a high school in the literal sense of "a tall school" would be pronounced [ˌhaɪˈskuɫ]. The sound change began in the Northern, New England, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the country,[71] 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 /aɪ/ before voiced consonants in certain words as well, particularly [d], [g] and [n]. Hence, words like tiny, spider, cider, tiger, dinosaur, beside, idle (but sometimes not idol), and fire may contain a raised nucleus. The use of [ʌɪ], rather than [aɪ], in such words is unpredictable from the phonetic environment alone, but it may have to do with their acoustic similarity to other words with [ʌɪ] 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.[72][73]

### KIT variation in final unstressed /ɪŋ/

[edit]

General American speakers typically realize final unstressed /ɪŋ/, like at the end of singing, as [ɪŋ] or, in a particularly casual style, [ɪn]. However, many speakers from California, other Western states including those in the Pacific Northwest, and the Upper Midwest realize final unstressed /ɪŋ/ as [in] when /ɪ/ ("short i") is raised to become [i] ("long ee") before the underlying /ŋ/ is converted to [n], so that coding, for example, is pronounced [ˈkoʊdin], homophonous with codeine.[74][75]

### Weak vowel merger

[edit]

Main article: Weak vowel merger

The KIT vowel /ɪ/ in unstressed syllables generally merges with the COMMA vowel /ə/, 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 [ə], in word-final or open-syllable word-initial positions (making salon [səˈɫɑn] and comma [ˈkʰɑmə]), but more close and often more fronted, like [ɪ~ɨ], in other positions (making patted or padded [ˈpʰæɾɨd] and minus [ˈmaɪnɨs]).[76] (Despite phonetic variation within the latter vowel, the symbol ⟨ɨ⟩ is used consistently on this page.)[78]

### Vowels before R

[edit]

#### R-colored vowels

[edit]

The lexical sets NURSE and lettER are merged as the sequence /ər/, a schwa vowel plus /r/, which can also be analyzed as a simple syllabic /r/, though often phonetically transcribed as the R-colored schwa [ɚ] ⓘ. Therefore, perturb, pronounced /pəˈtɜːb/ in British Received Pronunciation (RP), is /pərˈtərb/ (phonetically [pɚˈtɚb]ⓘ) in General American pronunciation. Similarly, the words forward and foreword, which are phonologically distinguished in RP as /ˈfɔːwəd/ and /ˈfɔːwɜːd/, are homophonous in GA: /ˈfɔrwərd/ (or phonetically [ˈfɔɹwɚd]).[79] Moreover, what is historically /ʌr/, as in hurry, merges to /ər/ in GA as well, so the historical phonemes /ʌ/, /ɜ/, and /ə/ are all neutralized before /r/. Thus, unlike in most English dialects of England, /ɜ/ is not a true phoneme in General American but merely a different notation of /ə/ for when this phoneme precedes /r/ and is stressed—a convention preserved in many sources to facilitate comparisons with other accents.[80]

#### Vowel mergers before R

[edit]

Most North American accents are characterized by the mergers of certain vowels when they occur before intervocalic /r/. 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 /ær/ (as in the first syllable of parish), /ɛr/ (as in the first syllable of perish), and /ɛər/ (as in pear or pair).[81] The merger is largely complete in most regions of the country, the major exceptions being much of the Atlantic Coast and southern Louisiana.[82]
* Hurry–furry merger: The pre-/r/ vowels in words like hurry /ʌ/ and furry /ɜ/ are merged in most American accents to [ɚ] or a syllabic consonant [ɹ̩]. Roughly only 10% of American English speakers acknowledge the distinct hurry vowel before /r/, according to the same dialect survey aforementioned.[83]
* Mirror–nearer merger in transition: The pre-/r/ vowels in words like mirror /ɪ/ and nearer /i/ are merged or very similar in most American accents. The quality of the historic mirror vowel in the word miracle is quite variable.[84]
* Americans vary slightly in their pronunciations of R-colored vowels such as those in /ɛər/ and /ɪər/, which sometimes monophthongizes towards [ɛɹ] and [ɪɹ] or tensing towards [eɪɹ] and [i(ə)ɹ] respectively. That causes pronunciations like [pʰeɪɹ] for pair/pear and [pʰiəɹ] for peer/pier.[85] Also, /jʊər/ is often reduced to [jɚ], so that cure, pure, and mature may all end with the sound [ɚ], thus rhyming with blur and sir. The word sure is also part of the rhyming set as it is commonly pronounced [ʃɚ].
* Horse–hoarse merger: This merger makes the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before /r/ 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,[30] 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 /ɒr/ (a short o sound followed by r and then another vowel, as in orange, forest, moral, and warrant) is realized as [oɹ~ɔɹ], thus further merging with the already-merged /ɔr/–/oʊr/ (horse–hoarse) set. In the U.S., a small number of words (namely, tomorrow, sorry, sorrow, borrow, and morrow) usually contain the sound [ɑɹ] instead and thus merge with the /ɑr/ set (thus, sorry and sari become homophones, both rhyming with starry).[38]

* v
* t
* e

General American /ɑr/ and /ɔr/ followed by a vowel, compared with other dialects  | British RP | General
American | Traditional
American[A] | Canada

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|
|

Only borrow, sorrow, sorry, (to)morrow | /ɒr/ | /ɑːr/ | /ɒr/ or /ɑːr/ | /ɔːr/
Forest, Florida, historic, moral, porridge, etc.  | /ɔːr/
Forum, memorial, oral, storage, story, etc.  | /ɔːr/ | /ɔːr/

1. ^ This here refers to accents of greater New York City, greater Philadelphia, the older Southern U.S., and the older Northeastern elite. It also includes some speakers, though particularly older ones, in Eastern New England (predominantly Rhode Island) and coastal states of the modern Southern U.S.

### Lists of monophthongs, diphthongs, and R-colored vowels

[edit]

Pure vowels (monophthongs)  Wikipedia's
IPA
diaphoneme | Wells's
GenAm
phoneme  | GenAm
realization  | Example
words

|
|
|

/æ/ | [æ] (listenⓘ)[86] | bath, trap, yak
[eə~ɛə][87][88][89] | ban, tram, sand (pre-nasal /æ/ tensing)
/ɑː/ | /ɑ/ | [ɑ~ɑ̈] (listenⓘ)[38] | ah, father, spa
/ɒ/ | bother, lot, wasp (father–bother merger)
/ɔ/ | [ɑ~ɒ~ɔ̞] (listenⓘ)[38][90] | boss, cloth, dog, off (lot–cloth split)
/ɔː/ | all, bought, flaunt (cot–caught variability)
/oʊ/ | /o/ | [oʊ~ɔʊ~ʌʊ~o̞] (listenⓘ)[91][92][93] | goat, home, toe
/ɛ/ | [ɛ] (listenⓘ)[86] | dress, met, bread
/eɪ/ | [e̞ɪ~eɪ] (listenⓘ)[86] | lake, paid, feint
/ʌ/ | [ʌ̟~ʌ] (listenⓘ) | bus, flood, what
/ə/ | [ə~ɐ~ʌ][34] (listenⓘ) | about, oblige, arena
[ɨ~ɪ~ə][94] (listenⓘ) | ballad, focus, harmony (weak vowel merger)
/ɪ/ | [ɪ~ɪ̞][95] (listenⓘ) | kit, pink, tip
/iː/ | /i/ | [i] (listenⓘ)[86] | beam, chic, fleece
happy, money, parties (happY tensing)
/ʊ/ | [ʊ̞] (listenⓘ)[95] | book, put, should
/uː/ | /u/ | [u̟~ʊu~ʉu~ɵu] (listenⓘ)[96][92][97][91] | goose, new, true
Diphthongs Wikipedia's
IPA diaphoneme | GenAm realization  | Example words

|
|

/aɪ/ | [äːɪ] (listenⓘ)[91] | bride, prize, tie
[äɪ~ɐɪ~ʌ̈ɪ] (listenⓘ)[98] | bright, price, tyke (price raising)
/aʊ/ | [aʊ~æʊ] (listenⓘ)[86] | now, ouch, scout
/ɔɪ/ | [ɔɪ~oɪ] (listenⓘ)[86] | boy, choice, moist
R-colored vowels[99][100] Wikipedia's
IPA diaphoneme | GenAm realization  | Example words

|
|

/ɑːr/ | [ɑɹ] (listenⓘ) | barn, car, park
/ɛər/ | [ɛəɹ] (listenⓘ) | bare, bear, there
[ɛ(ə)ɹ] | bearing
/ɜːr/ | [ɚ] (listenⓘ) | burn, first, murder
/ər/ | murder
/ɪər/ | [iəɹ~ɪəɹ] (listenⓘ) | fear, peer, tier
[i(ə)ɹ~ɪ(ə)ɹ] | fearing, peering
/ɔːr/ | [ɔəɹ~oəɹ] (listenⓘ)[101] | horse, storm, war
hoarse, store, wore
/ʊər/ | [ʊəɹ~oəɹ~ɔəɹ] (listenⓘ) | moor, poor, tour
[ʊ(ə)ɹ~o(ə)ɹ~ɔ(ə)ɹ] | 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".[102] In 1930, American linguist John Samuel Kenyon, who largely popularized the term, considered it equivalent to the speech of "the North" or "Northern American",[102] but, in 1934, "Western and Midwestern".[103] Now typically regarded as falling under the General American umbrella are the regional accents of the West,[104][105] Western New England,[106] and the North Midland (a band spanning central Ohio, central Indiana, central Illinois, northern Missouri, southern Iowa, and southeastern Nebraska),[107][108] 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 other features may serve to distinguish such accents from U.S. ones.[109] 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.[110]

The Mid-Atlantic United States,[5] the Inland Northern United States,[111] and Western Pennsylvania[5] were regarded as having General American accents in the earlier twentieth century but not by the middle of that century. Many younger speakers within the Mid-Atlantic region,[112] the Inland North,[113][114][115] and many other areas, however, appear to be retreating from their regional features towards a more General American accent. The regional accents (especially the r-dropping ones) of Eastern New England, New York City, and the Southern United States have never been labeled "General American", even since the term's popularization in the 1930s.[116] In 1982, British phonetician John C. Wells wrote that two-thirds of the American population spoke with a General American accent.[12]

### 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.[117]

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.[118] 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.[119][120] Since the 2000s, Mainstream American English has also been occasionally used, particularly in scholarly articles that contrast it with African-American English.[121][122]

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.[111][123] 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,[124] 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

[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.[125] This includes western New England and the area to its immediate west, settled by members of the same dialect community:[126] interior Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, and the adjacent "Midwest" or Great Lakes region. However, since the early to mid-20th century,[111][127] 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).[128]

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.[129] 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.[130] 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.[131] 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.[132]

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.[133] 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.[134] Furthermore, Kenyon himself was vocally opposed to the notion of any superior variety of American speech.[135]

## 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.[136] 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.[137] Newscaster Walter Cronkite exemplified the rise of General American in broadcasting during the mid-20th century.[138][139]

General American is thus sometimes associated with the speech of North American radio and television announcers, promoted as prestigious in their industry,[140][141] where it is sometimes called "Broadcast English",[142] "Network English",[111][143][144][145] or "Network Standard".[2][144][146] Instructional classes in the United States that promise "accent reduction", "accent modification", or "accent neutralization" usually attempt to teach General American patterns.[147] Television journalist Linda Ellerbee states that "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere",[148] 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.[140][141]

## 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

[edit]

### Citations

[edit]

1. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 123.
2. ^ a b Kövecses (2000), pp. 81–82.
3. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 34, 470.
4. ^ a b c d Kretzschmar (2004), p. 257.
5. ^ a b c 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. ^ a b c d e Wells (1982), p. 118.
9. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 124, 126.
10. ^ Kretzschmar (2004), p. 262.
11. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 263.
12. ^ a b Wells (1982), p. 34.
13. ^ a b Boberg (2004a), p. 159.
14. ^ Wells (1982), p. 491.
15. ^ Hallé, Best & Levitt 1999, p. 283.
16. ^ Kortmann & Schneider 2004, p. 317.
17. ^ Zhou et al. (2008).
18. ^ a b Plag, Ingo; Braun, Maria; Lappe, Sabine; Schramm, Mareile (2009). Introduction to English Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter. p. 53\. ISBN 978-3-11-021550-2. Retrieved July 4, 2013.
19. ^ Collins & Mees 2002, p. 178.
20. ^ Collins & Mees 2002, pp. 181, 306.
21. ^ Wolchover, Natalie (2012). "Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?" LiveScience. Purch.
22. ^ Lass, Roger (1990). "Early Mainland Residues in Southern Hiberno-English". Irish University Review. 20 (1): 137–148\. JSTOR 25484343.
23. ^ Wolfram, Walt; Schilling, Natalie (2015). American English: Dialects and Variation. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 103–104.
24. ^ Wells (1982), p. 247.
25. ^ Seyfarth, Scott; Garellek, Marc (2015). "Coda glottalization in American English". In ICPhS. University of California, San Diego, p. 1.
26. ^ Vaux, Bert (2000_. "Flapping in English." Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, IL. p .6.
27. ^ Grzegorz Dogil; Susanne Maria Reiterer; Walter de Gruyter, eds. (2009). Language Talent and Brain Activity: Trends in Applied Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. p. 299\. ISBN 978-3-11-021549-6.
28. ^ Wells 1982, p. 490.
29. ^ Jones, Roach & Hartman (2006), p. xi.
30. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, p. 52.
31. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 144
32. ^ Some British sources, such as the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, use a unified symbol set with the length mark, ː, 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.
33. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 120, 480–481.
34. ^ a b Wells (2008).
35. ^ a b Wells (1982), p. 487.
36. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 476, 487.
37. ^ Jones (2011), p. IX.
38. ^ a b c d e Wells (1982), p. 476.
39. ^ Lindsey (1990).
40. ^ 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".
41. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 182.
42. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 173–174.
43. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 173–174, 260–261.
44. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 173–174, 238–239.
45. ^ a b c Duncan (2016), pp. 1–2.
46. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 173.
47. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 238.
48. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 178, 180.
49. ^ a b Boberg (2008), p. 145.
50. ^ Duncan (2016), pp. 1–2; Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 175–177.
51. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 183.
52. ^ Baker, Mielke & Archangeli (2008).
53. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 181–182.
54. ^ Boberg (2008), pp. 130, 136–137.
55. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 82, 123, 177, 179.
56. ^ Labov (2007), p. 359.
57. ^ Labov (2007), p. 373.
58. ^ Wells 1982, pp. 136–37, 203–6, 234, 245–47, 339–40, 400, 419, 443, 576.
59. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, p. 171.
60. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 61.
61. ^ Vaux, Bert; Golder, Scott (2003). "Do you pronounce 'cot' and 'çaught' the same?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
62. ^ Vaux, Bert; Jøhndal, Marius L. (2009). "Do you pronounce "cot" and "caught" the same?" Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
63. ^ Wells 1982, pp. 136–7, 203–4.
64. ^ Wells (1982), p. 485.
65. ^ Roca & Johnson (1999), p. 190.
66. ^ Wells (1982), p. 132.
67. ^ According to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.
68. ^ "Want: meaning and definitions". Dictionary.infoplease.com. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
69. ^ "want. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000". Bartleby.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2008. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
70. ^ "Want – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary". M-w.com. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
71. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, p. 114: "where Canadian raising has traditionally been reported: Canada, Eastern New England, Philadelphia, and the North".
72. ^ Freuhwald, Josef T. (November 11, 2007). "The Spread of Raising: Opacity, lexicalization, and diffusion". University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved September 21, 2016.
73. ^ Murphy, Patrick Joseph (2019). "Listening to Writers and Riders: Partial Contrast and the Perception of Canadian Raising" (PDF). University of Toronto PhD Dissertation: 116–117. Retrieved January 17, 2024.
74. ^ Metcalf, Allan (2000). "The Far West and beyond". How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 143\. ISBN 0618043624. "Another pronunciation even more widely heard among older teens and adults in California and throughout the West is 'een' for -ing, as in 'I'm think-een of go-een camp-een.'"
75. ^ Hunter, Marsha; Johnson, Brian K. (2009). "Articulators and Articulation". The Articulate Advocate: New Techniques of Persuasion for Trial Attorneys. Crown King Books. p. 92\. ISBN 9780979689505. "Regional Accents ... A distinguishing characteristic of the Upper Midwestern accent is the tendency to turn the 'ing' sound into 'een,' with a cheerful 'Good morneen!'"
76. ^ Wells (2008), p. xxi.
77. ^ Flemming & Johnson, 2007, pp. 83-4.
78. ^ Though analyses may differ, the choice to use the symbol ⟨ɨ⟩ here dates back to a tradition starting in the 1950s from linguist George L. Trager and others.[77]
79. ^ Wells (1982), p. 121.
80. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 480–1.
81. ^ Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder (2003). "How do you pronounce Mary / merry / marry?" The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
82. ^ Kortmann & Schneider (2004), p. 295.
83. ^ Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder (2003). "flourish Archived 2015-07-11 at the Wayback Machine". The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
84. ^ Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder (2003). "the first vowel in "miracle"". The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
85. ^ Wells 1982, pp. 481–482.
86. ^ a b c d e f Kretzschmar (2004), pp. 263–4.
87. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 180.
88. ^ Thomas (2004), p. 315.
89. ^ Gordon (2004), p. 340.
90. ^ Wells (1982), p. 145.
91. ^ a b c Heggarty, Paul; et al., eds. (2015). "Accents of English from Around the World". Archived from the original on April 29, 2011. Retrieved September 24, 2016. See under "Std US + 'up-speak'"
92. ^ a b Gordon (2004), p. 343.
93. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 104.
94. ^ Flemming, Edward; Johnson, Stephanie. (2007). "Rosa's roses: Reduced vowels in American English". Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37(1), 83–96.
95. ^ a b Wells (1982), p. 486.
96. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 154.
97. ^ Boberg (2004b), p. 361.
98. ^ Boberg, Charles (2010). The English Language in Canada: Status, History and Comparative Analysis. Cambridge University Press. p. 156\. ISBN 978-1-139-49144-0.
99. ^ Kretzschmar (2004), pp. 263–4, 266.
100. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 121, 481.
101. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 483.
102. ^ a b Van Riper (2014), p. 124.
103. ^ Van Riper (2014), p. 125.
104. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 146.
105. ^ Van Riper (2014), p. 130.
106. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 128, 130.
107. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 129–130.
108. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 268.
109. ^ Harbeck, James (August 2015). "Why is Canadian English unique?" BBC. BBC.
110. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 162–3.
111. ^ a b c d Wells (1982), p. 470.
112. ^ Fruehwald, Josef (2013). "The Phonological Influence on Phonetic Change". Publicly Accessible University of Pennsylvania Dissertations. p. 48. Archived August 16, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.
113. ^ Driscoll, Anna; Lape, Emma (2015). "Reversal of the Northern Cities Shift in Syracuse, New York". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 21 (2).
114. ^ 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.
115. ^ 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. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 23, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2019.
116. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 123, 129.
117. ^ 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.'
118. ^ 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".
119. ^ Boberg (2004a)
120. ^ Boberg, Charles (2021). Accent in North American film and television. Cambridge University Press.
121. ^ 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.
122. ^ 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).
123. ^ Labov, William (2012). Dialect diversity in America: The politics of language change. University of Virginia Press. pp. 1–2.
124. ^ Van Riper (2014), p. 129.
125. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 190.
126. ^ Bonfiglio (2002), p. 43.
127. ^ "Talking the Tawk". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. 2005.
128. ^ McWhorter, John H. (2001). Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a "Pure" Standard English. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-7867-3147-3.
129. ^ Kretzschmar (2004), pp. 260–2.
130. ^ Bonfiglio (2002), pp. 69–70.
131. ^ Bonfiglio (2002), pp. 4, 97–98.
132. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 123, 128–130.
133. ^ Seabrook (2005).
134. ^ Hunt, Spencer (2012). "Dissecting Ohio's Dialects". The Columbus Dispatch. GateHouse Media, Inc. Archived from the original on September 28, 2021.
135. ^ Hampton, Marian E. & Barbara Acker (eds.) (1997). The Vocal Vision: Views on Voice. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 163.
136. ^ Fought, John G. (2005). "Do You Speak American? | Sea to Shining Sea | American Varieties | Rful Southern". PBS. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016.
137. ^ 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.
138. ^ Babbel.com; GmbH, Lesson Nine. "The United States Of Accents: Announcer Voice And Other Radio Accents". Babbel Magazine. Retrieved May 11, 2025.
139. ^ Fallows, James (June 8, 2015). "That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Away". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on December 4, 2023. Retrieved May 11, 2025.
140. ^ a b Gross, Terry (January 24, 2005). "A Fake Newsman's Fake Newsman: Stephen Colbert". Fresh Air. National Public Radio. Retrieved July 11, 2007.
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142. ^ Nosowitz, Dan (August 23, 2016). "Is There a Place in America Where People Speak Without Accents?". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
143. ^ Cruttenden, Alan (2014). Gimson's Pronunciation of English. Routledge. p. 87\. ISBN 978-0-41-572174-5.
144. ^ a b Melchers, Gunnel; Shaw, Philip (2013). World Englishes (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 85–86\. ISBN 978-1-44-413537-4.
145. ^ Lorenz, Frank (2013). Basics of Phonetics and English Phonology. Logos Verlag Berlin. p. 12\. ISBN 978-3-83-253109-6.
146. ^ Benson, Morton; Benson, Evelyn; Ilson, Robert F. (1986). Lexicographic Description of English. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 179–180\. ISBN 9-02-723014-5.
147. ^ Ennser-Kananen, Halonen & Saarinen (2021), p. 334.
148. ^ Tsentserensky, Steve (October 20, 2011). "You Know What The Midwest Is?". The News Burner. Archived from the original on November 18, 2018. Retrieved December 13, 2018.

### Bibliography

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* 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. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 24, 2011.
* Boberg, Charles (2004a). "Standard Canadian English". In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Standards of English: Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-76389-9.
* Boberg, Charles (2004b). "English in Canada: 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. 351–365\. ISBN 3-11-017532-0.
* 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. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 22, 1997.
* Bonfiglio, Thomas Paul (2002). Race and the Rise of Standard American. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-017189-1.
* Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2002). The Phonetics of Dutch and English (5 ed.). Leiden/Boston: Brill Publishers.
* Delattre, P.; Freeman, D.C. (1968). "A dialect study of American R's by x-ray motion picture". Linguistics. 44: 29–68.
* Ennser-Kananen, Johanna; Halonen, Mia; Saarinen, Taina (2021). ""Come join us and lose your accent!" Accent modification courses as hierarchization of international students". Journal of International Students. 11 (2): 322–340\. doi:10.32674/jis.v11i2.1640. eISSN 2166-3750. ISSN 2162-3104.
* Duncan, Daniel (February 10, 2016). "'Tense' /æ/ is still lax: A phonotactics study". In Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur; Farris-Trimble, Ashley; McMullin, Kevin; Pulleyblank, Douglas (eds.). Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Annual Meetings on Phonology. Vol. 3\. Washington, D.C.: Linguistic Society of America (published June 21, 2016). 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; Roach, Peter; Hartman, James (2006). English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-68086-8. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
* 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.
* Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W. (2004). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Company KG. ISBN 978-3-11-017532-5. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
* 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. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 8, 2005.
* 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 May 14, 2008.
* 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. Vol. 85\. Duke University Press for the American Dialect Society. ISSN 0002-8207.
* 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. Vol. 1: An Introduction (pp. i–xx, 1–278), Vol. 3: Beyond the British Isles (pp. i–xx, 467–674). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511611766. 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.
* Zhou, Xinhui; Espy-Wilson, Carol Y.; Boyce, Suzanne; Tiede, Mark; Holland, Christy; Choe, Ann (2008). "A magnetic resonance imaging-based articulatory and acoustic study of "retroflex" and "bunched" American English /r/". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 123 (6): 4466–4481\. Bibcode:2008ASAJ..123.4466Z. doi:10.1121/1.2902168. PMC 2680662. PMID 18537397.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Jilka, Matthias. "North American English: General Accents" (PDF). Stuttgart: Institut für Linguistik/Anglistik, University of Stuttgart. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 21, 2014.

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