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General American
General American (abbreviated as GA or GenAm) is an umbrella variety of American English—a spectrum of accents[1]—unified by a sound system separate from the dialects of the American South and East Coast, including New York City and New England,[1][2][3] but today widespread throughout the United States. Despite persistent debate,[4][5] General American is popularly perceived as lacking any notably regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics;[6] however, modern studies link its origins to northern speech patterns of the non-coastal Eastern United States,[7] originating from interior Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and the adjacent Midwestern region prior to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.[1][8]
The term was popularized by the American linguist John Samuel Kenyon, who, in 1930, considered it equivalent to the speech of "the North," or "Northern American,"[9] but, in 1934, "Western and Midwestern";[10] however, the term was disseminated earlier, for example, by the American Anglicist George Philip Krapp, who in 1925 considered it "Western" and wide-ranging.[9] According to British phonetician John C. Wells, typical Canadian English aligns to General American rather than England's Received Pronunciation in every situation where these latter two differ.[11] He also concluded that, by 1982, two-thirds of the U.S. population[more recent figures would be better] spoke General American English.[6] Due to its prevalence, General American is sometimes, controversially,[12] referred to as a de facto standard accent of the United States.[6]
Contents
General American in the media
General American, like British Received Pronunciation (RP) and most prestige accent varieties of many other societies, has never been the accent of the entire nation.
The General American accent is most closely related to a generalized Midwestern accent and is spoken particularly by many newscasters. This has led the accent to sometimes be referred to as a "newscaster accent" or "television English". It is thought to have evolved from the English spoken by colonials in the Mid-Atlantic states, evolved and moved west. General American is sometimes promoted as preferable to other regional accents.[13][14] In the United States, classes promising "accent reduction","accent modification" and "accent neutralization" generally attempt to teach speech patterns similar to this accent. The well-known television journalist Linda Ellerbee, who worked hard early in her career to eliminate a Texas accent, stated, "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere";[15] political comedian Stephen Colbert worked hard as a child to reduce his South Carolina accent because of the common portrayal of Southerners as stupid on American television.[13][14]
Regional home of General American
It is commonly believed that General American English evolved as a result of an aggregation of rural and suburban Midwestern dialects, though the English of the Upper Midwest can deviate quite dramatically from the sounds of General American, especially since that region's twentieth-century Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS). The local accent often gets more distinct the farther north one goes within the Midwest, with the Northern Midwest featuring its own dialect North Central American English. General American is also highly divergent from the accents typical of larger Midwestern cities and the Great Lakes region in general, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, where speech has undergone the NCVS. The fact that a rural Midwestern dialect became the basis of what is General American English is often attributed to the mass migration of Midwestern farmers to California and the Pacific Northwest from where it spread. However, General American has origins dating back even before conservative Midwestern speech, itself stemming from interior Pennsylvania and upstate New York.[1]
The Telsur Project[16] (of William Labov and others) examines a number of phonetic properties by which regional accents of the U.S. may be identified. The area with Midwestern regional properties is indicated on the map: eastern Nebraska (including Omaha and Lincoln); northwestern, southern, and central Iowa (including Des Moines, Sioux City and the Iowa-side Quad Cities), with an adjacent narrow strip of northern Missouri; and western and central Illinois (including Peoria, the Illinois-side Quad Cities, and Bloomington-Normal). Notably, this section of Illinois does not include the Chicago area.
According to Matthew J. Gordon, a sociolinguistics and American dialectology researcher:
The fact that the NCS is well established in Michigan is particularly interesting in light of the dominant beliefs about local speech. As research by Dennis Preston has shown, Michiganders believe they are "blessed" with a high degree of linguistic security; when surveyed, they rate their own speech as more correct and more pleasant than that of even their fellow Mid-westerners. By contrast Hoosiers tend to rate the speech of their state on par with that of Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find Michiganders who will claim that the speech of national broadcasters is modeled on their dialect. Even a cursory comparison of the speech of the network news anchors with that of the local news anchors in Detroit will reveal the fallacy of such claims.Nevertheless, the Michiganders' faith that they speak an accentless variety is just an extreme version of the general stereotype of Midwestern English.[17]
Particularly important in setting standards was John Kenyon, the pronunciation editor of the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary.[18]
Phonology
Consonants
A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:
- Wine–whine merger: largely in effect toward [w] (13px listen); the phoneme [ʍ] (13px listen) is retained only in American English varieties that have not undergone the merger, with /ʍ/ often analyzed as a consonant cluster of /hw/.
- /r/ as [ɹ] or [ɻ]: many Americans realize the phoneme [ɹ] (13px listen) (often transcribed as /r/) as postalveolar, with some possible retroflexion (perhaps, even as [ɻ] (13px listen)).[19]
- T-glottalization and intervocalic alveolar flapping: /t/ undergoes t-glottalization, producing a glottal stop [ʔ], before a consonant (particularly a syllabic nasal) or in word-final position, for example, in words like button [ˈbʌʔn] (13px listen), mountain [ˈmæʊnʔn̩] (13px listen), atmosphere [ˈæʔməsfɪɚ] (13px listen), grateful [ˈgɹeɪʔfɫ̩] (13px listen), and cot [kʰäʔ] (13px listen). The word-final /t/ rule, however, may be superseded by General American's intervocalic alveolar flapping, wherein intervocalic /t/ as well as intervocalic /d/ become [ɾ] (13px listen) when between a stressed syllable and an unstressed one, or between two unstressed syllables; for example, leader [ˈɫiɾɚ] (About this sound listen), catalogue/catalog [ˈkʰæɾəɫɑg] (About this sound listen), or ratty [ˈɹæɾi] (About this sound listen). Typically, /t/ and /d/ also between /r/ and a vowel become realized as the flap consonant [ɾ]; thus: party [ˈpʰɑɹɾi] (About this sound listen).
- L-velarization: the typical English distinction between a "clear L" (i.e. [l] (13px listen)) and a "dark L" (i.e. [ɫ] (13px listen) or even [ʟ] (13px listen)) is much less noticeable in General American compared to other English dialects; it may even be altogether absent.[20] Instead, General American speakers pronounce even the "clear" variant as more or less "dark", meaning that all "L" sounds have some degree of velarization.[21] Additionally, some speakers may vocalize /l/ to [ɤ̯] when it appears before /f v/ (and sometimes also /s z/).[22]
Vowels
• When monophthongized, /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ tend to be closer to cardinal [e] and [o], respectively.
• For many speakers, /aʊ/ is more fronted in GA than what appears on this chart.
| Pure vowels (Monophthongs) | ||
|---|---|---|
| English diaphoneme | General American phoneme | Example words |
| /æ/ | lax: [æ] (About this sound listen) | bath, trap, yak |
| tense (typically, before /m/ or /n/): [ɛ̝ə] | ham, man, yeah | |
| /ɑː/ | [ɑ~ä] (About this sound listen) | blah, bother, father, lot, top, wasp |
| /ɒ/★ | ||
| [ɒ(ː)] (About this sound listen) (or, if /ɒ/–/ɔː/ merged: [ɑ]) |
all, dog, bought, loss, saw, taught | |
| /ɔː/ | ||
| /ɛ/ | [ɛ] (About this sound listen) | dress, met, bread |
| /ə/ | [ə] (About this sound listen) | about, syrup, arena |
| /ɪ/ | [ɪ] (About this sound listen) | hit, skim, tip |
| /iː/ | [i] (About this sound listen) | beam, chic, fleet |
| /ɨ/ | [ɪ̈~ɪ~ə] (About this sound listen) | private, muffin, wasted |
| /ʌ/ | [ʌ~ɐ] (About this sound listen) | bus, flood, what |
| /ʊ/ | [ʊ] (About this sound listen) | book, put, should |
| /uː/ | [u̟~ʊu] (About this sound listen) | food, glue, new |
| Diphthongs | ||
| /aɪ/ | before a voiceless consonant: [äɪ~ɐɪ~ʌɪ] | bright, dice, pike |
| elsewhere: [äɪ] (About this sound listen) | ride, shine, try | |
| /aʊ/ | [aʊ~æʊ] (About this sound listen) | now, ouch, scout |
| /eɪ/ | [eɪ~ɛ̝ɪ] (About this sound listen) | lake, paid, rein |
| /ɔɪ/ | [ɔɪ~o̞ɪ] (About this sound listen) | boy, choice, moist |
| /oʊ/ | [o̞ʊ~ʌʊ] (About this sound listen) | goat, oh, show |
| R-colored vowels | ||
| /ɑr/ | [ɑɹ~ɑɚ] (About this sound listen) | barn, car, park |
| /ɛər/ | [ɛɚ] (About this sound listen) (or, if /ɛər/–/ɛr/ merged: [ɛɹ]) |
bare, bear, there |
| /ɜr/ | [ɚ] (About this sound listen) | burn, doctor, first, herd, learn, murder |
| /ər/ | ||
| /ɪər/ | [iɚ~ɪɚ] (About this sound listen) | fear, peer, tier |
| /ɔr/ | [o̞ɹ~ɔɚ] (About this sound listen) | hoarse, horse, poor score, tour, war |
| /ɔər/ | ||
| /ʊər/ | ||
| /jʊər/ | [jʊɹ~jɚ] (About this sound listen) | cure, Europe, pure |
| ★ Footnotes When followed by /r/, the phoneme /ɒ/ is pronounced entirely differently by General American speakers as [ɔ~o], for example, in the words orange, forest, and torrent. The only exceptions to this are the words tomorrow, sorry, sorrow, borrow and, for some speakers, morrow, which use the sound [ɑ]. | ||
General American has eleven or twelve pure vowel sounds (or monophthongs) that can be used in stressed syllables (for some, typically in diphthongized combinations) as well as two to three vowels that can be heard only in unstressed syllables. The monophthongs of General American are shown in the table below:
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | rhotacized | |||
| Close | [[close front unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.i]] |
[[close back rounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.u]]6 | ||
| Near-close | [[near-close near-front unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɪ]] |
[[near-close central unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɪ̈]]~[[near-close near-front unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɪ]]~[[mid central vowel#Mid-central unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ə]]3 |
[[near-close near-back vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ʊ]] | |
| Close-mid | [[close-mid front unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.e]]1 |
[[close-mid back rounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.o]]1 | ||
| Mid | [[mid central vowel#Mid-central unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ə]]3 |
[[r-colored vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɚ]]5 |
||
| Open-mid | [[open-mid front unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɛ]] |
[[open-mid back unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ʌ]]4 |
[[r-colored vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɝ]]~[[r-colored vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɚ]]5 |
[[open-mid back rounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɔ]]~[[open back rounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɒ]] |
| Near Open | [[near-open front unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.æ]]2 |
[[open back unrounded vowel#REDIRECTmw:Help:Magic words#Other This page is a soft redirect.ɑ]] | ||
^1 For most speakers, what are often transcribed as /e/ and /o/ are realized in actual speech as the diphthongized [eɪ~ɛ̝ɪ] (13px listen) (e.g. in laid and pray) and [o̞ʊ~ʌʊ] (13px listen) (e.g. in so and load) respectively, especially in open syllables.
^2 For most speakers, what is transcribed as [æ] (13px listen) is always raised and sometimes diphthongized when appearing before a nasal consonant (that is, before /m/, /n/ and, for some, /ŋ/). This allophone is especially audible in monosyllabic words, and it may be narrowly transcribed as [ɛ̝ə̯] (About this sound pronunciation of /æn/ as [ɛ̝ə̯n]; About this sound pronunciation of /æm/ as [ɛ̝ə̯m]), or, based on specific dialect, variously as [e̞ə̯] or [ɪə̯] (see Æ-tensing in General American or click "show" below).
| /æ/ tensing[23] in American English accents:<big/> | ||||||||||
| Environment | Example words |
Boston & metropolitan West |
Baltimore & Philadelphia |
Dakotas & Northwest |
General American & Midland |
Inland North (Great Lakes) |
New York City | South | Upper Midwest | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consonant following /æ/ |
Syllable type | |||||||||
| /r/ | open | arable, arid, baron, barrel, barren, carry, carrot, chariot, charity, clarity, Gary, Harry, Larry, marionette, maritime, marry, marriage, paragon, parent, parish, parody, parrot, etc.; this feature is determined by the presence or absence of the Mary-marry-merry merger |
lax [æ] (Boston) tense [ɛə] (West) |
lax [æ] | tense [ɛə] | tense [eə]~[ɛə]~[æ] |
tense [eə] | lax [æ] | [æʲə] | tense [eə]~[ɛə]~[æ] |
| /m/, /n/ | closed | Alexander, answer, ant, band, can (the metal object), can't, clam, dance, ham, hamburger, hand, handy, man, manly, pants, plan, planning, ranch, sand, slant, tan, understand, etc.; in Philadelphia, began, ran, and swam alone remain lax |
tense [eə]~[ɛə]~[æ] |
tense [eə] | tense [eə] | |||||
| open | amity, animal, can (the verb), Canada, ceramic, family, gamut, hammer, janitor, manager, manner, Montana, panel, planet, profanity, salmon, Spanish, etc. |
lax [æ] | tense/lax [ɛə]~[æ] | lax [æ] | ||||||
| /ɡ/ | open | agate, agony, dragon, magazine, ragamuffin, etc. |
lax [æ] | tense [eə]~[ɛə]~[æ] | lax [æ] | tense [eɪ] | ||||
| closed | agriculture, bag, crag, drag, flag, magnet, rag, sag, tag, tagging, etc. |
tense [eə] | ||||||||
| /b/, /d/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/, /v/, /z/, /ʒ/ |
closed | absolve, abstain, add, ash, bad, badge, cab, cash, clad, dad, fad, flash, glab, grab, halve, mad, pad, plad, raspberry, rash, sad, smash, splash, tab, tadpole, trash, etc.; in Philadelphia, bad, mad, and glad alone become tense; in NYC, this environment has a lot of variance and many exceptions to the rule (e.g. had remains lax) |
tense/lax [ɛə]~[æ] | lax [æ] | lax [æ] | |||||
| /f/, /s/, /θ/ | closed | ask, bask, basket, bath, brass, casket, cast, class, craft, crass, daft, drastic, glass, grass, flask, half, last, laugh, laughter, mask, mast, math, pass, past, path, plastic, task, wrath, etc. |
tense [eə] | |||||||
| all other consonants | act, apple, aspirin, athlete, avid, back, bat, brat, café, cafeteria, cap, cashew, cat, Catholic, chap, clap, classy, fashion, fat, flap, flat, gap, gnat, latch, mallet, map, mastiff, match, maverick, pack, pal, passive, pat, patch, pattern, rabid, racket, rally, rap, rat, sack, sat, Saturn, savvy, scratch, shack, slack, slap, tackle, talent, trap, travel, wrap, etc. |
lax [æ] | lax [æ] | |||||||
Footnotes </small>1) Nearly all American English speakers pronounce /æŋ/ somewhere between [æŋ] and [ɛ̃ŋ], though Western speakers specifically favor [ɛ̃ŋ]. 2) The NYC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore dialects' rule of tensing /æ/ in certain closed-syllable environments also applies to words inflectionally derived from those closed-syllable /æ/ environments that now have an open-syllable /æ/. For example, in addition to pass being tense (according to the general rule), so are its open-syllable derivatives passing and passer-by, but not passive.</small> | ||||||||||
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^3 [ə] (13px listen) and [ɪ̈] (also transcribed as [ɨ̞] and [ᵻ] (the latter is a non-IPA symbol) (About this sound listen)) are indeterminate vowel sounds that occur only in unstressed syllables of certain types. [ə] is heard, for example, as the "a" at the beginning of about and at the end of China, as the "o" in omit, and as the "u" in syrup. [ɪ̈] is heard as the "a" in private or cottage, the "e" in evading or sorted, the "i" in sordid, the "u" in minute, or the "y" in mythologist. [ə] and [ɪ̈] frequently overlap and easily merge, this is known as the weak-vowel merger.
^4 The vowel of strut is generally near-open and fronted (approaching [ʌ̈~ɐ] (13px listen)), but speakers from Ohio and, commonly, those in the South realize this vowel as an open-mid central unrounded vowel ([ɜ~œ̈]).[24][25] It however always remains a back vowel before /l/, and often even merges with /əl/, so that /ʌl/ becomes [ʌɫ̩] or [ɫ̩].
^5 In American English, /ɜr/ (General American [ɝ]) and /ər/ (General American [ɚ]) are often analyzed[clarification needed] as sequences of /ʌr/ and /ər/, respectively.[citation needed] In actual speech, General American speakers pronounce both, without much or any distinction, as [ɚ] (About this sound listen); for example, the word worker /ˈwɜrkər/ is often realized with two rhyming syllables as [ˈwɚkɚ] (About this sound listen).
^6 The General American vowel /u/ has a unique quality (About this sound listen); it tends to be slightly less rounded [u̜] and more fronted [u̟], and perhaps even diphthongized with a somewhat fronter and lower onset.
- General American speakers are largely divided in how they pronounce the vowel sound in words like cot /ɑ/ and caught /ɔ/; some speakers pronounce the two with the same vowel sound but other speakers pronounce each word with distinct vowel sounds: About this sound cot–caught distinction (help·info). Among speakers who distinguish between the two, the vowel of cot (usually transcribed in American English as [ɑ] (13px listen)), may be more of a central vowel which may vary from [a̠] (also [ä]) to [ɑ̟] (About this sound listen), while /ɔ/ is phonetically lower, closer to [ɒ] (13px listen) with only slight rounding.[26] Among speakers who do not distinguish between the two and are thus said to have undergone the cot–caught merger, /ɑ/ usually remains a back vowel, [ɑ], sometimes showing lip rounding as [ɒ] (also transcribed [ɑʷ] in non-standard IPA), and, because these speakers do not distinguish between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, their retracted allophones for /ɑ/ may be identical to the lowered allophones of /ɔ/ among speakers who preserve the contrast.
- Depending on one's analysis, people who merge the vowels of cot and caught to /ɑ/ either have no phoneme /ɔ/ at all or have the [ɔ] only before /ɹ/. Words like north and horse are usually transcribed /nɔɹθ/ and /hɔɹs/, but because all accents with cot and caught merged to /kɑt/ have also undergone the horse–hoarse merger, it may be preferable to transcribe north and horse [no̞ɹθ] and [ho̞ɹs].[27] Thus, in these cases, the [ɔ] before /ɹ/ can be analyzed as an allophone of /o/.
- Unstressed vowels vary in quality:
- The /aɪ/ diphthong—[äɪ] (About this sound listen)—before a voiceless consonant may be raised towards [ɐɪ] or [ʌɪ], a growing phenomenon in General American, predominant historically in the northern, New England, and Mid-Atlantic regions.[29] In the General American accent, this alone causes a distinction, for example, between the words rider and writer (About this sound listen). Although present with most U.S. speakers, this phenomenon is considered one of the two variants of so-called "Canadian raising." This raising can also apply across word boundaries, though the position of a word or phrase's stress may deny the raising from taking place. For instance, a high school in the sense of "secondary school" is generally pronounced [ˈhɐɪsku̟ɫ]; however, a high school in the literal sense of "a tall school" is pronounced [ˌhäɪˈsku̟ɫ].
The diphthongs of General American are shown in the next table:
| Offglide is a front vowel | Offglide is a back vowel | |
|---|---|---|
| Opener component is unrounded | [äɪ] (13px listen), [ɐɪ], [eɪ~ɛ̝ɪ] (13px listen) | [aʊ~æʊ] (13px listen) |
| Opener component is rounded | [ɔɪ] (13px listen) | [o̞ʊ~ʌʊ] (13px listen) |
Characteristics
While there is no single formal definition of General American, various features are considered to be part of it, including rhotic pronunciation, which maintains the coda [ɹ] in words like pearl, car, and court.[30] Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like father and bother, flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before [ɹ].[citation needed] General American also generally has yod-dropping after alveolar consonants.[31] Other phonemic mergers, including the cot–caught merger, the pin–pen merger, the Mary–marry–merry merger and the wine–whine merger, may be found optionally at least in informal and semiformal varieties.[citation needed]
One phenomenon apparently unique to General American is the behavior of the stressed /ɒrV/ where /V/ stands for any vowel (usually /ə/ or /ɨ/)—i.e. stressed /ɒr/ followed by a vowel sound. Particularly words using this sound are pronounced distinctly in different North American accents: in New York–New Jersey English, the Philadelphia dialect, and the Carolinas they are all pronounced with /ɑr-/ and in Canadian English they are all pronounced with /ɔr-/. But in General American there is a split: the majority of these words have /ɔr-/, like Canadian English, but the first five words of the list below have /-ɑr-/, like New York-New Jersey English, for many speakers.[32] Words of this class include, among others:
| General American stressed /ɒr/ followed by a vowel in comparison with other English dialects:<big/> | |||
| /ɒr/ | /ɔr/ and /ɔər/ | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced [ɒɹ] in England English | pronounced [ɔːɹ] in England English | ||
| pronounced [ɒɹ] in Boston English | pronounced [ɔɹ] in Boston English | ||
| pronounced [ɔɹ] in Canadian English | |||
| pronounced [ɑɹ] in regional Atlantic American English[note 1] | pronounced [ɔɹ] in regional Atlantic American English[note 1] | ||
| pronounced [ɑɹ] (13px listen) in General American English | pronounced [ɔɹ] (13px listen) in General American English | ||
|
(these five words only:)
borrow, morrow, sorry, sorrow, tomorrow |
corridor, euphoric,
foreign, forest, Florida, historic, horrible, majority, minority, moral, orange, Oregon, origin, porridge, priority, quarantine, quarrel, sorority, warranty, warren, warrior (etc.) |
aura, boring,
choral, coronation, deplorable, flooring, flora, glory, hoary, memorial, menorah, orientation, Moorish, oral, pouring, scorer, storage, story, Tory, warring (etc.) | |
See also
References
- ^ a b c d Wells (1982c:470)
- ^ Wells (1982c:471)
- ^ Van Riper, William R. (2014) [1973]. "General American: An Ambiguity". In Allen, Harold B.; Linn, Michael D. Dialect and Language Variation. Elsevier. p. 129.
- ^ Wells (1982a:110)
- ^ Van Riper (2014:124, 126)
- ^ a b c Wells (1982a:34)
- ^ Labov (1982:190)
- ^ "Talking the Tawk". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. 2005.
- ^ a b Van Riper (2014:124)
- ^ Van Riper (2014:125)
- ^ Wells (1982c:491)
- ^ Van Riper (2014:125–6)
- ^ a b Gross, Terry (January 24, 2005), "A Fake Newsman's Fake Newsman: Stephen Colbert", Fresh Air (National Public Radio), retrieved 2007-07-11
- ^ a b Safer, Morley (August 13, 2006), The Colbert Report: Morley Safer Profiles Comedy Central's 'Fake' Newsman, 60 Minutes, retrieved 2006-08-15
- ^ You Know What The Midwest Is?
- ^ Telsur Project home page
- ^ "Do You Speak American? American Varieties: The Midwest Accent". PBS. Retrieved 2012-09-06.
- ^ Seabrook (2005)
- ^ Hallé, Best & Levitt (1999:283) citing Delattre & Freeman (1968), Zawadzki & Kuehn (1980), and Boyce & Espy-Wilson (1997)
- ^ Grzegorz Dogil, Susanne Maria Reiterer, and Walter de Gruyter, ed. (2009). "general+american"+"velarized" Language Talent and Brain Activity: Trends in Applied Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. p. 299.
- ^ Jones, Roach & Hartman (2006:xi)
- ^ Rogers (2000:120–121)
- ^ Labov et al. (2006), p. 182.
- ^ Thomas (2001:27–28)
- ^ Heggarty, Paul et al, ed. (2013). "Accents of English from Around the World". University of Edinburgh.
- ^ Wells (1982c:476)
- ^ Wells (1982:479)
- ^ a b c Wells (2008:XXV)
- ^ Labov (1982:114): "where Canadian raising has traditionally been reported: Canada, Eastern New England, Philadelphia, and the North"
- ^ 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 4 July 2013.
- ^ Wells (1982a:247)
- ^ Shitara (1993:?)
Notes
- ^ a b This primarily refers to the dialects of Philadelphia, Rhode Island, the Carolinas, northern New Jersey, New York City, and Long Island.
References
- Boyce, S.; Espy-Wilson, C. (1997), "Coarticulatory stability in American English /r/", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101 (6): 3741–3753, PMID 9193061, doi:10.1121/1.418333
- Delattre, P.; Freeman, D.C. (1968), "A dialect study of American R's by x-ray motion picture", Linguistics 44: 29–68
- Hallé, Pierre A.; Best, Catherine T.; Levitt, Andrea (1999), "Phonetic vs. phonological influences on French listeners' perception of American English approximants", Journal of Phonetics 27 (3): 281–306, doi:10.1006/jpho.1999.0097
- Jones, Daniel; Roach, Peter; Hartman, James (2006), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (17 ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006), The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, pp. 187–208, ISBN 3-11-016746-8
- Mannell, R.; Cox, F.; Harrington, J. (2009a), An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, Macquarie University
- Mannell, R.; Cox, F.; Harrington, J. (2009b), An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, Macquarie University
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- Rogers, Henry (2000), The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics, Essex: Pearson Education Limited, ISBN 978-0-582-38182-7
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- Shitara, Yuko (1993), "A survey of American pronunciation preferences", Speech Hearing and Language 7: 201–232
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External links
- The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary
- 'Hover & Hear' pronunciations in a General American accent, and compare side by side with other English accents from the US and around the World.
- Hollywords Audiovisual Industry Dictionary Project Style Guide (Includes pronunciation guides based on the American Broadcast English (ABE) accent)