General American

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See Help:IPA for a pronunciation key.

General American (sometimes called Standard Midwestern, Standard Spoken American English or American Broadcast English) is one of the most homogeneous and widespread accents of Anglophone North America. It is the accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English, several Northeastern accents, and other distinct regional accents and social group accents like African American Vernacular English.

Contents

[edit] General American in the media

General American—like British Received Pronunciation as well as most standard language varieties of many other societies—was never the accent of the entire nation. Rather, it is most closely related to a generalized Midwestern accent and is spoken particularly by many newscasters, in part because the national broadcasters preferred to hire people who exhibited similar speech. The famous news anchor Walter Cronkite is a good example of a broadcaster using this accent. General American is sometimes promoted as preferable to other regional accents; in the United States, classes promising "accent reduction" generally attempt to teach speech patterns similar to this accent. The well-known television journalist Linda Ellerbee, who worked hard early in her career to eliminate a Texas accent, stated, "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere"; comedian Stephen Colbert worked hard as a child to reduce his South Carolina accent on account of the portrayal of Southerners as stupid on television of the day. General American is also the accent generally taught to people learning English as a second language in the United States, as well as outside the country to anyone who wishes to learn "American English."

[edit] Regional home of General American

Further information: North Central American English

General American originated in the dialect of the Inland North region. One reason may be that, as long ago as the U. S. Civil War, residents of areas such as Michigan and northern Ohio adopted a precise version of their pronunciation to set themselves apart from nearby speakers of Southern dialects. Particularly important in setting standards was northeastern Ohio, as the home of John Kenyon, the pronunciation editor of the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary.[1] However, since the 1960s northeastern Ohio and much of the rest of the Inland North have been affected by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift[2] and thus the pronunciation giving rise to General American is now far less common there.

The area of the United States where the local accent is largely free of regional features
The area of the United States where the local accent is largely free of regional features

The Telsur Project[3] of William Labov and others examines a number of phonetic properties by which regional accents of the U.S. may be identified. The area that is now most free of these regional properties is indicated on the map: eastern Nebraska (including Omaha and Lincoln), southern and central Iowa (including Des Moines), and western Illinois (including Peoria and the Quad Cities but not the Chicago area). It may therefore be the case that the accents spoken in this region are deemed the most "neutral" by Americans. This is borne out in an article in the November 1998 issue of National Geographic Magazine, in which the locals' "neutral accents" are cited as one of the reasons why Omaha is home to a large number of telemarketing companies.

Notable media personalities from this region include former talk show host Johnny Carson, and CNN Headline News personality Chuck Roberts, who was a local news anchor in Omaha.

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Consonants

A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:

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

The phoneme /ʍ/ is present only in varieties that have not undergone the wine-whine merger. /ʍ/ is often analyzed as a consonant cluster of /hw/. Also, many Americans realize the phoneme /ɹ/ (often transcribed as /r/) as a retroflex approximant [ɻ].

[edit] Vowels

General American has sixteen or seventeen vowel sounds that can be used in stressed syllables as well as two that can be used only in unstressed syllables. Most of the vowel sounds are monophthongs. The monophthongs of General American are shown in the table below:

Monophthongs Front Central Back
plain rhotacized
Close i     u
Near-close ɪ     ʊ
Close-mid e[4]     o[5]
Mid   ə ɚ  
Open-mid ɛ ɝ ʌ • ɔ
Near Open æ     ɑ

Depending on one's analysis, people who merge the vowels of cot and caught to /ɑ/ either have no phoneme /ɔ/ at all or have the [ɔ] only before /r/. Words like north and horse are usually transcribed /nɔɹθ/ and /hɔɹs/, but since all accents with cot and caught merged to /kɑt/ have also undergone the horse-hoarse merger, it may be preferable to transcribe north and horse /noɹθ/ and /hoɹs/.[6] Thus, in these cases, the [ɔ] before /ɹ/ can be analyzed as an allophone of /o/. Some speakers who have maintained the contrast between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ realize /ɔ/ phonetically lower, closer to [ɒ].[7]

[ɝ] and [ɚ] are often analyzed as sequences of /ʌr, ər/, respectively. [ə] is actually an indeterminate vowel that occurs only in unstressed syllables. Since the occurrence of [ə] is mostly predictable, it need not be considered a phoneme distinct from /ʌ/.

The diphthongs of General American are shown in the next table:

Diphthongs Offglide is a front vowel Offglide is a back vowel
Opener component is unrounded aɪ eɪ[4] aʊ
Opener component is rounded ɔɪ oʊ[5]

[edit] Characteristics

While there is not any single formal definition of General American, various features are considered to be part of it, including rhotic pronunciation, which maintains the coda [ɹ] in words like pearl, car, and court. 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]. General American also generally has yod-dropping after alveolar consonants. 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.

One phenomenon apparently unique to General American is the behavior of words that in RP have [ɒɹV] where [V] stands for any vowel. These words are treated differently in different North American accents: in New York-New Jersey English they are all pronounced with [-ɑɹ-] and in Canadian English they are all pronounced with [-ɔɹ-] (thus "sorry" is pronounced by Canadians as "sore-ee"). But in General American there is a split: the majority of these words have [-ɔɹ-], like Canadian English, but the last four words of the list below have [-ɑɹ-], like New York-New Jersey English, for many speakers.[8] Words of this class include, among others:

RP NY/NJ GA Can.
orange ˈɒɹɪndʒ ˈɑɹəndʒ ˈɔɹəndʒ
origin ˈɒɹədʒɪn ˈɑɹədʒɪn ˈɔɹədʒɪn
Florida ˈflɒɹɨdə ˈflɑɹədə ˈflɔɹədə
horrible ˈhɒɹɨbl̩ ˈhɑɹəbl̩ ˈhɔɹəbl̩
quarrel ˈkwɒɹəl ˈkwɑɹəl ˈkwɔɹəl
warren ˈwɒɹən ˈwɑɹən ˈwɔɹən
borrow ˈbɒɹəʊ ˈbɑɹoʊ ˈbɔɹoʊ
tomorrow təˈmɒɹəʊ təˈmɑɹoʊ təˈmɔɹoʊ
sorry ˈsɒɹi ˈsɑɹi ˈsɔɹi
sorrow ˈsɒɹəʊ ˈsɑɹoʊ ˈsɔɹoʊ

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Seabrook (2005)
  2. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:187–208)
  3. ^ Telsur Project home page
  4. ^ a b For most speakers, what is often transcribed as /e/ is realized as [eɪ], especially in open syllables. The off-glide [ɪ] is predictable by phonological rule.
  5. ^ a b For many speakers, what is often transcribed as /o/ is realized as [oʊ], especially in open syllables. The off-glide [ʊ] is predictable by phonological rule.
  6. ^ Wells (1982:479)
  7. ^ Wells (1982:476)
  8. ^ Shitara (1993:?)

[edit] References

v • d • e
Dialects and accents of English
Europe
North America
Oceania
Asia
Africa
Miscellaneous