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. It is often perceived by Americans themselves as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education, 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.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." See also: map.
The precise definition and usefulness of the term continue to be debated, and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness. Some scholars prefer other names, such as Standard American English, though this can be a wider term encompassing more than just accent, whereas General American does not incorporate other linguistic features like grammar structures, spelling conventions, vocabulary, etc.
Standard Canadian English accents may be considered to fall under General American, especially in opposition to the United Kingdom's Received Pronunciation. The phonetician John C. Wells, for instance, said in 1982 that typical Canadian English accents align with General American in nearly every situation where British and American accents differ.
Consonants A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:
+ Consonant phonemes in General American Labial Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Stop Affricate Fricative Approximant ()
Pronunciation of R
The phoneme is pronounced as a postalveolar approximant or retroflex approximant , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the sound is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South. All these variants exhibit various degrees of labialization and pharyngealization.
Rhoticity
Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, in which is pronounced in all historical environments spelled with the letter . 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 in these environments and so are called non-rhotic. 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.Wolchover, Natalie (2012). "Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?" LiveScience. Purch.
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. 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.Wolfram, Walt; Schilling, Natalie (2015). American English: Dialects and Variation. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 103–104. 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 Dropping of the consonant (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, is "dropped" or "deleted" in stressed syllables after all alveolar and dental consonants (that is: everywhere except after , , , , , , , and ), so new, Tuesday, assume, duke are pronounced , , , (compare with British , , , . This applies also to syllables often transcribed with the secondary stress mark by American linguists, as in avenue (transcribed in this article). In unstressed syllables (as in menu ), however, is retained, as in most British accents.
T glottalization
is normally pronounced as a glottal stop , both when after a vowel (or a liquid) and when before a syllabic or any non-syllabic consonant, as in button and fruitcake . Similarly, in absolute final position after a vowel or liquid, is replaced by, or simultaneously articulated with, glottal constriction:Seyfarth, Scott; Garellek, Marc (2015). "Coda glottalization in American English". In ICPhS. University of California, San Diego, p. 1. thus, what may be transcribed as and fruit as . (This innovation of /t/ glottal stopping occurs in many British English dialects as well.)
T and D flapping
The consonants and become a flap both after a vowel or and before an unstressed vowel or a syllabic consonant other than . Common example words include later , party and model . Flapping thus results in pairs of words such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding being pronounced the same. Flapping of or before a full stressed vowel is also possible but only if that vowel begins a new word or morpheme, as in what is it? and twice in not at all . 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.Vaux, Bert (2000_. "Flapping in English." Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, IL. p .6. For instance, flapping is prohibited in words like seduce , retail , and monotone , yet optional in impotence .
Both intervocalic and may commonly be realized as (a nasalized alveolar flap) (flapping) or simply , making winter a homophone with winner in fast or informal speech.
Pronunciation of L
England's typical distinction between a "clear L" (i.e. ) and a "dark L" (i.e. ) is much less noticeable in nearly all dialects of American English; it is often altogether absent, with all "L" sounds tending to be "dark", meaning having some degree of velarization, perhaps even as dark as (though in the initial position, perhaps less dark than elsewhere among some speakers). The only notable exceptions to this "dark L" today are Southern American English and 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
Word pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. are homophones, in most cases eliminating , also transcribed , the voiceless labiovelar fricative. However, scatterings of older speakers who do not merge these pairs still exist nationwide, perhaps most strongly in the South. This merger is also found in most modern varieties of British English.
Vowels
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. 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 Close Mid () Open () Historical diphthongs
Vowel length Vowel length is not phonemic in General American, and therefore vowels such as are customarily transcribed without the length mark.Some British sources, such as the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, use a unified symbol set with the length mark, , 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. Phonetically, the vowels of GA are short when they precede the fortis consonants within the same syllable and long elsewhere. (Listen to the minimal pair of .) 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 in lead is noticeably longer than in leadership. (See Stress and vowel reduction in English.)
Vowel tenseness are considered to compose a natural class of tense pure vowels (monophthongs) in General American. All of the tense vowels except and can have either monophthongal or diphthongal pronunciations (i.e. vs ). Diphthongs are the most usual realizations of and (as in stay and row ), which is reflected in the way they are transcribed, though they are often perceptually regarded by speakers as monophthongs. Monophthongal realizations are still possible, most commonly in unstressed syllables; here are audio examples for potato and window . In the case of and , the monophthongal pronunciations () are in free variation with diphthongs (). As indicated in above phonetic transcriptions, is subject to the same variation (also when monophthongal: ), but its mean phonetic value is usually somewhat less central than in modern Received Pronunciation (RP). varies between back and central .
Assigning of tense vowels to loanwords
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 , the vowel, rather than lax , the vowel, as in Britain's Received Pronunciation (which approximates the original languages' pronunciation in using a lax vowel).
Pre-nasal tensing