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American English Pronunciation

English is spoken not only in Britain. It is the national language in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, & of a great part of the population in Canada. Each of those nations has its own orthoepic norm which exists alongside of regional types & numerous dialects.

Though the national languages have peculiar features of their own, which differentiate them from British English (BE) & from each other, they have much more in common. That is why they are considered to be variants of the same language, the English language.

American English (AE), which is the variant of the English language, has developed its own peculiarities in vocabulary, grammatical structure and pr-n. The most widely used regional types of AE pr-n are the Eastern, the Southern & the General American Types, the letter is spoken mainly in the Middle Atlantic States Region.

The GA pr-n is usually referred to as the standard pr-n of AE.

The peculiarities of GA lie in:

1) The pr-n of sounds & sound combinations;

2) Differences in the stress patterns of words;

3) Differences in intonation.

1. Peculiarities of pr-n of GA sounds & sound combinations as compared to those of RP:

    1. /r/ in GA is retroflexive, i.e. the tip of the tongue is curled back;

    2. /t/ is voiced between a vowel & a sonorant (as in “battle”,

“twenty”, or between two vowels the second of which is unstressed (as in “pity”, “better”). But the distinction between /t/ & /d/ is not neutralized, because the voiced /t/ is extremely short & resembles a one tap alveolar /r/. Americans easily distinguish between “writer” & “rider”, “latter” & “ladder”;

    1. /l/ is always dark, even before vowels (e.g. “film, “look”);

    2. / / is voiced in words like “excursion” - / n/, “version” -/ n/,

“Asia” -/ /, “Persia” -/ /;

    1. /h/ is often dropped in weak syllables , but it is retained when the syllable is stressed (e.g. ‘an historical novel” - / әnis 'torikl

'n vl/, “I saw him” - /ai 's :im/, but “history” -/histri/, “him” -/him/);

    1. /j / is omitted before /u/ )e.g. “duty’ -/du:ti/, “student” - /’studnt/,

“new” -/nu:/);

    1. /d/ is omitted after /l/ & /n/ )e.g. “cold”, “old”, “individual”);

    2. /k/ is omitted before /t/ )e.g. ”asked” -/æst /);

    3. The glottal stop /?/ is used instead of /t/ before /m, n, l, r, j, w/ (e.g. “certainly” - /sә:?nli /, “that one” - / æ?w n/, etc);

    4. GA vowels are not differentiated by their length. D. Jones notes

that all American vowels are long;

    1. /æ/ is used instead of /a:/ in words which do not contain “r” in spelling “path”, “glass”, “laugh”, “can’t”, “last”, “grass”, etc. Exceptions: “father”, “palm”, “balm”, “alms”);

  1. / æ / in GA is wider & longer than RP / æ /;

  1. /o / is much less diphthongal than in RP. It may be represented as /o:/;

  2. / ә/ tends to be monophthongized (e.g. “usually” - /ju әli/, “rural”

/rurәl/).

2.Peculiarities in the stress patterns in words in GA as compared to RP. American speakers make much greater use of secondary stress in polysyllabic words than British speakers do. In words which end in “-ary”, “-ory”, “-ery”, “-mony”, “-ative” the first syllable in the suffix bears tertiary stress (i.e. stress which is somewhat weaker than secondary stress). E.g. dictio nary, terri tory, milli nery, cere mony, com muni, cative.

  1. Peculiarities of GA intonation.

The most frequent intonation contour for statements & requests in GA is the tune, beginning low, rising to a high level, & then steadily falling.

E.g. He asked me to do it. Or He asked me to do it.

You better do it. or You better do it.

The same type of falling intonation contour may characterize the so-called General questions in GA.

E.g. did he ask you to do it?

“Rising” tunes that rise from a low pitch level & end on a high pitch level occur with some General questions, especially in situations where a very polite form is desirable.

E.g. do you know him?

Though the so – called Special Questions are pronounced with a falling tone in both RP & GA, the difference lies in the pr-n of the Scale. If in RP it is usually the Descending Scale, in GA the whole utterance is generally pronounced on a level tone.

E.g. RP ‘Why haven’t you told me about it?

GA Why haven’t you told me about it?

Why haven’t you told me about it?

Another frequent intonational characteristic in GA is to end a sentence with a high-pitch fall-rise.

E.g. We certainly can.

LECTURE 8