General American English, known in
linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella
accent of
American English spoken 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] Other scholars prefer the term Standard American English.[12][4]
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".[15] In 1930, American linguist
John Samuel Kenyon, who largely popularized the term, considered it equivalent to the speech of "the North" or "Northern American",[15] but, in 1934, "Western and Midwestern".[16] Now typically regarded as falling under the General American umbrella are the regional accents of the
West,[17][18]Western New England,[19] and the
North Midland (a band spanning central Ohio, central Indiana, central Illinois, northern Missouri, southern Iowa, and southeastern Nebraska),[20][21] 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 newly developing features may serve to increasingly distinguish such accents from American ones.[22] Similarly,
William Labov et al.'s 2006 Atlas of North American English identified these three accent regions—the Western U.S., Midland U.S., and Canada—as sharing those pronunciation features whose convergence would form a hypothetical "General American" accent.
Regarded as having General American accents in the earlier 20th century, but not by the middle of the 20th century, are the
Mid-Atlantic United States,[5] the
Inland Northern United States,[23] and
Western Pennsylvania.[5] However, many younger speakers within these regions have reversed away from mid-20th century accent innovations back towards General American features.[24][25][26][27] Accents that have never been labeled "General American", even since the term's popularization in the 1930s, are the regional accents (especially the
r-dropping ones) of
Eastern New England,
New York City, and the
American South.[28] In 1982, British phonetician
John C. Wells wrote that two-thirds of the American population spoke with a General American accent.[12]
Disputed usage
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.[29]
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.[30] 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.[31][32] Since the 2000s, Mainstream American English has also been occasionally used, particularly in scholarly articles that contrast it with
African-American English.[33][34]
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.[23][35] 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,[36] 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
Regional origins
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.[37] This includes western
New England and the area to its immediate west, settled by members of the same dialect community:[38] interior
Pennsylvania,
Upstate New York, and the adjacent "
Midwest" or
Great Lakes region. However, since the early to mid-20th century,[23][39] 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
Linguists have proposed multiple factors contributing to the popularity of a
rhotic "General American" class of accents throughout the United States. Most factors focus on the first half of the twentieth century, though a basic General American pronunciation system may have 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).[40]
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.[41] 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.[42] 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.[43] 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.[44]
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.[45] 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.[46] Furthermore, Kenyon himself was vocally opposed to the notion of any superior variety of American speech.[47]
In the media
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.[48] 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.[49]
General American is thus sometimes associated with the speech of North American radio and television announcers, promoted as prestigious in their industry,[50][51] where it is sometimes called "Broadcast English"[52] "Network English",[23][53][54][55] or "Network Standard".[2][54][56] Instructional classes in the United States that promise "
accent reduction", "accent modification", or "accent neutralization" usually attempt to teach General American patterns.[57] Television journalist
Linda Ellerbee states that "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere",[58] 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.[50][51]
Phonology
Typical General American accent features (for example, in contrast to British English) include features that concern consonants, such as
rhoticity (full pronunciation of all /r/ sounds),
T-glottalization (with satin pronounced [ˈsæʔn̩], not [ˈsætn̩]),
T- and D-flapping (with metal and medal pronounced the same, as [ˈmɛɾɫ̩]),
L-velarization (with filling pronounced [ˈfɪɫɪŋ], not [ˈfɪlɪŋ]),
yod-dropping after
alveolar consonants (with new pronounced /nu/, not /nju/), as well as features that concern vowel sounds, such as various vowel mergers before /r/ (so that Mary, marry, and merry are all commonly
pronounced the same), raising of pre-voiceless /aɪ/ (with price and bright using a higher vowel sound than prize and bride), raising and gliding of pre-nasal /æ/ (with man having a higher and tenser vowel sound than map), the
weak vowel merger (with affecting and effecting often pronounced the same), and at least one of the LOT vowel mergers (the
LOT–PALM merger is complete among most Americans and the
LOT–THOUGHT merger among at least half). All of these phenomena are explained in further detail under
American English's phonology section. The following provides all the General American consonant and vowel sounds.
Vowel length is not
phonemic in General American, and therefore vowels such as /i/ are customarily transcribed without the length mark.[a] 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].) This applies to all vowels but the schwa /ə/ (which is typically very short [ə̆]), so when e.g. /i/ is realized as a diphthong [i̞i], it has the same allophones as the other diphthongs, whereas the sequence /ɜr/ (which corresponds to the NURSE vowel /ɜː/ in RP) has the same allophones as phonemic monophthongs: short [ɚ] before fortis consonants and long [ɚː] elsewhere.[clarification needed] The short [ɚ] is also used for the sequence /ər/ (the LETTER vowel). 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.[59][60] (See
Stress and vowel reduction in English.)
/i,u,eɪ,oʊ,ɑ,ɔ/ are considered to compose a
natural class of
tense monophthongs in General American, especially for speakers with the
cot–caught merger. The class manifests in how GA speakers treat loanwords, as 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 that is the surname of
Thomas Mann, which is pronounced with the tense /ɑ/ rather than lax /æ/ (as in RP, which mirrors the German pronunciation /man/, which also has a lax vowel).[61] All of the tense vowels except /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ can have either monophthongal or diphthongal pronunciations (i.e. [
i,u,e,ö̞ vs [i̞i,u̞u,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[pəˈtʰeɪɾö̞]ⓘ and window[ˈwɪndö̞]ⓘ. In the case of /i/ and /u/, the monophthongal pronunciations are in
free variation with diphthongs. Even the diphthongal pronunciations themselves vary between the very narrow (i.e. [i̞i,u̞u~ʉ̞ʉ]) and somewhat wider (i.e. [ɪi~ɪ̈i,ʊu~ʊ̈ʉ]), with the former being more common. /ɑ/ varies between back [
ɑ] and central [
ɑ̈].[62] As indicated in above phonetic transcriptions, /u/ is subject to the same variation (also when monophthongal: [
u~ʉ),[62] but its mean phonetic value is usually somewhat less central than in modern RP.[63]
Raising of short a before nasals: For most speakers, the
short a sound, /æ/ as in TRAP or BATH, is pronounced with the
tongue raised, followed by a centering
glide, whenever occurring before a
nasal consonant (that is, before /m/, /n/ and, for some speakers, /ŋ/).[64] This sound may be narrowly transcribed as [ɛə] (as in Anneⓘ and amⓘ), or, based on a specific dialect, variously as [eə] or [ɪə]. See the chart for comparison to other dialects.
^
abcdIn 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].[70]
^In Philadelphia, the irregular verbs began, ran, and swam have [æ].[71]
^In Philadelphia, bad, mad, and glad alone in this context have [ɛə].[70]
^The untensed /æ/ may be lowered and retracted as much as [
ä] in varieties affected by the
Canadian Shift.[78]
^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.[80] In New Orleans, [ɛə] additionally occurs before /v/ and /z/.[81]
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].[82]
General American does not have the opposition between /ɜr/ and /ər/, which are both rendered [
ɚ]ⓘ; therefore, the vowels in further/ˈfɜrðər/ are typically realized with the same segmental quality as [ˈfɚðɚ](listenⓘ).[83] This also makes
homophonous the words forward/ˈfɔrwərd/ and foreword/ˈfɔrwɜrd/ as [ˈfɔɹwɚd], which are distinguished in Received Pronunciation as [ˈfɔːwəd] and [ˈfɔːwəːd], respectively.[83] Therefore, /ɜ/ is not a true phoneme in General American but merely a different notation of /ə/ preserved for when this phoneme precedes /r/ and is stressed—a convention adopted in literature to facilitate comparisons with other accents.[84] What is historically /ʌr/, as in hurry, is also pronounced [ɚ](listenⓘ), so /ʌ/, /ɜ/ and /ə/ are all
neutralized before /r/.[84] Furthermore, some analyze /ʌ/ as an allophone of /ə/ that surfaces when stressed, so /ʌ/, /ɜ/ and /ə/ may be considered to be in
complementary distribution and thus comprising one phoneme.[85]
The phonetic quality of /ʌ/ (STRUT) is an advanced open-mid back unrounded vowel [
ʌ̟].(listenⓘ),[86][87]
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" dialect regions:
Canada, the
American West, and the
American Midland.[88] The following charts (as well as the one above) present the vowels that these three dialects encompass as a perceived General American sound system.
^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.
^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."
^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.'
^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".
^Boberg, Charles (2021). Accent in North American film and television. Cambridge University Press.
^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.
^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).
^Labov, William (2012). Dialect diversity in America: The politics of language change. University of Virginia Press. pp. 1–2.
^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".
^Flemming, Edward; Johnson, Stephanie. (2007). "Rosa's roses: Reduced vowels in American English". Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37(1), 83–96.
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