Information AboutGeneral American |
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General American (sometimes called '''Standard Midwestern ''', '''Standard Spoken American English''' or '''American Broadcast English''') is the Accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. The General American accent is not thought of as a Linguistic Standard in the sense that Received Pronunciation (RP) has historically been the standard, Prestige Variant in England , but its speakers are perceived as "accentless" by most Americans . Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English , several Northeast ern accents, and other distinct Regional Accents and social group accents like African American Vernacular English . GENERAL AMERICAN IN THE MEDIA General American—like the 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 in the United States, as well as outside the country to anyone who wishes to learn "American English." REGIONAL HOME OF GENERAL AMERICAN where the local accent most closely resembles General American]] The Telsur Project {Link without Title} of (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 , longtime NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw , and CNN Headline News personalities Chuck Roberts and Paula Zahn , both of whom were local news anchors in Omaha. PHONOLOGY Consonants A table containing the Consonant Phoneme s is given below: The phoneme is present only in varieties that have not undergone the Wine-whine Merger . is often analyzed as a consonant cluster of . Also, many Americans realize the phoneme (often transcribed as ) as a Retroflex Approximant . 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 Monophthong s. The monophthongs of General American are shown in the table below: Depending on one's analysis, people who Merge The Vowels Of ''cot'' And ''caught'' to either have no phoneme at all or have the only before . Words like ''north'' and ''horse'' are usually transcribed and , but since all accents with ''cot'' and ''caught'' merged to have also undergone the Horse-hoarse Merger , it may be preferable to transcribe ''north'' and ''horse'' and (Wells 1982, 479). Thus, in these cases, the before can be analyzed as an allophone of . Some speakers who have maintained the contrast between and realize phonetically lower, closer to . and are often analyzed as sequences of , respectively. is actually an indeterminate vowel that occurs only in unstressed syllables. Since the occurrence of is mostly predictable, it need not be considered a phoneme distinct from . The Diphthong s of General American are shown in the next table: 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 in words like ''pearl'', ''car'', and ''court''. Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the Merger of the vowels of words like ''father'' And ''b'''o'''ther'' , Flapping , and the reduction of vowel contrasts before . General American also generally has Yod-dropping after Alveolar Consonant s. 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; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving these Phonemic distinctions. One phenomenon apparently unique to General American is the Behavior Of Words That In RP Have where {Link without Title} stands for any vowel. Words of this class include, among others:
These words are treated differently in different North American accents: in New York-New Jersey English they are all pronounced with and in Canadian English they are all pronounced with (thus "sorry" is pronounced by Canadians as "sore-ee"). But in General American there is a split: the majority of these words have , like Canadian English, but the last four words of the list above have , like New York-New Jersey English, for many speakers (Shitara 1993). SEE ALSO
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