Everything about General American totally explained
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.
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's 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're 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."
Regional home of General American
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. However, since the 1960s northeastern Ohio and much of the rest of the Inland North have been affected by the
Northern Cities Vowel Shift and thus the pronunciation giving rise to General American is now far less common there.
The Telsur Project 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's 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.
Phonology
Consonants
A table containing the
consonant phonemes is given below:
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].
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:
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/. 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].
[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:
Further Information
Get more info on 'General American'.
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