Talk:General American English/Archive 2

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What REAL General American English sounds like

Look here and here for vowel charts for what General American English really sounds like. It's closer to this:

General American English

Monophthongs	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close	i "peal"				u "pool"
Near-close		ɪ "pill"		ʊ "pull"
Mid			ə "pupil"
Open-mid	ɛ "pet"				ɔ "pot"
Near Open	æ "pat"		ɐ "putt"
Open				a "par"

--Haldrik 07:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Note: The turned-v (ʌ) is obsolete and no longer used to represent a near-open central vowel, which is now represented more precisely by the new IPA letter turned-a (ɐ). --Haldrik 07:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Notice how both of those charts, as well as every single other published reference I know of, uses the symbol ʌ for the "strut" vowel. It isn't "obsolete and no longer used"; on the contrary, it's used universally. Using ɐ because you personally think it's more accurate is original research and isn't allowed at Wikipedia. Angr 05:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

True. As far as I can see, the difference betwee using ʌ and ɐ is not a question of "obsoleteness" and "precision", but rather one between general usage of IPA for cross-linguistic comparison (which would indeed require that region of the vowel space to be represented by ɐ) and long-standing tradition in English studies (which uses ʌ for broad transription of the strut vowel no matter how a particular accent exactly pronounces it.) Dialectological work that needs very narrow phonetic transcription sometimes uses ɐ, everywhere else, ʌ. Including Ledefoged's sketch of American English in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, if that's any authority. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The difference is the turned-a symbol IS IPA, whereas the turned-v symbol is NOT IPA. The turned-v comes from the American "tic-tac-(toe)" chart, which is NOT IPA, but so similar it causes massive confusion. The tic-tac-toe chart cannot be used as if equal to the IPA chart! --Haldrik 06:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

What the heck is "the"(!) Tic-tac-toe chart? That's a concept introduced there by one lecturer for one series of lecture notes. Apparently, he means any vowel chart formatted as a table rather than in the shape of the vowel trapezoid as the official IPA definition does. Which means basically all our vowel charts are tic-tac-toe charts, and they are perfectly legitimate as such. And please have another look at my remark about Ladefoged above. (Hint: the "if" in "if that's any authority" was facetious.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry Haldrik, I'm going to revert this [1] of you. There is no such thing as "the" North American Vowel chart, and there's no such dichotomy between "real IPA" and North American usage either. There's just perfectly routine application of the IPA for single-language-specific purposes, which my involve certain deviations in the usage of individual symbols. Which is absolutely normal and done everywhere in the literature. Please, this page is meticulously sourced and I can vouch it closely corresponds to what the leading authorities in the field do. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It must be clarified that the chart isnt an official IPA chart, and uses IPA letters wrongly. --Haldrik 06:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

This use of turned-v for English is officially sanctioned as part of IPA (i.e. as within the range of variation that IPA tolerates), by the fact that Ledefoged uses it in the IPA's authoritative handbook itself. (And not even offering any apologies for it). We do more than strictly necessary by offering an explanatory note about it; but we should not be implying there was some serious disagreement or wrongness or dichotomy between approaches about this. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

LOL! I agree that the deference to "tradition" is still in play, but the resulting "traditional" chart doesnt even remotely resemble what American English sounds like! --Haldrik 07:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Any chart that uses the symbol "ɔ" for the vowel of pot (like yours above) really doesn't remotely resemble what American English sounds like. Angr 07:20, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I beg to differ. Have a look at the acoustic vowel chart here again for the ɔ in "pot". --Haldrik 07:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

And who are Peterson & Barney 1952 and why should I believe them instead of every other linguist who's ever written about American English? Angr 07:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Google: Peterson Barney vowel. --Haldrik 07:30, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but I still can't find evidence that Peterson & Barney thought that [ɔ] is the vowel of "pot" and not that of "bought". Angr 07:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about, it is written right on the acoustic vowel chart above. That very word was used for the acoustic measurements. (And General American English has the caught-cot merger so there is no distinction between the vowels of "bought" and "pot".) --Haldrik 07:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Unlike Italian vowels which are symmetric, General American English vowels arent symmetric. --Haldrik 08:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

That chart is taken from a Finnish website; they got their data from P&B, but then so did the people who made the chart on this page (scroll about a third of the way down), which just shows symbols, not specific words associated with them. Or see the chart on this page; data taken from P&B, but [ɔ] is identified as "hawed" while [ɑ] is identified as "hod". And incidentally, not all varieties of General American have the cot-caught merger: see Phonological history of English low back vowels#Cot-caught merger and the map there. Some GenAm speakers have the merger, others don't. The merger cuts across GenAm. Angr 08:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

And look again at the site you just gave! The mid-open ɔ is significantly closer (closer to u), than the fully open a is! --Haldrik 08:14, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

And? Angr 08:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems the confusion involves data where the caught-cot merger prevails versus where the caught-cot distinction prevails. These realize the vowels differently. --Haldrik 09:13, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

As I see it, this new confusion is because more or less all American accents that have the caught-cot merger also have the previous Father-bother merger. Which means that even if there is a separate vowel /ɔ/ as opposed to [ɑ], it will not occur in words like "pot"; "pot" will always be on the [ɑ] side. But this is all unrelated to your previous objection regarding turned-v. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

My dialect (which is a variant of General American) has the caught-cot merger while father-bother are absolutely distinct. The vowel in "father" = "car", "spa", and is nearer to an open central vowel. And "bother" = "caught", "cot", and is nearer to a mid-open back vowel. Also "brother" = "gut", "love", and is a near-open central vowel. Notably, my accent is strongly monothongized so that "mayonaise" sounds nearer to [menez]. --Haldrik 21:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

You wouldn't happen to be from Eastern New England, would you? That's pretty much the only place in North America I know of where father and bother don't rhyme and where cot and caught are homophonous as an open-mid (rounded, right?) back vowel. But while "General American" isn't actually explicitly defined anywhere, I suspect most people wouldn't consider an ENE accent to be General American, even if it's rhotic. Angr 21:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Nope, not from New England (which to my ear sounds strongly accented). Albeit, I grew up in an area where most people were transplanted from all over America, including New York, the Midwest, California, and so on: hence a Generalized "pan-American" accent. --Haldrik 21:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

"'General American' isn't actually explicitly defined anywhere". Surprisingly this statement seems to be true. Obviously, being unable to define "General American" is a methodological problem in scientifically describing what it sounds like! LOL! --Haldrik 21:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, and in fact the term "General American" and the concept associated with it is actually widely rejected by American linguists. It's almost only used by British linguists nowadays. However, American dialectology has traditionally put more emphasis on lexical differences rather than phonological ones when it comes to drawing isoglosses and labeling dialects, while British dialectology is more interested in phonology, so that may also have something to do with it. I recently had to give an oral presentation as part of my Habilitation, and one of the topics I suggested was defining General American. But the committee selected a different topic, so I never did the research. Angr 22:05, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

"One of the topics I suggested was defining General American. But the committee selected a different topic". Too bad. Obviously American English is distinctive and not being able to pin down its phonology makes it a desideratum. --Haldrik 22:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Oh I don't have time to read all this -- so here's some random opinions: no American vowel is actually an IPA cardinal, they all require IPA diacritics; the "turned v" isn't obsolete, and the American sound is really somewhere between "turned v" and "turned a"; the use of rhotacized vowels in the article chart is too subtle, it's allophonism which is not carried through in the rest of the analysis presented; ɔ (with some IPA diacritics) definitely exists in anything to be called the standard, not using it is a definite sign of Great Lakes, of course ɔ without some IPA diacritics is a definite sign of Glouchester Massachussets, and ɔ with a diacritic that doen't exist in IPA (smaller lip circumference) is a definite sign of Brooklyn (New York... New Yark... New Yawk... New Yawwwk -- all clear?).

And the specific results of historical-short-O, which splits between ɑ and ɔ based on phonemic context (with exceptions), is essential to "standardness" -- the paragraph on the cot-caught merger (which many linguists seems to be highly confused about in any case) does not relate to the standard -- which absolutely has [kɑt] -- and is trying to introduce some multidialectical symbolic phonemology.

Haldrik's [a] is wrong -- it's [ɑ] when a monophthong (in the few surviving historical-long-A's [father], before R, as one result of the historical-short-O shift). The diphthong in "house" has [au] -- and no not [aw] or [aʊ], a [u] (with some diacritics on it!). The diphthong in "why" has [ai] -- and not [aj] or [aɪ].

Please sign your comments by typing four tildes (thus: ~~~~). Better yet, please sign up for a user name, especially since you seem to have a dynamic IP. It makes communicating with you much easier! It's free and does not require vouchsafing any personal information (though you may give your e-mail address if you wish -- but no one will see it). —Angr 13:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

To clear up some of the comments regarding Peterson & Barney: (1) the word with /ɔ/ was in fact hawed and the word with /ɑ/ was hod, (2) the speakers in the study were "33 men, 28 women and 15 children.... Two of the speakers were born outside the United States and a few others spoke a foreign language before learning English. Most of the women and children grew up in the Middle Atlantic speech area. The male speakers represented a much broader regional sampling of the United States; the majority of them spoke General American" – ishwar  (speak) 09:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Singing voices—worth noting?

Does anyone think it's worth noting that mostly all Caucasian people when using a singing voices adhere to the General American accent? Even those with British/Canadian English backgrounds? The fact that many Brits sing in an "American accent" when singing–IMO–is evidence that the GenAmE is really the neutrally spoken English language. Any comments on this?— OLP 1999 13:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, unless there are published sourced that can be cited, it's original research. It's also contrary to my experience, which is that American singers (in certain styles of course) use RP when singing -- certainly r-dropping is very common in singing. Angr 14:34, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

R-dropping is the norm in singing because it sounds terrible to sing "errrrrrr". Dark L is also avoided, but in America, choirs use American vowels otherwise. In England they use RP usually. Pop music strongly favors American vowels (still avoiding R and L).LiuLanDi 10:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What about punk? Greenday have a definite Estuary English sound to my ear -- Chris Q 12:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the whole point of punk to be against the norm?LiuLanDi 08:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed this awesome phenomenon, too. Then suddenly, in an interview, the singer spiiks veri kut English. EDIT: The "neutral accent" theory seems to make sense: the United States is a miniature version of the world mashed and mushed and chewed into one piece. --84.249.253.201 19:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Diphthongs

The following is taken from Angr's talk page:

And about diphthongs, the same basic argument holds: the symbols /aɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ/ are simply those that are most widely used in IPA transcriptions (Kenyon & Knott, Ladefoged, J.C. Wells, etc.). Using other transcriptions like /ɑi/ or whatever just because you think they're more accurate verges on original research when it contradicts common usage. —Angr 13:12, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't have any books on hand by Ladefoged or Wells, but Kenyon & Knott didn't use IPA (at least if you're talking about their Pronouncing Dictionary). They devised their own system, known commonly as "KK". When they wrote their dictionary (in the 50s, if I recall correctly) IPA wasn't so widespread.

I'm going to be referring to the vowels on the IPA chart, so open a copy and look at the vowel quadrangle. The sound /a/ is a front vowel, very close to /æ/. It is very close to the vowel sound in "hat". In the GenAm diphthong chart, /aɪ/ is listed. There really needs to be at least one example word for each diphthong. I'm guessing it's supposed to be the vowel in the word "high". If so, then that would mean [haɪ] is very close to [hæɪ]. And that would mean that the first two phonemes in "high" are the same as the first two phonemes in "hat". I'm an American who speaks ABE (being quite aware that ABE is not so well defined). I was born and raised in the Midwest, and have lived in other parts of the country, being able to aurally compare my accent with people in those places. I lived in the US from birth until age 35 and I've never once heard someone pronounce the "long i" sound as /aɪ/. Furthermore, Americans don't stop the upward glide early at ɪ like they do in RP, they go further toward /i/. The other diphthongs in the chart are screwed up as well. If you are going to make a claim that they are "standard" or "widespread", then you need to provide some more references. Not just names, but sources. Even secondary or tertiary sources. Preferably electronic ones. Wikipedia has a preference for electronic sources. I might be able to find Wells' Longman dictionary here in China, but journal articles are not so easy.

By the way, did you insert that chart in the GenAm article, or was it someone else?LiuLanDi 02:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

K&K use IPA with some very minor deviations. They're actually closer to IPA now than they were at the time since they use [ɪ] for the KIT vowel at a time when IPA was still using [ɩ], and their [U] for the FOOT vowel is very similar to current IPA [ʊ] but rather different from then-IPA [ɷ]. The other deviations are listed at Kenyon and Knott; as you see, there aren't many. They're certainly close enough to count as an IPA transcription of American English. As for the quality of /a/, what's shown on the IPA chart is the position of the cardinal vowel. That doesn't mean that the symbol /a/ can't be used for other sounds in the neighborhood. In fact, /a/ is used in all but the most narrow transcriptions for vowels ranging anywhere from cardinal /a/ to a central vowel just below /ɐ/. The same is true for the other vowel symbols: they all have only approximate values in broad transcription. The German word Vlies and the English word fleece are both reasonably transliterated /fliːs/, but that doesn't mean they sound identical. The German vowel is closer and fronter than the English vowel, while still not being as close or as front as cardinal /i/. Does that mean the transcription /fliːs/ is wrong for both German and English, just because the vowel isn't actually cardinal /i/? Of course not. And the same holds for /aɪ/ and the other diphthongs. Using that transcription does not imply that the diphthong actually moves from the position of cardinal /a/ to the exact position of /ɪ/ on the vowel chart. And if we were providing a narrow transcription, maybe we would prefer to transcribe high as [hɑ̈i̞] or the like, but we're providing a broad transcription. In a broad transcription, any combination of /a/ or /ɑ/ followed by /ɪ/, /i/, or /j/ would adequately represent the PRICE vowel, so which one do we pick? Well, the one that's used by most published sources. Wells's phonetic symbols for English are here. Granted, it's RP, but his transcriptions of GenAm diphthongs are the same (except for /əʊ/, for which he uses /oʊ/ for GenAm). For the other authors, I don't know if I can find online examples of their usage, but I would be happy to scan pages from the books and e-mail you the JPGs to show it. —Angr 08:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The KK link you gave says nothing about diphthongs. They are listed in both of Crystal's encyclopedias, which I have at home but I won't be there until Saturday, so I can't tell you exactly right now. I don't remember them being as "off" as the vowels in the chart.

Who put the chart in? You didn't answer that. Do you know?

I'm not concerned with narrow transcriptions. The /a/ as you say describes any vowel in the vicinity of the cardinal vowel described, and the central vowel below /ɐ/. But the PRICE vowel starts in the back. "Ha" and "high" start with the same sound (in broad terms). Don't you say them that way?

You really think "Vlies" and "fleece" have a long vowel? Just curious.

If Wells' vowels for GA are the same (except the one you noted) as what he uses for RP, then we've got a major problem right there for explaining how "General American" sounds. If it sounds the same as RP, then WTF? The whole point should be to show the differences.

Anything you email me I would be very grateful for. I have a Google mail account, and my user name is strange guitars (no space).LiuLanDi 14:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I probably put the chart in; you can browse the page history and see for sure. I don't really remember off hand, but it's the sort of thing I would do. For me, "high" starts considerably further forward than "ha" does, and "how" starts even further forward than that. In a narrow transcription, I'd probably use [ɑ] for my "ha" vowel, [ɑ̈] or even [ɐ̞] for the starting point of my "high" vowel, and [ä] for the starting point of my "how" vowel. But in a broad transcription I'd certainly use /a/ for the starting points of both diphthongs, and maybe even for "ha", since /a/ and /ɑ/ don't contrast in English. German "Vlies" and the RP pronunciation of "fleece" definitely have (phonologically) long vowels, though in English the voiceless consonant keeps the vowel from being as long as that of "fleas". I don't believe GenAm has phonological vowel length (though the vowel of "peace" is still longer than the vowel of "piss"), but my point was about the quality of the vowels, not the length. Both the German vowel and the English vowel can reasonably be represented by /i/, but they don't have the exact same quality as each other, and neither is the cardinal /i/. Not all Wells' GenAm vowels are the same as his RP vowels, but the diphthongs /aɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ, eɪ/ are the same. The other vowels that are the same in his transcription of GenAm and RP are /ɪ, æ, ʌ, ʊ, iː, uː, ə, i, u/ and the nonrhotic versions of /ɑː/ and /ɔː/. I don't agree with his use of the length mark in transcribing GenAm -- especially not in LOT words (it really grates my nerves to see GenAm pot transcribed as homophonous with RP part) -- but his use of /aɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ/ doesn't bother me at all, especially since he's far from the only person to transcribe them that way. —Angr 14:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you say "high" and "hot" with the same vowel? "Ha" is an expression word and those have the greatest amount of variation in ideolects, in my ears, so that was a bad choice on my part.

How can you say /a/ and /ɑ/ don't contrast? There is no single vowel /a/ in English, but there is certainly a difference between the starting vowel in "cow" and the vowel in "hot".

What do you mean by "phonologically long" vowels? Do you mean that the duration is longer?

I think if I say "peace out" and "piss off" that the "peace" "piss" vowels have the same duration, but not the same quality.

I can't really agree with the idea that a broad transcription means that you should use IPA representations of the vowels in exactly the same way as "most" people do. That would defeat the whole purpose of using IPA to show contrasts and similarities in accents. It's my understanding that IPA was developed primarily for that reason.

If all that's out there about something is too new to be contested, then maybe it's better to just have the established (not only documented, but also relatively accepted) stuff. It's well-established that a significant number of people believe in the existence of GA, and that GA is not well defined. If the phonological differences haven't been well described and reasonably accepted, then should a description of the accent's phonology even be here? LiuLanDi 16:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Just another quick comment here without fullfilling my thread-reading duty: standard American has lost the historical Germanic "phonemic vowel length". In standard German the A in "vater" has about twice the duration of the A in "fasst", in British the A in "father" has about 1.5 times the duration of the A in "fast", in American the A in "father" has about the same duration as the A in "fast".

(This refers to words in a stressed phrase position BTW.)

Standard American likewise contracts the duration of diphthongs -- though I'm not sure if it's to a fully one-mora length like long vowels -- and if you want to be detail-oriented you could indicated that with IPA "short" signs after each of the two vowels in each diphthong, though I've never seen that done.

Getting obscure, there are "non-phonemic" vowel duration distinctions in some contexts, before voiced consonants if I remember correctly, and of course when you're shocked and outraged. Whaaaaaaaat???!!! But that is definitely way beyond a phonology chart.

IPA for bane and bone

(copied from the language reference desk) According to the articles Help:IPA for English and General American, the vowels in "bayed" and "bode" are transcribed as e and o, but may sometimes be rendered as /ei/ and /oʊ/, because they are pronounced as diphthongs by "many" speakers of general American. Now, I am absolutely unable to imagine any speaker of General American who doesn't pronounce them as these diphthongs. Thoughts? --194.145.161.227 18:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Have you met them all? There are quite a few. When describing accent, it's usually best to "never say never" since, no one has ever studied the language of every speaker unless there are only a handful of speakers. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

We're talking about general American, which would be what CNN newscasters usually speak - not some obscure dialects. If you can imagine a pronunciation of "bayed" and "bode" which is both non-diphthongal and can be described as "general American", then ... well, then you can imagine more than I can. My guess is that this is just some US transcription convention which doesn't even pretend to express phonetic reality - the phonetic reality being that these vowels are always diphthongal. --194.145.161.227 02:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you on this one. The article may be a bit weak on the words because it doesn't have references to back up such statements. Then again, native speakers of diphthong heavy languages often argue that they don't exist as diphthongs in fast speech, so there might be references supporting the opposite.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  12:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that I suspect that the wording in the article is very misleading for the reader (implying that these vowels are frequently, even normally monophthongal) without clear support in literature. Th' prunseaysh'n in fa:s speech isn' normly regardd 's th' "real" un. Anyway, I think this should be researched and fixed (I don't have an English book about phonetics at home right now, so I prefer somebody else to do it :)).

Yeah, I know you mean GA and I still stand by my above statement. There are many speakers of General American and there just happens to be idiolectal variation among speakers. Although I sometimes question the analysis of always-diphthongal [eɪ]. It's just as easy to imagine that there is one /e/ and is more open when a monophthong and more close when part of a rising diphthong. Phonemic and underlying representations can get pretty scary. I once read an analysis of French that stated that there were no underlying front vowels. I also hear that Chomsky and Halle (in Sound Pattern of English) analyze English /ɔɪ/ as an underlying |ø| .Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 14:06, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, innovative phonological analyses of what is "underlying" can be very weird; I prefer to discuss the phonetic side of it. But I'm not sure I understood your questioning of the "always-diphthongal [eɪ]" Aren't you talking about a diphthong, too? --194.145.161.227 15:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm saying that in speakers/dialects in which it is always a diphthong, I see three plausible underlying representations:

1. two vowels: |e| → [eɪ] and |ɛ| → [ɛ]
2. two vowels: |ej| → [eɪ] and |ɛ| → [ɛ]
3. one vowel, raised before /j/: |ɛj| → [eɪ]

To a certain extent, what you choose for the underlying representation is sort of arbitrary, but I think it ought to make sense. Otherwise, you could do something like this |☺| → [eɪ]. |♥| → [ɛ]. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. In other words, it's a matter of taste; you simply like e, it kind of appeals to your aesthetic sense. That's fine with me. --194.145.161.227 17:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not that I like e, that is what is apparantly used in the scholarship. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's obviously used in American scholarship (note that the British transcription of IP is quite different, even though RP itself is hardly very different phonetically in these respects, but this can be interpreted in different ways:

1.It can be just a traditional notation in American scholarship (as I suspect).

2.It could supposed to reflect an underlying form rather than the actual phonetic realization (as you suggest)

3.It could actually be supposed to mean that either the dominant pronunciation is non-diphthongal (as some wordings in the article currently imply).

Your interpretation is based on your opinion that an underlying analysis of that sort is plausible, although it's not rationally clear what is so plausible about it - hence my comment about aesthetic taste. In any case, that ought to be checked. --194.145.161.227 21:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Then check them. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Copied from the language reference desk:

I'm not sure what needs to be checked. Roca & Johnson state that the vowel in late is "diphthongized usually in GA, and generally in RP... where it is also a little lower..." (p179).Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, even that is a sufficient basis for changing the wording in the article. This seems to confirm that they believe that non-diphthongal realizations do occur, albeit more rarely. Yet - I would be interested to know how they describe the vowel phonetically, before stating that it is "usually diphthongized"? --194.145.161.227 01:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Roca & Johnson are both British and work in Britain. I'd rather see what an American phonetician (or at least a British phonetician who spent most of his professional life in America, like Ladefoged) has to say. British phoneticians are famous for making generalizations about American English that they would like to be true, rather than ones that are actually true. —Angr 14:18, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Responded at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 November 11 —Angr 07:43, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Likewise. I'm going to have to leave this discussion now, though. Real life is calling. --194.145.161.227 14:40, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Vowel of strut

I noticed the little edit conflict regarding GA /ʌ/. I've changed the table back to the way it was earlier. In General American, that vowel is pretty much back (although a little bit fronted). There are American dialects in which it is a more central vowel but GA is not one of them. My source is the same source that I put in the vowel's article. I hope this puts the dispute to rest. Thank you. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

"General American" Doesn't Really Exist and Is Not "Standard" American

Dictionary-standard American pronunciation originates with the Mid-Atlantic dialect on the East Coast. The concept of "General American" is an entirely flawed blurring of distinct Northern dialect groups -- the description of it (especially in British hands) often includes the entire Northern tier of the US.

Today's standard American is the mother dialect of (roughly) the non-urban middle classes of the Northeast, and urban/suburban middle and upper classes of the West Coast -- not the Midwestern farm country.

The Midwestern farm belt shown on the map does speak a Northern dialect that is very close to that of the coasts -- and in pronunciation is only distinguishable from it at the sub-cardinal vowel (allophonic-like) level. No way a British native, for example, can pick up Johnny Carson's "country" quality.

Now to prove that this Midwestern speech form is not the actual "standard" we have only to stop talking about "accent" and look at dialects in toto. It is the Northeast and West Coast that originated, and use "standard", nationalized, media-adopted, vocabulary and phraseology, like "soda" -- while the area on the map uses "localisms" like "pop".

In fact as a child on a car trip from the East to West coasts, I had a very long and confused conversation in Nebraska trying to get a "soda" -- and although the two speakers in this linguistic study could understand each other's accents perfectly, they had 0% inter-dialectical comprehensibility. One of them was speaking the "standard American dialect" and it wasn't the Midwesterner.

(Don't tell the Sumner Institute of Linguistics about this or we'll have a new language code for "Nebraskan".)

Some media personalities -- particularly the newscasters mentioned -- do have (or adopt) this Midwestern quality -- but to appeal to the broad American audience and seem "down to earth".

(Tom Brokaw, incidentally, speaks with a famously individual accent that sounds like a speech defect!)

The methodology of "what sounds least accented" to a cross-section of the American population is utterly flawed -- in a knowledge vacuum this would produce a median accent, and with people aware of the notion of "standard" speech it produces a variant of the actual standard which is as close to their own speech as possible: that is, someone from Nebraska is speaking something close enough to the standard as to be identified with it, and someone from Oklahoma thinks someone from Nebraska sounds a whole lot better than some elitist from the coasts.

Nonetheless -- there are a bunch of linguists out there who do advance the idea of "General American", in forms something like the description presented in this article. So what I am arguing for in my treatise here is only that "General American" should be presented as one model, with criticism, and not fact. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.7.2.60 (talk • contribs) 13:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Keep in mind that any additions have to be backed up with published sources and that original research isn't allowed at Wikipedia, but otherwise go for it! —Angr 13:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

---

But leaving aside the existential validity of "General American" itself, this article is bizarre in its presentation of "General American" as a localized Midwestern phenomenon.

I have never seen "General American" described as anything other than a giant swath across North America, including often Canadian English. It's basically the entire Northern dialect range, minus immigrant dialects in Northeastern cities, a few puddles of New England dialect, and the new, radical, "Northern Cities" (so called, "Great Lakes Cities" more clearly) vowel shift.

The article is confused from start to finish. It describes settlers moving from the Northeast to the Midwest. It fails to mention that some people stayed in the Northeast, and that some of those settlers also went on to Oregon.

The lengthy information on the perceived "least accented" speech in the article seems to be the basis of defining GA in such a limited and specific area of the Midwest -- and here my point on perception is absolutely germane. A similar study found that people in Great Britain, on average, think a Lancashire accent sounds "least accented" and is most acceptable for call centers. So the entire concept of "least accented" should be removed from the article as it is distorting the principal of what "General American", as standardly described, is. The layman's subjective perception of accent is a distinct subject from the linguist's objective definition of dialect, which is what this article should be about.

Here's the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:

"General American noun (in nontechnical use) the variety of English spoken in the greater part of the U.S., particularly with reference to the lack of regional characteristics."

Which brings us back to the existential validity of "General American" --

"in nontechnical use" --

because it is a dated and sub-professional concept.

And to rest my case, from Encyclopedia Britanica:

http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-74800

"The chief differences between British Received Pronunciation, as defined above, and a variety of American English, such as Inland Northern (the speech form of western New England and its derivatives, often popularly referred to as General American), are in the pronunciation of certain individual vowels and diphthongs."

This article should be a brief description of the semi-scientific/popular concept called General American, with no phonological chart as that is elevating it inappropriately to a serious linguistic level, and should direct readers to the American English article. Any other articles referencing "General American" --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/General_American

as meaning standard American English should also be edited to point to the American English article.

Which I'll be getting around to tearing apart, time permitting.

I can't speak for the entire article, but in the parts I added, including the map, I tried very hard to make it clear that I am not claiming General American is unique to the Midwest, or originated in the Midwest and spread from there. Rather, what Labov et al.'s research showed is that the local accent of the area highlighted on the map is free of a wide range of pronunciations that are otherwise regionally restricted -- i.e., this area has no typically Southern features like /ay/ monophthongization, no Northern Cities Vowel Shift, no fronting of /u/ and /o/ as typical of the West, etc. etc., and therefore this regional accent comes closest to being "General American" in the sense of an accent free of regionalisms. —Angr 19:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

The call to merge General American with American English is just rediculous. GA has been studied by numerous linguists. I'm not aware of any criticism of their analysis and even if there were, it's a unique enough topic that they should remain separate. I think that referring to GA as a standard that parallels RP shows a cultural difference between the two countries. Americans value the accent least marked for region while the British value the speech of the educated. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction

The lead section of this article says GA originated in the Mid-Atlantic, but other sections (like the first one) say it originated in the Midwest. Which is right? CapitalSasha ~ talk 23:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know of any research that's been done into the question of where General American originated. Both statements are probably original research. —Angr 20:28, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

This is ridiculous

Standard American English is spoken in California and the west coast only. Midwestern accents are completely different and easily as garbled and awful-sounding as southern or southwestern accents. I don't know where this comes from, possibly from listening to midwestern radio and hearing the californian radio broadcasting graduates who had to move to small towns. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.122.208.51 (talk) 20:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC).

I do believe Western English is taking over as a standard. The midwestern dialect is the traditional standard. The Jade Knight 10:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Many of the people in TV and radio in the old days moved to the east or west coast from the middle of the country. In particular the people who moved to California during the dust bowl. --Gbleem 19:55, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Standard American English

I was looking for information on the standard written form of the language, which is entirely ignored here. The Jade Knight 10:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Standard Written English --Gbleem 19:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)