V. American-Based Pronunciation Standards of English. American English Outline

5.1. The Problem of the American Pronunciation Standard

5.2. The Principal Features of the American Pronunciation Standard

5.1. The Problem of the American Pronunciation Standard

Generally speaking, the situation in the USA may be characterized as exoglossic, i.e. having several languages on the same territory, the balance being in favour of American English.

It is true, of course, that the formation of the American Standard underwent the influence of minorities' languages, but its starting point was the English language of the early 17th century. However, time has passed, American English has drifted considerably from English English though as yet not enough to give us ground to speak of two different languages. Thus we speak of the national variant of English in America.

American English shows a lesser degree of dialect than British English due to some historical factors: the existence of Standard English when first English settlers came to America, the high mobility of population, internal migrations of different communities and so on. As regards pronunciation, however, it is not at all homogeneous. There are certain varieties of educated American speech. In the USA three main types of cultivated speech are recognized: the Eastern type, the Southern type and Western or General American.

1. The Eastern type is spoken in New England, and in New York City. It bears a remarkable resemblance to Southern English, though there are, of course, some slight differences.

2. The Southern type is used in the South and South-East of the USA. This type includes Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Lousiana, Texas ans parts of Maryland, West Virginia ans Oklahoma.It possesses a striking distinctive feature – vowel drawl, which is a specific way of pronouncing vowels, consisting in the diphthongization and even triphthongization of some pure vowels and monophthongization of some diphthongs at the expense of prolonging ("drawling") their nuclei and dropping the glides.

3. The third type of educated American speech is General American (GA), also known as Northern American or Western American spoken in the central Atlantic States: New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin and others. GA pronunciation is known to be the pronunciation standard of the USA. There are some reasons for it. GA is the form of speech used by the radio and television. It is mostly used in scientific, cultural and business intercourse. Also in two important business centres – New York and St. Louis – GA is the prevailing form of speech and pronunciation, though New York is situated within the territory where Eastern American is spoken, and St. Louis is within the region of Southern American.

There are more basic reasons for considering General American pronunciation the pronunciation standard of the United States. To begin with, the three dialects of America are not equal in importance. It may be said with certainty that the pronunciation of the Southern States of the United States, for example, is not the pronunciation standard of American English. The Southern American pronunciation is peculiar to that part of the country only and has not spread north, a "southern accent" is detected at once as characteristic of a locality and is therefore non-standard. Strictly speaking, there may be a question as to the priority of General American over "Eastern American English. But it is an established fact that most of the typical American peculiarities of pronunciation are characteristic of both General American and of Eastern American pronunciation. Eastern American has only a few features which are not to be met with in General American.

The facts given above prove that General American pronunciation is the pronunciation standard of American English. The peculiarities of General American will therefore be described in this lecture as representing the “norm”.