2. Major accent types: British and American

We will compare RP (BBC English) with GA (American Network English). The difference in cultural norms across the two na­tions is also reflected in the status of the pronunciation models: RP is a social prestige accent spoken by a tiny minority of the population, esti­mated at 3-5% only, while the proportion of GA speakers in the U.S.A. is much higher, estimated at 33% of the population.

Generally speaking, the main defining feature of British-oriented ac­cents is the absence of post-vocalic r which makes them all non-rhotic compared to North-America-oriented accents which are predomi­nantly rhotic. However, within each country there are regionally marked accents: the Scottish, the Irish and some other provincial accents on the British Isles are rhotic; in the U.S.A. the Southern, the Eastern and Afro-American types of English accents are non-rhotic. These distinctive features become social markers. In the States they describe Bostonians as pronouncing the phrase with a long a but without r. The cah was pahked in Hahvahd уahd.

Most of the distinctions are found in the system of vowels which was affected by the preservation of /r/ in GA (as is known from history, in South­ern British English it was vocalised).

Vowels

1. There are 20 vowels in the system of RP and 15-16 vowels in GA: because /r/ was not vocalised, GA lacks diphthongs ending in /ә/ , such as /iә/ or /juә/ in here or pure. In GA the corresponding sounds are pronounced as /ir/, /jur/. Actually, in GA all vowels oc­curring before r within a syllable are likely to become “r-coloured" (retroflexed) to some extent:

RP here [hiә], hair [heә], pure [pjuә]; GA here [hir], hair [her], pure [pjur];

2. American English lacks the short vowel /o/, it is replaced by a vowel /a:/ which is similar to rp vowel in father:

RP lock [lok], dog [dog], stop [stop];

GA lock |la:k], dog [da:g], stop [sta:p].

3. The rp vowel /o/ can also be replaced by a long vowel /o:/:

RP long [loη], forest [forist], sorry [sori]

GA long [lo:η], forest [fo:rist], sorry [so:ri]

4. As GA is not as strictly codified as RP, there is considerable variability in GA vowels in the open back area. Fewer and fewer Americans distinguish the vowel of lot [la:t] from that thought [o:]. This feature is called cot/caught merger and is most spread in the West (70% of the lexicon). (according to The phonological Atlas of North America, completed by William Labov at the University of Pennsylvania).

5. American linguists do not use the terms long and short vowels. Experimental data showed that in reading pairs of words with contrasting historically long (tense) and historical­ly short (lax) vowels RP speakers demonstrated, on the average, the ratio of 1.5:1, while with GA speakers the ratio is only 1.2:1. In certain contexts the contrast disappeared altogether.

6. The American /ae/ vowel is somewhat closer than the RP /ae/ so the phrase Merry Mary married sounds as if all the accented vowels are identical. Besides, in GA /ae/ is used not only in the same words as in RP but also in many words in which RP has /a:/,

e.g. RP dance [da:ns], ask [a:sk], pass [pa:s];

GA dance [daens], ask [aesk], pass [paes].

In phonology it is called a difference in distribution of the phoneme.

The diphthong [әu] is more rounded in GA:

RP go [gәu], home [hәum];

GA go [gou], home [houm]