American English

American English (AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US),[a] sometimes called United States
American English
English or U.S. English,[5][6] is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United
States.[7] English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances Region United States
is the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce. Currently, American Native speakers 225 million, all
English is the most influential form of English worldwide.[8][9][10][11][12][13] varieties of English
in the United
American English varieties include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and States (2010
particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around the census)[1]
world.[14] Any American or Canadian accent perceived as without noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural 25.6 million L2
markers is popularly called "General" or "Standard" American, a fairly uniform accent continuum speakers of
native to certain regions of the U.S. and associated nationally with broadcast mass media and highly English in the
educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of United States
there being one single "mainstream" American accent.[15][16] The sound of American English (2003)
continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having Language family Indo-European
emerged in the 20th century.[17] Germanic
West
Germanic
Contents Ingvaeonic

History Anglo–
Frisian
Phonology
English
Conservative phonology
Innovative phonology North
American
Vocabulary English

Differences between American and British English American

English
Varieties
Regional accents Early forms Old English
General American Middle English
Other varieties 17th century
See also Modern
English
Notes Writing system Latin (English
References alphabet)
Unified English
Bibliography
Braille[2]
Further reading Official status
External links Official language in United States
(32 US states, 5
non-state US
History territories) (see
article)
The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas. The first Language codes
wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed –
ISO 639-3
by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from
many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing a Glottolog None
process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies IETF en-US[3][4]
became more homogeneous compared with the still distinct regional varieties in Britain.[18][19]
English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and
Africa, and firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English became common after the mid-18th century.[20] Since then, American
English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that, in some cases, show minor influences in the last two centuries from
successive waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages,[21] primarily European languages.[10]

Phonology
Compared with English as spoken in the United Kingdom, North American English[22] is more homogeneous and any phonologically unremarkable
North American accent is known as "General American". This section mostly refers to such General American features.

Conservative phonology
Studies on historical usage of English in both the United States and the United Kingdom suggest that spoken American English did not simply
deviate away from period British English, but is conservative in some ways, preserving certain features contemporary British English has since
lost.[23]

Full rhoticity (or R-fulness) is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme /r/ (corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩) in all environments,
including after vowels, such as in pearl, car, and court.[24][25] Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce ⟨r⟩ except before a vowel,
such as some Eastern New England, New York, a specific few (often older) Southern, and African American vernacular accents, are often quickly
noticed by General American listeners and perceived to sound especially ethnic, regional, or "old-fashioned".[24][26][27]

Rhoticity is common in most American accents, although it is now rare in England, because during the 17th-century British colonization nearly all
dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way.[28] The preservation of rhoticity in North America was
also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during the
following two centuries) when the Scotch-Irish eventually made up one seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from
Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North and throughout the West;
American dialect areas that consistently resisted upper-class non-rhotic influences and that consequently remain rhotic today.[29] The pronunciation
of ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠] ( listen) or retroflex approximant [ɻ] ( listen),[30] but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant
r sound is also associated with the United States and perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South.[31]

American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT ) have instead retained a LOT –CLOTH split: a
17th-century split in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in
most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into a merger with the THOUGHT (caught) set. Having taken place prior
to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the THOUGHT
vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/, /θ/, and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few
instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong), and variably by region or speaker in gone, on, and certain other words.[32]

The standard accent of southern England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved in other ways compared to General American, which has
remained relatively more conservative. Examples include the modern RP features of a trap–bath split and the fronting of /oʊ/, neither of which is
typical of General American accents. Moreover, American dialects do not participate in H-dropping, an innovative feature that now characterizes
perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England.

Innovative phonology

However, General American is more innovative than the dialects of England or elsewhere in the world in a number of its own ways:

Unrounded LOT : The American phenomenon of the LOT vowel (often spelled ⟨o⟩ in words like box, don, clock, notch, pot, etc.)
being produced without rounded lips, like the PALM vowel, allows father and bother to rhyme, the two vowels now unified as the
single phoneme /ɑ/. The father–bother vowel merger is in a transitional or completed stage in nearly all in North American
English. Exceptions are in northeastern New England English, such as the Boston accent, as well as variably in some New York
accents.[33][34]
Cot–caught merger in transition: There is no single American way to pronounce the vowels in words like cot /ɑ/ (the ah vowel)
versus caught /ɔ/ (the aw vowel), largely because of a merger occurring between the two sounds in some parts of North America,
but not others. American speakers with a completed merger pronounce the two historically-separate vowels with the same sound
(especially in the West, northern New England, West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and the Upper Midwest), but other speakers
have no trace of a merger at all (especially in the South, the Great Lakes region, southern New England, and the Mid-Atlantic and
New York metropolitan areas) and so pronounce each vowel with distinct sounds ( listen).[35] Among speakers who distinguish
between the two, the vowel of cot (usually transcribed in American English as /ɑ/), is often a central [ɑ̈] ( listen) or advanced back
[ɑ̟], while /ɔ/ is pronounced with more rounded lips and/or phonetically higher in the mouth, close to [ɒ] ( listen) or [ɔ] ( listen), but
with only slight rounding.[36] Among speakers who do not distinguish between them, thus producing a cot–caught merger, /ɑ/
usually remains a back vowel, [ɑ], sometimes showing lip rounding as [ɒ]. Therefore, even mainstream Americans vary greatly
with this speech feature, with possibilities ranging from a full merger to no merger at all. A transitional stage of the merger is also
common in scatterings throughout the United States, most consistently in the American Midlands lying between the historical
dialect regions of the North and the South, while younger Americans in general tend to be transitioning toward the merger.
According to a 2003 dialect survey carried out across the United States, about 61% of participants perceive themselves as
keeping the two vowels distinct and 39% do not.[37] A 2009 followup survey put the percentages at 58% non-merging speakers
and 41% merging.[38]
STRUT in special words: The STRUT vowel, rather than the one in LOT or THOUGHT (as in Britain), is used in function words and
certain other words like was, of, from, what, everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody, and, for many speakers because and rarely
even want, when stressed.[39][40][41][42]
Vowel mergers before intervocalic /r/: The mergers of certain vowels before /r/ are typical throughout North America, the only
exceptions existing primarily along the East Coast:
Mary–marry–merry merger in transition: According to the 2003 dialect survey, nearly 57% of participants from around the
country self-identified as merging the sounds /ær/ (as in the first syllable of parish), /ɛr/ (as in the first syllable of perish), and /
ɛər/ (as in pear or pair).[43] The merger is already complete everywhere except along some areas of the Atlantic Coast.[44]
Hurry–furry merger: The pre-/r/ vowels in words like hurry /ʌ/ and furry /ɜ/ are merged in most American accents to [ə~ɚ]. Only
10% of American English speakers acknowledge the distinct hurry vowel before /r/, according to the same dialect survey
aforementioned.[45]
Mirror–nearer merger in transition: The pre-/r/ vowels in words like mirror /ɪ/ and nearer /i/ are merged or very similar in most
American accents. The quality of the historic mirror vowel in the word miracle is quite variable.[46]
Americans vary slightly in their pronunciations of R-colored vowels such as those in /ɛər/ and /ɪər/, which sometimes
monophthongizes towards [ɛɹ] and [ɪɹ] or tensing towards [eɪɹ] and [i(ə)ɹ] respectively. That causes pronunciations like [pʰeɪɹ] for
pair/pear and [pʰiəɹ] for peer/pier.[47] Also, /jʊər/ is often reduced to [jɚ], so that cure, pure, and mature may all end with the sound
[ɚ], thus rhyming with blur and sir. The word sure is also part of the rhyming set as it is commonly pronounced [ʃɚ].
Yod-dropping: Dropping of /j/ after a consonant is much more extensive than in most of England. In most North American accents,
/j/ is "dropped" or "deleted" after all alveolar and interdental consonants (everywhere except after /p/, /b/, /f/, /h/, /k/, and /m/) and
so new, duke, Tuesday, assume are pronounced [nu], [duk], [ˈtʰuzdeɪ], [əˈsum] (compare with Standard British /nju/, /djuk/, /
ˈtjuzdeɪ/, /əˈsjum/).[48]

T-glottalization: /t/ is normally pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ] when both after a vowel or a liquid and before a syllabic [n̩] or any
non-syllabic consonant, as in button [ˈbʌʔn̩] ( listen) or fruitcake [ˈfɹuʔkʰeɪk] ( listen). In absolute final position after a vowel or
liquid, /t/ is also replaced by, or simultaneously articulated with, glottal constriction:[49] thus, what [wʌʔ] or fruit [fɹuʔ]. (This
innovation of /t/ glottal stopping may occur in British English as well and variably between vowels.)
Flapping: /t/ or /d/ becomes a flap [ɾ] ( listen) both after a vowel or /r/ and before an unstressed vowel or a syllabic consonant
other than [n̩], including water [ˈwɔɾɚ] ( listen), party [ˈpʰɑɹɾi] and model [ˈmɑɾɫ̩]. This results in pairs such as ladder/latter,
metal/medal, and coating/coding being pronounced the same. Flapping of /t/ or /d/ before a full stressed vowel is also possible but
only if that vowel begins a new word or morpheme, as in what is it? [wʌɾˈɪzɨʔ] and twice in not at all [nɑɾəɾˈɔɫ]. Other rules apply
to flapping to such a complex degree in fact that flapping has been analyzed as being required in certain contexts, prohibited in
others, and optional in still others.[50] For instance, flapping is prohibited in words like seduce [sɨˈdus], retail [ˈɹitʰeɪɫ], and
monotone [ˈmɑnɨtʰoʊn], yet optional in impotence [ˈɪmpɨɾɨns, ˈɪmpɨtʰɨns].
Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may commonly be realized as [ɾ̃] (a nasalized alveolar flap) (flapping) or simply [n], making winter
and winner homophones in fast or informal speech.
L-velarization: England's typical distinction between a "clear L" (i.e. [l] ( listen)) and a "dark L" (i.e. [ɫ] ( listen)) is much less
noticeable in nearly all dialects of American English; it is often altogether absent,[51] with all "L" sounds tending to be "dark,"
meaning having some degree of velarization,[52] perhaps even as dark as [ʟ] ( listen) (though in initial position, perhaps less dark
than elsewhere among some speakers).[53] The only notable exceptions to this velarization are in some Spanish-influenced
American English varieties (such as East Coast Latino English, which typically shows a clear "L" in syllable onsets) and in older,
moribund Southern speech, where "L" is clear in an intervocalic environment between front vowels.[54]
Weak vowel merger: The vowel /ɪ/ in unstressed syllables generally merges with /ə/ and so effect is pronounced like affect, and
abbot and rabbit rhyme. The quality of the merged vowels varies considerably but is typically closer to [ə] in word-initial or word-
final position, and closer to [ɪ~ɨ] elsewhere.[55]
Raising of pre-voiceless /aɪ/: Many speakers split the sound /aɪ/ based on whether it occurs before a voiceless consonant and so
in rider, it is pronounced [äɪ], but in writer, it is raised to [ʌɪ] (because [t] is a voiceless consonant while [d] is not). Thus, words like
bright, hike, price, wipe, etc. with a following voiceless consonant (such as /t, k, θ, s/) use a more raised vowel sound compared to
bride, high, prize, wide, etc. Because of this sound change, the words rider and writer ( listen), for instance, remain distinct from
one another by virtue of their difference in height (and length) of the diphthong's starting point (unrelated to both the letters d and t
being pronounced in these words as alveolar flaps [ɾ]). The sound-change also applies across word boundaries, though the
position of a word or phrase's stress may prevent the raising from taking place. For instance, a high school in the sense of
"secondary school" is generally pronounced [ˈhɐɪskuɫ]; however, a high school in the literal sense of "a tall school" would be
pronounced [ˌhaɪˈskuɫ]. The sound change began in the Northern, New England, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the country,[56] and
is becoming more common across the nation.
Many speakers in the Inland North, Upper Midwestern, and Philadelphia dialect areas raise /aɪ/ before voiced consonants in
certain words as well, particularly [d], [g] and [n]. Hence, words like tiny, spider, cider, tiger, dinosaur, beside, idle (but sometimes
not idol), and fire may contain a raised nucleus. The use of [ʌɪ], rather than [aɪ], in such words is unpredictable from phonetic
environment alone, but it may have to do with their acoustic similarity to other words that with [ʌɪ] before a voiceless consonant,
per the traditional Canadian-raising system. Some researchers have argued that there has been a phonemic split in those
dialects, and the distribution of the two sounds is becoming more unpredictable among younger speakers.[57]
Conditioned /æ/ raising (especially before /n/ and /m/): The raising of the /æ/ or TRAP vowel occurs in specific environments that
vary widely from region to region but most commonly before /n/ and /m/. With most American speakers for whom the phoneme /æ/
operates under a somewhat-continuous system, /æ/ has both a tense and a lax allophone (with a kind of "continuum" of possible
sounds between both extremes, rather than a definitive split). In those accents, /æ/ is overall realized before nasal stops as more
tense (approximately [eə̯]), while other environments are more lax (approximately the standard [æ]); for example, note the vowel
sound in [mæs] for mass, but [meə̯n] for man). In the following audio clip, the first pronunciation is the tensed one for the word
camp, much more common in American English than the second ( listen).
In some American accents, however, specifically those from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, [æ] and [eə̯] are
indeed entirely-separate (or "split") phonemes, for example, in planet [pʰlænɨʔ] vs. plan it [pʰleənɨʔ]. They are called Mid-
Atlantic split-a systems. The vowels move in the opposite direction (high and forward) in the mouth compared to the backed
Standard British "broad a", but both a systems are probably related phonologically, if not phonetically, since a British-like
phenomenon occurs among some older speakers of the eastern New England (Boston) area for whom /æ/ changes to /a/
before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or when preceded by a homorganic nasal.
 /æ/ raising in North American English[58]

New York Baltimore, General Canada,

Great
Following Example
American,
Midland US, Southern Northern Minnesota,
City,[59] New Philadel-
Lakes

consonant words[59] New England, Pittsburgh US Mountain Wisconsin

Orleans[60] phia[59][61] US
Western US US
Non-prevocalic
fan, lamb, stand [ɛə][62][A][B]
/m, n/
[ɛə][62] [ɛə] [ɛə~ɛjə][65] [ɛə][66]
Prevocalic
animal, planet,
/m, n/ Spanish [æ]
/ŋ/[68] frank, language [ɛː~eɪ][69]
Non-prevocalic
bag, drag [ɛə][A] [ɛː~ɛj][66] [eː~ej][70]
/ɡ/
[ɛə][67][62]
Prevocalic /ɡ/ dragon, magazine [æ] [æ][C]
Non-prevocalic
grab, flash, sad [ɛə][A] [æ][68] [æ~æɛə][65]
/b, d, ʃ/ [æ][62]
Non-prevocalic ask, bath, half,
[ɛə][A] [æ][71] [ɛə][71]
/f, θ, s/ glass
as, back, happy,

Otherwise [æ][D]
locality

A. In New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, most function words (am, can, had, etc.) and some learned or less common words (alas, carafe, lad, etc.) have [æ].[63]

B. In Philadelphia, the irregular verbs began, ran, swam, and wan (a local variant of won) have [æ].[64]
C. In Philadelphia, bad, mad, and glad alone in this context have [ɛə].[63]

D. In New York City, certain lexical exceptions exist (like avenue being tense) and variability is common before /dʒ/ and /z/ as in imagine, magic, and jazz.[72]

In New Orleans, [ɛə] additionally occurs before /v/ and /z/.[73]

"Short o" before r before a vowel: In typical North American accents (both U.S. and Canada), the historical sequence /ɒr/ (a short
o sound followed by r and then another vowel, as in orange, forest, moral, and warrant) is realized as [oɹ~ɔɹ], thus further merging
with the already-merged /ɔr/–/oʊr/ (horse–hoarse) set. In the U.S., a small number of words (namely, tomorrow, sorry, sorrow,
borrow, and morrow) usually contain the sound [ɑɹ] instead and thus merge with the /ɑr/ set (thus, sorry and sari become
homophones, both rhyming with starry).[36]

General American /ɑr/ and /ɔr/ followed by a vowel, compared with other dialects
Metropolitan New
Received General
York, Mid-Atlantic,
Canada
Pronunciation American some Southern US,

some New England

Only borrow, sorrow,
/ɑːr/
sorry, (to)morrow
/ɒr/ /ɒr/ or /ɑːr/
Forest, Florida, historic,
/ɔːr/
moral, porridge, etc.
/ɔːr/
Forum, memorial, oral,
/ɔːr/ /ɔːr/
storage, story, etc.

Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include the following:

Horse–hoarse merger: This merger makes the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before /r/ homophones, with homophonous pairs like
horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, war/wore, etc. homophones. Many older varieties of American English still
keep the sets of words distinct, particularly in the extreme Northeast, the South (especially along the Gulf Coast), and the central
Midlands,[74] but the merger is evidently spreading and younger Americans rarely show the distinction.
Wine–whine merger: This produces pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. homophones, in most cases
eliminating /ʍ/, also transcribed /hw/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. However, scatterings of older speakers who do not merge
these pairs still exist nationwide, perhaps most strongly in the South.[74]

Vocabulary
The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora,
fauna, and topography from the Native American languages.[75] Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash, moose (from
Algonquian),[75] wigwam, and moccasin. The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, cookie,
from Dutch; kindergarten from German,[76] levee from French; and rodeo from Spanish.[77][78][79][80] Landscape features are often loanwords from
French or Spanish, and the word corn, used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in
the U.S.

Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style). Due to
Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of
coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are
found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms (lot, waterfront) and types of homes like log cabin, adobe in the 18th
century; apartment, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof (driveway,
breezeway, backyard). Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through
railroading (see further at rail terminology) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads (dirt roads, freeways) to infrastructure
(parking lot, overpass, rest area), to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally.[81] Already existing English words—
such as store, shop, lumber—underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in the U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and
democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States.[82] From the world of
business and finance came new terms (merger, downsize, bottom line), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common
everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball. The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North
America (elevator, gasoline) as did certain automotive terms (truck, trunk).

New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish (chutzpah, schmooze) and
German (hamburger, wiener).[83][84] A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their
American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7), while others have not (have a nice day, for sure);[85][86] many are now distinctly old-
fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze and jazz, originated as American
slang.

American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs.[87] Examples of
nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan,
estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation, major, and many others. Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance
foothill, landslide (in all senses), backdrop, teenager, brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound
words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and
station-wagon (called an estate car in England).[88] Some are euphemistic (human resources, affirmative action, correctional facility). Many
compound nouns have the verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover, and
many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin (win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many
others).[89]

Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive in the U.S.[87] Several verbs
ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize, etc.; and so are some back-formations (locate,
fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster and enthuse). Among syntactical constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of,
etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay and
kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through
(as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky.

A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United
States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall ("autumn"),
faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"; itself unused in the U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet, eyeglasses, and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms.
Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of
the year."[90] Gotten (past participle of get) is often considered to be largely an Americanism.[10][91] Other words and meanings were brought back
to Britain from the U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), I guess (famously criticized by H. W.
Fowler), baggage, hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket,
originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry," smart meaning "intelligent," and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent
in American (and Irish) English than British English.[92][93][94]

Linguist Bert Vaux created a survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word
choices, hoping to identify regionalisms.[95] The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda (but pop in the
Great Lakes region and generic coke in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink,[96] you or you guys for the plural of you (but y'all in the South),
sneakers for athletic shoes (but often tennis shoes outside the Northeast), and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods.

Differences between American and British English

American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and
orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, known as Webster's Dictionary, was written by
Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings.

Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between
adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs he ran quick/he ran quickly; different use of some auxiliary verbs; formal
(rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns; different preferences for the past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE:
learned/learnt, burned/burnt, snuck/sneaked, dove/dived) although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English
writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE at school); and whether or not a definite
article is used, in very few cases (AmE to the hospital, BrE to hospital; contrast, however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor, BrE the actress Elizabeth
Taylor). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are
constantly influencing each other,[97] and American English is not a standardized set of dialects.

Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as flavor for British flavour,
fiber for fibre, defense for defence, analyze for analyse, license for licence, catalog for catalogue and traveling for travelling. Noah Webster
popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity,
analogy or etymology."[98] Other differences are due to the francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred
programme for program, manoeuvre for maneuver, cheque for check, etc.).[99] AmE almost always uses -ize in words like realize. BrE prefers -ise,
but also uses -ize on occasion (see: Oxford spelling).
There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences, called "comma splices" in American English,
and American English requires that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place
them outside. American English also favors the double quotation mark ("like this") over single ('as here').[100]

Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, autumn is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas fall is more common in
American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park
(United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs.
apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation.[101]

AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE
transport or where the British form is a back-formation, such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar). However, while individuals usually
use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems.

Varieties
While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible,
there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions.

Regional accents

The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in a complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence":
some accents are homogenizing and leveling, while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another.[103]

Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises
three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally
diverse: New England, the Mid-Atlantic States (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent), and the South. As
of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area, Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique
features, including the fronting of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in the mouth toward [a] and tensing of the TRAP /æ/ vowel wholesale to [eə]. These sound
changes have triggered a series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the "Inland North".[104] The Inland North shares with
the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents) a backer tongue positioning of the GOOSE /u/ vowel (to [u]) and the MOUTH /aʊ/ vowel
(to [ɑʊ~äʊ]) in comparison to the rest of the country.[105] Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another
Northern regional marker is the variable fronting of /ɑ/ before /r/,[106] for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth Park
the car in Harvard Yard.[107]

Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston, Pittsburgh, Upper
Midwestern, and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the LOT vowel with the
THOUGHT vowel (/ɑ/ and /ɔ/, respectively):[109] a cot–caught merger, which is rapidly spreading
throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor
passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older
cot–caught distinction.[104] For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the THOUGHT vowel is
particularly marked, as depicted in humorous spellings, like in tawk and cawfee (talk and coffee), which
intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal: [oə].[110] A split of TRAP into two separate
phonemes, using different a pronunciations for example in gap [æ] versus gas [eə], further defines New
York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents.[63]

Most Americans preserve all historical /ɹ/ sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent. The only
traditional r-dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New
England, New York City, and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and,
relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across the country), though the vowel-consonant
cluster found in "bird," "work," "hurt," "learn," etc. usually retains its r pronunciation, even in these
non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their
upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's r-dropping, a feature that has
continued to gain prestige throughout England from the late 18th century onwards,[111] but which has
conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century.[112] Non-rhoticity makes a word The red dots show every U.S.
like car sound like cah or source like sauce.[113] metropolitan area where over 50% non-
rhotic speech has been documented
New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as among some of that area's local white
the most stigmatized and socially disfavored.[114][115][116][117] Southern speech, strongest in southern speakers in the twenty-first century. Non-
Appalachia and certain areas of Texas, is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent,[118] and rhotic speech may be heard from black
is defined by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality: [aː], the initiation event for a complicated Southernspeakers throughout the whole
vowel shift, including a "Southern drawl" that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding country.[108]
vowels. [119] The fronting of the vowels of GOOSE , GOAT , MOUTH, and STRUT tends to also define
Southern accents as well as the accents spoken in the "Midland": a vast band of the country that
constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American
spectrum.

Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds:
 Most populous Strong /aʊ/ Strong /oʊ/ Strong /u/ Strong /ɑr/ Cot–caught Pin–pen /æ/ raising
Accent name
urban center fronting fronting fronting fronting merger merger system
General American No No No No Mixed No pre-nasal
Inland Northern Chicago No No No Yes No No general
Mid-Atlantic States Philadelphia Yes Yes Yes No No No split
Midland Indianapolis Yes Yes Yes No Mixed Mixed pre-nasal

New York City New York City Yes No No[120] No No No split

North-Central (Upper pre-nasal &

Minneapolis No No No Yes Yes No
Midwestern) pre-velar
Northern New England Boston No No No Yes Yes No pre-nasal
Southern San Antonio Yes Yes Yes No Mixed Yes Southern
Western Los Angeles No No Yes No Yes No pre-nasal
Western Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Yes Yes Yes No Yes Mixed pre-nasal

General American

In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes"
since the mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other
accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame.[103] However, a General American sound system also has
some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least
some in the Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does
not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include
rhoticity, the father–bother merger, Mary–marry–merry merger, pre-nasal "short a" tensing, and other particular vowel sounds.[b] General American
features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in the most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General
American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents.

Other varieties

Although no longer region-specific,[121] African-American Vernacular English, which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class
African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop
culture. Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano
English, spoken in the West and Midwest, and New York Latino English, spoken in the New York metropolitan area. Additionally, ethnic varieties
such as Yeshiva English and "Yinglish" are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews, Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern
Louisiana, and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse
Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii, though primarily English-speaking, is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian
Pidgin, and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the
country, for example, Philippine English, beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of
the Philippine Islands; Thomasites first established a variation of American English in these islands.[122]

See also
Dictionary of American Regional English
List of English words from indigenous languages of the Americas
International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects
International Phonetic Alphabet chart for the English Language
Phonological history of English
Regional accents of English
Canadian English
North American English
International English
Received Pronunciation
Transatlantic accent
American and British English spelling differences

Notes
a. en-US is the language code for U.S. English, as defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) and Internet
standards (see IETF language tag).
b. Dialects are considered "rhotic" if they pronounce the r sound in all historical environments, without ever "dropping" this sound.
The father–bother merger is the pronunciation of the unrounded /ɒ/ vowel variant (as in cot, lot, bother, etc.) the same as the /ɑ/
vowel (as in spa, haha, Ma), causing words like con and Kahn and like sob and Saab to sound identical, with the vowel usually
realized in the back or middle of the mouth as [ɑ~ɑ̈]. Finally, most of the U.S. participates in a continuous nasal system of the
 "short a" vowel (in cat, trap, bath, etc.), causing /æ/ to be pronounced with the tongue raised and with a glide quality (typically
sounding like [ɛə]) particularly when before a nasal consonant; thus, mad is [mæd], but man is more like [mɛən].

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107. Vorhees, Mara (2009). Boston. Con Pianta. Ediz. Inglese (https://books.google.com/books?id=a0sQ5UzkiQUC&pg=PA52).
Lonely Planet. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-74179-178-5.
108. Labov, p. 48.
109. Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, p. 60.
110. "This phonemic and phonetic arrangement of the low back vowels makes Rhode Island more similar to New York City than to the
rest of New England (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch16_2nd.rev.pdf)".(Labov, Ash & Ash 2006, p. 226)
111. Trudgill 2004, pp. 46–47.
112. Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, pp. 5, 47.
113. Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, pp. 137, 141.
114. Hayes, Dean (2013). "The Southern Accent and 'Bad English': A Comparative Perceptual Study of the Conceptual Network
between Southern Linguistic Features and Identity (http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/15)". UNM Digital Repository:
Electronic Theses and Dissertations. pp. 5, 51.
115. Gordon, Matthew J.; Schneider, Edgar W. (2008). "New York, Philadelphia, and other northern cities: Phonology (https://books.go
ogle.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bGjixKTt9JcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA67&dq%22salence_comes_from%22)." Varieties of English 2: 67-
86.
116. Hartley, Laura (1999). A View from the West: Perceptions of U.S. Dialects from the Point of View of Oregon (https://digitalcommon
s.georgefox.edu/lang_fac/17). Faculty Publications - Department of World Languages, Sociology & Cultural Studies. 17.
117. Yannuar, N.; Azimova, K.; Nguyen, D. (2014). "Perceptual Dialectology: Northerners and Southerners' View of Different American
Dialects (http://kata.petra.ac.id/index.php/ing/article/view/18880)". k@ ta, 16(1), pp. 11, 13
118. Hayes, 2013, p. 51.
119. Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, p. 125.
120. Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006, pp. 101, 103.
121. Cf. (Trudgill 2004, p. 42).
122. Dayag, Danilo (2004). "The English‐language media in the Philippines" (https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-English%E
2%80%90language-media-in-the-Philippines-Dayag/25eac1a40823223ef5de8c6b0b8d6b7ddd023cf0). World Englishes. 23:
33–45. doi:10.1111/J.1467-971X.2004.00333.X (https://doi.org/10.1111%2FJ.1467-971X.2004.00333.X). S2CID 145589555 (http
s://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:145589555).

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Further reading
 Bailey, Richard W. (2012). Speaking American: A History of English in the United States 20th–21st-century usage in different
cities
Bartlett, John R. (1848). Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded As Peculiar to the
United States. New York: Bartlett and Welford.
Garner, Bryan A. (2003). Garner's Modern American Usage. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mencken, H. L. (1977) [1921]. The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th ed.).
New York: Knopf.

History of American English

Bailey, Richard W. (2004). "American English: Its origins and history". In E. Finegan & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA:
Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 3–17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Finegan, Edward. (2006). "English in North America". In R. Hogg & D. Denison (Eds.), A history of the English language
(pp. 384–419). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

External links
Do You Speak American (https://www.pbs.org/speak/): PBS special
Dialect Survey (http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html) of the United States, by Bert Vaux et al., Harvard
University.
Linguistic Atlas Projects (https://web.archive.org/web/20150713193617/http://us.english.uga.edu/cgi-bin/lapsite.fcgi/)
Phonological Atlas of North America (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html) at the University of Pennsylvania
Speech Accent Archive (https://web.archive.org/web/20080821121056/http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/)
Dictionary of American Regional English (http://dare.wisc.edu)
Dialect maps based on pronunciation (http://aschmann.net/AmEng/)

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