T: Phonetic peculiarities of american languages.

The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of
American English. The American variant of the English language differs
from British English in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but
chiefly in vocabulary.
The first wave of English-speaking immigrants was settled in North
America in the 17-th century. In this century, there were also speakers in
North America of the Dutch, French, German, Native American, Spanish,
Swedish and Finnish languages. Speaking about the historic causes of
these deviations it is necessary to mention that American English is based
on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first
settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century.
Even to non-native speakers of the English language it is in most cases an
easy task to differentiate between British and American native speakers by
listening to their pronunciation. In this term paper the most characteristic
phonological features of American English will be named and explained
and an overview of the variety of dialects within the United States will be
provided. This can be done best by using British Standard English – also
known as Received Pronunciation (RP) – as reference accent and pointing
out the differences to American English [1, p. 36].
On the whole, the history of the English Language originally starts with the
history of English in Britain. It is Standard British English, which is referred
to as Received Pronunciation (RP), and General American (GA) that are
meant in this study when dealing with the differences between British
English and American English. These standard varieties are sufficient for
the purpose of this research, as they both characterize most linguistic
features of the various national varieties of both British and American
English. Furthermore, the discussion of the differences between British
English and American English is limited here to pronunciation.
The aim of the paper is to provide an analysis of the phonetic peculiarities
of American English.
The objectives are:
1) to define the notion of “General American”;
2) to examine the peculiarities in the system of vowels;
3) to explain the specific features of American English in the consonant
system;
4) to identify stress peculiarities of American English.
Part 1. General AmericanHowever, it is hard to work with the
term American English when doing a phonological analysis of American
speech since it covers a broad spectrum of different dialects. For this
reason the term General American (GA), which is widely used and preferred
by most linguists today, will be introduced and worked with.
General American can be seen as the Standard English of North America,
but in contrast to Received Pronunciation, it is not defined by social
reputation or a specific geographical origin. Throughout the United States
one can not really find a socially preferred accent that is commonly
recognized as the standard pronunciation. There have been several
different approaches to defining a Standard English for the USA and in this
paper General American will be used in means of a range of accents that
do not exhibit any of the North-Eastern or Southern features which are
perceived as regional by the majority of American speakers. One has to
keep in mind that GA is not a single and totally homogenous accent. But
since its internal variation is mainly a matter of differences in the phonetic
realizations of a system of phonemes that is by and large shared by all GA
speakers, the generalization expressed in the notion ‘General American’ is
useful in phonological terms. [2, p. 72]
Pronunciation is the greatest difference. Students who master the English,
often face the characteristic difficulty during the first dialogue with the
American. And this is not due to the language but to the pronunciation.
Independently from the qualities of the American Speech, there is a group
of the main distinguishing features between American and British
pronunciation. [3, p. 277]
1)        Americans often say [r] in cases where it is not pronounced in British
English: hare, car, and port;
2)        Americans instead of [a:] pronounce the sound “a:”, as [æ] in words:
answer, past, ask, can't.
3)        In the words dew, news, duke American pronunciation is as follows:
[du:], [nu: z], [du: k];
4)        Americans say [nΛt], [hΛt], [tΛp], [Λn], ['kΛmon], in the words not, hot,
top, on, common;
5)        Words “butter”, “better”, “city” are pronounced as [bΛdə], ['bedər],
['sidi];
6)        Address, tomato and schedule are also pronounced differently:
['ædres], [tə'meitəu], [' skedju: l];
7)        Words ending in — ory and -ary in the American language are
stressed on the last syllable in the following: laboratory, secretary;
8)        [h] is omitted, usually in the beginning of the word: him, his, her,
humidity, humor, history.
Part 2. The vowels and diphthongsComparing the vowel charts of General
American and Received Pronunciation, one will notice that there are a
rather small number of differences in the phonemic inventory of both
accents, so the difference in pronunciation must mainly be due to
differences in the phonetic realizations of the phonemes.
Concerning the vowels and diphthongs, the only major difference of the GA
phonemic inventory compared to the RP inventory is the lack of the short ‘o’
(/Ŋ/) and of the centering diphthongs (/Iə, εə, ʊə/).
The first of these two phenomena is often referred to as the cot-caught
merger since in GA the vowels in those two words are turned into a single
sound which is very close to the long ‘ah’ vowel (/α:/)
so cot and caught become homophones in American pronunciation. Many
GA speakers perceive the vowels /Ŋ/, /ɔ:/ and /α:/ as allophones.
Additionally, GA phonology does not have the RP broad A (/α:/) in words
such as class or dance, but still uses the older form /æ/. “Formerly, all
dialects of the English language had the sound of /æ/ as in cat ( /kæt/ ) in
all of these words. At some time, probably during the late eighteenth
century, a sound change occurred in southern England that changed the
sound of /æ/ to /α:/ in words in which the former sound appeared
before” /f, θ, ð, s, z, v/, “either alone or in the company of /m/ or /n/.” [4, p.
410]
Here we give some examples to illustrate the above rules as well as a few
exceptions:
- words pronounced with [æs] in GA but with [ɑ:s] in RP: brass, class, glass,
grass, pass, mast, past, master, plaster, clasp, grasp, gasp, mask, task, ask,
basket. Exceptions: crass, gas, lass, mass, astronaut, pastel.
- words pronounced with [æf] in GA with [ɑ:f] in RP:calf, graph, giraffe, half,
laugh, staff, after, craft, daft, draft, laughter, raft, shaft.
-words pronounced with [æɵ] in GA with [ɑ:ɵ] in RP: bath, lath, path.
Exceptions: hath, maths, athlete, decathlon.
-words pronounced with [ænt] in GA with [ɑ:nt] in RP: aunt, plant, can’t,
advantage. Exceptions: ant, banter, scant, mantle.
-words pronounced with [æmp] in GA with [ɑ:mp] in RP: sample,
example. Exceptions: trample, ample.
Using this example it might be surprising to learn that American English is
phonologically more conservative than today’s RP. In fact, GA is in various
characteristics close to seventeenth century English (The spoken English in
some rural areas of the United States is sometimes even said to
be Elizabethan English) since the American population did not participate
in a lot of sound changes that appeared in England after the settlement of
North America.
As a general characteristic of GA affecting the realization of all vowels, one
can notice that vowel length is relatively less important than it is in RP.
Even though vowel length does differ in GA pronunciation as well, these
differences depend primarily on the environment in which the respective
vowels occur