I will describe this variety as the American English, afterwards, the other ones will be regarded in comparison to this; the main divergence between them lies on the field of pronunciation.
In General American, we find a lot of features already dealt with in the Irish section: The English [] as in ask, path, castle is pronounced as [æ(:)], the open o of top is unrounded, wh is voiceless. On the other hand, the [æ] occurs, too, in words where Irishmen would tend to [], as in dance. Rhoticity is there, but not realized by the StE [], the American [] is retroflex (constituting a great amount of the "American sound"). Intervocalic voiceless plosives are "weakened": p, t, k become b, d, g; like in English dialects, but here also in relatively cared pronunciation, full syllables are omitted in certain, lexically determined cases, like I'm gonna instead of I'm going to. The ing-form is pronounced [], especially if it is participle, less often as gerund. Unlike IE, the monophthongization phenomenon has nothing to do with an influence from a substratum. So, the StE diphthongs do not just turn to single vowels, rather the American pronunciation reflects an older English one; they extend from [e, o] to [ei, ou]. In England, this pronunciation changed to (RP)[] in the 17th century (up to [, ] in the Southern dialects).
At any case, I have to drop a few lines on intonation. The intonation pattern is completely different from StE, intonationally, StE is closer to Russian than to American English (Reese, 1993: 8).
The overweight of the stressed over the unstressed syllable is a lot smaller in American English; unstressed syllables are not reduced up to inaudibility as in Britain. Besides, Americans know a "secondary stress" (Bähr, 1974: 211) that can affect the position of the primary stress, too.
Some examples:
AE | BE |
---|---|
[] | [] |
[] | [] |
[] | [] |
[] | [] |
As a result, it is not surprising that the U.S.A. are the nation in the English-speaking world that has deviations in spelling rules from the British practice. Consider the following examples (American - British): "center - centre", "program - programme", "dialog - dialogue", "color - colour", "defense - defence", "judgment - judgement", "maneuver - manoeuvre". As for the "-ize/-ise"-ending, Americans prefer "-ize", English "-ise".
Whereas different political systems are the source for divergence in vocabulary and for some Englishes almost the only one, American English has plenty of these, but just as much from other domains. Let us first quote some "obvious" political terms:
The most important cereals on the American continent are maize; consequently, the American word is equal to the British notion for any kind of cereals: corn (Crystal, 1988: 250). So there are two important bases for the divergence of English and American vocabulary: independent development and different life styles. On the other hand, loan words from other languages into the melting pot or even from the languages of the "oldest" settlers are few.
A short list of examples of Americanisms, the total number of which
could fill dictionaries (Bähr, 1974: 216-221; Crystal, 1988: 249-250):
American English | British English |
---|---|
aluminum | aluminium |
apartment | flat |
ash-can | dustbin |
baggage | luggage |
candy | sweets |
bar | pub |
cab | taxi |
e.g. Hudson River | e.g. River Thames |
Mo thru Fr | Mo to Fr inclusive |
call (phone) | ring |
can | tin |
first floor | ground floor |
second floor etc. | first floor etc. |
elevator | lift |
sidewalk | pavement |
line | queue |
pants | trousers |
truck | lorry |
vacation | holidays |
yield | give way |
However, the divergence is decreasing. Nowadays, mass media and intercultural contact have stopped linguistic diversification. Again, linguistic and social power and cultural hegemony are situated in America. It has given the world new things and new words for them. The American vocabulary is scattering around the world. The computer was invented by a German technician, but the notion for it in most of the world is taken from American English, who first invented a word for it.
The mother country, sharing the same language, has become one of the weakest victims towards linguistic Americanisation. Many British call about "movies", though every dictionary says this word is not used in Britain, and "lifts" are also known as "elevators" these days. Englishmen "O.K." to use American words, though there are movements against this development, too.
In other English-speaking countries, like Australia and New Zealand, the willingness to adopt Americanisms is higher and resistance against it weaker.
slang | meaning |
---|---|
Yummy! | tasting good |
hangout | pub |
Hit me! | another beer, please. |
joint | hash cigarette |
tube | television |
You bet! | Of course! |
shades | sun glasses |
Haul ass! | Let's go! |
tough shit | bad luck |
play dirty | be unfair |
be down in the dumps | be in a bad mood |
cig, drag, fag | cigarettes |
four-letter words | invectives |
square | conservative |
mug | glass |
Good job! | Well done! |
Park your butt! | Sit down! |
zany, wild, jazzed, tough, hot, cool etc. | good |
Park your car in Harvard Yard [] (Wells, 1982b: 522).
Because of its bridge function, for Americans, New England accent sounds British, to British, though, American.
The open o is rounded, as New England accent is scarcely concerned by Irish influence. There is some difference to the English pronunciation yet: it tends to be longer, e.g. Boston [] (StE: [])(Wells, 1982b: 519). The r-colored diphthong [] is produced with a closed o, so that the difference between north [] and force [] is striking (Wells, 1982b: 525). The StE diphthongs, though, are mostly pronounced the GenAm way.
To conclude this paragraph, some words on the often mentioned treatment of the long vowel u, which is [] in StE and said to be [] in America. In fact, the latter is the normal pronunciation in New England. In the rest of America, it is very common, too, but in a lot of words regarded as uneducated (Gräf/Spitzbardt, 1983: 21). So it can be expected that this feature will be one of the last Eastern peculiarities to be dropped.
"New York ... has a distinctive accent, which differs from others more sharply than does any other North American regional accent. Americans in general are more aware of this accent than of any other local accent except possibly American southern accents (and in this they differ from the British, who are usually quite unaware that a New York accent is in any way different from other American accents)." (Wells, 1982b: 501f.)
It is really curious that Bähr (1974) does not mention this special accent. Geographically, the speech of New York is no longer restricted to the City as it was till the beginning of this century. It comprehends the surrounding counties of New York State and New Jersey, too (Bronstein, 1962: 13). Within it, there is the greatest range of social divergence found in the whole "new world" (Wells, 1982b: 502). Till the Second World War, the dialect was fully non-rhotic; today, rhoticity has become prestige norm (Oomen, 1982: 37). That is why by time different vowel treatments arose. In original New York City speech vowel + r tended to be produced as a diphthong ending in [] or []. Diphthongs unknown in StE nor GenAm are a sign of this accent in general. Long vowel often end in schwa ([]), e.g. bath [], thought[]. The [] is mostly pronounced []. Beside the [] of time (Bronstein, 1962: 18) and the glottal stop that occurs in lower class dialect, reminding of southern English pronunciation (Wells, 1982b: 515), the omitting of syllable-ending l or d after nasal consonants and the very unusual treatment of the th'es, which tend to be spoken as dental stops, should be emphasized. In opposition to the latter, "Many New Yorkers pronounce the alveolar consonants /t, d, n, l/ with the blade of the tongue rather than with the tip." (Wells, 1982b: 515).
Though it is the dialect of one of the most outstanding cultural centers in the English-speaking world, New York City speech is regarded as socially stigmatized (Wells, 1982b: 503). In recent years, the tendency has been moving towards a more GenAm-colored kind of speech.
The variety of American English that is spoken in the South (i.e. South-East) of the United States (s. dialect map) enjoys the same status, although GenAm features have not penetrated this area in the amount it has done in New York and the rest of New England.
"Die r-lose Aussprache gilt als charakteristisch für den Süden... Sprachhistorisch gilt der Verlust des präkonsonantischen und auslautenden /r/ als eine jüngere Entwicklung, die sich während des 18. Jahrhunderts vollzog. Die gängige Vorstellung, dieser Verlust sei charakteristisch für die Südstaatendialekte, trifft jedoch nicht überall zu. Einerseits gibt es Enklaven innerhalb des Südens, in denen sich postvokalisches /r/ als archaisches Aussprachemerkmal erhalten hat... Andererseits werden in manchen Gebieten des Südens r-lose und r-haltige Formen nebeneinander beobachtet." (Oomen, 1982: 66)
Rhoticity is thus not necessarily a sign for GenAm influence. Of course, there is a tendency towards the use of General American. The characteristics of the southern dialect is summarized as "Southern drawl". This comes from the lengthening of the vowels (Cassidy, 1982: 203). Striking is, too, that the []-diphthong is pronounced as [] and the [] becomes [] (Bähr, 1974: 208). The South is rather different in itself: "... we can expect to find at least thirty important subvarieties of Southern speech." (McDavid, 1970) It would take us too far to describe all of them.
The region around the first settlement of English people in America, however, the coastal area of Virginia round Jamestown (founded 1607), is a bit special, although it is subscribed to the southern dialect zone, too. The "Tidewater accent" is regarded as being closest to Shakespearian English. It is rhotic, the s-sounds are voiced (colloquially called "Zummerzet voicing"; Crystal, 1988: 224).
In fact, only Canadian themselves and people from the U.S. will be able to recognize Canadian English is distinctive from the U.S. way of talking.
Yet there are Canadian specialties, we even find regional variation within this vast country. Only in Canada, the ai- and au-diphthongs exist in two allomorphs: one before voiceless, the other one before voiced consonants: [ - [], [/] - []. The replacement of the question tag by the word eh? has been known as a stereotype of CE (Bailey, 1982: 161).
As for the regional variation, it is declining towards the West. "From Ottawa to Vancouver is more than 3000 kilometres; their accents are virtually the same." (Wells, 1982b: 491). Eastern Canadian has felt a lot of Scottish influence; in Nova Scotia we still find a Gaelic-speaking minority. A special role is played by Newfoundland, which has few to do with the rest of Canada.