4. American Eng.: phonetics

The development of AE on the Am. continent has a comparatively short history. AE in its spoken form is essentially southern Eng. Standard of the 17-18^th century. It’s a result of complex factors.

It’s known that early settlers of New Eng. and most of the Central Atlantic coast were largely populated by people of the southern and eastern England. Those, who settled in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, came from the north of Eng. In the early 17^th century first Europeans began to settle in the North Am. The 1^st Brit. settlement in America was Jamestown in Virginia. The first company established in Plymouth was thanks to Pilgrims. The 2d settlement consisted of 6 Puritan colonies.

During the first half of the 18^th century a large group of Germans came to America and settled throughout Pennsylvania. And some of these Pennsylvanian Dutch have retained until now an unusual version of German.

A group of Welsh immigrants also settled in this area, west of Pennsylvania. These settlements were also supplemented by Scots, whose speech was similar to that of the Northern England. Thus differences in American speech represented differences in British speech.

The foundations of the most changes in Am.pronunciation laid during the colonial period. And today the process of diversity continues. For indicating Am.regional differences there is a division into 3 types:

• Eastern American (geographically includes New Eng., east of the Connecticut River

• Southern Am. (Virginia, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia)

• American Eng. (standard Eng.) is an averaged Am. version. This variant may be heard from the Ohio to the Pacific Ocean.

It should be noted, that this diversion is rather conditional, because:

1. People change places

2. General education

3. Influence of radio and TV (AE)

Stand.Am. is used in scientific and business discourse, by teachers, journalists, politicians. Thus AE norms can be treated as an averaged standard at phonological, grammatical and lexical levels. The features that distinguish AE from BrE permitted to claim that AE isn’t a variety of the Eng.lang. and can be concerned as the special Am.lang.

Several linguists express the reverse p.of v.: the distinctions b-n AE and BrE don’t affect the inventory of the main lang.units at almost all lvls of the system of the Eng.lang.

The syst.of AE consonants:

-“R” – 1 of the most characteristic features of Am. pronunciation. The narrowing for “r” is formed b-n the tip of the tongue and the hard palate. The tip of the tongue doesn’t touch palate. Doctor, fur

-“L” – the phoneme in all positions is much harder than in Br.

- “T” is variable phoneme. It can change to:

a) [d] ex: better [beder] what [wod] city [sidi]

b) a glottal stop after the consonants [m,n,l.w,r] Ex: mountain [moun_in]

c) monition of t from kts/sts and in final syllables. Ex: twenty [tweni]

- Pronunciation of endings: sia, sion, tion [ʒ] ex: Asia, excursion

- Omission of “H”. Ex.: huge, human [jumen]

- Omission of “ed” after sp, sk ex: crisped, risked

- Omission of “D” from nd, ndy, nld. Ex: hand, candidate

Vowels

• [a] -> [ə] ex.: ask, glass, chance

• [ju] -> [u] after t,d,n,s,z ex: student [studænt], new [nu], duke [duk]

• [ai] -> [ei] ex: either

• Diphthong [ou] is weaken and sometimes reduced to [o], esp. in the West. in unstressed syllable [reidio], and before voiceless consonants: boat [bot], coat [kot]

Nasality is a common characteristic of AE. It’s defined as a resonant of speech sounds m, n, ng.

A dominant characteristic of a southern pronun.is a process of diphthongization.

Stress

- In the 3-syllable words stresses fall on the 2d syllable in AE (confiscate, tomato)

and on the 1^st syllable in BrE (confiscate, tomato)

- In some words,esp. foreign, stress falls on the 2d syllable in AE (finance)

And on the 1^st - in BrE ( finance)

- In AE there is a general tendency to double stresses and in BrE single stressing.