General American as the American English pronunciation standard

■ CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLINGUISTIC SITUATION IN THE USA

The development of American English on the American continent has a comparatively short history. It is generally assumed that its starting point was the English language of the 17th century when first English settlers came to America. However, in the course of time (the last two centuries) American English has drifted considerably from British English and has been modified locally, though as yet not enough to give linguists ground to speak of two different languages. The treatment of American English is as the national variant of English in the USA.

Traditionally three main groups of regional American English educated (literary) accents are distinguished:

1) the Eastern type (New York City and its environments, and New England east of the Connecticut River);

2) the Southern type (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and parts of Maryland, West Virginia and Oklahoma).

3) the Western type or General American (type of pronunciation includes the rest of the USA - the speech which may be heard, with only slight variations, from Ohio through the Middle West and to the Pacific Coast).

The three major types of AE pronunciation are not equal in importance, e.g. Southern pronunciation is peculiar to that part of the country and has not spread north, GA is the form of speech used in social communication, scientific and business discourse, also in two important business centres – New York and StLouis – GA is the prevailing form of pronunciation, though New York is situated within the territory where Eastern American is spoken. GA is treated as the pronunciation standard of AE and is described as representing the literary norm, while Southern American and Eastern American represent regional types of AE literary pronunciation.

Eastern American accent bears a remarkable resemblance to Southern British English, though there are, of course, some differences. It is characterized as an 'r-less' (or non-rhotic) accent, so Eastern American speakers use /з:/, /ə/ instead of GA /з/, /^ər/ in words like bird, winter. Eastern American speakers use the centring diphthongs with /ə/ glide.

In Southern speech there are unique differences in the manner of articulation. It possesses a striking distinctive feature - Southern vowel drawl, consisting in diphthongization or even triphthongization of some pure vowels and monophthongization of some diphthongs at the expense of prolonging ("drawling") their nuclei and dropping the glides, e.g. that /ðæıt/, yes /jeıəs/, fine /fа:n/, high /ha:/. The articulation is lax and imprecise.

In any event the mobility of modem life and communications are profoundly affecting regional accents, and they on the way to merging with each other.

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