Pronunciation in American English

Eastern American English

• C.G.Van Riper and D.E. Smith wrote in 1962:”It is difficult to generalize about Eastern American English ,since within the region where it is spoken there are many differing pronunciations.Eastern American pronunciation is typified as an “r-less”, or non-rhotic, type of American English pronunciation. Consequently ,it is characterized by the loss of [ɾ] in the final and preconsonantal positions,as in car [ka:] and park [pa:k] . EA speakers use [з:] and [ə] instead of the GA [ɝ] and [ɚ] in such words as bird,sister. One of the most striking features of EA, or more precisely, of Eastern New England is, perhaps, the use of the broad [a] ,in far , park,father...In contrast to GA Eastern American speakers use the RP [ɒ] in so-called “short-o” words, as in hot, crop, not, dog, in which places GA speakers use [ɑ] .In contrast to RP [ɒ] is also used in such words as caught , fought , law, horse. The word cot and caught come to the identical –[kɒt].