The Orthoepic Norm

American English Pronunciation

English is spoken not only in Britain. It is the national language in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, & of a great part of the population in Canada. Each of those nations has its own orthoepic norm which exists alongside of regional types & numerous dialects.

Though the national languages have peculiar features of their own, which differentiate them from British English (BE) & from each other, they have much more in common. That is why they are considered to be variants of the same language, the English language.

American English (AE), which is the variant of the English language, has developed its own peculiarities in vocabulary, grammatical structure and pr-n. The most widely used regional types of AE pr-n are the Eastern, the Southern & the General American Types, the letter is spoken mainly in the Middle Atlantic States Region.

The GA pr-n is usually referred to as the standard pr-n of AE.

The peculiarities of GA lie in:

1) The pr-n of sounds & sound combinations;

2) Differences in the stress patterns of words;

3) Differences in intonation.

1. Peculiarities of pr-n of GA sounds & sound combinations as compared to those of RP:

1. 
   /r/ in GA is retroflexive, i.e. the tip of the tongue is curled back;
   
2. 
   /t/ is voiced between a vowel & a sonorant (as in “battle”,
   

“twenty”, or between two vowels the second of which is unstressed (as in “pity”, “better”). But the distinction between /t/ & /d/ is not neutralized, because the voiced /t/ is extremely short & resembles a one tap alveolar /r/. Americans easily distinguish between “writer” & “rider”, “latter” & “ladder”;

3. 
   /l/ is always dark, even before vowels (e.g. “film, “look”);
   
4. 
   / / is voiced in words like “excursion” - / n/, “version” -/ n/,
   

“Asia” -/ /, “Persia” -/ /;

5. 
   /h/ is often dropped in weak syllables , but it is retained when the syllable is stressed (e.g. ‘an historical novel” - / әnis 'torikl