American Phonetics

NOTE: If your internet search has brought you directly to this page, you may wish to examine the whole website from the beginning by clicking HERE.

Recently I have observed many hits on this one page from countries all over the world, and I have guessed that it is turning up on web searches by people who are interested in learning the American style of pronunciation of English.  Unfortunately, this page was not originally written to serve that purpose since it is a minor part of a website about a system of spelling reform and it was written with an audience already familiar with English phonetics in mind.  However, I would be more than happy to expand its scope into a tutorial on American pronunciation if that would be useful.  Before I start on such a project, I would like some feedback.   So If such a tutorial, written for the average student of English, would be helpful in improving your pronunciation, please email me at tcgibian@cox.net with some words of encouragement.  For others interested just in a brief description of American English pronunciation, the following should be sufficient.

In the following description of American speech, I have tried to follow the format presented in Justin B. Rye's presentation of standard British speech.  Because there are considerable differences between RP and GA vowels, you will see that there is only an approximate fit in this area.  I have unashamedly used my own speech as the archtype in this section, not entirely out of vanity.  I speak a variety of North American English which is shared by perhaps two hundred million other individuals with only slight variation.  The few regional or individual quirks which I have are carefully pointed out, and with these exceptions I have speech close to that of most American news broadcasters.  The example of American English described in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association is close to my own with the exceptions that (1) I do not pronounce /u/ and /U/ centralized as is shown, (2) /e/ and /I/ are about the same height, rather than as shown, and (3) /&/ is somewhat more centralized than as shown.  All other nuances will be clear as you read the following description.  The system used is ASCII-IPA as developed by Evan Kirschenbaum. Two sites with more information on this system are:

Kirschenbaum         Alt-Usage-English

Just hit these links to learn more.

CONSONANTS

As you can see, some consonants cannot appear initially, and others are never found terminally.  Most native English speakers throughout throughout the world would produce an identical consonant listing.  You will notice that "r" is not found in a terminal position--in my type of speech this letter on the end of "car" is pronounced as a vowel, and in this word in British speech it is not pronounced at all.

VOWELS

NOTES:

There are two groups of vowel sounds shown, simple and diphthongal.  These notes will provide some information on speech traits characteristic of my type of GA, and more useful information can be gleaned from the word lists.

/a/    This vowel has a distinctly centralized sound to it -- not as much so as in Scottish or Irish pronunciation, but it is definitely not the /&/ which would be found in RP or in GA from the Eastern US.  Some years ago I used to hear this trait only in my own region of Southern California, but it is becoming much more widespread.  This sound is also the core of the diphthong /aU/.  Only before /N/ and /g/ is this sound precisely rendered as /&/ -- see below.

/O/     This sound is only found in two diphthongs for most GA speakers -- /OI/ and /OR/.  See /A/.

/A/    This vowel covers a lot of territory in my type of GA.  It is found in "palm", "part", "cot", and "caught".  Only in the Eastern GA regions are the last two words differentiated.

/R/    This sound is a distinguishing characteristic of North American speech, very closely following the Irish norm.  It is actually pronounced two different but similar sounding ways ways which can be very difficult to distinguish.  In both cases the lips are slightly rounded, as if to say /U/.  In one version the tip of the tongue is curled upward to point toward the forward portion of the hard palate.  The tongue position is similar to that for pronuncing /S/, but with the tip farther from the palate to produce a resonant rather than fricative sound.  The other pronunciation has the tip of the tongue held low and the region just behind the tip raised up toward the palate as described above.  This sound, by whichever method of articulation, is pronounced identically regardless of position within the word -- /fR/, /titSR/, /hiR -- and is sounded in all positions where written.

/i/    This is always a pure vowel.

/e/, /u/, /o/    These three are generally pure vowels but become slightly diphthongal when final or in a stressed syllable closed by a voiced consonant. In these cases they are said /Ee/, /Uu/, and /Oo/.

/UR/    This sound has a strong tendency to simplify to /R/.  For example, the word "cure" is /kyUR/ or /kyR/.  The word "during" is commonly heard as /dRrIN/.  Also "courage" is heard as /kRrIdZ/.

The three vowels /I/, /E/, and /a/ are allophonically shifted to slightly higher and more forward positions when followed by /N/ or /g/ but not /k/.  These three could almost be represented by /i/, /e/, and /&/ in these positions.

VOWEL LENGTH:

Traditionally, English vowels have been divided into the short and the long.  Originally the distinction was the length of time spent in uttering them -- the first group was given half of what the second had.  Over the course of time the two groups came to be pronounced rather differently, so that the difference was qualitative as well as quantitative.  In British speech the length distinction is preserved, but in North America it is almost gone.  We have a somewhat different system which has come into general distribution within the last hundred years and which is now almost universal.  For us, none of the vowels are differentiated by length, but under certain conditions any vowel can be elongated.  When a vowel is found in a stressed syllable which is open and terminal or closed with a voiced consonant, it is given twice as long a pronunciation as in other environments. Therefore, "wait" has a shorter vowel than "wed".  This is a very subtle trait which is hard to master consciously, but the lack of it will always identify a speaker as "not born here".  It is found in Western Canada as well in the American GA area.

UNSTRESSED VOWELS:

The fully unstressed vowel has two pronunciations in RP, but in Western GA there is only one.   It is a mid, central vowel rather like /@/ but pronounced higher in the mouth.  It may be slightly modified by the adjacent sounds, but in an entirely predictable way. Therefore, "taxas" and "taxes" are pronounced identically.

MERGERS:

Mergers represent pairs of words formerly pronounced differently but which now are indistinguishable.  Such pairs of words are often good at indicating the relationship between dialects of English and evolutionary changes within any one dialect.  As an example, one merger prevalent in (almost) all dialects is "sea/see".  As the spelling indicates, in at the time that the spelling was fixed, these two words were pronounced differently, but they are no longer.  The mergers prevalent in Western G.A. are:

1) due/do
2) Mary/merry/marry
3) father/bother
4) cot/caught
5) whet/wet
6) latter/ladder
7) The "pin/pen" merger, once fairly widespread, is no longer as common as it once was.

In the Eastern G.A. area distinctions 1 (due/do), 2 (at least Mary+merry/marry), 4 (cot,caught), and 5 (whet/wet) are still heard in various regions.  In 4 the difference between the two vowels, where it exists, is not great. There are several other mergers, such as "hoarse/horse" which are not mentioned here because they are now found in most dialects of English.

The sounds represented above can be spelled in various ways.  For example, the vowel in "due" can also be spelled in other words as "ue" or "ew".  Also, changes have occurred in certain environments: "fear", and "see" have different vowels. (see below)

GROUP CHANGES:

Several formerly long vowels before "r" have been shortened, lowered, and centralized somewhat in much of the Western G.A. region.  Words such as "here", "there", and "sure" are commonly pronounced with the vowels of "hit", "bet", and "put". In Eastern G.A. areas, you will still often hear the vowels of "he", "they", and "too" in these positions.

The "California Chain Shift", noticed by other authors, has three components.  1) centeralizing of back vowels ("do", "put"), 2) lowering of front vowels ("bit", "bet"), and 3) backing of low vowels ("back", "cot").  It is rare for all of these to be heard in any one part of the Western G.A. region, but the third one is becoming very widespread.  The result of this shifting is very subtle, but can sometimes cause confusion.  For Example, the Eastern pronounciation of "hot" can sound like "hat" to a Califorinian.