Dialects of American English

The American literary norm and its peculiarities.

The history of the development of English in America.

The spreading of English in the world and reasons for that.

American English Pronunciation.

Over 300 million people now speak English as their first language. It is the national language of Great Britain, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (part of it).

The American variant of English has been thoroughly described by many prominent scholars both in our country and in the USA.The sociolinguistic situation in the United States is very complicated. It is moulded by certain linguistic, cultural, historic, demographic, geographic, political and other factors.

The American variant of English underwent the influence of many languages, but the starting point was the English language of the early 17 th and 18th centuries. There are certain varieties of educated American speech. In the U.S.A. 3 main types of cultivated speech are recognized: the Eastern type, the Southern type, the Western or General American. General American pronunciation is known as the Standard Pronunciation of the U.S.A. It is the form of speech used by the radio and T.V. It is used in scientific, cultural and business intercourse. American English may be analyzed from 3 points of view: 1. Peculiarities Vowels and Consonants; 2. Stress Differences. 3. Intonation Differences.

The Eastern type is spoken in New England and in New York city. It bears a remarkable resemblance to Southern English with some slight differences.

The Southern type is used in the South and South-East of the USA. It possesses a striking feature- vowel drawl, which is a specific way of pronouncing vowel, consisting in the diphthongization of some pure vowels and monophthongization of some diphthongs by prolonging their nuclei and dropping the glides.

General American, also known as Northern American or Western American spoken in the central Atlantic States: New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin and others.

Some peculiarities: 1. there is no division into long and short vowels; 2. the number of diphthongs varies from 3 to 12 phonemes. Following D.A. Shakhbagova we distinguish 5 diphthongs: |ei|, |ai|, |oi|, |au|, |ou|. 3. Usually vowels and diphthongs have |r| sound between a vowel and consonant or between a vowel and a silence: TURN, BIRD, STAR. 4. American English is characterized by nasalization, when vowels are preceded or followed by a nasal consonant (SMALL, NAME). Nasalization is often called an American twang….5.The sound |l| in all positions is always dark. 6. Intervocalic |t| is normally voiced. In words like TWENTY, LITTLE |t| is dropped. 7. The “wh” is represented in GA by |^^| or |hw| sound. 8. The sonorant |j| is usually weakened or omitted between consonants: Tuesday |tu:zdi|, suit |su:t|, stupid |stu:pid|. 9. The pronunciation of many words is different: Asia |eiже|, lever |lever|, schedule |skedjel|, tomato |te’ meitou|, vase |veiz|. 10 Words like HOSTILE, MISSILE, REPTILE have final |el|.

Stress differences. 1. In words of French origin GA tends to have stress on the final stllable: BAL’LET |lei|, BE’RET |rei|. 2. Some words have stress on the first syllable in GA: ‘ADDRESS, ‘CIGARETTE, ‘MAGAZINE, ‘RESEARCH. 3. Some compounds have their stress on the first syllable too: ‘WEEKEND, ‘ICECREAM, ‘NEW YEAR. 4. Polysyllabic words ending in –ary, -ory, -mony have secondary stress: ‘LABORA’TORY, ‘TESTI’MONY, ‘DICTIO’NARY.

Intonation differences.1. They use a medium Level Head instead of Descending ScaleKI don’t want to go to the \theatre. 2. In emphatic sentences Mid-Wavy-Level Head is used. 3. Rise-Fall is used in GA instead of Low FallK| Come and see me to\morrow. 4. The Mid-Rising tone is used instead of in general questions. 4. In the Fall- Rise nuclear tone the rise is higher than in RP. 5. Requests are pronounced with a Fall- Rise: Open the door. 6. Leave-takings are often pronounced with a high-pitched Fall-Rise in GA: Good night. 7. They use High Rise instead of Low –Rise in many cases.

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