American accent ''tips'' on antimoon

''Most Americans and Canadians speak something similar to General American. Whether you're in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle or Toronto, you will generally hear the same accent.''


This is so not true.
If all these accents were that similar to ''General American'' there would be no discussion here on boards at all.

The only NewYorkers that sound close to G.A. are LadyGaga and Brooke Shields (who opted for a traditional (not Valley Girl) Californian type of accent with cot/caught merger to [A] and no L-coloring/rounding in ''wall/doll'' )

"This is so not true.
If all these accents were that similar to ''General American'' there would be no discussion here on boards at all."

Kendra, it depends upon what you're comparing it to. If you compare those areas with British English, they probably do sound more or less alike.

Of course, to us Americans, a Chicago accent is very different indeed to the English spoken in Los Angelos, but I'm not sure a Britisher would be able to hear it.

<<''Most Americans and Canadians speak something similar to General American. Whether you're in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle or Toronto, you will generally hear the same accent.''


This is so not true.
If all these accents were that similar to ''General American'' there would be no discussion here on boards at all.>>

By and large, I think it's true. The South was already excepted from that list, and the only place mentioned that I would contend has a distinct accent is New York (the city, not the whole state). Other than Boston and parts of the South, New York is home to one of the only non-rhotic dialects in the United States.

Anyway, the point was that the vast majority of Americans have a similar accent, especially in contrast to Britons. Aside from a few inevitable regional differences in vocabulary and pronunciation, I think that's correct. When I entered college, I made friends from Washington, Oregon, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Hawaii, Illinois, upstate New York, Maryland, and Kentucky. I'm from southern California, which is also the location of the university. The only person I considered to have a noticeable accent was the guy from Kentucky. I had no initial clue as to where any of the others were from.

As an interesting side note, that same guy from Kentucky claims to this day that after hearing any Southern accent, he can pinpoint the speaker's home state. They sound mostly the same to me.

For God's sake! Come up with a universal standard of pronunciation and stop torturing us, ESL students! A lot of unnecessary time is wasted on working out the "correct" English pronunciation......

I think Americans don't have strong accents in general. Apart from Ebonics, all the other major varieties are pretty similar to one another I think. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom there seem to be several strong accents which appear to be pretty different from one another.

But maybe it's also because the US is so big that most "weird" minor dialects are overlooked, so we all get a false impression.

Chicagoan way of pronouncing the word IMPOSSIBLE sounds like something like IMPASSABLE to a Canadian and Californian and (even NYC) ears. Chicagoan way of pronouncing the word FLASH sounds like FLESH to a nonLaker ear. I don't know why people in the Great Lakes region pronounce FLASH like Kiwis, as if it were written: FLESH.

Also, many Americans pronounce BUSES the same way other Americans pronounce BOSSES.

[dɑn] is
1. Don/dawn in Denver or L.A., but
2. only dawn in Chicago and
3. only Don in NYC


A friend of mine is from Wisconsin, now that she lives in California, everyone there makes fun of the way she says "tag" and "flag" or "eggnog"... At the elementary school that she works, all the kids go "what did she say?" when she says "we're going to play tag[teg]" and they're like "what's [teg]?" hahaha.

Strongly Disagree.

Within the Northeast itself, there is a SIGNIFICANT variation in the dialects spoken by natives. Between Baltimore and Maine you're likely to hear about half a dozen different distinct dialects of English. Baltimore, Philiadelphia, the New York Area, Providence, Boston, New Hampshire and Maine all have different accents. Aside from television, I rarely heard a GenAm accent growin up, and I'm only 20 years old.

The differences in accent tend to diminish the further up you go on the socioeconomic ladder, but despite that there are still SIGNIFICANT differences in speech across the country.

Yes, prof. Labov agrees. while there may be some unification of grammar and lexicon (vocabulary) [including the spread of ''Californianisms'' like -awesome- or -dude-], phonology of US (and Canadian) English is becoming more diverse than ever. I don't know of a single accent on the East Coast that would sound ''neutral'' (the ''nearest'' are urban Vermont accents that do come close to the ''newscasters English'').

Way to miss the point, some of you. What exactly do you "strongly disagree" with, LexDiamondz? Surely not the point of my article (repeated in Johnny's post), which was that the accent differences between American speakers are much smaller than those between British speakers. The next time you decide to weigh in, make sure you understand what your interlocutors are saying, mmkay?