Neutral American English

Guest   Fri May 11, 2007 7:18 pm GMT
>>Perhaps the "fiction"--if it is one--that Nebraska--and Iowa--represents General American English has been repeated so many times that we have all taken it as fact. Does anybody else have definite information?<<

The first thing that should be remembered here, though, is that General American does not correspond necessarily to the English of today but rather to that of about fifty years ago. In particular, a number of mergers such as the cot-caught merger have spread since then, limiting its range today.

>>Travis, I think any accent is subjective, i.e. depending upon whose doing the perceiving. The Great Lakes folks would swear to you they have no accent, but to a Southerner/transplanted Westerner, it's so strong it'd knock you down.<<

The notion of accent is inherently subjective, of course; that is why I referred to the "average" North American rather than all North Americans. And of course, yes, while I am very used to the dialect here (even though I probably am more aware of various innovations and conservatisms in it than most here), there are some that find my own speech quite heavily accented.

>>Southern Californians, in particular, have accents to me because it's a)variant from the Nebraska standard I've been brainwashed to believe is standard and b) it differs from Nevadan English. I hear a lot of vowel lengthening (is that the proper term?) going on; in the phrase "a whole lot less", for example, the short "e" in less is spoken with a much more open mouth than elsewhere. I can pick a Southern Californian out on television in just a few seconds of speech, just as I can spot a Great Lakes speaker in a short time.<<

The main matter here is that any standard should avoid regional innovations which do not apply to most of North America, and hence many of the innovations present in Californian English today would make it unsuitable as a new standard variety for North American English.
Jasper   Fri May 11, 2007 7:26 pm GMT
TRAVIS:

Quite so, quite so. I've delved deeper in my memory since my last post.

A book checked out that was printed in the 40s still used the old Broadway Stage English as the standard (an extraordinarily beautiful tongue, in my opinion). A book checked out recently called Speech and Diction something or other (I can get the exact title if you wish), printed in 1962, specifically alludes to this--by 1962, the standard had switched to General American. I suspect that the "decision" in question had taken place directly because of television.

So you are exactly right about the "50-year" thing. The thing is, who's making the standards today? I don't know; do you? I'd always assumed that General American had never deviated from the Nebraska standard.

I agree that our English has changed a lot since then. Back to Southern English for a moment--I can think of several things that have changed since I was a boy in the 60s, i.e. the disappearance of "spelt", "learnt", "dreamt"; the disappearance of non-rhotic Southern speech, etc.

What other changes have you noticed in General American English, besides the cot/caught merger? Explain in detail--you won't bore me, this is intensely interesting to me...
Jasper   Fri May 11, 2007 7:29 pm GMT
Shatnerian:

Bingo! I was wondering who was going to catch this!

St. Joseph, MO is very near the Nebraska border. ;-) His language formative years would have been spent there.

Good job, Shatner.
Hello   Fri May 11, 2007 8:45 pm GMT
>> Perhaps the "fiction"--if it is one--that Nebraska--and Iowa--represents General American English has been repeated so many times that we have all taken it as fact. Does anybody else have definite information? <<

The only place that states that is the Wikipedia article on General American. The article states that: "The area that is most free of these regional properties is indicated on the map: eastern Nebraska (including Omaha and Lincoln), southern and central Iowa (including Des Moines), and northern Illinois (including Peoria and the Quad Cities but not the Chicago area).", and "cites" it by providing a link to Labov's ANAE. However, if you read the ANAE, Labov actually defines General American differently: He shows a scatter plot of features and shows that if there is a General American accent, it would be in the middle of the scatterplot where the West, Midlands, and Canada, come together. He never mentions the Nebraska stuff at all. The authors of Wikipedia article came up with that on their own.
Travis   Fri May 11, 2007 9:17 pm GMT
>>What other changes have you noticed in General American English, besides the cot/caught merger? Explain in detail--you won't bore me, this is intensely interesting to me...<<

I wouldn't say that such is a change in General American, but rather a change in dialects which were close to it historically. This has had the result that many dialects which are otherwise close to General American are cot-caught merged even though GA itself is not.

As for other changes in GA itself, the main thing is that I would have to say that it is normally standard today to have a fully Mary-merry-marry merger, whereas very conservative GA may not have the full merger and instead only have a Mary-merry merger. Furthermore, it seems that shifting /{/ and /E/ to /e/ before /N/ seems very common in what would be considered GA today even though conservative GA lacks such. The main thing about these two shifts is they do not seem to be really regional in nature and they also seem to have been accepted as part of GA (whereas cot-caught merger is not part of GA even though dialects with it may otherwise be very close to GA).
Josh Lalonde   Fri May 11, 2007 9:26 pm GMT
<<As for other changes in GA itself, the main thing is that I would have to say that it is normally standard today to have a fully Mary-merry-marry merger, whereas very conservative GA may not have the full merger and instead only have a Mary-merry merger.>>

I was reading an article recently that said that GenAm 'Mary' and 'marry' were equivalent to non-merged 'merry', and I was wondering what everyone thinks of that. To me, it sounds more like 'marry' and 'merry' merge into 'Mary' [ME_rr\i].
Travis   Fri May 11, 2007 9:37 pm GMT
>>I was reading an article recently that said that GenAm 'Mary' and 'marry' were equivalent to non-merged 'merry', and I was wondering what everyone thinks of that. To me, it sounds more like 'marry' and 'merry' merge into 'Mary' [ME_rr\i].<<

The matter is that while people often use [E] to transcribe such, in practice the merged vowel seems to be between [E] and [e], even though the exact height of the vowel may differ from dialect to dialect. Note that the same also applies to the merging of historical [O] and [o] before /r/, where the merged vowel is generally between the [o] and the position of the COUGHT vowel (which may be [O] or [Q]).
Josh Lalonde   Fri May 11, 2007 9:43 pm GMT
But would you identify your Mary-merry-marry with merry or MarY? It's definitely Mary for me.
Travis   Fri May 11, 2007 10:43 pm GMT
The vowel that I have is closer to [e] than to [E], but mind you that my [E] is rather centralized while may [e] is not, and my merged vowel is not centralized (making it closer to [e] perceptually).
Lazar   Fri May 11, 2007 11:05 pm GMT
<<I was reading an article recently that said that GenAm 'Mary' and 'marry' were equivalent to non-merged 'merry', and I was wondering what everyone thinks of that. To me, it sounds more like 'marry' and 'merry' merge into 'Mary' [ME_rr\i].>>

<<But would you identify your Mary-merry-marry with merry or Mary? It's definitely Mary for me.>>

As someone who's 3M-unmerged, I find that the merged pronunciation (which I hear on television and even among some of my peers here) tends to sound more like my "Mary" than my "merry".

Some sources would have you think that the "mare" of a merged speaker is like unmerged "merry" with the [i] chopped off, which I think is off the mark. I think that the merged and unmerged pronunciations of "mare" and "Mary" are generally similar, and that it's in "merry" and "marry" that the merged and unmerged speakers differ. To posit the reverse just doesn't make sense to me.

I agree with what Travis said: I think the "Mary" of an unmerged speaker like me, and the "Mary, merry, marry" of a merged speaker, tend to differ from basic [E] by either length, height, diphthongization, or a combination of these. I use [E@`] for this sound. Note that this is a broad transcription, which I use for the sake of interdialectal compatability: I consider it to encompass the range of pronunciations that includes [E:r\], [e:r\], [E@`], and so forth. (In my own speech, the "mare, Mary" vowel is longer and closer than my basic [E], and variably diphthongal.)

So if I'm not mistaken, your usage of [E_r] is equivalent to my usage of [E@`].
Lazar   Fri May 11, 2007 11:10 pm GMT
Sorry, let me revise this so it makes more sense:

<I think that the merged and unmerged pronunciations of "mare, Mary" are generally similar, and that it's in "merry" that the merged and unmerged speakers differ. To posit the reverse just doesn't make sense to me.>
Lena   Sat May 12, 2007 3:29 am GMT
Peter Ladefoged (Course in Phonetics) and Daniel Jones (Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary) defend COT/CAUGHT MERGED version of General American, based on the WestCoast GA (w/o shifts). There's no room for Nebraska (which is unmerged).


"nebraska accent" 519 results in google
so, they have an accent, after all
Guest   Sat May 12, 2007 4:27 am GMT
<<"nebraska accent" 519 results in google
so, they have an accent, after all>>

You could type in any place and put the word "accent" after it and I'm sure you get some google results. This isn't at all unique to "Nebraska accent".
Jasper   Sat May 12, 2007 7:13 am GMT
Someone mentioned Colorado and Florida as possible centers of General American.

Colorado wouldn't do because it falls in the Rocky Mountain Dialect region. Or does it? Newer dialect maps don't seem to show it at all. Is the Rocky Mountain dialect becoming extinct?

I've heard it in Eastern Nevada and Utah; Representative Enid Holtzclaw spoke it. For those who don't know, it sounds like a "countrified" GenAm; the "r" sound in words like "work" is "swallowed", i.e. pronounced further back in the mouth, like Southerners do. A bastardized version can be heard in the movie Calamity Jane, starring Doris Day (rent the movie).

But do Coloradoans still speak it? Dunno; but if they do, it won't do as a representative of General American.

As for Florida? I assume you're speaking of Southern Florida; Northern Florida has the worst "cracker" Southern dialect you'll ever hear. Southern Florida as General American? Maybe; I haven't heard enough speakers of it..
Jasper   Sat May 12, 2007 7:17 am GMT
<General American is not analogous to pre-WW2 upper class "Mid-Atlantic" varieties, you must remember.> GUEST

So what's the official name for the dialect, as spoken in 1930s and 1940s movies? Whatever it was, it remains--at least to me--the most beautiful tongue in the US.

Can anybody give me more information on this dialect?