Talk:General American English

Centralisation of /ɛ/
A lot of Americans pronounce /ɛ/ something between [ɛ] and [ɜ], such that dress sounds a bit like druss. I think this tendency is strongest in female speakers, but not necessarily restricted to them. Is this a regional thing or is it part of General American? 77.191.169.174 (talk) 17:31, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

This tends to be regional at this point, associated with the South, the Midland, and the emerging accent of California. Wolfdog (talk) 11:52, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Living down to the invidious stereotype
Can I just acknowledge how darkly humorous it is to have the General American article's current first speech example, from a Caucasian male, be that of a white man justifying torture? 'Couldn't be more on the nose. Won't somebody think of the henchmen! Representation is so important, and accurate representation… is accurate? Jesus Christ. To the extent this is your "normal reference material", the vibe nearly matches that of a German textbook maths problem, 1944 edition. I don't know that I agree with the Marxist trope-cum-slogan of "Late stage capitalism!", but this is late stage something. Flippin' 'eck! Four Phúc Sake. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't know if this worth responding to, but neither that short clip nor the full interview https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b007w3c5 justifies torture. I find it hard to believe Matt Damon has ever done so. You might need to understand something about American politics circa 2007 to have the proper context. CAVincent (talk) 18:17, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

PS: I'm calling it: One day soon, academic papers will be published, possibly in Indian English, correlating the pervasive politicisation and political devolution of Wikipedia with the decline of the empire of you-know-what. 'Round the decay of that colossal wreck… this too shall pass. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 21:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this is worth responding to either, but oh, yeah, sure, I'm just such a stranger and I just don't understand "the culture" enough, and if only I did, then of course I'd know how Hollywood royalty justifying torture isn't justifying torture at all, at all. History will not be kind, and sooner than ye think. I mean, sure, leave this in the article. I'm not going to fight you over it. "Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake." Late stage indeed. Enjoy yourself! 👍

ɚ
Who analyzes [ɚ] as its own phoneme rather than /ər/? Nardog (talk) 15:41, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't have any off the top of my head, but my main instinct was to make the "Consonant phonemes in General American" and "Vowel phonemes in General American" use symbols that are consistent throughout the whole page. I'd be happy to remove <ɚ> from the Vowel phonemes if you think it's not well-supported. However, I was moments away from turning all /r/s into inverted /ɹ/s, to match the symbol in the Consonant phonemes chart. Is that cool with you? (That would mean /ər/ becomes /əɹ/ of course.) Wolfdog (talk) 15:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * No, not until it is demonstrated that "/ɹ/" is a more common phonemicization in the literature. Nardog (talk) 15:51, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * So then let's do the opposite: the <ɹ> on the Consonant phonemes should be changed to . Sounds good? (My goal here is consistency. The page is a bit nightmarish in this regard.) Wolfdog (talk) 16:23, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. Yes, let's. It's not like there's one predominant realization of /r/ within GA anyway...! Nardog (talk) 16:38, 29 April 2024 (UTC)