Talk:General American English/Archive 1

Added Paragraph
I added the paragraph about the difficulties sometimes faced by Midwestern Americans with understanding other dialects from personal experience: I grew up in the Upper Midwest myself, and have spent most of the last 20 years living in various places up and down the East Coast, from the Carolinas to New England, with frequent visits to in-laws on the VA-TN border.
 * sounds like original research. I mean folks have trouble understanding unfamiliar accents in general. --wikt:user:eean

What is the evidence that the Midwestern accent has declined in popularity among the media?

--Trau

move to "General American"?
I'm sorely tempted to move this article to General American and switch the direction of the redirect. As the article itself says, the accent is not standard in any official sense, nor is it limited to the Midwest. The term most commonly encountered in linguistics is General American. If no one objects, I'll go ahead and do that. --Angr 23:01, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's been five days and no one's objected, so I'm moving it. --217.88.122.127 20:12, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, the above is from me, of course. Wikipedia was being stupid and thinking I had disabled cookies when I hadn't. --Angr 20:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Removed paragraph
I removed the following paragraph because it's unclear what is meant by "placing stress on consonants and on syllables in the middle of words". If someone would like to restore this paragraph, let's discuss it here first.


 * Individuals from the Midwestern US sometimes have difficulty understanding other dialects of English, because most other dialects, both in other parts of the US and abroad, place less stress on consonants and on syllables in the middle of words. Since Slavic languages stress consonants even more heavily than does Standard Midwestern, a Russian who learns English extremely well often sounds almost Midwestern (cf. Vladimir Posner).  This is especially noticeable in the speech of interpreters for important Russian officials.  (The exception to this is seen when Russian interpreters have specifically learned to speak British English, and their vowels sound seriously over-emphasized to native English speakers.)

--Angr 20:40, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

pronunciation of "sorry" in GA
With all due respect, User:Angr, you are wrong. I don't know how much exposure you have to the pronunciation of AmE you have there in Germany, but I can tell you, having visited Des Moines this past weekend (as is my habit about once a month), NOBODY there says SARI! It is unequivocally an r-colored "o" sound, not a lengthened "a" sound. If you take the time to listen to newscasters from the region, you will notice the same, although, given their penchant for wanton hubris, it's rare to hear newscasters ever actually say they're sorry! I leave it up to you to delete your error, since apparently you feel your degree outweighs my personal experience, but let me say this as clearly as possible: regardless of what you might read in your texts, YOU ARE WRONG. Tomer TALK 12:04, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * As a speaker of Inland North and South Midlands the two dialects which bracket North Midland which this page is equating with General American, I would say that sorry is pronounced SARI. However I also find Inland North less accented than North Midland and find no support for choosing the western half of the North Midland dialect area as the least accented in the Telsur pages. Did I miss that somewhere. All I find is maps of a dialect area that stretches from Ohio to Nebraska. Rmhermen 13:16, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

I'm basing my claims on what's General American not on what I hear here in Germany, but on what I say (having lived in the U.S. from birth till almost age 29), and on what I notice other American speakers saying, and to some extent on dictionaries (though in this case they tend to list both pronunciations without identifying who says what). My degree doesn't outweigh your personal experience; but my personal experience is at variance with yours. I've never met anyone who pronounced "sorry" to rhyme with "glory" who didn't turn out to be Canadian. Every time I've heard an American without an obvious New England, NYC, or Southern accent say this word, s/he pronounced it to rhyme with "starry". But I've never been to Des Moines; if they do pronounce "sorry" to rhyme with "glory", then the statement in the article needs to be qualified. --Angr/comhrá 13:54, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I have lived in the upper midwest since I was 4 years old (St. Paul, Minn. ages 4-7, Eau Claire, Wisc. ages 7-33). I can tell you unequivocally that everyone in this area pronounces sorry to rhyme with glory.  (If I had time to waste, I'd go out and record people saying "sorry" for your benefit, since, as I said, newscasters are unlikely to be doing so in great numbers anytime soon...)  That's not really the issue at hand, however, since GA is defined in this article to be a reflection of the pronunciation of the area in which Des Moines finds itself dead center, I think it's pretty inconsistent, since, in Des Moines, I have heard "/'sa: ri/" only from people from southern Iowa and the Ozarks, where it is pronounced to rhyme with "tarry".  All that said, my point is not to say that the pronunciation /'sa: ri/ does not occur anywhere in the described region, but that it is not an indicator of GA, nor is it universal in the region outlined in the map in the article.  Tomer TALK  07:27, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

The problem is, both you and I are relying on our own observations, which amounts to original research. What we need to find is published literature discussing the distribution of both pronunciations in the United States. In case no sociolinguistic fieldwork on this question has been done (I don't know of any, but I'm a phonologist, not a sociolinguist), we may have to rely on American dictionaries, and see whether any of them list different vowels for sorry than they do for borrow, sorrow, and tomorrow (which you didn't complain about and so I assume you agree are pronounced with ). Another point: General American is not defined as the accent around Iowa; the accent around Iowa is stated to be closest to GenAm of any regional accent. GenAm itself can be found in all regions of the country, since not everyone uses the regional accent of the region where they live. --Angr/comhrá 08:10, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Okay, the majority of dictionaries and pronouncing dictionaries I've checked (Longman [Wells 2000], Random House Webster's Unabridged, Kenyon & Knott, American Heritage, Merriam Webster's 11th Collegiate, NTC [Silverstein 1994], and CMU), give as their first or only pronunciation for sorry. (Only K&K give  first for sorry, but they do so for borrow and tomorrow as well.) A postal poll of 400 native speakers of American English from throughout the country [Shitara 1993] indicates a 68-32% preference for  in sorry and a 65-35% preference for  in tomorrow. I haven't seen Shitara 1993 myself (she's cited in Wells 2000), so I don't know whether any information on regional distribution is included. --Angr/comhrá 09:00, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Since the majority of the population lives pretty much everywhere except Iowa, and does not speak, GA, I don't see how this information is particularly relevant. :-p And yes, my observation is that borrow, sorrow and tomorrow are pronounced  in the area defined.  My objection remains.  While I agree that including either of our observations in the article would qualify as original research, I'm not trying to include original research, I'm trying to exclude something (a single word) on the basis of personal observation...I think there's a subtle but very important important difference.  Tomer TALK  09:12, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the dictionary and survey results show that is the most common American pronunciation of sorry, and that's not original research or personal observation. I reiterate that GenAm does not mean English as spoken in the area enclosed in orange on the map. GenAm means the accent (or group of accents, since there is variation within what's called GenAm) used throughout the country by people who don't have a regional accent. The area enclosed in orange on the map is the area where the regional accent comes closest to GenAm, without necessarily being identical to GenAm. If twice as many people say  as  (as the survey indicates), and if the pronunciation  is limited to certain regions (which I don't have information on but suspect is the case), then it's safe to call  the GenAm pronunciation. I also strongly doubt that you're correct when you say the majority of the U.S. population does not speak GenAm, though I can't back that up with published evidence. --Angr/comhrá 10:40, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I strongly disagree with your stated doubt, but I don't think it's worth arguing about. I still think "sorry" should be deleted from the list, but I'm only one editor.  If I thought it were something that could be quantified, I'd expend more effort trying to refute your apparently strongly-held view.  I've suddenly just stopped caring enough to continue disputing your POV.  Tomer TALK  10:48, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

I'll verify that the General American pronunciation of sorry is "sahree" as opposed to "soaree". The latter is more associated with Canadian English, and everyone I know only pronounces it that way when making fun of Canadians. If someone pronounces it "soaree", it would very likely be pointed out. --LakeHMM 05:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

midwest
it doesnt make any sense that midwestern english is standard. if you look at chicago, that is midwest, and i would hardly call them standard, especially when they say words like "accent". cleveland is also in the midwest and has the same weird accent. we can also look at minnesota and wisconsin, both in the midwest and they talk funny as well, especially when they say "about", they use the canadian about. and minnesota people love to say "dontcha know". i seriously doubt minnesota english is standard for usa, maybe canada though. i live in ohio and i must say that people here sound like southerners more than anything else. i might as well be in kentucky. so really, standard american english is NOT based on the midwest.


 * I agree with this. General American doesn't exist.  Of course England's RP does; they have a BBC.  It's run by the government.  America never had such a station.  I think this article should serve to explain why there ISN'T a General American dialect instead of pretending there is one (either that, or it should analyze what the various American accents have in common in comparison with other accents instead of attempting to single out a particular accent as "General American.")

Juppiter 19:20, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * General American exists all right; I'm a native speaker of it. But it isn't codified the way RP is, and there's much more variation allowed within it than within RP. It may be more convenient to define it negatively: General American is any American accent that isn't a local regional accent. I was born in Santa Barbara and my parents grew up in Los Angeles, but I don't have the fronting of /o/ and /u/ or the raising of to /i/ before  associated with California English. Between the ages of 2 and 9 I lived in Rochester, New York, but I don't have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Between the ages of 9 and 21 I lived in Austin, Texas, but I don't have any of the characteristics of a Texas accent (no -monophthongization, no pin-pen merger, neither of the fill-feel and fell-fail mergers, etc.). Lacking a regional accent, but indisputably having an American accent, I default to General American. --Angr/undefined 20:38, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * You are, of course, incorrect. Just because you perceive differences between the way you speak and the way various acquaintances of yours from other areas speak does not mean that General American is not based on the speech of the midwest.  As for peoplf rom minnesota and wisconsin pronouncing "about" the same as canadians, I can tell you, categorically, your perception is incorrect.  As for people from Minnesota saying "dontcha know", I hardly think the worst stereotypes of Minnesotan you might have picked up upon from watching Fargo qualify as authoritative.  If you admittedly perceive your own pronunciation as "southern", in fact, I would have to, without wanting to sound too insulting, have to dismiss your judgment of both midwestern "accents" an any subsequent comparison to what you apparently erroneously believe to be General American, as terminally flawed.  Tomer TALK  04:47, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

I'd say what's most incorrect about the anonymous statement above are the assumptions that (1) there's a single Midwestern accent, and (2) that General American is based on a regional accent. He's quite right that the local accents of Chicago, Cleveland, and Minnesota aren't General American. He's also right that a lot of Southern features have spread into Ohio. The map shows the region where the local accent comes closest to GenAm, and it's farther west than Chicago and Ohio and farther south than Minnesota and Wisconsin. But even so, saying the local accents of eastern Nebraska, southern and central Iowa, and west-central Illinois come closest to GenAm is not the same thing as saying they are GenAm. GenAm is spoken throughout the country, by people who for whatever reason don't have an accent identifiable with any particular region. (Also, the question of "dontcha know" is irrelevant because it's not a matter of accent. The particular phonetic realization of the /o/ in both words is a matter of accent, but the usage of the phrase itself isn't.) --Angr/undefined 06:10, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Ah. I regarded the most relevant part of the "dontcha know" thing as the palatalization of the /t/, rather than anything to do with vowel phonemes.  Hence my characterization of it as an exaggeration rather than a valid identifier of any regional pronunciation. Tomer TALK  06:55, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Is there any variety of English where "don't you" can't be pronounced "dontcha"? --Angr/undefined 08:26, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

NAFAIK. (and no, that doesn't say "Norfolk" :-p ) Tomer TALK  17:22, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Expand this thing
Could someone who knows about the topic please write on the article where the term General American comes from? The article should also specify how General American is prnounced, with allophones and everything, not just phonemes. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 02:04, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I'll see what I can find out about the former. As for the latter, it may be difficult because there is no single, monolithic General American pronunciation; there's a lot of variation within GenAm. --Angr/undefined 06:19, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

General American: Accent?
It's mentioned in the article that General American is considered by some to be an accentless variation on the greater language. I would ask, plainly, WHAT variation? I think it's worth noting, whether you want to tack General American to a specific and perhaps somewhat arbitrary spot in the United States, that the high concept here is simply pronouncing words as they appear in the dictionary, be it Webster's, Oxford, Cambridge or what have you. Is it unfair to say that in the face of a proud and very long tradition, people have independently picked up dictionaries and resolved to do what they're told?

Ylem 12:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The word "variation" doesn't occur anywhere in the article, so I'm not sure what you're objecting to. And I think there's hardly anyone who bases their pronunciation on what a dictionary says; rather, it's the other way around. Dictionaries base their pronunciation guides on what people actually say. --Angr/undefined 12:06, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't object to how the article is worded. You're right about "variation". What we see instead is General American being referred to as an accent again and again when it clearly is not. This isn't the place to argue whether a dictionary is any language's definitive guide to pronunciation, but I think we probably don't need to: British English dictionaries contain "General American" pronunciation, and have for hundreds of years; neither their audience nor their authors have shown any desire to actually use it. We do not see in America, for instance, regional dictionaries that accommodate its own dialects, or their unique pronunciation. That dictionaries base their pronunciation guide on what people say would be nice. On the contrary, there has been a consensus for some time.Ylem 20:32, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I think you might have a different definition of "accent" than linguists have. If you look at the article Accent (linguistics) you will see that "Accents mark speakers as a member of a group by their pronunciation of the standard language." (I'm not sure it's necessary to say "standard language", as it's possible to have an accent in a nonstandard or nonstandardized language as well.) General American is a particular pronunciation (or rather, a group of closely related pronunciations) of American English and is therefore an accent. The reason why "accentless" is always written in scare quotes in the article is that technically, "accentless" speech is impossible since every pronunciation is an accent, but laymen often use the word "accent" to mean "nonstandard accent". Laymen often say "So-and-so doesn't have an accent" when what they mean from the linguists' point of view is "So-and-so's accent is standard." Are you sure British dictionaries have included General American pronunciation for hundreds of years? I thought it was a relatively recent thing (in the past 15 years or so) that some British dictionaries have included American pronunciations. And while older dictionaries may have been fairly prescriptive, I think modern dictionaries do a good job of being descriptive instead. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (11th edn.), for example, bases the pronunciations given on a database of pronunciations used by educated Americans recorded from radio and television since the 1930s. So that dictionary at any rate (and I think really most modern dictionaries) derives its pronuncation guides from what people actually say. It also gives variant pronunciations, including Canadian and British as well as regional accents from within the U.S., when these differ unpredictably from the commonest American pronunciation. --Angr/undefined 21:10, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Midwest home of telemarketing
In the section "Regional home of General American" the reason given for the location choice for telemarketing firms is the accentless speech. This may be the reason for the larger area, but I grew up in the region, and the reason frequently cited there is that Omaha was originally chosen as a telemarketing center was because of the high density of long distance lines installed there during the 1950s, due to the needs of the Strategic Air Command located at Offutt Air Force Base. --Blainster 22:05, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I just added this before noticing your comment. Great minds think alike, eh?

Another reason is that in the old days, a toll-free number was not valid in the state where it was based; ads frequently said "Call 1 800 XXX-XXXX, except in Nebraska." (It was obviously worth more to spend five seconds plugging the product than to read a second telephone number for the Cornhuskers.) Better to lose Nebraska's 1.5 million consumers than the 10 million in Illinois or Ohio, or even the 3 million in Iowa. ProhibitOnions 12:22:45, 2005-08-23 (UTC)


 * Non-linguistic reasons why Omaha has lots of telemarketing companies might be interesting to add at Omaha, Nebraska or at Telemarketing, but they're completely irrelevant to the discussion of General American. I've changed the wording to "neutreal accents are one of the reasons why" and deleted the rest. --Angr/undefined 04:29, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

German Americans
I added (an now restored) the link to German Americans in the image caption. The fact that the areas with an accent, the South and the Northeast, are the only areas in the U.S. where German Americans are not the dominant population can not be a coincidence. The article, as it now stands, does not mention the effect of German (or the Low Saxon dialect) on General American. Something seems to be missing. -- Petri Krohn 22:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * What's missing is any verifiable evidence based on published, reliable sources that German Americans had any influence whatever on the General American accent. Also, the map at German American shows that the region most heavily settled by Germans is far larger than just the area where the local accent is closest to GenAm. The area of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, for example, is also heavily German-American. Noticing a coincidence and proclaiming a connection is called original research, and it isn't allowed at Wikipedia. User:Angr 06:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * At the time of the NCVS northern cities were heavily populated by African American migrants from the South. -- Petri Krohn 12:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * But the NCVS is used primarily by whites; AAVE is unaffected by it. User:Angr 14:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Section on origin of General American
I wrote a new section on the origin of General American pronunciation, trying to avoid any unverified connections. As it stands the section is practically empty. The article can not avoid the question on the origin. This is something that readers will expect the article to address. If absolutely nothing is known of the origin of GenAm, then this must be stated as a fact in the article. The three facts we know: Even if the German Americans managed to dissolve into the American people without so much as leaving a trace, the census map on the ethnic origin of Americans is still relevant. -- Petri Krohn 12:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Immigrants from the British Isles are concentrated in the North East and New England. Their language is different from General American and is considered a dialect/accent.
 * 2) The Southern United States is dominated by African Americans, their influence is evident in the Southern American English dialects.
 * 3) The largest immigrant group in the U.S. is German Americans


 * You're trying to create a connection between ethnicity and language without citing so much as a single source to support your hypothesis. Original research is not allowed on Wikipedia, and that is precisely what you're adding. You've decided that there must be a connection between German-American ethnicity and the General American accent, but this in the absence of any sources, it appears that this is just your idea. Adding one's own ideas to Wikipedia articles is a violation of policy. The census map on the ethnic origin of Americans is completely irrelevant in a linguistics article, since there is no connection at all between a person's ethnicity and their accent. User:Angr 13:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * What is stated is fully supported by the presented references. I *am not* stating that there is a connection between German ethnicity and GenAm language. That inference is up to the reader. What I am stating is that there are no sources supporting this obvious inference. (Here I am relying on your previous comment.) You can not however overlook the fact that the GenAm speakers were mostly of German origin.


 * > there is no connection at all between
 * > a person's ethnicity and their accent.


 * In one sense you are correct. The people labeled as "Germans" most likely spoke a North German or Low Saxon dialect with an accent very different from High German.
 * You should also note the image presenting the distribution of German Americans. This even more closely corresponds to the GenAm map than the combined map with the light blue continent. -- Petri Krohn 14:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * P.S. Please do not confuse Original research with primary sources. -- Petri Krohn 14:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Presenting two unrelated facts and letting the reader make an inference is just as bad. The evidence you have given supports the statement that German Americans are most concentrated in the northern Midwest. You still have not presented a shred of evidence that there is any connection between German-American ethnicity and the General American accent, and to avoid the problem that no such evidence exists, you've now resorted to a version that says in effect, "This is where the local accent is closest to General American. This is where German Americans are most populous. You decide". One could equally well show a map of average annual snowfall in the United States and show that the areas with the most snowfall roughly correspond to the areas with the highest concentration of German Americans. Even if you didn't come right out and say "there is a correlation between German-American areas of settlement and average annual snowfall", by putting the statements together you would be leading the reader to believe that such a correlation exists, or at least leading the reader to believe the author believes it. User:Angr 14:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Now you are mixing snowfall and accent; we all know that that does not make sense. Accent however has a direct relationship to ethnic/language origin. Are you seriously trying to deny *this* fact? -- Petri Krohn 15:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am, because accent actually has very little relationship to ethnic or linguistic origin. Children pick up their native language and accent primarily from their peers, not their parents, and in a multiethnic country like the United States, children's peers are usually from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. User:Angr 15:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * If that is the case, where do you suppose the children of these German immigrants picked their accent from? -- Petri Krohn 15:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * From the other children around them, most of whom were of mixed ancestry. User:Angr 15:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * In this case that can not be true, as the German Americans were the first, and often, the only people to settle these areas. The only mixtures were with related linguistic groups like Norwegians and Dutch. -- Petri Krohn 16:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree with Angr. "Primary sources" may be okay in certain situations; deriving your own conclusions from primary sources if scholarship hasn't done so is OR; suggesting conclusions from primary sources without saying so openly, by means of insinuation, is even worse. For the moment, I suggest you leave the paragraph out, get yourself a good book on American dialectology from the next library, and spend some time reading instead of discussing here.Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

RfC I have to side with the editors who insist this needs more citation. Take heart: this looks like an interesting correlation, and if it really is an original observation then the editor who made it might have the core of a paper for an academic journal (which could then be cited in Wikipedia). I suggest this person collaborate with a professional linguist. For the present, Wikipedia is not the proper avenue of publication. Durova 18:00, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

RFC response
I'm a linguist dealing with English. I'm not particularly familiar with American dialectology, but I know there is a huge lot of literature on it, and I haven't ever heard of a theory linking the main divisions of American dialects to the strength of German influence. Not that I'd exclude it, but it doesn't strike me as particularly likely. In this sense, I find the paragraph under discussion here to be misleading. Especially the sentence: "It is not known whether German Americans or their Low Saxon dialect had any effect on the formation of General American". The expression "it is not known" implies that scholars have looked into such a hypothesis, haven't been able to verify it, but don't exclude it either. We have no reason to believe that this is the case. For all we know, they may have looked into it and disproved it thoroughly. Or they may never have seriously considered it. (Or, in fact, they may consider it true.) The fact is that we (the two or three Wikipedians on this discussion) do not currently know. But we shouldn't present our ignorance as if it was factual ignorance out in the real world of scholarship. As matters stand, it's up to whoever wants to include such content to provide evidence that scholarship has considered such a hypothesis; in the absence of that, we shouldn't say anything about the topic, in order not to insinuate to the reader things that we cannot verify. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:56, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Is it not amazing that German Americans are the largest immigrant group in America, and yet, according to Wikipedia, they did not leave trace in the American English language, except for a few loan words! This fact in itself is so amazing that it would warrant an article of its own, maybe called the vanishing Germans :-) --Petri Krohn 15:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You may find it as amazing as you like. Show us evidence that linguists share your amazement. Until then, there's really nothing to discuss here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I modified the text to remove any speculation. It now explicitly states that "linguistic literature does not support any link with German dialects and General American."
 * Is this now OK with you? -- Petri Krohn 16:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * No. Since the linguistic literature doesn't support any link, the coincidence is not worth mentioning in the article. This is as absurd as a sentence saying "The meteorological literature does not support any link between German-American settlement and annual average snowfall." User:Angr 16:03, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Not so! The same fallacy again. Mixing meteorology and accent is, most likely, absurd. Comparing accent and language is not. -- Petri Krohn 16:14, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * But you're not comparing accent and language. You're comparing accent and ethnicity, which is no less absurd than comparing accent and meteorology. User:Angr 16:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The German people and German ethnicity are defined by the use of the German language. -- Petri Krohn 16:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * But German Americans aren't. At a guess, I'd venture that the vast majority of them can hardly say anything in German besides "Danke", "Auf Wiedersehen", and "Gesundheit". User:Angr 16:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * [After edit conflict] Honestly, in line with what I said above, still not quite. We know nothing. We know neither that scholarship "doesn't know" about that link, nor that scholarship "doesn't support" that link. Until someone goes and looks it up. Until then, it's better not to write anything.
 * By the way, maybe as a help to ease your amazement: Dialectologists speak of the so-called "founder effect". When populations expand into new areas and then mix, the new local varieties emerging in each particular area are primarily determined by the very first settlers in each location. Later newcomers merge into what's already there and don't influence the mixture very much. Wherever Germans came into areas where English-speakers were already established, they would have got assimilated without leaving much trace, no matter how strong their numbers were. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should be silent on the issue until published evidence is presented which supports this. I cannot think of any features of General American that particularly remind me of German. Perhaps it would be easier to find evidence if we knew what features are supposedly related to German. Rmhermen 17:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Petri, although your hypothesis is interesting and at least slightly plausible, as a layman with some familiarity with Americna linguistics I'm unaware of anything proving the relationship. For instance, there are clear differences between the Midwestern urban dialects (Milwaukee/Chicago/Detroit) and the Eastern ones (New York/Philly/Boston), which I attribute to differences in immigration patterns (more Poles vs. Italians, for one). But I don't have any proof, so this is original research and justifications such as "it's logical to compare" don't wash. Please do some valuable research and find the literature and bring it here as citations. Otherwise, you're basically arguing for us to ignore policy in the face of an attractive idea. --Dhartung | Talk 05:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

"Origin" in NY/NJ
DragoonWraith 16:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC): In the characteristics section, a list of words is cited that whose pronunciation is unique to GenAm, including "origin" - now, I don't know how GenAm says "origin", as I come from one of those regions with a different accent, but given that the region I'm referring to is also mentioned, here is what I have to say (the odd construction of this sentence is entirely my own peculiarity, nothing to do with my accent or anything else - I blame too many years studying Latin screwing with my word ordering): It is stated that each of the words in this list are pronounced with [-ɑr-] in NY/NJ accents, which is true for most of them, but not for "origin", at least not in my experience. I'm quite certain I have never heard anyone say "are-ijin", they say "or-ijin" (I'm no good with pronunciation symbols, "are" and "or" refer to the English words and their pronunciation); maybe it's a part of NY/NJ accent that I'm not familiar with, but I figured I'd point it out.

Central & Southwest Ohio
Most of our city dwellers speak with an "accentless" accent, very "General American". I don't understand the map for the Midwest and why Ohio is not included in "General American". I can vouch for it :-).

Any others from Central & Southwestern Ohio that can share more about our beautiful "General American" accent.
 * Unfortunately, your vouching for it is original research. Published linguistic research does not confirm the absence of regionalisms in Ohio. User:Angr 09:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Age of Speaker
Does the age of a speaker have anything to do with pronounciation? I have noticed that in my region the elderly speak somewhat different. For example for the word "where" they say Hwere, while most others say it without pronouncing the H. Regarding the word sorry, very small children say Sari. I noticed once a mother said to her young daughter "Say you're sorry" so the girl said "I'm sari". How did the small daughter have a different accent?
 * Sure, it's very common for there to be linguistic differences between generations. The difference in pronunciation you've noticed in the word "where" is the wine-whine merger, where older people have not done the merger but younger people have. The little girl may well be picking up the accent of other children she knows from school or daycare; children are far more likely to use their peers' pronunciation than their parents'. User:Angr 09:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I see...very interesting!

Britain's General American Accent
Britain is full of many accents sliding and varying in every direction, village to village, hamlet to hamlet. The thing is, some accents in Britain seem to come close to General American. Well maybe not close but the closest thing Britain has. I've noticed that somewhere round Yorkshire in the North of England. My question is...Where in Britain is the closest accent to General American? Could it be possible that a Brit could be confused for a General American Accent speaker?


 * I am surprised that you find the non-rhotic Yorkshire accent close to General American, though it does have the "flat a". I think that some of the Border Scots accents, which are both rhotic and have the "flat a" and don't have the distinctive "continental" pronunciation of "u" closer to an American accent (in Yorkshire "look" and "luck" are ).


 * Incidentally some West country accents sound very similar to the "Old Timer" in Deputy Dawg, though that is hardly Genaral American -- Chris Q 12:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, we're getting somewhere. I would like more input as to where in the UK do they speak the closest to General American. Heres another thing, a fellow from Cornwall also seemed close to General American in accent. Yes Cornwall is one side & Yorkshire the other.


 * If I recall correctly, the "flat a" is a survival of what used to be a widespread British pronunciation - similar to the way that U.S. "lawyer" was a common term on the other side of "the pond" a couple of centuries ago. Many people suppose the differences between British and U.S. English are due to American corruptions or borrowings from specific localities.  That isn't necessarily a safe assumption. Durova 23:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "Borrow", "Sorrow", "Tomorrow", and "Sorry"
I think that it should be pointed out that the reason that these three words are pronounced with the vowel from "are" is because the first vowel has been dissimilated from the second in this environment. It's worth adding this simply for explanatory purposes. Although what I present here is uncited, I can remember reading something like this in a reliable source. I recommend that anyone who's interested and has access to a university library find some citations for the following. In Linguistic Terms the change is such

/ɒ/ > /ɑ/ / _roʊ

That is the first vowel dissimlates from a second for the feature ROUND in the environment _roʊ. Naturally /ɒ/ went to /ɑ/ as they share the same place of articulation with regards to tongue position.

Referencing the conversation above about "sorry", in all likelihood this change is probably the result of analogy with "sorrow" as the result of certain similarities in meaning, namely "expression/expressing emotional distress."

By the way, I have a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in Linguistics from the University of Washington, if any of you were wondering how I'd find something like this. :) - RedRoot 8-28-2006


 * I thought about adding it when I added that section, but I can't find any published sources to back the claim up. Without published sources, it's original research and can't be used. —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 07:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)