english accents

English accents13. General American (cont.)

r-coloured vowels

NURSE first, third, occur, serve

lettER gather, standard, persist

historically:

• short vowels fell together as /ə/ before /r/

• [ə] and [r] coalesced as a single rhotacized vowel

• (in non-rhotic accents) the rhotacization was lost

The THOUGHT vowel/ɔ/

• Variation in quality: generally opener than in BrE

• In the CLOTH set as well as the THOUGHT set

• Subject to an on-going merger with /ɑ/ LOT ("the low back merger") dawn-don, hawk-hock

• Those who have not merged /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ have lexical variability in on, fog, sorry, wash

The TRAP-BATH vowel/æ/

With regional, social-stylistic and positional variation, subject to raising and tensing to [ɛː ~ eə ~ iə]

jazz

The LOT vowel/ɑ/

• Subject to fronting to [a] ("Northern Cities Shift"), which protects it from the Low Back Merger found west of the Mississippi, in western Pennsylvania, in Canada etc.

The Northern Cities shift

æTRAP

ɑLOT

ɔTHOUGHT

ʌSTRUT

… also, the lowering and centralization of /ɪ/ (KIT) and /ɛ/ (DRESS)

TRAP LOT

THOUGHT

KIT

DRESSSTRUT

http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/radio/#