Talk:General American English/Archive 2

message: Look here and here for vowel charts for what General American English really sounds like. It's closer to this:
General American English
Monophthongs	Front 	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close       	"peal"	     	  	    	"pool"
Near-close  	 	"pill"    	  	"pull"   	 
Mid         	 	     	"pupil"	    	 
Open-mid    	"pet" 	     	  	    	"pot"
Near Open   	"pat" 	     	"putt" 	    	 
Open        	 	     	  	"par"    	 
--Haldrik 07:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Notice how both of those charts, as well as every single other published reference I know of, uses the symbol  for the "strut" vowel. It isn't "obsolete and no longer used"; on the contrary, it's used universally. Using  because you personally think it's more accurate is original research and isn't allowed at Wikipedia. Angr 05:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: True. As far as I can see, the difference betwee using  and  is not a question of "obsoleteness" and "precision", but rather one between general usage of IPA for cross-linguistic comparison (which would indeed require that region of the vowel space to be represented by ) and long-standing tradition in English studies (which uses  for broad transription of the strut vowel no matter how a particular accent exactly pronounces it.) Dialectological work that needs very narrow phonetic transcription sometimes uses , everywhere else, . Including Ledefoged's sketch of American English in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, if that's any authority. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The difference is the turned-a symbol IS IPA, whereas the turned-v symbol is NOT IPA. The turned-v comes from the American "tic-tac-(toe)" chart, which is NOT IPA, but so similar it causes massive confusion. The tic-tac-toe chart cannot be used as if equal to the IPA chart! --Haldrik 06:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What the heck is "the"(!) Tic-tac-toe chart? That's a concept introduced there by one lecturer for one series of lecture notes. Apparently, he means any vowel chart formatted as a table rather than in the shape of the vowel trapezoid as the official IPA definition does. Which means basically all our vowel charts are tic-tac-toe charts, and they are perfectly legitimate as such. And please have another look at my remark about Ladefoged above. (Hint: the "if" in "if that's any authority" was facetious.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry Haldrik, I'm going to revert this  of you. There is no such thing as "the" North American Vowel chart, and there's no such dichotomy between "real IPA" and North American usage either. There's just perfectly routine application of the IPA for single-language-specific purposes, which my involve certain deviations in the usage of individual symbols. Which is absolutely normal and done everywhere in the literature. Please, this page is meticulously sourced and I can vouch it closely corresponds to what the leading authorities in the field do. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It must be clarified that the chart isnt an official IPA chart, and uses IPA letters wrongly. --Haldrik 06:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This use of turned-v for English is officially sanctioned as part of IPA (i.e. as within the range of variation that IPA tolerates), by the fact that Ledefoged uses it in the IPA's authoritative handbook itself. (And not even offering any apologies for it). We do more than strictly necessary by offering an explanatory note about it; but we should not be implying there was some serious disagreement or wrongness or dichotomy between approaches about this. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LOL! I agree that the deference to "tradition" is still in play, but the resulting "traditional" chart doesnt even remotely resemble what American English sounds like! --Haldrik 07:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I beg to differ. Have a look at the acoustic vowel chart  here again for the  in "pot". --Haldrik 07:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And who are Peterson & Barney 1952 and why should I believe them instead of every other linguist who's ever written about American English? Angr 07:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Google: Peterson Barney vowel. --Haldrik 07:30, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, but I still can't find evidence that Peterson & Barney thought that  is the vowel of "pot" and not that of "bought". Angr 07:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What are you talking about, it is written right on the acoustic vowel chart above. That very word was used for the acoustic measurements. (And General American English has the caught-cot merger so there is no distinction between the vowels of "bought" and "pot".) --Haldrik 07:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Unlike Italian vowels which are symmetric, General American English vowels arent symmetric. --Haldrik 08:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That chart is taken from a Finnish website; they got their data from P&B, but then so did the people who made the chart on this page (scroll about a third of the way down), which just shows symbols, not specific words associated with them. Or see the chart on this page; data taken from P&B, but  is identified as "hawed" while  is identified as "hod". And incidentally, not all varieties of General American have the cot-caught merger: see Phonological history of English low back vowels#Cot-caught merger and the map there. Some GenAm speakers have the merger, others don't. The merger cuts across GenAm. Angr 08:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And look again at the site you just gave! The mid-open  is significantly closer (closer to u), than the fully open  is! --Haldrik 08:14, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And? Angr 08:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

text: As I see it, this new confusion is because more or less all American accents that have the caught-cot merger also have the previous Father-bother merger. Which means that even if there is a separate vowel  as opposed to , it will not occur in words like "pot"; "pot" will always be on the  side. But this is all unrelated to your previous objection regarding turned-v. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My dialect (which is a variant of General American) has the caught-cot merger while father-bother are absolutely distinct. The vowel in "father" = "car", "spa", and is nearer to an open central vowel. And "bother" = "caught", "cot", and is nearer to a mid-open back vowel. Also "brother" = "gut", "love", and is a near-open central vowel. Notably, my accent is strongly monothongized so that "mayonaise" sounds nearer to . --Haldrik 21:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You wouldn't happen to be from Eastern New England, would you? That's pretty much the only place in North America I know of where father and bother don't rhyme and where cot and caught are homophonous as an open-mid (rounded, right?) back vowel. But while "General American" isn't actually explicitly defined anywhere, I suspect most people wouldn't consider an ENE accent to be General American, even if it's rhotic. Angr 21:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, not from New England (which to my ear sounds strongly accented). Albeit, I grew up in an area where most people were transplanted from all over America, including New York, the Midwest, California, and so on: hence a Generalized "pan-American" accent. --Haldrik 21:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Indeed, and in fact the term "General American" and the concept associated with it is actually widely rejected by American linguists. It's almost only used by British linguists nowadays. However, American dialectology has traditionally put more emphasis on lexical differences rather than phonological ones when it comes to drawing isoglosses and labeling dialects, while British dialectology is more interested in phonology, so that may also have something to do with it. I recently had to give an oral presentation as part of my Habilitation, and one of the topics I suggested was defining General American. But the committee selected a different topic, so I never did the research. Angr 22:05, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "One of the topics I suggested was defining General American. But the committee selected a different topic". Too bad. Obviously American English is distinctive and not being able to pin down its phonology makes it a desideratum. --Haldrik 22:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Please sign your comments by typing four tildes (thus: ~~~~). Better yet, please sign up for a user name, especially since you seem to have a dynamic IP. It makes communicating with you much easier! It's free and does not require vouchsafing any personal information (though you may give your e-mail address if you wish -- but no one will see it). —Angr 13:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  To clear up some of the comments regarding Peterson & Barney: (1) the word with /ɔ/ was in fact hawed and the word with /ɑ/ was hod, (2) the speakers in the study were "33 men, 28 women and 15 children.... Two of the speakers were born outside the United States and a few others spoke a foreign language before learning English. Most of the women and children grew up in the Middle Atlantic speech area. The male speakers represented a much broader regional sampling of the United States; the majority of them spoke General American" – ishwar  (speak) 09:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What REAL General American English sounds like

message: Does anyone think it's worth noting that mostly all Caucasian people when using a singing voices adhere to the General American accent? Even those with British/Canadian English backgrounds? The fact that many Brits sing in an "American accent" when singing–IMO–is evidence that the GenAmE is really the neutrally spoken English language. Any comments on this?— OLP 1999 13:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, unless there are published sourced that can be cited, it's original research. It's also contrary to my experience, which is that American singers (in certain styles of course) use RP when singing -- certainly r-dropping is very common in singing. Angr 14:34, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: R-dropping is the norm in singing because it sounds terrible to sing "errrrrrr".  Dark L is also avoided, but in America, choirs use American vowels otherwise.  In England they use RP usually.  Pop music strongly favors American vowels (still avoiding R and L).LiuLanDi 10:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about punk? Greenday have a definite Estuary English sound to my ear -- Chris Q 12:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't the whole point of punk to be against the norm?LiuLanDi 08:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've noticed this awesome phenomenon, too. Then suddenly, in an interview, the singer spiiks veri kut English. EDIT: The "neutral accent" theory seems to make sense: the United States is a miniature version of the world mashed and mushed and chewed into one piece. --84.249.253.201 19:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Singing voices&mdash;worth noting? 

message: I noticed the little edit conflict regarding GA .  I've changed the table back to the way it was earlier.  In General American, that vowel is pretty much back (although a little bit fronted).  There are American dialects in which it is a more central vowel but GA is not one of them.  My source is the same source that I put in the vowel's article.  I hope this puts the dispute to rest.  Thank you.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 00:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vowel of str''u''t

message: Dictionary-standard American pronunciation originates with the Mid-Atlantic dialect on the East Coast. The concept of "General American" is an entirely flawed blurring of distinct Northern dialect groups -- the description of it (especially in British hands) often includes the entire Northern tier of the US.
Today's standard American is the mother dialect of (roughly) the non-urban middle classes of the Northeast, and urban/suburban middle and upper classes of the West Coast -- not the Midwestern farm country.
The Midwestern farm belt shown on the map does speak a Northern dialect that is very close to that of the coasts -- and in pronunciation is only distinguishable from it at the sub-cardinal vowel (allophonic-like) level. No way a British native, for example, can pick up Johnny Carson's "country" quality.
Now to prove that this Midwestern speech form is not the actual "standard" we have only to stop talking about "accent" and look at dialects in toto. It is the Northeast and West Coast that originated, and use "standard", nationalized, media-adopted, vocabulary and phraseology, like "soda" -- while the area on the map uses "localisms" like "pop". 
In fact as a child on a car trip from the East to West coasts, I had a very long and confused conversation in Nebraska trying to get a "soda" -- and although the two speakers in this linguistic study could understand each other's accents perfectly, they had 0% inter-dialectical comprehensibility. One of them was speaking the "standard American dialect" and it wasn't the Midwesterner.
(Don't tell the Sumner Institute of Linguistics about this or we'll have a new language code for "Nebraskan".)
Some media personalities -- particularly the newscasters mentioned -- do have (or adopt) this Midwestern quality -- but to appeal to the broad American audience and seem "down to earth".
(Tom Brokaw, incidentally, speaks with a famously individual accent that sounds like a speech defect!)
The methodology of "what sounds least accented" to a cross-section of the American population is utterly flawed -- in a knowledge vacuum this would produce a median accent, and with people aware of the notion of "standard" speech it produces a variant of the actual standard which is as close to their own speech as possible: that is, someone from Nebraska is speaking something close enough to the standard as to be identified with it, and someone from Oklahoma thinks someone from Nebraska sounds a whole lot better than some elitist from the coasts.
Nonetheless -- there are a bunch of linguists out there who do advance the idea of "General American", in forms something like the description presented in this article. So what I am arguing for in my treatise here is only that "General American" should be presented as one model, with criticism, and not fact. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.7.2.60 (talk • contribs)  13:01, 22 November 2006   (UTC)
:Good idea. Keep in mind that any additions have to be backed up with published sources and that original research isn't allowed at Wikipedia, but otherwise go for it! —Angr 13:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't speak for the entire article, but in the parts I added, including the map, I tried very hard to make it clear that I am not claiming General American is unique to the Midwest, or originated in the Midwest and spread from there. Rather, what Labov et al.'s research showed is that the local accent of the area highlighted on the map is free of a wide range of pronunciations that are otherwise regionally restricted -- i.e., this area has no typically Southern features like /ay/ monophthongization, no Northern Cities Vowel Shift, no fronting of /u/ and /o/ as typical of the West, etc. etc., and therefore this regional accent comes closest to being "General American" in the sense of an accent free of regionalisms. —Angr 19:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The call to merge General American with American English is just rediculous.  GA has been studied by numerous linguists.  I'm not aware of any criticism of their analysis and even if there were, it's a unique enough topic that they should remain separate.  I think that referring to GA as a standard that parallels RP shows a cultural difference between the two countries.  Americans value the accent least marked for region while the British value the speech of the educated.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "General American" Doesn't Really Exist and Is Not "Standard" American

message: The lead section of this article says GA originated in the Mid-Atlantic, but other sections (like the first one) say it originated in the Midwest. Which is right? CapitalSasha ~ talk 23:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know of any research that's been done into the question of where General American originated. Both statements are probably original research. —Angr 20:28, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction 

message: Standard American English is spoken in California and the west coast only. Midwestern accents are completely different and easily as garbled and awful-sounding as southern or southwestern accents. I don't know where this comes from, possibly from listening to midwestern radio and hearing the californian radio broadcasting graduates who had to move to small towns. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.122.208.51 (talk) 20:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do believe Western English is taking over as a standard.  The midwestern dialect is the traditional standard.  The Jade Knight 10:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Many of the people in TV and radio in the old days moved to the east or west coast from the middle of the country. In particular the people who moved to California during the dust bowl. --Gbleem 19:55, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is ridiculous 

message: I was looking for information on the standard written form of the language, which is entirely ignored here.  The Jade Knight 10:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Standard Written English --Gbleem 19:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard American English