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American English

American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English,[b] is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States.[4] English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances is the de facto common language used in government, education and commerce. It is also the official language of most US states (at least 30 out of 50). Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.[5][6][7][8][9][10]

"U.S. English" redirects here. For the political organization, see U.S. English (organization). For the English language throughout North America, see North American English. For other uses, see American English (disambiguation).

American English

242 million, all varieties of English in the United States (2019)
67.3 million L2 speakers of English in the United States (2019)

United States (32 US states, five non-state US territories) (see article)

None

en-US[2][3]

American English varieties include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around the world.[11] Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American;[5] it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent.[12][13] The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in the 20th century.[14]

History[edit]

The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing a process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain.[15][16] English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to the diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century,[17] while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased.[18] Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages.[19][7]


Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in the influence of the Scotch-Irish immigration in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers.[19][20]

: The American phenomenon of the LOT vowel (often spelled ⟨o⟩ in words like box, don, clock, notch, pot, etc.) being produced without rounded lips, like the PALM vowel, allows father and bother to rhyme, the two vowels now unified as the single phoneme /ɑ/. The father–bother vowel merger is in a transitional or completed stage in nearly all North American English. Exceptions are in northeastern New England English (such as the Boston accent), the Pittsburgh accent, and variably in some older New York accents, which may retain a rounded articulation.[31][32]

Unrounded LOT

in transition: There is no single American way to pronounce the vowels in words like cot /ɑ/ (the ah vowel) versus caught /ɔ/ (the aw vowel), largely because of a merger occurring between the two sounds in some parts of North America, but not others. American speakers with a completed merger pronounce the two historically separate vowels with the same sound (especially in the West, northern New England, West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and the Upper Midwest), but other speakers have no trace of a merger at all (especially in the South, the Great Lakes region, southern New England, and the Mid-Atlantic and New York metropolitan areas) and so pronounce each vowel with distinct sounds listen.[33] Among speakers who distinguish between the two, the vowel of cot (usually transcribed in American English as /ɑ/), is often a central [ɑ̈] or advanced back [ɑ̟], while /ɔ/ is pronounced with more rounded lips and/or phonetically higher in the mouth, close to [ɒ] or [ɔ] , but with only slight rounding.[34] Among speakers who do not distinguish between them, thus producing a cot–caught merger, /ɑ/ usually remains a back vowel, [ɑ] , sometimes showing lip rounding as [ɒ]. Therefore, even mainstream Americans vary greatly with this speech feature, with possibilities ranging from a full merger to no merger at all. A transitional stage of the merger is also common in scatterings throughout the United States, most consistently in the American Midlands lying between the historical dialect regions of the North and the South, while younger Americans, in general, tend to be transitioning toward the merger. According to a 2003 dialect survey carried out across the United States, about 61% of participants perceive themselves as keeping the two vowels distinct and 39% do not.[35] A 2009 follow-up survey put the percentages at 58% non-merging speakers and 41% merging.[36]

Cot–caught merger

STRUT in special words: The STRUT vowel, rather than the one in LOT or THOUGHT (as in Britain), is used in and certain other words like was, of, from, what, everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody, and, for many speakers because and rarely even want, when stressed.[37][38][39][40]

function words

Vowel mergers

Mary–marry–merry merger

Americans vary slightly in their pronunciations of such as those in /ɛər/ and /ɪər/, which sometimes monophthongizes towards [ɛɹ] and [ɪɹ] or tensing towards [eɪɹ] and [i(ə)ɹ] respectively. That causes pronunciations like [pʰeɪɹ] for pair/pear and [pʰiəɹ] for peer/pier.[45] Also, /jʊər/ is often reduced to [jɚ], so that cure, pure, and mature may all end with the sound [ɚ], thus rhyming with blur and sir. The word sure is also part of the rhyming set as it is commonly pronounced [ʃɚ].

R-colored vowels

: Dropping of /j/ after a consonant is much more extensive than in most of England. In most North American accents, /j/ is "dropped" or "deleted" after all alveolar and interdental consonants (that is: everywhere except after /p/, /b/, /f/, /h/, /k/, and /m/) and so new, duke, Tuesday, assume are pronounced [nu], [duk], [ˈtʰuzdeɪ], [əˈsum] (compare with Standard British /nju/, /djuk/, /ˈtjuzdeɪ/, /əˈsjum/).[46]

Yod-dropping

American and British English spelling differences

Canadian English

Dictionary of American Regional English

International English

International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects

International Phonetic Alphabet chart for the English Language

List of English words from indigenous languages of the Americas

Phonological history of English

Regional accents of English

Transatlantic accent

(2012). Speaking American: A History of English in the United States 20th–21st-century usage in different cities

Bailey, Richard W.

(1848). Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded As Peculiar to the United States. New York: Bartlett and Welford.

Bartlett, John R.

(2003). Garner's Modern American Usage. New York: Oxford University Press.

Garner, Bryan A.

(1977) [1921]. The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th ed.). New York: Knopf.

Mencken, H. L.

: PBS special

Do You Speak American

of the United States, by Bert Vaux et al., Harvard University.

Dialect Survey

Linguistic Atlas Projects

at the University of Pennsylvania

Phonological Atlas of North America

Speech Accent Archive

Dictionary of American Regional English

Dialect maps based on pronunciation