Questions tagged [american-english]
The variety of English used in the United States of America.
98 questions
0
votes
0
answers
47
views
what kinds of two prepositions can or cannot be compounded?
Are these examples of compounding two prepositions:
from within
off of
outside of
?
Are there descriptive rules for what kinds of two prepositions can be compounded, or for what kinds of two ...
- 913
6
votes
1
answer
199
views
Women doctors vs woman doctors
In English, noun modifiers are not marked for number. One says "cowboy boot" and "cowboy boots", not "cowboys boots".
So I'm often confused when I see people write (for ...
- 71
0
votes
0
answers
87
views
Why are the <tt> in <utter> (american English) and <r> in <cara> (Spanish) considered the exact same sound [ɾ]?
According to Wikitionary, the american pronounciation of <utter> is [ˈʌɾɚ] in IPA, and <cara> in Spanish is pronounced as [ˈka.ɾa].
According to the IPA these are both the same voiced ...
- 101
-5
votes
1
answer
113
views
Do linguists consider that vowel length marks aren't necessary for AmE (and parhaps RP,too)?
Take a word like "redeemer". Is it conceivable that the middle vowel wouldn't be significantly longer in any native AmE speaker's idiolect? Is the linguists' inside-baseball notion "...
- 247
4
votes
0
answers
78
views
Is there any place in the US where the Northern Cities Vowel Shift is not reversed among young speakers?
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS) is a chain shift of vowels affecting six vowels in the Inland Northern United States during the twentieth century. This sound change progressed and spread ...
- 41
1
vote
1
answer
106
views
Which English syllable contains the most phonemes?
I'm working on a set of modifications to Hangul which would allow it to completely express USAmerican English. The project has been going delightfully smooth so far, and I'm writing some stress-test ...
- 113
0
votes
0
answers
67
views
English /j/ "mutation" in certain contexts
First of all, I cannot provide any actual audio data, but I am fairly certain that I have heard this phenomenon before.
In American English, in a dialect, there appears to be a [j] insertion (or [r] ...
-2
votes
1
answer
75
views
What are examples of English words containing a Near-close near-front unrounded vowel
What are examples of English words containing a near-close near-front unrounded vowel, when American pronunciation is used.
- 133
1
vote
0
answers
104
views
Cot-Caught Merger in NYC and New Jersey?
I'm a bit confused with the cot-caught and father-bother merger, especially as they appear in the NYC / New Jersey area? I'm a native of the area and have lived there my whole life, yet I have the ...
-2
votes
1
answer
143
views
What's this linguistic phenomenon in English speaking?
I was enjoying the relaxing vibes that the hotel provided.
When Americans say the above sentence, do they sometimes say "vibes that" in a way that sounds like "vibesat"?
Does it ...
- 913
2
votes
1
answer
225
views
Does California English have an additional vowel phoneme?
I've noticed that my pronunciation of the word only differs from the General American pronunciation (I'm from coastal California). This is the pronunciation of only that I assume is General American: ...
-1
votes
2
answers
358
views
Half-letters in American English
I'm an American spending some time in Japan, and notice that even though most people know some English words, they have a hard time understanding and pronouncing a word like "left" because ...
- 99
3
votes
2
answers
201
views
Is there a Mid-Atlantic pronouncing dictionary?
I’m someone who speaks what I would describe as “a conservative American accent”. I sound like General American from a couple decades ago. I distinguish between the vowels in Mary, marry, and merry, ...
- 173
2
votes
0
answers
104
views
Origin of vowel-h digraphs that English speakers use to represent phonemes
The majority of English speakers are not proficient in the International Phonetic alphabet or any other phonetic transcription system outside their own orthography. However, we often feel the need to ...
- 724
13
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Unexplained /ɪl/ /ɛl/ phenomenon in American English
(I hope all this background information I’m about to give is relevant.) I’m a teenager from the north side of Chicago with a mostly unplaceable General American accent. I have some general tendencies ...
- 724
2
votes
0
answers
63
views
L-epenthesis/allophony in unexplained circumstances in American English
I've been having trouble articulating this question, so I'm sorry if it's poorly worded.
I'm a teenage English speaker from Chicago. I've recently noticed a seemingly odd allophonic possibility in ...
- 724
14
votes
2
answers
4k
views
Why isn't the American r considered a vowel?
As a native American English speaker from the Northwest, whenever I isolate the r in words like "right" or "rope" it's always /ɚ/, the same as the r in words like "first" ...
- 149
0
votes
1
answer
78
views
Preceding 'look' in response to question
Have read that this increased in popularity starting with US president Obama, but what significance does starting a response with a superfluous 'Look, ...' before giving an answer have?
eg, an ...
- 101
0
votes
0
answers
175
views
Unusual categorization of slang terms in parts of speech ("cap")
I am not educated in syntax (or any formal linguistics really), so my hypotheses and observations in this question may not be super high-level.
I am a young American English speaker from the Midwest. ...
- 724
1
vote
1
answer
229
views
A better rule for Canadian Raising
I'm a teenager from Chicago with a pretty standard contemporary Midwestern/General American accent (not distinctly Chicago). I'm interested in the phonetic phenomenon of Canadian Raising, in which ...
- 724
0
votes
0
answers
92
views
Stress, spirantization and other changes in the word "okay"
I'm a teenager from the Midwest. In the English language, many words have significant variance in their range of possible pronunciations. Some words may sound different from speaker to speaker in ...
- 724
0
votes
1
answer
95
views
Child language acquisition as an explanation for American rounding of the /r/ sound
The English phoneme typically represented by the letter ⟨r⟩ represents a confusing and complicated mess of allophonic realizations, some of which are highly disparate and some of which vary only ...
- 724
5
votes
0
answers
244
views
What's the geographic distribution of the father/bra split in American English?
In most American English dialects with the father/bother merger, the bother vowel (originally /ɔ/) unrounds, lowers, and merges into the father vowel (originally /ɑ/), with the end result being /ɑ/, ...
- 183
0
votes
1
answer
121
views
Voiceless Schwa after a plosive consonant
Take American English as an example, what is the difference in sounding between [pʰə̥ˈtʰeɪ̯ɾoʊ̯] and [pʰˈtʰeɪ̯ɾoʊ̯]?
- 67
2
votes
2
answers
529
views
Do sentences have primary and secondary stresses?
I know that stress can shift in an English phrase or sentence to emphasize the words that mean more specifically what the speaker wishes to express, however I'm talking about the general stress where ...
- 395
1
vote
0
answers
115
views
Variations of [aɪ] in English
I'm learning IPA and am surprised that some standard American English sounds which seem subtly different to me are all recorded as [aɪ].
Consider the phrase "I like the night", which I ...
- 111
4
votes
1
answer
746
views
AmE feature related to American multiculturalism?
I speak with a (General) American accent. Native non-American English speakers sometimes tell me that "you pronounce every single syllable in every word." I've also stumbled upon very ...
- 300
0
votes
3
answers
276
views
The A sound in Ask and At
I was reading a book on rhetoric today and it had the following table of pronounciation:
The thing I find confusing about this table is that I pronounce the A in "ask" and "at" ...
- 833
2
votes
1
answer
116
views
What is the term for words that were once polite and became impolite?
Sort of the opposite of a euphemism but not exactly -- I am thinking how the word "lady" when used to address an adult, female stranger seems to have a negative connotation as in "...
- 555
4
votes
1
answer
1k
views
In English are there any rules to prefer the word order "rock, paper, scissors" to name the game?
Reading some buzzfeed article I saw someone claiming that in their part of the world they say "paper, scissors, rock" As the article mentions, this seems crazy wrong to most Americans and to ...
- 151
5
votes
0
answers
116
views
The negative in "Sophie ate all her strawberries and so didn't Amelia"
New England speakers often use a negative form such as so didn't where others would use the positive, as in Sophie ate all her strawberries and so didn't Amelia. Since this usage may confuse a speaker ...
- 275
2
votes
1
answer
293
views
What is the best book to learn about the linguistics features of American English (particularly phonology and phonetics) in detail?
I have a fairly good understanding of the IPA, Chain Shifts, variations within dialects but I still have troubles with lots of phonological ideas like devoicing, weird consonantal clusters tongue ...
user32747
0
votes
1
answer
340
views
Claim that the american r sound is actually [ʁ] out west
This quora answer by Kit di Pomi (and if you browse his other answers he uses a similar uvular transcription) claims that: [ʀ] isn’t used anywhere off-stage as far as I know, typically American ...
user32747
1
vote
2
answers
265
views
In English the suffix sometimes changes the stress pattern of the rest of the word. Is English the only language with this system?
TELephone, telePHONic, teLEphony. PHOTograph, photoGRAphic,photOgraphy. biOLogy, bioLOGical.
The suffix changes the stress pattern of the rest of the word. Is English the only language with this ...
1
vote
0
answers
96
views
Connection between “wiseguy” and the Cantonese slang 古惑仔
"Wiseguy" can mean a made man in the mafia or a smart ass who acts like they are smarter than others. What I find interesting is that the Cantonese/Chinese slang term 古惑仔(Gu Wac Zai) has ...
- 21
2
votes
0
answers
377
views
What happened to American Southern Midlands?
About a decade ago discovered the dominant dialect area of my hometown (Tulsa, Oklahoma) was considered to be "(American) Southern Midlands", or "Southern Midlands American English"...
- 313
-4
votes
2
answers
375
views
is american English wrong because i heard people said the British is correct? [closed]
i heard that american English is wrong according to British people and people who use non american English? so is British English correct?
1
vote
1
answer
162
views
What are the official names of the various accents in the United States?
What I'm meaning to ask is: What are the technical names for things like the Southern Accent, California accent (or Western, if that's what it is), etc.?
I assume that regional accent differences have ...
- 19
1
vote
0
answers
78
views
Which online sources provide narrow transcriptions for English?
I've tried a dozen of online English dictionaries, and all of them give broad transcriptions. So it's impossible to tell from them, for example, how many aspirated "p"s there are in "appropriate". ...
user31981
1
vote
2
answers
2k
views
Aspiration of p, t, k in English
I'm trying to figure out when exactly p, t, k should be aspirated in (American) English.
Here's what I found here:
Voiceless stops are aspirated at the beginning of a word, and at the beginning ...
user31981
2
votes
0
answers
51
views
Where are some of the biggest freely available English 1 on 1 conversation corpuses that are in plain text preferably?
I'm looking for a free, preferably plain text, 1 on 1 English casual conversation (such as texting back and forth) corpus that requires little to no preprocessing (finding and replacing characters). ...
- 21
1
vote
1
answer
110
views
Familiarity with any/innie merger in American English?
It was recently pointed out to me that I pronounce “any” ( and the related anything, anymore, etc.) as /ˈɪn.i/ instead of /ɛn.i/. Does anyone know a regional variation of American English that has ...
- 11
0
votes
1
answer
72
views
help with the sounds of words [closed]
when we concentrate on articulars sounds we don't think about how people listening to those sounds. How to decide are rounded or unrounded vowels and which are tense or lax vowels? and what clues are ...
- 5
0
votes
0
answers
83
views
Slip of the tongue
Just now, I had a slip of the tongue which resulted in a silly grammatical error. I said "if I had, I would not commented on it". I added "have" afterwards. My question is "do natives make such ...
- 121
3
votes
1
answer
424
views
Does the southern pronunciation of Jenny have a triphthong in it?
You know when Forrest Gump yells Jenny's name and it sounds like "Jenneay". I'm wondering if there actually is a triphthong at the end there, or of it is a figment of my imagination. I ...
- 225
1
vote
1
answer
222
views
Why did Oftentimes not become standard English outside of the US
I had never heard anyone use "oftentimes" as a word until I watched an American in a youtube video about 5 years ago. I am confident that where I am in Australia and in the UK that it wouldn't be ...
2
votes
2
answers
467
views
Can medial /t/ and /d/ before syllabic /n/ be distinguished easily?
Addendum (0:00am, June 27th, JST): After reading Draconis' answer, I did a little more research and added my findings below the horizontal line.
Can medial /t/ and /d/ before syllabic /n/ be easily ...
- 81
4
votes
1
answer
253
views
Where does Texan English derive its l-vocalization?
My English teacher grew up in Texas and unsurprisingly her native dialect is Texan English. I noticed that when intervocalic /l/ is followed by /i/, the /l/ is elided and /y/ takes its place. For ...
- 43
4
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Why did Canadian English remain so close to standard U.S English?
TV Stereotypes about exaggerated Canadian accents not withstanding, to me Canadian English sounds identical to standard U.S English. I can't tell English speaking Canadians from Americans with ...
- 523
2
votes
1
answer
209
views
Does anyone have a link to the American Local News Corpus V1.0?
I found a paper http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~anni/papers/alnc_lrec14.pdf that has made this epic text corpus of over 1 billion words available somewhere, but I can't find it anywhere online.
The paper says ...
- 191