Homework - Phonetics

American English

(AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US, also known as United States English, or U.S. English) Refers to the dialects of the English language spoken in the United States. A popular sense of the term is that it means only the 'standard', typically written form of English in the US. Linguists, however, would use it to mean any dialect, standard or not, that is used in America. Often the accents of the US are included in the definition too.

Facts about American English:

English is the de facto national language of the United States, with 82% of the population claiming it as a mother tongue, and some 96% claiming to speak it "well" or "very well". However, no official language exists at the Federal level. According to the 2000 US Census the number of speakers (older than five) of English is 215 million people. 

American English is not a single dialect, similar for all speakers throughout the US and its insular areas. It differs from region to region and often within the same towns, cities and local communities, though it is often claimed that it shows less diversity than might be found elsewhere in the English-speaking world, particularly when discussion refers to the western United States.

'Standard American English' - meaning the formal variety of American English which is the subject of dictionaries and grammar books, and is taught in schools and to learners of English in the USA and in various places overseas - is just one form of American English today. 

Confining the definition of 'American English' to the standard variety also creates a problem: all forms of a living language change all the time, as new generations develop new vocabulary or reanalyse one aspect of their native language's grammar in a slightly different way from how their parents used it.

Sounds of American English:
The following charts concentrate on the sounds of Standard American English. These charts are done in the standard IPA.

Vowels:

General American is a notional accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. A General American accent is not a specific well-defined standardized accent in the way that Received Pronunciation has historically been the standard, prestigious variant of the English language in England; rather, accents with different features can all be perceived as General American provided they lack certain non-standard features.

One feature that General American is generally agreed to include is rhotic pronunciation, which maintains the coda [ɹ] in words like pearl, car, and court. Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like father and bother, flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before historic /ɹ/. General American also has yod-dropping after alveolar consonants.

Consonants of American English:

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Phonetics: The sounds of American English

Australian English 

(AusE, AuE, AusEng, en-AU) is the form of the English language as spoken in Australia. Is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most regionally homogeneous language varieties in the world. As with most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.

Facts about Australian English:

The percent of population that speaks English is 92% according to the 2006 Census. Convicts sent to Australia came mostly from large English cities and included a significant proprtion of Cockneys from London. They were joined by free settlers, military personnel and administrators, often with their families.

Three main varieties of Australian English are spoken according to linguists: broad, general and cultivated. They are part of a continuum, reflecting variations in accent. They often, but not always, reflect the social class or educational background of the speaker. Broad Australian English is recognisable and familiar to English speakers around the world because it is used to identify Australian characters in non-Australian films and television programmes (often in the somewhat artificial "stage" Australian English version). Examples are film/television personalities Steve Irwin and Paul Hogan. Slang terms ocker, for a speaker, and Strine, a shortening of the word Australian for the dialect, are used in Australia.

Sounds of Australian English:

Australian English is a non-rhotic accent and it is similar to the other Southern Hemisphere accents (New Zealand English and South African English). Like most dialects of English it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.

The vowels of Australian English can be divided into two categories: long and short vowels. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, mostly correspond to the lax vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation. The long vowels, consisting of both monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to its tense vowels and centring diphthongs. Unlike most varieties of English, it has a phonemic length distinction: that compresses, shortens or removes these features.

Vowels:

Australian English consonants are similar to those of other non-rhotic varieties of English. In comparison to other varieties, it has a flapped variant of /t/ and /d/ in similar environments as in American English. Remaining cases of /lj/ are often pronounced simply as [j] in colloquial speech, though this is stigmatised particularly in the case of the word Australia, so it is often pronounced as four syllables to avoid the /lj/. /nj/, and other common sequences of consonant /j/, are retained. Some speakers use a glottal stop as an allophone of /t/ in final position, for example trait, habit; or in medial position, such as a /t/ followed by a syllabic /n/ is often replaced by a glottal stop, for example button or fatten. Alveolar pronunciations nevertheless predominate. Linking- and intrusive-R are also features of Australian English.

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Scottish English

Is the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language. The main, formal variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English, often abbreviated to SSE. SSE may be defined as "the characteristic speech of the professional class [in Scotland] and the accepted norm in schools."

Facts about Scottish English:

Scottish English results from language contact between Scots and the Standard English of England after the 17th century. The resulting shifts to English usage by Scots-speakers resulted in many phonological compromises and lexical transfers, often mistaken for mergers by linguists unfamiliar with the history of Scottish English. Furthermore, the process was also influenced by interdialectal forms, hypercorrections and spelling pronunciations.
 

Sounds of Scottish English:

Scottish English is rhotic; /r/ is most often an alveolar tap [ɾ], but a continuant [ɹ] similar to that of RP is also heard. Less common is use of the alveolar trill [r] (hereafter, <r> will be used to denote any rhotic consonant). The phoneme /x/ is common in names and in SSE's many Gaelic and Scots borrowings, so much so that it is often taught to incomers, particularly for "ch" in loch. Some Scottish speakers use it in words of Greek origin as well, such as technical, patriarch, etc.

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