Talk:General American English

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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

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This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.

Discussions:

Moved, 25 February 2005, from Standard Midwestern to General American, see discussion.
Moved, 25 August 2019, from General American to General American English, see discussion.

Rhotic ɜ instead of ə? ɑ - ä?

In the monophtong diagram, why is there rhotic ɜ where I would expect ə to be? Also, ɑ looks like in the positon for where ä would be. Zbutie3.14 (talk) 04:21, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

⟨ɜ⟩ used to be defined as a "variety of [ə]" by the IPA, without a defined height. This is how it's used in most transcriptions of English. And ⟨ɑ⟩ is just as good a transcription of an open central vowel as ⟨a⟩ or ⟨ɐ⟩, with ⟨ɐ⟩ being arguably the best if you really don't want to use any diacritics. But we use ⟨ɑ⟩ because that's what most sources use (some actually write it ⟨a⟩) and because it varies between back and central for speakers without the cot-caught merger. For the cot-caught-merged majority, the merged phone is typically back, so ⟨ɑ⟩ is the most appropriate symbol for that. Sol505000 (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dark L

The article should specify what the rule is for the alternation between dark and light /l/ in GA. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 17:19, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is no rule as far as I'm aware. All L's are velarized, so you can choose either ⟨ɫ⟩ or ⟨l⟩ to transcribe them, depending on how narrow you want your transcription to be. Sol505000 (talk) 17:01, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SQUARE - really /ɛr/?

Shouldn't SQUARE be phonemicized as /ær/? /æ/ before /r/ sounds exactly like pre-nasal TRAP (or very close anyway), except that it's not nasalized (unless idiolectally or regionally, for speakers with a nasal voice quality). I'd write /skwær, ðær, ʃær/ just like we write /mæn, bæn, kæn/. Sol505000 (talk) 16:12, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Except we go by what credible sources do and there's a long tradition of not employing /æ/ for this vowel in US transcriptions, as with Wells' work, Kortmann's Handbook of Varieties of English, virtually all dictionaries, Labov, etc. Notations like ɛər or ɛr or eər or er are the norm. Wolfdog (talk) 17:16, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then this seems to be an issue of sources assuming that the established transcriptional conventions are accurate without investigating the issue themselves, or keeping up to date with others' research (e.g. about /æ/ raising to /eɪ/ in 'sang', 'rang' etc.). An anti-scientific approach, but sadly it's still (somewhat) common in linguistics. If the merger affects all three of /eɪr, ɛr, ær/, surely it makes the least sense to choose ⟨ɛr⟩ (or a non-phonemic symbol such as ⟨eər⟩ or ⟨ɛər⟩) for this sequence. ⟨er⟩ would be fine if we used ⟨e⟩ for FACE, but ⟨ær⟩ is definitely the best from a logical standpoint. /æ/ would then be analyzed as undergoing raising to [ɛə ~ eə] before all sonorants except /l/ (and /ŋ/, where there's no centering glide and it can be safely transcribed /eɪŋ/). In dialects with the TRAP split, ⟨eər⟩ would be even better because you have the /eə/ phoneme.

Aren't there really ANY sources that use /ær/, though? /ɪr, ʊr/ already vary between that and ⟨ir, ur⟩, depending on the source. Sol505000 (talk) 18:18, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[ɚ] versus [əɹ]

Perhaps Nardog or another editor will know --- I skimmed the Archives but couldn't quickly find such a discussion --- is there any reason why in our vowel chart (and thus other transcriptions on the page) we give NURSE/LETTER as [ɚ] but then for, say, NEAR as [iəɹ] and SQUARE as [ɛəɹ], rather than [iɚ] and [ɛɚ]? Can't remember if we've already talked through this choice. Thanks. Wolfdog (talk) 11:44, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

⟨ɚ⟩ essentially means [ɹ̩] or [ɻ̍] (see e.g. Handbook of the IPA, p. 25), which means [ɚ̯] and [ɹ] or [ɻ] are equivalent. [əɹ] represents a sequence of two sounds. Which is how NEAR and SQUARE manifest in GA in pausa (before a consonant or pause). Nardog (talk) 11:49, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah right, interesting. I was recently reading "Amount of rhoticity in schwar and in vowel+/r/ in American English" (Kuecker et al 2015) that measuring the durations of tokens of NURSE, LETTER, and other vowels+R (START e.g.), concludes (tentatively) that can all be reasonably analyzed as a vowel followed by a separate /r/, though the more precise findings were that "Overall means for all participants show rhoticity of 58% for all vowel+/r/ tokens [START], of 76% for unstressed schwar [LETTER], and 94% for stressed schwar [NURSE]". Intriguing results. Wolfdog (talk) 15:10, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]