Research Topics. Unit 2 - week 3: page 5

Key features of General American in comparison with RP

There are many subtle phonetic differences between RP and General American (GenAm) pronunciations. Here, however, I will focus only on those broad differences which need to be taken into account for the research exercise (if one of your speakers has a north American based/influenced pronunciation.)

GenAm is a rhotic accent - post-vocalic r is pronounced (see above).

GenAm is generally yod-dropping (/j/ not pronounced before /u:/, see above)

The sounds in the set of words illustrated by father, stop and cross are distributed in a rather different way than in RP. See following table

A similar difference cnab be observed with the following set

Homework exercises

(to be completed for next session)

Please read the following sentenced aloud at a fairly quick pace (attempting to get as near as possible to a natural, spoken delivery) and try to write a phonetic transcription of your actual spoken pronunciations. Please bring your transcriptions along to next week's Research Topics seminar in a form that can be handed in for me to have a look over.

1. In Summer he likes to go up to the castle and scale the walls of the tower.
2. Fred parked the new car in the garage of the old house, where we used to stack the beer bottles.
3. I know no-one who can shove and muscle his way in as well as George, unless it's Mary, or possibly Dan.
4. Poor Andy, the only reason he was left out of all this was because he didn't have the courage to confront his father over the monies owed.
5. When this band are on tour, they're usually a law unto themselves - the thing is, they play fast and loose with the terms of their contract.
6. It looks as if their luck has finally run out - everyone's laughing at their futile attempts pass off the forgery as a genuine Picasso.
7. It's pure folly. You don't tear out the heart of a city, rip down all the old buildings, turn everything into one big car park, poor scorn on all efforts at conservation and then think you're going to be victorious at the next general election.