American English

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 629.

British English.

Northern regional type: [a:]→[ǽ] – is fronted (glass, after); [ǽ] is more open like in [a] (beg, bad [bag, bad]); [Λ] is pronounced like [u] (half, love); diphthong [əu] is pronounced like monophthong [o:] (go [go:]); [əi]→[3:] (say [s3:], take [t3:k]); all tones are dropped and speech is generally slower that in southern English – Low-Rise is used much more often and it gives a sing-song quality to the speech. Scottish regional type: they don't have diphthong [iə] and [3:] (here [hir], bird [bird]); [au]→[u] (down [dun]); [Λ]→[ǽ] (grass [grǽs]); all vowels are short, length isn't a distinctive feature ([ka:st=ka•st=kǽst]); voiceless labio-velar fricative is used [m=hw] (which-witch [hwitƒ]). The British people distinguish between RP educated regional types of pronunciation on the one hand and local dialects on the other. One of the best examples of local dialects is Cokney used by the less educated in the working class areas of London. It has certain striking peculiarities: [əi]→[ai] (lady [laidi]); [au]→[a:] (loud [la:d]); P,T,H – are heavily aspirated; the final [ŋ] sounds like N or NK (nothing [nΛfin, nΛfink]); [ð, Ө]→f, d, r, v ([nΛfin, nΛfink]); [L] - vocalic (milk); instead of P, T, K they pronounce glottal stop ? (butterfly [bΛ?flai]).

American English pronunciation is the national variant of English in America, it has peculiar features in vocabulary, grammatical structure and pronunciation. It dates back to the English language of the early 17 century (the epoch of Shakespeare). American English at present is not homogeneous The most widely used regional types of AE pronunciation are the Eastern, the Southern types and the General American (GA), also known as Northern America it is considered to be the pronunciation standard of the USA. The peculiarities of GA lie in: a) pronunciation of sounds; b) differences in stress patterns of words; c) differences in intonation.

Peculiarities of pronunciation of GA sounds: [r] - is more sonorous than the corresponding RP sound; [l] is always dark; [ j] is omitted before [u]: duty ['du:ti], news [nu:z]; intervocalic [t] is voiced: better [‘bedə], or may drop out: twenty ['tweni], or it is replaced by a glottal stop before [ m,n,l,r ] - certainly [sə:?nli]; [k] is omitted before [t]: asked [ǽst]; the presence of a voiceless labiovelar fricative [m]; GA vowels are not differentiated by length, they are all long; besides they are mostly nasalized. Nasalization is often called an American twang; [ǽ] is used instead off [a:] in words which do not contain [r]: glass, path, laugh; GA has no [o], instead of it [a:] is pronounced; [əu] is much less diphthongal than in RP, it may be represented as [o:]. Peculiarities in stress patterns: American speakers make much greater use of tertiary stress, or post-tonic stress than British speakers do. The tertiary stress falls on the suffixes -ary, -ory, -mony: 'dictionary, 'territory; the words of French origin in GA retain the original stress on the final syllable, while RP has it on the initial one: ballet, café; some words have different pronunciation in contrast to RP having the stress on the first syllable: 'magazine, ^lcigarette, ^laddress. Differences in intonation: the most important differences between British and American pronunciation involve intonation rather than pronunciation itself. British intonation is often characterized as having "wider melodic curves" and more rapid changes than AE intonation. As a result of such intonation patterns, the speech of an Englishman sounds abrupt, manneristic to American ears. At the same time American speech often sounds unemotional, rather dry, monotonous and colourless to an Englishman. The thorough analysis of both types of intonation reveals both structural and functional differences. The structural differences: a) in pre-terminal pitch contours - in RP the most common contour is Gradually Descending Stepping Head, while in GA the intonation group has a level pre-terminal contour. Thus, in GA there is almost no need to single out the prehead, the head, etc. b) in the realization of the terminal tones - in GA the starting point of practically all tones is at the medium pitch level, while in RP the starting point can be observed at the low, medium or high pitch levels. The functional differences; 1)In GA the most frequent intonation contour for General Questions is the tune beginning low, rising to a high level and then steadily falling (Did he ask you to do it?). Even if General Questions are pronounced with a rising tone, it rises from a low pitch level and ends on a high pitch level. 2)RP requests are normally pronounced with a Low Rise, while in GA the speakers pronounce them with Fall-Rise undivided (GA - Hurry up. Shut the door. RP -' Hurry up. Shut the door. 3) Leave takings: GA - Good-bye. RP - Good-bye. So^ long. On account that the features that distinguish AE from BrE are so numerous, some linguists thought that AE cannot be considered a variant of the English language and must be defined as American language. But most linguists express the opposite point of view.