RP and GA similarities and differences

There are many phonemes which have the same phonetic realization in both RP and GA (they sound the same) but they have a different sound in certain non-RP UK accents. (i.e. FACE, PRICE, CHOICE, AND MOUTH, sound the same in RP amd GA but NOT have diffrent phonetic realisations on Cockney). Aslo, the STRUT vowel sounds the same in RP and GA but different from both in working class North of England speech. North of England speech is also flat BATH, like the US (with a few exceptions), and that is something which is even more common and extends much further up the socioeconimic scale than the strange pronunciation of the STRUT vowel. (An American would pronounce STRUT the same way a mainstream RP speaker would).

Most Americans, who only get to hear RP occasionally on TV (which is only spoken by a handful of people in the entire country) think that THAT is how "British" people speak when, in fact, I think that GA comes slightly closer to RP (and sounds nicer if it's the educated kind) that some of the very broadest, regional, working class accents of England and Wales with (their endless dipthong shifts (like Cockney).

The only problem is this... Cockney sounds a lot more "British" than it otherwise would because, despite its numerous conflicys with RP, it is still a broad BATH accent. At the same time, North of England English would sound more American (since it is flat BATH) were it not for the absence of the STRUT vowel.

When I have the time I would like to point out the similarites and differences.

Incidentally, English is stupid compared to other European languages... (written vs. spoken form). I'll elaborate further some other time...

I am not british, I am half Slovakian half Austrian, and I can openly say that Educated General American sounds nicer than some regional, working class accents of England. The problem with American English is that is very ANNOYINGLY NASAL.

Please Americans try to understand that is nothing wrong with the American slang. The problem is the NASAL way you speak. I swear is so ANNOYING as hell, when i hear the American tourists talking like having their Nose blocked with burgers. Its Slow and Nasal - American Nasal speech it just doesn't sound nice, no offense !

''the STRUT vowel sounds the same in RP and GA''

This is not true at all. This vowel has different realizations in many subtypes of RP and many subtypes of GA, for example in the Welsh RP (think Charlotte Church) it's almost a schwa [@], the same vowel used in Inland South (Dallas Texas, for example). In sloppy RP, the strut vowel is more open, almost [a] (as in Australian English), which is close to the way that vowel is pronounced in Pittsburgh, PA. Listen to prof. Labov interview on busses/bosses misunderstanding (some Americans pronounce busses with a vowel close to [a], which is the same way some other Americans pronounce the word bosses); in normal paced Californian English words ''lust, last, lost'' can all have a central [a]like realization which can be difficult for a foreigner).

''Please Americans try to understand that is nothing wrong with the American slang. The problem is the NASAL way you speak. I swear is so ANNOYING''

Not all Americans sound nasal, only those in the Great Lakes region do (Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo). Westerners and people from Midland (Indianapolis, Columbus) sound normal, and WestCoast speakers sound flat.

Like is much prettier than mate (pronounced as: mait) most British people use.

<<I am not british, I am half Slovakian half Austrian, and I can openly say that Educated General American sounds nicer than some regional, working class accents of England. The problem with American English is that is very ANNOYINGLY NASAL.

Please Americans try to understand that is nothing wrong with the American slang. The problem is the NASAL way you speak. I swear is so ANNOYING as hell, when i hear the American tourists talking like having their Nose blocked with burgers. Its Slow and Nasal - American Nasal speech it just doesn't sound nice, no offense !>>

We can't help it if we speak that way. I can't hear it. I don't think that we sound any more nasal than anybody else with the exception of a lot of people from the Great Lakes region and maybe some older accents from New York.

Also, your English is riddled with mistakes, which makes it sound like a foreigner who thinks he's better at speaking it than he really is. Oh, wait...

What you refer to as being "nasal" in the case of Inland North (that is, Great Lakes) dialects is not really nasality at all, but rather the perception of the vowel shifts that have occurred in such dialects due to the NCVS. Mind you though that such dialects do not fall under the umbrella of General American, even though there can be idiolects of such which are very GA-like in and of themselves.

<<Please Americans try to understand that is nothing wrong with the American slang. The problem is the NASAL way you speak. I swear is so ANNOYING as hell, when i hear the American tourists talking like having their Nose blocked with burgers. Its Slow and Nasal - American Nasal speech it just doesn't sound nice, no offense !>>


I wonder what Europeans think of English spoken with the California Vowel Shift? (Does it sound as nasal as General American?)

For that matter, I wonder what is thought of Southern American speech in Europe? It seems to me that Southern American speech would sound the least nasal of all...

CVS makes an accent sound flat

>>For that matter, I wonder what is thought of Southern American speech in Europe? It seems to me that Southern American speech would sound the least nasal of all...<<

I'm not a European, but I have to say that Southern dialects often actually sound very "careful" to me, despite the many stereotypes associated with such, as do many Western dialects. At least Southern dialects are not *so* standardized that people speaking them sound like they are trying to speak General American very carefully, whereas many Western dialects almost come off as somewhat annoyingly overenunciated to me (despite their having the cot-caught merger).

I actually like to hear the Southern accent of the United States - I like the way it sounds but I'm not absolutely sure why - I don't know whether to think it's cute or just plain funny, much in the way I think the UK Brummie accent is funny - but in no way is the Brummie accent cute - that's my opinion anyway :-)

I just like the slow, measured tones of the American Southern draaaawwwwllll......and I remember being amazed to realise for the first time that white people down there also speak that way. There was a time when I thought it was only black people who spoke like that, either out there in the baking hot cotton fields or in the kitchen a cookin an' a stirrin' of some real tasty gumbo an' a mixin' of the ole mint juleps for the master of the house and his mighty fine lady!

Anyway, I quite like the Southern accent. I also admit to liking the Noo Yoik accent, in its way........like the Scouse accent it's sharp and witty, but again in my opinion, more preferable to the thick Liverpool speech which makes them as sound as if they're going to gob out a whole load of phlegm at any minute (I do hope nobody is eating as they read this......)

My least liked American accents seem to come from younger females -
to use a good old Scottish word they can sound really dreich. They don't speak clearly, rarely finish their sentences, swallow half their vowels, and so many seem to adopt a strange sort of huskiness in the throat somehow, deep down in the region of the larynx somewhere, which makes me think it's all delberately designed to sound that way for reasons best known to themselves...probably their interpretation of sophistication.

I have to admit that generally (but not exclusively) I personally prefer American accents when they emerge from the mouths of the guys.....much less strident, just for starters.

>>My least liked American accents seem to come from younger females -
to use a good old Scottish word they can sound really dreich. They don't speak clearly, rarely finish their sentences, swallow half their vowels, and so many seem to adopt a strange sort of huskiness in the throat somehow, deep down in the region of the larynx somewhere, which makes me think it's all delberately designed to sound that way for reasons best known to themselves...probably their interpretation of sophistication.<<

If you're talking about "Valley Girl" speech, well, we hate it too, honestly. At least around here, though, the general tendency is more to drop non-sibilant alveolar consonants when not before stressed vowels or when word-final and to simplify intervocalic and final consonant clusters (often resulting in long consonants). Actually, more progressive speech varieties here tend to be more vowel-heavy than is usual for English dialects (and full of complex secondary diphthongs and triphthongs) due to the tendency to take this to an extreme.

I forgot to mention nasality.......I don't regard nasality as the main problem with American voices. Here in the UK we certainly have our fair share of less attractive accents and modes of speech and accents can be affected by the way they are voiced, such as in the Scouse accent I mentioned in the other post. It's not so much emanating from the nasal passages but more from the back recesses of the throat, or even further down than that.

I think it's fair to say that in a crowd of people coming from so many parts of the world, with everyone chattering and yelling all at the same time, the voices which invariably carry louder and more noticeably than any of the others are those of Americans. We hear it here in Edinburgh such a lot, so trust me, it's true! :-)

"I thought it was only black people who spoke like that"

Damian, that's actually a minority accent, mostly spoken in the lower South. Even there, it's stratified by class. Wealthy landowners may speak that way, but the guy who works on their cars does not. He speaks a rhoticized version of English. In my area, along the Alabama/Tennessee border, that accent is rare and imported. In fact, we are heavily Scot-influenced. I just glanced at our local phone book, and, from 278 residential pages, eight are devoted to names beginning with "Mc," and the heavy majority are protestant. In fact, my middle name, which is my mother's family name, is "Boyd."

The matter is that non-rhotic dialects were more widespread in the past than they are at the present, and even then were primarily limited to coastal dialects (which were more English English-influenced) than more inland dialects (which were more Scottish English-influenced), whereas the spread of rhoticism in the South has not affected AAVE. So I would probably say that Southern dialects and AAVE were probably *closer* together in the past, at least as rhoticism goes, than they are today myself.