What defines an American accent?

Question

Having only been raised in America, I sometimes hear British people talking about American accents. I can't possibly comprehend what an American "accent" sounds like, since to me American English has no accent. (I realize that there are separate dialects depending on what part of the U.S. people are from, like the Midwest or Southeast or North or wherever). I recognize British accents, where words are clipped and vowels are longer, or an Australian one, where words are longer and vowels are clipped, but what precisely defines an American accent? Do we have completely different sounds for different letters? Are we drawing the vowels out longer or shorter? What do we sound like to British or Australian people?

Answer 1

A few thins it may help to keep in mind:

1) There are a variety of American dialects and accents. And there is a much LARGER variety of British English [or even more narrowly 'English English'] dialects and accents. Thus it is difficult to make blanket statements about, eg., "American Engilsh".

2) MOST of the distinstinctive features of American English dialects actually COME from a handful of British dialects, viz.., the dialects of the regions of England from which 17th-18th century British immigrants to the American colonies.

These can be traced to FOUR major immigrations during the colonial period, each from one region of England to a specific region in the colonies. A basic summary chart of these:

1. New England - Puritan Migrations (1629-40) from East Anglia
2. Coastal South (Virginia to Florida) -Cavalier Migrations (1642-1675) from South England
3. New Jersey, Pennsylvania - Quaker migrations (1675-1725)from the Midlands area of England (near Wales)
4. Appalachian English - Scots-Irish migrations (1715-1775), mostly English people from Britain's Celtic fringe (North England, Northern Ireland)
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/REF/bgnotes.html

3) Though there is neither one English English (or British English) nor one American English, there IS, in each case, one dialect (or cluster of dialects) that have come to be considered THE dominant one in modern times

a) "Received Pronunciation" (sometimes called "the Queen's English")

b) "General American English" (something like "Broadcasters' English" too) . This is the type Americans tend to think of as "not having an accent". Geographically it predominates in the midwest, and is a BLEND of dialects, mainly from those original four.

4) It is possible to point to some features that are distinctive to each of these two dominant dialects and/or to a large number of dialects in Engiand and in the U.S.

One of the most obvious is one you have noted -- that RP is "non-rhotic" (or 'r-dropping', referring to the loss of pronunciation of final r in various situations); General American/most American dialects ar "rhotic" (preserving that r)

Other disitinguishing features between the two include the "broad a" (think "aunt") of RP vs. the typical American ("flat a"), "yod-dropping" in American vs. RP/English (e.g., Amerian "noo" vs. RP "nyu" for the word "new"), the pronunciation of the /t/ phoneme in words like bluntness as a glottal stop in much English/British Engilsh

Note the following listing of some of these distinctive features of each:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English#Phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#Characteristics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_English#General_features
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation#Characteristics

Answer 2

America does not have a definite accent. The real Americans are of course the Native Indians. The rest of the country is made up of immigrants ie English Scottish Irish Italian African most of the Caribbean Islands as well as most of South America. As a nation they only just over 200 years old and if you travel around the different states you would think you were in a different country each time. As for Scott's comments about american English being correct because they have have a greater population is a load of horse manure. The ill educated settlers at the time that america was being colonised had very poor grammar and even worse spelling that is why the spoken word in america is so far removed from the correct pronunciation of the English language.

Answer 3

There are a number of distinct American accents, and within broad divisions, further distinctions can be made.

The so-called standard accent, sometimes called 'Midwestern", sometimes 'Midlands". It is spoken most "purely" from Iowa into Nebraska.

Unlike "Southern" and Northeastern accents which drop their Rs (and sometimes intrude Rs), all pretty much according to the same rules as British English, the Midlands accent pronounces every last one of its Rs (and intrudes not a one). There is also a distinct lack of nasality in this standard accent, unlike certain Northeastern accents (New York especially).

Answer 4

What defines an American accent is not only the region in which you live, but the neighborhood in which you live. Since America is this wonderful melting pot of different cultures and peoples, I think it is nice that our way of speaking can bind us together as sharing a region or even a neighborhood.

Answer 5

I do believe that American English Accent might probably originated from Irish accent.Both Irish and American accent sounds almost the same.I'm at least 95% sure that this is the real fact behind the famous American accent.

Answer 6

I think you are joshing us. Americans speak the only real and true English. Everyone else has the accent.

Answer 7

Like um, uh... dude, it's like uh totally.. ya know?

Answer 8

being loud and speaking through the nostrills