Talk:General American English/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

About Steve

My problem with General American English is of a practical nature. I have a brother-in-law, Steve, who was born in Oklahoma, spent most of his life in Maine, and has lived in Germany for about a decade. I can say: Steve still uses General American when he speaks German but *Steve still uses General American English when he speaks German appears to be utter nonsense. (My, as well as my sister's—who is Steve's wife—, parent tongues are German and Chinese.) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:29, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Both of those sentences about Steve sound confusing to me. Are you saying he speaks German with a GA accent? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 22:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, Steve uses a General American accent when he speaks German or recites Shakespeare, but when he speaks American English he sometimes also uses other accents, depending on his interlocutor and the situation. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 08:06, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@LiliCharlie: as Aeusoes1 points out, both sentences are unclear, and don't indicate any problem with the article title, which, after all, is based on published, reliable sources. General American, as clearly stated in the lead sentence, is a variety of English, so has no applicability to any other language. Your brother-in-law Steve doesn't use General American when speaking German, any more than you would use Standard German when speaking English. If you wanted to say he speaks German with a General American (English) accent, that would be more clear and accurate. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:41, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

1. I am saying "uses" to stress that he masters several accents, but chooses to use GA, which is well-known, prestigious and easily understood in Germany. (To his surprise, many Germans found his non-rhotic Maine accent difficult to understand and less prestigious, so he stopped using it.)
2. It seems that a majority of experts prefer "General American" to refer to a group of accents, and "Standard American English" to refer to a national variety of Standard English with a particular morphology, syntax, vocabulary, accent, spelling, etc. Irrespective of page titles and possible synonyms, we should have separate articles on those two subjects that are clearly distinct as well as abundantly discussed in linguistic literature. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 08:06, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

If you're saying he deliberately uses a General American accent when speaking German instead of a regional accent, than "Steve still uses General American" is a rather cryptic way of stating it. Regardless, I don't see how your brother-in-law's travails with language are especially relevant here. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:56, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

• This is one very good reason for wikipedia’s Preference for use of reliably published secondary sources. Lily and Steve are speaking informally. Attempting to document the informal use of English is quite a challenge. If you stick to the language used by reliable secondary sources, such as journal articles and books, you benefit from the editing process that attempts to standardise the language. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:04, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

• Yes. But note that documenting word use is the job of dictionaries such as Wiktionary, however "encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title." That is to say: If an article's title is ambiguous in encyclopædic sources, it will be disambiguated in a way that only one subject is treated; namely, "the subject" (def. sg.) that the article gives "factual information" on. As a consequence, the third of our five criteria for deciding on an article title (WP:PRECISE) stipulates that "titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article ... when a more detailed title is necessary to distinguish an article topic from another, use only as much additional detail as necessary."

Following the tradition of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as well as the Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia is about topics and factual information rather than their designations. In the factual world we have lots of phoneticians who write on the topic of a group of accents that they most frequently call General American, as well as lots of experts in English Studies who write on the topic of a national variety of Standard English in the US that they sometimes call General American English; we shouldn't be overly worried about those labels, as Wikipedia is about topics, subjects, and factual information, not about the words and expressions that have been used by experts as well as non-experts to refer to them. (I am of course a phonetician who has read thousands of pages about the accent called General American but who doesn't care about Standard American English or English studies in general. I know many accents from around the world without knowing much about the mother tongues of the speakers who typically use those accents. And although I am also fluent in a dozen or so languages: as a phonetician, they are not the topic I focus on.) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:21, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

LiliCharlie, I hope you don't plan on co-opting every discussion to return to this topic. If you want to start another move discussion, you have that right. But going about it this way is likely to be perceived as disruptive. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:35, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to discuss the article topics

No, what I want is an article split discussion (i.e., an article topic discussion) before we move to discuss article titles. As I said above, I want an article treating the phonetic topic of the group of accents known as General American, and another article on the sociolinguistic topic of a national prestige variety of Standard English with a particular morphology, syntax, vocabulary, accent, spelling, etc. that has been called Standard American English by some. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 17:18, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

It might be best to generate the content first before splitting. Right now, we have like one sentence covering that topic saying that it's not really a thing. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:55, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I also sensed that, of the many articles discussed and debated above, some are referring to "General American" as an umbrella accent while others are referring to "General American English" (or "General American") as a complete umbrella dialect (including accent, grammar, lexicon, etc.). However, the traditional use of the GA label in linguistics is only to designate the first sense. Additionally, this article treats GA as a sound system or accent spectrum only; I don't usually read about spellings like "color" or "realize" being regarded as General American spellings nor "She's gotten it" as General American grammar. Almost invariably, any add-on phrase in the literature will be something along the lines of General American accent, because we're talking about phonetics here. Having said that, I agree with aeusoes1 that splitting seems pointless unless there is some content to split. However, I personally would also discourage splitting, since we don't need a separate General American (for accent/phonetics) and General American English (for that same thing, plus typical American vocabulary, orthography, and grammar, which can already be studied on pages like American and British English grammatical differences, American and British English spelling differences, American English vocabulary, etc. etc.) Wolfdog (talk) 01:07, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia defines American English as "the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States" (cf. English language in England, Welsh English, Hiberno-English, etc.), and British English as "the standard dialect of [the] English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom." — I find it strange that there is no dedicated article about the American counterpart of British English, the standard dialect of English in the US. Interestingly, the articles you list seem to compare only standard varieties, despite our much broader definition of "American English." Can we really dispense with an article about a notion we frequently, though only implicitly, refer to? And: Won't attentive readers get genuinely puzzled by the way we disregard our own definitions? — I am not convinced, or not yet. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 03:50, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Honestly, I find that definition of "British English" to be odd; I've always heard of Received Pronunciation specified as British English's "standard" accent and I always am careful to use "British English" as a broad collection of dialects, not as any one standard. Anyway, I understand your point, but I'm just iterating that all the information on typical American dialect features is in fact already out there.

By the way, American English is much more homogeneous than British Engish(es), so whether you speak Inland North dialect, Western dialect, or New York dialect, you probably use the exact same grammar, spelling, and vast number of lexical features. (Southern or Midland dialect less so in terms of grammar and lexicon.) It's accent that primarily differentiates American dialects and so again a General American accent that largely merits its own page. This brings to mind too that, whereas RP is spoken by a teensy minority of Britons, GA is spoken by a vast majority of Americans. So something like "General American grammar or spelling" can be pretty much be simplified to "American grammar or spelling". Wolfdog (talk) 10:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that "the exact same grammar" is used all over the area you designate. For instance, I am sure I have heard Inland North and New York speakers, but not them Westerners, say yous for Standard English you (pl.). And don't even professional newscasters diverge considerably from a true General American accent, as in the videos on this page by Dan Nosowitz? As a side note, my impression from a mostly European perspective is that the (not only) politically divided American nation still likes to think of itself as a homogeneous society (formerly: melting-pot), which it isn't. I understand that "men ... created equal" have to be like that, lest equality come to an end. And linguistic differences are group markers that reveal social inequalities. Or, as Dan Nosowitz put it: "[W]e have to acknowledge that we are extremely bad at actually hearing accents." Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 16:20, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

OK then... "almost the exact same", if you insist on literal language only. But you understand my point: there is a vast homogeneity that can be weighed against a mere handful of differences in this area (most Inland Northerners, Westerners, and New Yorkers, to use your own example, absolutely say you guys rather than yous, though yes yous is certainly a minority-used regional variant). I'd even bet Americans in those regions are probably more different from person to person than from sub-region to sub-region. (Except, as I've already said, in terms of accent.) Wolfdog (talk) 01:45, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

If "Americans in those regions are probably more different from person to person than from sub-region to sub-region" this is not a problem for our topic. Dialects don't have to be distributed geographically (though before the printing press and geographical mobility most of them were). African-American English is a well-known case of a non-regional dialect of American English, but there are many others. In fact, all social groups (professional groups, age groups, ethnicities, genders, the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, city and country dwellers, family and housemates, etc.) seem to speak their own dialect (i.e., use a special set of linguistic features) that is different from the standard dialect and reveals social differences (not necessarily vertical differences on the social scale, but horizontal ones as well). Also note that typical language users do not always use the same dialect; quite the contrary, code-switching is ubiquitous human behaviour, and no one talks to their lover, children, colleagues, strangers, and the head of state in the same way. — My point is: whether the use of a linguistic feature like you guys is restricted geographically or not, it is used only in certain dialects of American English, and the standard dialect of American English that is the topic of this discussion is not one of them. (Thinking of English dialects as a predominantly geographical matter seems a bit strange for a country like the US. English in the British Isles has seen centuries of development before the era of geographical mobility. In the US it has not.) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:35, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. Wolfdog (talk) 15:53, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

This discussion so far seems based on little more than personal observations. If significant coverage exists in reliable sources for the separate topics under discussion, can someone please indicate where, before this section becomes much longer? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I thought this discussion had come to an end. — Thanks for your concern, but I think you have already provided enough encyclopædic sources that show that "General American" has been used by several academic authors to refer to much more than an accent. At this point I see no need for further evidence, and I don't think anyone will call "significant coverage ... in reliable sources" into question. I am sure article topics and the need for a separate Wikipedia article on the American English standard dialect will be discussed later in a wider context. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 02:58, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

"General" American

I find it utterly hilarious that General American is being so uncritically treated like RP here. How is a manufactured form of a Midwestern dialect that has only really been widely disseminated and popularised in the last few decades 'the U.S. equivalent to Received Pronunciation'? That's a wheeze.

Sure, if enough people pretend that this dialect—which is no more special or important than any other—is Standard American English™ (whatever that means), then the erroneous claim ultimately becomes self-fulfilling.

With all due respect to the editors of this article, this reads like a prescriptivist who is a fanboy/fangirl of this dialect wanted to promote it. Where is the NPOV?

Has anyone even considered looking to see if there are other perspectives that question the legitimacy of the notion that just because the Midwest is large and a lot of people speak dialects that are similar to this manufactured one (which I would argue was manufactured because of that fact) that this is real "American English"? I don't believe for a second that no one at any point in the past few decades has questioned the validity of that claim.

Did people decide to do a 360° turn when the Mid-Atlantic accent fell out of style? "Well, getting people to speak well didn't work. Perhaps getting them to speak poorly would be better."

This article used to be more careful in its wording, and with a little tweaking would have been fine. But now it is blatantly biased, and this is very concerning to me. Tharthan (talk) 20:00, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are based on published sources. If any of the sources cited in the article don't support the contents, please indicate which ones, or suggest other specific improvements. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:43, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@Sangdeboeuf: Of course Wikipedia articles are based on published sources. I would hope so. What I am asking is this: Is it really the article's current composers' contention that there aren't legitimate published sources that are opposed to the notion presented in the opening portion of this article (to whatever extent), or that such sources otherwise can't be included or referenced without giving undue weight to that perspective?

So, with regard to specific parts of the article that there are issues with, I would suggest that the biggest problem is with the first paragraph (the opening paragraph) of the article. That ought to be looked over again, and rewritten. Tharthan (talk) 20:13, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't see any actionable suggestion here. I mean, if you haven't considered looking to see if there are other perspectives that question the legitimacy of the notion yourself, it's not clear what you expect anyone else to do. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:15, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I think Sangdeboeuf is asking for the exact specifics of any potential changes and Tharthan is indeed suggesting that he is aware of such other perspectives. In my experience at WP though, if a topic has enough coverage, we write about it. And that's regardless of whether the topic is controversial, unscientific, or even criticized as existing at all. The coverage itself appears to be all that's needed to legitimize an article in such cases. I had a similar debate with editors at Utah English about a dialect that isn't clearly demarcated or defined whatsoever. However, for whatever reason, quite a few scholars (mostly out of Utah -- shocker!) have done research in the hopes of confirming that shiny, holy-grail notion of an independent Utah English (excitedly focused on a few minor variant features), with the research itself thus apparently meriting the existence of the article. (I opposed this in the debate and joked that we should accordingly name the page not Utah English but rather Research on Utah English. Plenty of research; zero amazing results. I'm still ambivalent, but certainly the decades of General Americans' use as a label comprises even more research than Utah English.) Wolfdog (talk) 11:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Wolfdog: Right. In the case of this article, some of the wording could do with better clarification. Humour me for a moment on this next exercise: Let us imagine that someone did a study of the United States during the Civil War on the subject of support of slavery. Now, let's imagine (simply for sake of argument) that most people in the North were against slavery, and most in the South were not. Let us also imagine (again, for sake of argument) that there were many more people in the South at this time than in the North.

Now, let us say that someone decided to write a piece in a respected paper titled "By Far, Americans Support Slavery" or "Slavery: An American Ideal", and said "a majority of Americans support slavery". Well, in this hypothetical scenario, that would be technically correct. However, it would be misleading, as there is a stark divide between the North and the South on this issue.

Similarly, I think that it would be worth clarifying some of the similar kind of wording that is used in this article, and also looking to see if there are any number of sources with a different perspective than the one that is overwhelming in this article.

And I do agree that Wikipedia has some dubious content. All in all, though, I think that it is a boon. It is intended to be the sum of man's knowledge, and although I believe that it has a very long way to go before it reaches that point, it is still the best encyclopaedia for the everyman that we have today, in my opinion.

And also, coverage of some dubious subjects is actually important simply for informativity's sake. It's actually good that someone can look up some pseudoscientific hokum here that they may have been told is the answer to all of their problems, and then read from us that it is, in fact, baseless hokum. That helps inform. Tharthan (talk) 16:40, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I think the article already does a good job on that front. And I agree with Sangdeboeuf that you can feel free to bring in research you've found into this very discussion, and we can then discuss how to appropriately add it to the page. Wolfdog (talk) 17:54, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I second that, nor do I see where the article says GAE is 'the U.S. equivalent to Received Pronunciation', as Thartan seems to suggest. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

General American is, throughout Wikipedia, often treated as the U.S. equivalent to Received Pronunciation. I don't quite mean that articles claim that it has the same prestige (although I have indeed seen General American be perceived as something to strive to speak [by speakers of dialects that actually are much more traditional than General American] as if it were a "more educated" or "refined" dialect, when it is in fact quite the opposite when compared to the dialects that these people are already speaking), however. Now, this article is a bit more passive-aggressive in this regard, but note:

"Despite confusion arising from the evolving definition and vagueness of the term "General American" and its consequent rejection by some linguists, the term persists mainly as a reference point to compare a baseline "typical" American English accent with other Englishes around the world (for instance, see: Comparison of General American and Received Pronunciation)."

I do very much appreciate the portions of the article that attempt to note the controversiality of this dialect being presented in the way that it often is, but I would also note that introductory paragraphs tend to be read much more often than the full articles are. So perhaps some things could be incorporated there in this case that are currently only incorporated elsewhere. Tharthan (talk) 03:48, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

I fully agree that some things could be incorporated into the lead section. Why don't you do just that and we'll see how the edit(s) are received by others? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 06:33, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

/i, u/ etc. before dark /l/

We currently have a passage that reads as follows: Before the dark l, /i, u/ and sometimes also /eɪ, oʊ/ are realized as centering diphthongs [iə, uə, eə, oə] or even as disyllabic sequences [i.jə, u.wə, e.jə, o.wə]. Therefore, words such as peel and fool and sometimes also rail and role are pronounced [ˈpʰiəɫ ~ ˈpʰi.jəɫ], [ˈfuəɫ ~ ˈfu.wəɫ], [ˈɹeəɫ ~ ˈɹe.jəɫ], [ˈɹoəɫ ~ ˈɹo.wəɫ]. This can even happen word-internally before another morpheme, as in peeling [ˈpʰiəɫɪŋ ~ ˈpʰi.jəɫɪŋ] and fooling [ˈfuəɫɪŋ ~ ˈfu.wəɫɪŋ]. The source given is Wells's esteemed Accents of English; however, it is 38 years old now, and I find the disyllabic sequences suggestion to be strange and highly unlikely, at least in modern-day GenAm. If an American says [ˈfu.wəɫɪŋ] with three syllables, I certainly raise an eyebrow; this sounds somewhat drawl-ish or "country" to my ears. Does anyone know of any more recent sources on this? Do my gut feelings ring true to others? Wolfdog (talk) 21:48, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I would agree that that would/does sound drawlish/countryish. Firejuggler86 (talk) 23:33, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Classification of /oʊ/ as a monophthong according to Wells (and this article)

I'm not familiar with Wells' classification of vowels in American English, but I'm quite confused why the "goat", "home", "toe" vowel is listed as a monophthong. Has there been some sound change in American English in this vowel, or was Wells just wrong? The article does also gives the vowel's IPA diphthong transcription, but doesn't mention why it's considered a monophthong according to Wells (or indeed why it's categorised under the "pure" vowels in this article, despite the article giving its IPA transcription as /oʊ/)

Can anyone shed any light on this? Or perhaps add a note to the article explaining the reason for the conflict (both internally to the article, and with the reality of General American English, at least in the present day)

--Tomatoswoop (talk) 05:19, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

@Tomatoswoop: Search for /i, u, eɪ, oʊ, ɑ/ are considered to compose a natural class of tense monophthongs in General American, especially for speakers with the cot–caught merger. in the article. There's your explanation. I agree that using a monophthongal long back [oː] is probably not a part of General American. It's more Canadian, Scottish or Northern English. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:29, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) See Accents of English, vol. 1, pp. 120–1. Wells analyzes FLEECE, FACE, GOOSE, and GOAT in GA as underlyingly tense monophthongs, but transcribes FACE as /eɪ/ to avoid confusion with RP /e/, which represents DRESS, not FACE. Nardog (talk) 09:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Very interesting, thank you both for drawing my attention to that. Whether that analysis should be considered the "consensus" and therefore reflected in the categorisation system of this article, I absolutely couldn't comment, but assuming that this categorisation is the right way to go about this article, maybe it would be prudent to move that clarification to a more prominent place. Perhaps just before the categorisation into "pure vowels" and dipthongs. Or if not to move the whole bullet point, perhaps add a small note just before the pure vowels table to point out that /oʊ/ and /eɪ/, while written in the table as diphthongs are instead here considered part of the group of "sometimes diphthongised tense vowels" as per Wells. --Tomatoswoop (talk) 03:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Also, Kbb2, if you disagree that putting /oʊ/ into the the monophthongal category is the right choice, perhaps you have another reference about general American that is better? I'm no expert, but it does seem to me that the American /oʊ/ is clearly a diphthong, not just a tense vowel, isn't the monophthongal /o/ exactly what Americans mock when parodying a Canadian accent? I won't change it because I'm talking about my own impression here, not some peer reviewed reference, and I'm no expert.--Tomatoswoop (talk) 03:37, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

No. Even though the monophthongal /o:/ IS a feature of Canadian accents, it is not what Americans mock when they parody Canadian accents. In America, the monophthongal /o:/ is mostly associated with North Dakota and Minnesota (both of which border Canada - go figure). The quirky horror film Fargo for example. Americans mock the Canadian dipthongs such as in "out and about" (but they typically misrepresent how they're pronounced by Canadians, too). Firejuggler86 (talk) 13:44, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Are there major sources beyond Wells's 1982 one that regard /oʊ/ and /eɪ/ as monophthongs "underlyingly" or of a "natural class" (what does this mean?)? In other words, is this widely agreed upon and practiced in the American phonological community (of which I'm not even sure we can say the British phonetician Wells is a part) or just one phonetician's view? Labov, for example, seems to avoid speaking of monophthongs vs. diphthongs at the phonemic level in favor of a distinction between "long vs. short vowels" or "checked vs. free vowels" (which Wells uses too). Wolfdog (talk) 23:38, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

ö̞

According to the article "History of the International Phonetic Alphabet" (Summary section), ö was replaced by ɵ in 1932. So in the vowels section, /ö̞/ is outdated and we should replace it with ɵ with a half-plus underneath?Serios3723 (talk) 11:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't quite work that way. Before 1932, there was no symbol that represented the vowel position that ⟨ɵ⟩ now represents. So diacritics were necessary. Thus we have pre-1932 works that use ⟨ö⟩ to represent sounds that post-1932 works would use ⟨ɵ⟩ for. Now that we have ⟨ɵ⟩, greater precision in phonetic transcription is possible and ⟨ö⟩ can be used to indicate a vowel position that is somewhere between cardinal [o] and [ɵ]. There's even a vowel chart that shows the exact position for the diphthong in words like row, showing that transcribing this vowel as [ö̞ʊ] is accurate. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:29, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Understood, it's not outdated, thanks! Serios3723 (talk) 11:55, 2 January 2021 (UTC)