Approx. 300,000,000 people live in North America.
You should have had alcohol with your lunch. It would help you to forget all these mundane queries.
[quote=“the chief”]Get your fucking stories straight, counsel.
The Irish fella referred to, as you note, an American accent, not the American accent.
Nobody is saying there’s a single one.[/quote]
Eeeeasy there big fella… Perhaps the counselor deserves just a slight break before you toss your net over him and throw him in the lion pit? 
When was the last time you heard a native English speaker say “He speaks with the American accent?”
No, one would use “an” whether one believed that there existed a single uniform American accent or one believed that there were a group of accents that could all be categorized as ‘American’. Similarly, most people would say “He has a Brooklyn accent” (rather than “the Brooklyn accent”), even though ‘Brooklynese’ is generally thought of as a single distinctive accent rather than a group of them.
To put it another way: what would you think if someone told you that his boss speaks with a very strong ‘northern hemisphere accent’? Would you think A: “Ah, this person clearly means that his boss speaks with one of the large number of accents that could be classified as originating in the northern hemisphere.” Or would you think B: “What the fuck is this guy smoking? There is no such thing as a ‘northern hemisphere accent’!” ?
My guess is that most people’s reactions would be closer to “B”. No?
You are right that the statement MT heard does not necessarily mean that the person thought there was a single uniform American accent. But the statement (and the use of “an”) does not so conclusively rule out MT’s interpretation as you suggest.
This online ‘quiz’ tells you what kind of American accent you have
gotoquiz.com/what_american_a … o_you_have
to be taken with a grain of salt of course, but fun nonetheless – it correctly identified where I’m from
so americans are NOT the same as canadians?
go figure. you learn something new every day.
they sure do sound the same (roughly). just like kiwis and aussies sound the same if you’re neither. or south africans and rhodesians sound the same (giving my age way there) if you come from somewhere else.
of course there is an american accent: it is spoken by msot of those who learnt to speak in the countries of north america. even my taiwanese wife has an american accent, with texan twinges, y’all hear now.
[quote=“David Chen”]This online ‘quiz’ tells you what kind of American accent you have
gotoquiz.com/what_american_a … o_you_have
to be taken with a grain of salt of course, but fun nonetheless – it correctly identified where I’m from[/quote]
They go my accent pegged perfectly. I took a British Accent test and it said I came from some place called “Slough”. 
Pretty slick quiz there.
Great, me, Erhu, and Morris Day.
Damn skippy, I thought they all talked like my family.
Erm, well, yeah…sort of…
Well now. It seems I have a “Midland” accent and that I “have a good voice for TV and radio”. Maybe I should move to England and make my name in showbusiness. What’s Birmingham’s local TV station called?
Yeah but you got a face fit for radio.
[quote=“David Chen”]This online ‘quiz’ tells you what kind of American accent you have
http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have
to be taken with a grain of salt of course, but fun nonetheless – it correctly identified where I’m from[/quote]
They got it completely wrong. I’m from the American Southwest (Los Angeles), not the Northeast. :loco:
Just because I differentiate between all the words on the list like the dictionary.
As someone who has studied sociolinguistics (which regards accents and probes the question of “what is a standard dialect?”), I can assure you the usual indicator of a standard accent is not necessarily how many people speak it, but how much money is attached to the people who speak it. The Golden Rule of Dialects… the ones with the gold are the ones with the standard accent.
That being said, my major research for this class was finding how those who are the most likely to speak standard American English, that being news anchors (other reporters are not necessarily held to the same standard), still show dialectal accents. I showed this by comparing local news programs from Boston, Atlanta, New York and Chicago. Which brings up that, while there is a general number of phonemes that are common to standard American English, it is within a range that allows for regional inflection.
In Ohio, you can tell which part of the state someone is from the minute they open their mouths, right down to the closest city, but Ohio is largely in the middle of the Midwestern English accent belt.
I have lost my accent to the point that sometimes my family will point out the things I say “funny” and I’ve native English speakers ask me if I was from South Africa or Australia (!) because of my “accent”. Of course, it hasn’t happened while in Taiwan, but that’s probably because we are all adapting each others’ accents so we all “talk funny”.
[quote=“David Chen”]This online ‘quiz’ tells you what kind of American accent you have
gotoquiz.com/what_american_a … o_you_have
to be taken with a grain of salt of course, but fun nonetheless – it correctly identified where I’m from[/quote]
They were off by roughly 1,500 miles for me.
Here a link explaining non-regional American English accent
[quote]http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/standardamerican/hamlet/
Standard American,” in the context of dramatic speech, means one single standard of speech that will sound American — simple, unaffected and distinct, devoid of regional influences. Although there is no official Standard American speech, there is a range of acceptability. In [/quote]
Thanks, AC, that is interesting. Here’s your link again: pbs.org/speak/seatosea/stand … an/hamlet/
But it still leaves me with some questions.
Ok, devoid of regional influences I understand, but I still don’t know what it means to “sound American.” Probably I couldn’t understand anyway as it can only be described in arcane linguistic jargon.
[quote]Although there is no official Standard American speech, there is a range of acceptability. In real life, as opposed to the theater, all accents, dialects and regionalisms of a language are valid. But, in the theater, we deal with the dramatic expression of the written word. As a professor of speech for actors, I want to teach a manner of speech that communicates the content of the written word with clarity and consistency. That is why I teach students to speak “Standard American” English, without regionalisms, accents or dialects.
Very few, if any, Americans grow up speaking this consistent Standard American speech. [/quote]
Now she lost me. If there is no official Standard American speech and very few, if any, Americans grow up consistently speaking Standard American speech, then it’s not real, is it? It’s a way of speaking that’s been concocted by drama teachers (and perhaps CNN broadcasters) to represent American speech, but in fact no one really talks that way. It’s phoney. It’s not “American” speech, it’s merely an act put on by a few in the trade.
Ah, so that’s who created this phoney language, the IPA. In order to learn to speak American speech one must read their 39 rules and practice them, even if one was born and raised in the US, as very few if any people actually speak that way.
If that’s the case, it sounds like it’s a way of distilling speech down to mere content alone and THERE IS NO ACCENT. If no info is conveyed beyond content, then one can’t tell the speaker’s from America, right? Or is putting on an act of speaking with the IPA’s 39 rules?
Mother Theresa,
You know on Mainland China they actually have an oral exam for “standard” putonghua, which is need for careers in broadcast and teaching.
Perhaps that’s what American English needs. But then again English is not even an official language in the USA.
I took the “What American Accent Do You have” quiz and these are the results:
Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you’re a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
They say my voice contains the following mix:
The Midland 95%
Boston 80%
North Central 80%
The Inland North 30%
Philadelphia 25%
The South 25%
The Northeast 20%
Interesting.
I was born and raised in Santa Clara (Bay Area) California and have lived in Texas, Illinois, Oregon, and other parts of California.
[quote]
I was born and raised in Santa Clara (Bay Area) California and have lived in
Texas, Illinois, Oregon, and other parts of California.[/quote]
Well they all sound pretty AMERICAN to me!
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Ah, so that’s who created this phoney language, the IPA. In order to learn to speak American speech one must read their 39 rules and practice them, even if one was born and raised in the US, as very few if any people actually speak that way.
If that’s the case, it sounds like it’s a way of distilling speech down to mere content alone and THERE IS NO ACCENT. If no info is conveyed beyond content, then one can’t tell the speaker’s from America, right? Or is putting on an act of speaking with the IPA’s 39 rules?[/quote]
Hi MT, the IPA created a system of transcribing the sounds of speech and so made hundreds of symbols. The 39 symbols for English are the basic vowells and consonants we all use. The IPA symbols used for English simply describe what we say, so if I transcribed your speech, the transcription would be different from a British person’s. The difference would be in the symbols used to describe the variation, not (generally) the basic consonants and vowels we all use.
For example ‘bird’. The basic phonemes are the ‘b’ sound, the ‘ir’ sound and the ‘d’ sound. However my accent, is different from yours and I would ‘roll’ the ‘r’ slightly (Slightly weird accent; Cheshire with a hint of the Glaswegian grandparents) and so my accent would have a little symbol over the one to represent my ‘ir’ sound to represent the ‘rrr’.
IPA transcription is a system of notation, kind of like musical notes, not a prescriptive committee. It contains symbols to transcribe even the glottal clicks made in some African languages. They simple describe, not prescribe. Noone’s trying to fence you in. The idea of a ‘standard accent’ is (sort of) imposed by socio-cultural factors such as the perceived status of the speakers, and it often goes with economic power, for obvious reasons. I think ImaniOU said that earlier in the thread.
It’s impossible to have ‘no accent’ as accent simply means the style in which you produce the phonemes (or basic sounds) of your language which has until now, mostly been defined by where we have lived.
Edit Sorry if that is blahblahblah or unclear, there’s no coffee in this house. Happy to clarify if anyone cares.
[quote=“Buttercup”][quote=“Mother Theresa”]Ah, so that’s who created this phoney language, the IPA. In order to learn to speak American speech one must read their 39 rules and practice them, even if one was born and raised in the US, as very few if any people actually speak that way.
If that’s the case, it sounds like it’s a way of distilling speech down to mere content alone and THERE IS NO ACCENT. If no info is conveyed beyond content, then one can’t tell the speaker’s from America, right? Or is putting on an act of speaking with the IPA’s 39 rules?[/quote]
Hi MT, the IPA created a system of transcribing the sounds of speech and so made hundreds of symbols. The 39 symbols for English are the basic vowells and consonants we all use. The IPA symbols used for English simply describe what we say, so if I transcribed your speech, the transcription would be different from a British person’s. The difference would be in the symbols used to describe the variation, not (generally) the basic consonants and vowels we all use.
For example ‘bird’. The basic phonemes are the ‘b’ sound, the ‘ir’ sound and the ‘d’ sound. However my accent, is different from yours and I would ‘roll’ the ‘r’ slightly (Slightly weird accent; Cheshire with a hint of the Glaswegian grandparents) and so my accent would have a little symbol over the one to represent my ‘ir’ sound to represent the ‘rrr’.
IPA transcription is a system of notation, kind of like musical notes, not a prescriptive committee. It contains symbols to transcribe even the glottal clicks made in some African languages. They simple describe, not prescribe. Noone’s trying to fence you in. The idea of a ‘standard accent’ is (sort of) imposed by socio-cultural factors such as the perceived status of the speakers, and it often goes with economic power, for obvious reasons. I think ImaniOU said that earlier in the thread.
It’s impossible to have ‘no accent’ as accent simply means the style in which you produce the phonemes (or basic sounds) of your language which has until now, mostly been defined by where we have lived.
Edit Sorry if that is blahblahblah or unclear, there’s no coffee in this house. Happy to clarify if anyone cares.[/quote]Buttercup, what I think might have been meant by “IPA” in this case was a phonemic subset similar to the 44-phoneme one developed by Adrian Underhill for British English. People often call that one “IPA”, which is incorrect of course. As you say, the aim of the real, complete, IPA is to describe, not to prescribe. The more limited phonemic sets aren’t intended for prescriptive phonetic training, though I suppose if someone wants to use them for that purpose there’s nothing to stop them.
Sure. Underhill didn’t develop it though, it goes way back; doesn’t he just write EFL training materials like ‘Sound Foundations’? I may be misinformed, I tended to doze off in phonology lectures.
MT, as to your original question, I’d say that there are some broad general characteristics of American accents. But what I think you should also bear in mind is that to some extent the “American-ness” of accents may be a mental construct. That is, we make connections between the accents even when one particular American accent may be more similar to an accent from another country than to another American accent.
A lot of language is hard to “dissect” in labs, and is really created by the brain. For example, take the way in which the mind percieves phonemes – the individual blocks of sound which make up meaning. Phonemes sound very different from accent to accent. Think, for example, of the phoneme represented by “tt” in the word “butter”, and how different it sounds in British and in American accents. Still, the mind percieves these different sounds as being the same for the purpose of meaningful communication.
Similarly, when analysing recorded speech, it’s impossible to slow down a tape and determine exactly where one phoneme ends and another begins. They merge together. But the brain perceives them as separate units.
So when we hear an accent and classify it as “American”, part of that American-ness may be easily analysed from a phonetic point of view, but part may be a mental construct based on our previous knowledge of how people in various parts of North America speak.