General American and actors

[Ryusenshi]

I've been thinking recently about the elusive beast known as General American, the US pronunciation standard that hardly anybody uses. In particular, actors often reduce or suppress their native accent, so they're interesting text subjects. Unfortunately, my ears aren't good enough to pick up subtle differences in accents, so I'd prefer to rely on native speakers. Google isn't much help: googling "Actor X accent" only gives articles about the time Actor X did a terrible British accent. Maybe the people on this board can help me.

Here are a few questions.

1. Do you know any actors who speak "perfect GenAm" without any trace of a local accent?
2. For instance, do the following actors have a noticeable local accent? Anne Hathaway, Scarlett Johansson*, Natalie Portman, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert John Downey Jr... (not counting films in which they fake a specific accent, e.g. Pitt's Southern accent in Inglourious Basterds)
3. It seems to me that the center of gravity has moved westwards. When I see movies from the 1970's, I think I hear more of a "Midwestern" thing, while present-day actors sound more "West Coast" to my ears (even those not from the West Coast). Not only because of the low-back merger, but the overall tone and voice quality. Am I just talking out of my ass here?

* I think I've heard Johansson and Portman pronouncing sorry as [ˈsɔːɹi] instead of the more common [ˈsɑːɹi]. My guess is that their native Northeast accent has [ɑː] in words like horrible, they suppress it, and they ended up hypercorrecting.

By the way, what about the Joker's accent in The Dark Knight? It seems like a mix between New York and Chicago. (Now that I think about it, this description could apply to Gotham City...)

[Travis B.]

The matter with GA is that most NAE varieties have features in common with it, but most varieties have differences as well. Probably the closest NAE variety to GA is Western American English, whose primary differences are the cot-caught merger and fronting of /uː/. That said, though, some subvarieties of Western American English, such as Californian English and Pacific Northwest English, have their own vowel shifts, in ways similar to the Canadian Vowel Shift, that make them not as close to GA per se.

[Travis B.]

I should note that the dialect here in southeastern Wisconsin has [ˈsɔːʁi(ː)] for sorry, even though it is traditionally a Canadian English pronunciation (uvular rhotic aside) rather than an American English one.

[Vijay]

In the context of American English, I'm not sure how much sense it even makes to talk about dialects in the first place. Wasn't most of the US settled by people from the Midwest less than two hundred years ago? Instead, what we seem to have is a whole bunch of extremely messy isoglosses.

[mèþru]

Gold rushes drew people from the whole country to the major cities (or towns in Montana's case) in some of the western states. And Las Vegas also drew people from the whole country for different reasons. Plus Mormons from the various places the community centered on before Young's great trek.

[alynnidalar]

I should think the US was primarily settled by people from the East Coast. English speakers were pretty thin on the ground west of the Mississippi two hundred years ago.

[mèþru]

200 years ago the Midwest was primarily Amerind. And the main European language there was some kind of pidgin French.

[Linguoboy]

The matter with GA is that most NAE varieties have features in common with it, but most varieties have differences as well. Probably the closest NAE variety to GA is Western American English, whose primary differences are the cot-caught merger and fronting of /uː/. That said, though, some subvarieties of Western American English, such as Californian English and Pacific Northwest English, have their own vowel shifts, in ways similar to the Canadian Vowel Shift, that make them not as close to GA per se.

I'll see if I can find it, but I once saw a map of the major isoglosses defining GA that coverged on southern Iowa. That corresponds to my own experience.

At this point, fronting of /uw/ is so universal that I would consider it a characteristic of GA.

[Arzena]

I should note that the dialect here in southeastern Wisconsin has [ˈsɔːʁi(ː)] for sorry, even though it is traditionally a Canadian English pronunciation (uvular rhotic aside) rather than an American English one.

Where can I listen to a sound file of this uvular rhotic pronunciation? I don't doubt you on this, my brain's having a hard time processing a uvular rhotic in a native English root!!11!

[Travis B.]

I should note that the dialect here in southeastern Wisconsin has [ˈsɔːʁi(ː)] for sorry, even though it is traditionally a Canadian English pronunciation (uvular rhotic aside) rather than an American English one.

Where can I listen to a sound file of this uvular rhotic pronunciation? I don't doubt you on this, my brain's having a hard time processing a uvular rhotic in a native English root!!11!

Here is me saying "sorry". There is some weird artifact in the audio where it breaks up for a few milliseconds, but that is irrelevant.

[mèþru]

sounds more like velar to me

[Travis B.]

sounds more like velar to me

I natively have a velar approximant as an allophone of /l/ and this is further back than that.

[mèþru]

Still, strange to hear velar/uvular fricatives/approximants in American English.

[Ares Land]

And I bothered practicing retroflex r when I could've pretended I was from Wisconsin all along!

I don't think it's velar, it sounds like something like [ˈsɔːʁʷi].

[Travis B.]

And I bothered practicing retroflex r when I could've pretended I was from Wisconsin all along!

I don't think it's velar, it sounds like something like [ˈsɔːʁʷi].

Do not assume that how I speak is universal for people from Wisconsin. Also note that if you do try to speak like me, you'll have to learn a doubly articulated postalveolar and uvular approximant for where /r/ comes after a coronal, and you'll have to learn to labialize your /r/s (my initial /r/ is strongly labialized, and my other /r/s may be more weakly labialized).

[Ares Land]

Do not assume that how I speak is universal for people from Wisconsin. Also note that if you do try to speak like me, you'll have to learn a doubly articulated postalveolar and uvular approximant for where /r/ comes after a coronal, and you'll have to learn to labialize your /r/s (my initial /r/ is strongly labialized, and my other /r/s may be more weakly labialized).

Don't worry that's not something I'd actually try.

(It'd be fairly useless anyway. I think English learners should really concentrate their efforts on the vowels; it's the hardest part, and also the most liable to produce misunderstandings. In my experience English speakers have no trouble whatsoever with uvular r's. Getting focus or beach wrong is another matter )

[Travis B.]

(It'd be fairly useless anyway. I think English learners should really concentrate their efforts on the vowels; it's the hardest part, and also the most liable to produce misunderstandings. In my experience English speakers have no trouble whatsoever with uvular r's. Getting focus or beach wrong is another matter )

With like focus or beach, it depends on dialect; for me these two words are pretty straightforward - [ˈfokɘs] and [piʔtʃ] - with the main complications being that the vowels have to be short even when they maybe long in other English dialects, and that the final consonant in beach must be preglottalized (or otherwise they may be misheard as having /ɡ dʒ/. (On the other hand having [b] instead of [p] in beach is perfectly acceptable, and having [ə] instead of [ɘ] will make you sound like you speak a different English dialect but will not interfere with understanding.) However, other dialects have pronunciations like [ˈfɐʉ̯kəs] and [bɪjtʃ], which are likely going to be harder for non-native English speakers, due to the diphthongs, and I get the impression that it is all the diphthongs combined with all the low vowels in many English varieties that make them hard to pronounce for non-native English speakers.

[Travis B.]

I should say that the things that interfere the most with my understanding of non-native speakers' speech is lack of expected aspiration, lack of proper vowel length allophony, and lack of preglottalization, with interfere with differentiation of fortis obstruents from lenis obstruents. Not getting vowels perfect will make one sound non-native, but ultimately does not really interfere with understanding.

[zompist]

I think you missed the joke... the thing with focus is that if your vowel is too high (or even too open) you get "fuck us", and with beach that if you lax the vowel you get "bitch".

And Ars Lande is quite right that wrong vowels are liable to produce misunderstandings. As just one example, years ago there was a bit of confusion when my wife asked for a [kɪs]. Though she didn't mind the kiss, what she really wanted was the keys.

[Linguoboy]

Getting the vowels wrong can even affect perception of the consonants. I think I've posted before about not being able to understand perceiving a German friend's final consonants as devoiced when, on closer listening, they clearly weren't and finally determining that what gave that impression was lack of allophonic lengthening in the lax vowels.