Fun Easy English - English facts - American English accents.

Learning objectives

Read about the different English accents in the United States

English accents in the United States

The standard American English accent is spoken by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia.

Regional and cultural variations within the USA

Boston, Massachusetts

• "Park the car in Harvard Yard" becomes "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd."

Brooklyn, New York

• "Park the car in Harvard Yard" becomes "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd."
• faster speech
• When asked if the apartment had heat in the winter the landlord replied "Shua. We got a brand new url boyna." ("Sure. We got a brand new oil burner.")

Midwest (Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin)

• "opportunity" like "ahppertunity" (NOTE: This is standard in Connecticut, an eastern state.)
• "Park the car in Harvard Yard" becomes "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd."

USA (Minnesota, esp. rural)

• "Father" rhymes with "bother".
• Preservation of non-prevocalic <r>
• Canadian raising
• "roof", "book", and "root" all use the same vowel
• Use of German/Scandinavian "ja" as an affirmative filler or emphatic; Standard US English "yes" is used to answer questions and to start an explanation.
• Tendency towards a "sing-songy" intonation (the area's earliest European settlers were primarily Scandinavian, and this has influenced the local dialect). More recently, this has been reinforced by an influx of Asians, most of whom speak tonal languages.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh accents have a number of distinctive features.

South

• "I" becomes "Ah" in the South.
• slower speech tempo
• putting two modals together as if the second were an infinitive: "I might could do that."

New England and East Coast

• faster speech tempo

Maine

• Older native Maine (USA) residents pronounce "yes" or "yeah" as "ayuh", with the stress on the the second syllable.

California

• use a lot of "like", "totally awesome" etc.

African American, sometimes referred to as Ebonics

This is actually a cluster of dialects with numerous regional variations. The below describes some features found in many (but not necessarily all) varieties, and emphasizes a stereotype that may or may not be true in some areas of the United States. This dialect is not exclusive to African-Americans and might be more appropriately titled Urban.

• Use of double negative; in some speakers: "I ain't never done nuthin' like that."

• Use of "ain't" where Standard American English (SAE) uses "isn't".