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Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American; [6] it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech.
English-language scholar William A. Kretzschmar Jr. explains in a 2004 article that the term "General American" came to refer to "a presumed most common or 'default' form of American English, especially to be distinguished from marked regional speech of New England or the South" and referring especially to speech associated with the vaguely-defined "Midwest", despite any historical or present ...
North American English is a collective term for the dialects of the United States and Canada. It does not include the varieties of Caribbean English spoken in the West Indies. Rhoticity: Most North American English accents differ from Received Pronunciation and some other British dialects by being rhotic.
A diversity of earlier Southern dialects once existed: a consequence of the mix of English speakers from the British Isles (including largely English and Scots-Irish immigrants) who migrated to the American South in the 17th and 18th centuries, with particular 19th-century elements also borrowed from the London upper class and enslaved African-Americans.
Pre-/r/ distinctions: New York accents lack most of the mergers that occur with vowels before an /r/, which are otherwise common in other varieties of North American English. There is typically a three-way Mary–marry–merry distinction, in which the vowels in words like marry [ˈmæɹi] , merry [ˈmɛɹi] , and Mary [ˈmeɹi] ~ [ˈmɛəɹi ...
The U.S. has dozens of distinct regional accents reflecting not just place, but also race and ancestry. For example, the New Yorker accent is one of the most visible regional accents in American ...
New England English is, collectively, the various distinct dialects and varieties of American English originating in the New England area. [1] [2] Most of eastern and central New England once spoke the "Yankee dialect", some of whose accent features still remain in Eastern New England today, such as "R-dropping" (though this and other features are now receding among younger speakers). [3]
A California Assembly bill would allow the use of diacritical marks like accents in government documents, not allowed since 1986's "English only" law which many say targeted Latinos.