Pronunciation Challenges
I. Introduction General American
In the early part of the seventeenth century English settlers began to bring their language to America, and another series of changes began to take place. The settlers borrowed words from Indian languages for such strange trees as the hickory and persimmon, such unfamiliar animals as raccoons and woodchucks. Later they borrowed other words from settlers from other countries – for instance, chowder and prairie from the French, scow and sleigh from the Dutch. They made new combinations of English words, such as backwoods and bullfrog, or gave old English words entirely new meanings, such as lumber (which in British English means approximately junk) and corn (which in British means any grain, especially wheat). Some of the new terms were needed, because there were new and un-English things to talk about. Others can be explained only on the general theory that languages are always changing, and American English is no exception. Aside from the new vocabulary, differences in pronunciation, in grammatical construction, and especially in intonation developed. If the colonization had taken place a few centuries earlier, American might have become as different from English as French is from Italian. But the settlement occurred after the invention of printing, and continued through a period when the idea of educating everybody was making rapid progress. For a long time most of the books read in America came from England, and a surprising number of Americans read those books, in or out of school. Moreover, most of the colonists seem to have felt strong ties with England. In this they were unlike their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, who apparently made a clean break with their continental homes. The problem of the theme is that the problem of the theme is that: A good many Englishmen and some Americans used to condemn every difference that did develop, and as recently as a generation ago it was not unusual to hear all “Americanisms” condemned, even in America. It is now generally recognized in this country that we are not bound to the Queen’s English, but have a full right to work out our own habits. Even a good many of the English now concede this, though some of them object strongly to the fact that Americanisms are now having an influence on British usage. The aim of the theme is to study deeply the differences of American and British English. There are thousands of differences in detail between British and American English, and occasionally they crowd together enough to make some difficulty. If you read that a man, having trouble with his lorry, got out his spanner and lifted the bonnet to see what was the matter, you might not realize that the driver of the truck had taken out his wrench and lifted the hood. It is amusing to play with such differences, but the theory that the American language is now essentially different from English does not hold up. It is often very difficult to decide whether a book was written by an American or an English man. Even in speech it would be hard to prove that national differences are greater than some local differences in either country. On the whole, it now seems probable that the language habits of the two countries will grow more, rather than less, alike, although some differences will undoubtedly remain and others may develop. It also seems probable that there will be narrow-minded and snobbish people in both countries for some time to come. But generally speaking, anybody who learnsto speak and write the standard English of his own country, and to regard that of the other country as a legitimate variety with certain interesting differences, will have little trouble wherever he goes. General American—like the British Received Pronunciation as well as most standard language varieties of many other societies—was never the accent of the entire nation. Rather, it is most closely related to a generalized Midwestern accent and is spoken particularly by many newscasters, in part because the national broadcasters preferred to hire people who exhibited similar speech. Famous news anchor Walter Cronkite is a good example of a broadcaster using this accent. Since Cronkite was born in Missouri, and spent his first dozen years there, some assumed that General American was the regional accent of the state, although Cronkite's teen years were spent in Texas, which is not known for having "accentless" speakers. General American is sometimes promoted as preferable to other regional accents; in the United States, classes promising "accent reduction" generally attempt to teach speech patterns similar to this accent. The well-known television journalist Linda Ellerbee, who worked hard early in her career to eliminate a Texas accent, stated, "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere." Some sources[attribution needed][1] suggest this is less true today than it was formerly. GeneralAmerican is also the accent generally taught to individuals from other countries learning English as a second language in the United States, as well as outside the country to anyone who wishes to learn "American English." II. Main part Pronunciation symbols
The symbols used to render pronunciations are those that are used in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition (1992). These symbols are phonemic rather than phonetic. That is, they are designed to help you distinguish meaningful units of sound, such as the difference between cat and cad or pat and pet. They are not designed to represent the specific pronunciation of any individual or of any particular speech community. Thus they allow people from different speech communities to pronounce words correctly in their native dialect. In the discussions that follow, the term long vowel can refer to any of the following sounds: ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), (ä), and ( ); it can also refer to the diphthongs (ou) and (oi). The term short vowel can refer to any of these sounds: ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), and ( ). A full pronunciation key can be found at Pronunciation Symbols. 1. a 2. aberrant 3. acumen 4. -ade 5. aerate 6. affluence affluent 7. -age 8. agoraphobia 9. ague 10. albumen albumin 11. alms 12. alumni alumnae 13. analogous 14. anesthetist 15. angina 16. Antarctic 17. apartheid 18. aplomb 19. arctic / Arctic 20. argot 21. ask 22. assimilation 23. asterisk 24. athlete 25. auxiliary 26. banal 27. barbiturate 28. blackguard 29. boatswain 30. bogeyman 31. bouquet 32. bowline 33. breeches 34. brooch 35. bulimia 36. buoy 37. C 38. cabal 39. cache 40. cadre 41. catacomb 42. Celt / Celtic 43. centenary 44. cerebral 45. Ch 46. choleric 47. clique 48. clothes 49. colander 50. comptroller 51. conch 52. coupon 53. covert 54. culinary 55. dais 56. debacle 57. deify / deity 58. demagogic demagogy 59. despicable 60. desultory 61. diphtheria 62. diphthong 63. disastrous 64. disparate 65. dissect 66. dissimilation 67. doughty 68. dour 69. dwarf 70. ebullience ebullient 71. -ed 72. either 73. envelope 74. environment 75. epoch 76. err 77. escalator 78. escape 79. espresso / expresso 80. et cetera 81. exquisite 82. February 83. flaccid 84. forecastle 85. formidable 86. forte 87. fulminant fulminate 88. fulsome 89. fungi 90. G 91. genealogy 92. genuine 93. genus 94. gerrymander 95. gibberish 96. governor 97. grievous 98. gunwale 99. H 100. harass 101. hegemony 102. height 103. heinous 104. herb 105. hoof 106. hovel / hover 107. impious 108. inherence / inherent 109. integral 110. interest 111. intrusion 112. inveigle 113. jewelry 114. junta 115. juvenilia 116. kerchief 117. kilometer 118. kudos 119. L 120. lasso 121. leeward 122. leisure 123. length 124. library 125. lived 126. lower / lour 127. machinate 128. mainsail 129. mauve 130. mayoral 131. metathesis 132. millenary 133. mineralogy 134. mischievous 135. moot 136. mores 137. naphtha naphthalene 138. neither 139. niche 140. nuclear 141. often 142. ophthalmia 143. -or 144. panegyric 145. penalize 146. poinsettia 147. portentous 148. posthumous 149. potpourri 150. primer 151.pronunciation spelling 152. prosody 153. pumpkin 154. quark 155. quasi 156. quay 157. quixotic 158. ration 159. Realtor 160. remonstrate 161. renaissance Renaissance 162. renege 163. renown 164. ribald 165. roof 166. row 167. sarcophagi 168. scarify 169. schism 170. scone 171. secretive 172. sheik 173. shone 174. similar 175. sloth 176. sonorous 177. spelling pronunciation 178. spontaneity 179. strength 180. the 181. tomato 182. topgallant topmast topsail 183. trauma 184. troth 185. valet 186. vase 187. victual 188. whilst 189. wizen 190. Xmas 191. zoo- / zo-
Pronunciation Challenges
Pronunciation Challenges Confusions and Controversy Differences Between American and British English While there are certainly many more varieties of English, American and British English are the two varieties that are taught in most ESL/EFL[2] programs. Generally, it is agreed that no one version is "correct" however, there are certainly preferences in use. The most important rule of thumb is to try to be consistent in your usage. If you decide that you want to use American English spellings then be consistent in your spelling (i.e. The color of the orange is also its flavour - color is American spelling and flavour is British), this is of course not always easy - or possible. The following guide is meant to point out the principal differences between these two varieties of English.
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