General American

General American is a national accent of American English based on speech patterns common in the Midwest of the United States and those used by many American network television broadcasters. It is also sometimes called Standard Midwestern. The General American accent or dialect is not thought of as a linguistic standard in the sense that Received Pronunciation (RP) is the standard, prestige variant in England and British society historically, but its speakers are perceived as "accentless" by most Americans. The idea of a uniform media American accent has declined in popularity since the late 1960s.

Full vowels:

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back		Front	Central rhotacized	Back
Monophthongs	Checked				Free
Close
Close-mid
Open-mid
Open

//: bid
//: good
//: bed
//: bud
//: bad

//: bead
//: booed
//: bayed
//: bode
//: bird
// or //: bought
//: pod, father

Note: the vowels /

/ and /

/ are diphthongal for many American speakers, so the transcriptions /

/ and /

/ are also often used.

Diphthongs	to //	to //		Rhotacized
Diphthongs	Closing			Rhotacized
Starting close
Starting mid
Starting open

//: boy
//: buy
//: cow

//: beer
//: boor (often replaced by //, sometimes by // in American English)
//: bear
//: bore (sometimes phonemicized //)
//: bar

Reduced vowels:

//: roses (for many Americans merged with /ə/)
//: Rosa’s
//: runner
/l/: bottle
/n/: button
/m/: rhythm

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English Pronunciation

English Language