Talk:General American English

Living down to the invidious stereotype

Can I just acknowledge how darkly humorous it is to have the General American article's current first speech example, from a Caucasian male, be that of a white man justifying torture? 'Couldn't be more on the nose. Won't somebody think of the henchmen! Representation is so important, and accurate representation… is accurate? Jesus Christ. To the extent this is your "normal reference material", the vibe nearly matches that of a German textbook maths problem, 1944 edition. I don't know that I agree with the Marxist trope-cum-slogan of "Late stage capitalism!", but this is late stage something. Flippin' 'eck! Four Phúc Sake. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if this worth responding to, but neither that short clip nor the full interview [1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b007w3c5 justifies torture. I find it hard to believe Matt Damon has ever done so. You might need to understand something about American politics circa 2007 to have the proper context. CAVincent (talk) 18:17, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if this is worth responding to either, but oh, yeah, sure, I'm just such a stranger and I just don't understand "the culture" enough, and if only I did, then of course I'd know how Hollywood royalty justifying torture isn't justifying torture at all, at all. History will not be kind, and sooner than ye think. I mean, sure, leave this in the article. I'm not going to fight you over it. "Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake." Late stage indeed. Enjoy yourself! 👍
PS: I'm calling it: One day soon, academic papers will be published, possibly in Indian English, correlating the pervasive politicisation and political devolution of Wikipedia with the decline of the empire of you-know-what. 'Round the decay of that colossal wreck… this too shall pass. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 21:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

You are too optimistic. Personally, at this point, I find it hard to see anything in the future but an American and corporate boot stamping on a human face forever, and even if the rival powers were to win, they are just as fine with torture.--62.73.72.3 (talk) 18:29, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

I have to agree with ReadOnlyAccount that Damon's statement in the clip seems to be excusing torture - 'Ah, these are such difficult times, such hard moral questions!' - and calling for torture to be legalised and regulated as opposed to prosecuted and punished - 'Don't get me wrong, I am not unpatriotic, I am not against our brave men and women in the CIA who torture people! On the contrary, they are good guys, I'm just worried about their interests, they need to have some clear guidelines as to what degree of torture is permissible in order to avoid legal problems.' (And that while he is actually taking a somewhat critical stance against the decay of human rights and the rule of law after 9/11 - it is symptomatic of the state of the US political scene that this is what passed and still passes for the most 'critical' pose possible within the Overton window.) These are definitely revolting remarks if you are coming from the position that torture is unacceptable even when performed by the US on some 'lowly barbarians'. Admittedly, the latter view is somewhat - and increasingly - fringe in the US, but on the other hand, I bet that about half of the US political spectrum - or more like two-thirds at this point - would also be offended by the example, but in their case it would be by Damon's suggestion that there should even be any limits on torture by 'our heroic intelligence community'. So, all in all, this is definitely a highly politically charged and controversial subject and not suitable for an example in an article about phonetics.--62.73.72.3 (talk) 18:19, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Rhotic ɜ instead of ə? ɑ - ä?

In the monophtong diagram, why is there rhotic ɜ where I would expect ə to be? Also, ɑ looks like in the positon for where ä would be. Zbutie3.14 (talk) 04:21, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

⟨ɜ⟩ used to be defined as a "variety of [ə]" by the IPA, without a defined height. This is how it's used in most transcriptions of English. And ⟨ɑ⟩ is just as good a transcription of an open central vowel as ⟨a⟩ or ⟨ɐ⟩, with ⟨ɐ⟩ being arguably the best if you really don't want to use any diacritics. But we use ⟨ɑ⟩ because that's what most sources use (some actually write it ⟨a⟩) and because it varies between back and central for speakers without the cot-caught merger. For the cot-caught-merged majority, the merged phone is typically back, so ⟨ɑ⟩ is the most appropriate symbol for that. Sol505000 (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Dark L

The article should specify what the rule is for the alternation between dark and light /l/ in GA. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 17:19, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

There is no rule as far as I'm aware. All L's are velarized, so you can choose either ⟨ɫ⟩ or ⟨l⟩ to transcribe them, depending on how narrow you want your transcription to be. Sol505000 (talk) 17:01, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

'Low importance'?

General American is by far the most common pronunciation of English in the world, the one with the most native speakers and the one most commonly approximated by non-native speakers (and I say this as a non-native speaker who instead chooses to approximate a 'Standard British' accent, but is quite aware of being very much in the minority in this respect). I genuinely don't see how this article can be of 'low importance' on the importance scales of the wiki projects 'English language' and 'Languages' - or even of 'United States'. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 17:27, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

SQUARE - really /ɛr/?

Shouldn't SQUARE be phonemicized as /ær/? /æ/ before /r/ sounds exactly like pre-nasal TRAP (or very close anyway), except that it's not nasalized (unless idiolectally or regionally, for speakers with a nasal voice quality). I'd write /skwær, ðær, ʃær/ just like we write /mæn, bæn, kæn/. Sol505000 (talk) 16:12, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Except we go by what credible sources do and there's a long tradition of not employing /æ/ for this vowel in US transcriptions, as with Wells' work, Kortmann's Handbook of Varieties of English, virtually all dictionaries, Labov, etc. Notations like ɛər or ɛr or eər or er are the norm. Wolfdog (talk) 17:16, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Then this seems to be an issue of sources assuming that the established transcriptional conventions are accurate without investigating the issue themselves, or keeping up to date with others' research (e.g. about /æ/ raising to /eɪ/ in 'sang', 'rang' etc.). An anti-scientific approach, but sadly it's still (somewhat) common in linguistics. If the merger affects all three of /eɪr, ɛr, ær/, surely it makes the least sense to choose ⟨ɛr⟩ (or a non-phonemic symbol such as ⟨eər⟩ or ⟨ɛər⟩) for this sequence. ⟨er⟩ would be fine if we used ⟨e⟩ for FACE, but ⟨ær⟩ is definitely the best from a logical standpoint. /æ/ would then be analyzed as undergoing raising to [ɛə ~ eə] before all sonorants except /l/ (and /ŋ/, where there's no centering glide and it can be safely transcribed /eɪŋ/). In dialects with the TRAP split, ⟨eər⟩ would be even better because you have the /eə/ phoneme.

Aren't there really ANY sources that use /ær/, though? /ɪr, ʊr/ already vary between that and ⟨ir, ur⟩, depending on the source. Sol505000 (talk) 18:18, 27 November 2024 (UTC)