diacríno

Why don’t you understand American?

A friend of mine told me the Americans he’d met didn’t speak an understandable American English. He claims that it’s not the same clear American language he knows from Friends or Hollywood movies. This complain seems to be shared with many other non native English speakers. Is that substantially true? What can the cause be?

First of all, I would like to say many accents are present in the American movies. The old ones have often Eastern American accents; Friends must have NY twists… Southern accents, even if present, never fool foreigners and are always perceived as accents. Otherwise, I wonder if non native speakers do know what the General American accent is. By that I mean: in what measure do foreigners distinguish the General American from other American accents?

The easy hypothesis is foreigners, especially Europeans (used to the RP - the standard British pronunciation), perceive Eastern American accents (some of NY, the archaic Bostonian, generally those form New England) as understandable, clear American. [I could explain differences between the GA and the RP, but I don't have an exhaustive knowledge on diffs between the GA and other American accents.] But it cannot be only that…

A more responsible factor must be the weight that formal language has is movies and in daily life respectively. On one hand, movies have everything, hence formal and informal mix together. On the other hand, daily life communication is obviously informal. The American tourists speak, of course, a loosened American. If you understand which are the watermarks of informal American, you shouldn’t have further comprehension problems.

I will point to some main characteristics:

• linking words is quite frequent
  • tapped t [t̪ - a specific American sound, produced by tapping the alveolar ridge*] is omnipresent in linking. Examples:
    • it is >> iddiz = ɪt̪ ‘ɪz;
    • what a relief >> waTeriLEAF = ‘wət̪ə rɪ’li:f ;
    • how does it happen = ‘haʊ t̪ə zɪt ‘hæpn;
    • get a life >> gedda life =’gɛt̪ə ‘laif.
  • some consonants change if involved in linking:
    • did you >> didge you;
    • let you >> letch you;
    • bless you >> blesh you;
    • get a life >> gedda life.
  • other consonants disappear in linking:
    • kind of true >> kinda true;
    • can’t say = ‘kænt̪ ’seɪ - due to tapping, t almost disappears; therefore, foreigners never understand the negation, so they get exactly the opposite. Symetrically, Americans might understand can’t when a foreigner says can;
    • I sent it >> I sennit.
• other occurences of tapped t:
  • as already mentioned, it appears after some consonants and it’s very weak: can’t say = ‘kænt̪ ’seɪ ; international = int̪ɚ’næʃnəl ; twenty = ‘twɛnt̪i: ; software = ’sɑ:ft̪ wɚ ;
  • sometimes tapped t occurs in final (not linking) position: side and sight might have the same final consonant. In this case, vowel length matters and intonation becomes very important in disambiguation.
• contracted forms are frequent. That means pronouns and auxiliary verbs are shortened, h is very often dropped: Where has he lived in Asia ['wɛ rə zi: 'lɪv dɪ ,neɪ ʒə]?

* The tapped t is that American sound which makes you ['meɪk ʃju:] think at Adam instead of autumn ['ɑ:t̪əm]; it creates confusion between atom [’æt̪̪əm] and Adam ['æt̪̪əm]; it doesn’t let you know when somebody is having a heart attack ['hɑr t̪̪ə tæk] (hard attack is so close - just a longer ɑ); it presents comedies in famous newspapers…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 2:00 am and is filed under EN. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.