Intro to General American

Intro to General American

Contents

The Setting

The Zone

The Groove

Consonants

Useful Resources

Materials and quotes taken from “How to Do Accents” by Edda Sharpe and Jan Haydn Rowles.

2016

The Setting– Of the mouth and facial muscles

-The “position or shape of your tongue, mouth, soft palate, lips and/or jaw.”

-The active articulators[1] are the parts you can move to affect the setting of an accent.

A few examples;

-Yorkshire

CheeksLoose

LipsSlack

JawDropped

TongueHeavy & flat

-Scottish

CheeksSoft

LipsPouted & held small

JawMid-open

TongueRolled forward and gripped

-Cockney

Cheeks Held

LipsFlat (corners pinched)

JawClosed

Soft palateLow

The Zones; Where the sound is placed

(Hayden Rowles, J & Sharpe, E. How to Do Accents, Oberon, 2009)

The Groove;

The Groove is the music and melody of the accent. Each accent has its own unique rhythm and tune, which gives it a distinct style.

Identifying the Default Tune

This is the tune an accent uses for “simple statements of fact, with no sub textual meaning or implication: a ‘news-reading’ tune, if you like” (156:2009) Finding this Default Tune can help to find the starting point for an accent, to which you can add the other expressive and emotional features of the accent as you progress. The default tune has 3 qualities:

1) The Physical Effort - The first stage of identifying the default tune is to assign the accent a physical effort. Pop on an accent sample, get up and moving and see how your body responds physically. You can then translate this to the energy that drives the accent. Eight examples of the efforts you can choose (based on Laban Movement Analysis) are included in the Resources section of this pack.

2) The Tune - The next stage is to think about whether the accent has an over the phrase and down or under the phrase and up feeling. For example:

Liverpool: under the phrase and up
NSEA: over the phrase and down
Northern Irish: under the phrase and up
Cockney: over the phrase and down

A good way to feel this is to sing the tune to a basic pattern of ‘dum dums’.

3) Musical Quality - Finally, see if you can pinpoint whether the accent has more of a minor or major key in musical terms. Minor key accents often sound unfinished or questioning, e.g. Northern Irish. Major key accents can have more of a feeling of resolution and confidence, e.g. Cockney.

Rhotic v Non Rhotic

Rhotic accents say EVERY /r/ and NEVER add in extra /r/.

e.g. Northern Irish, Standard American, Scottish, parts of rural Lancashire.

Non-rhotic accents ONLY say an /r/ if it’s followed by a vowel sound and MAY add some intrusive* /r/ sounds.

e.g Norfolk, Wales, Newcastle.

* The Intrusive /r/ is when an /r/ sound is added during connected speech where it isn’t written in the spelling of the word, usually between two vowel sounds e.g. law/r/and order, pizza/r/and chips. There are NO INTRUSIVE /R/s in rhotic accents. **

** This is one of the major trip ups when non-rhotic speakers, like RP, affect a rhotic accent, like Standard American. So be vigilant!

Consonants

There are five “make or break” (57:2009) consonant sounds that are important to identify when you’re approaching an accent.

1)R – tapping (Scottish), bunching, curling or bending (N.I/Gen Am/SW England)?

2)L – light, dark or none?

3)H – dropped or kept?

4)NG – running, runnin, runn’n or runningk?

5)TH – with it, wivvit, widdit or wizzit.?

Useful Resources

1) Your Equipment – the articulators

Hayden Rowles, J & Sharpe, E. How to Do Accents, Oberon, 2009

2) Finding Accent Samples

•Get a recording from a native of that area using the Standard Text provided within this pack. It is also a good idea to record them telling a fun story from their childhood.

•Other places for resources;

•The Accent Kit – App available on iTunes

•IDEA – The International Dialects of English Archive

•BBC Archives -

3) Eight Basic Efforts

Laban is a movement system designed by Rudolf Laban in order to understand “the way in which a movement is performed” (153:2009). It’s a great system that can be used really simply, via the Eight Basic Efforts, or in more detail if you find it helpful. The diagram below outlines the Eight Basic Efforts.

4) Standard Text

- This is a piece of text that contains all possible sounds in the English language. It is great for using when learning a new accent to make sure you have covered every possible sound shift.

Arthur the Rat

There was once a young rat named Arthur, who could never take the trouble to make up his mind. Whenever his friends asked him if he would like to go out with them, he would only answer, ‘I don’t know.’ He wouldn’t say ‘yes’ and he wouldn’t say ‘no’ either. He could never learn to make a choice.

His aunt Helen said to him, ‘No one will ever care for you if you carry on like this. You have no more mind than a blade of grass.’ Arthur looked wise, but stupidly said nothing.

One rainy day, the rats heard a great noise in the loft where they lived. The pine rafters were all rotten in the middle, and at last one of the joists had given way and fallen to the ground. The walls shook and all the rats’ hair stood on end with fear and horror. ‘This won’t do,’ said the old rat who was chief, ‘I’ll send out scouts to search for a new home.’

Three hours later the seven tired scouts came back and said, ‘We have found a stone house, which is just what we wanted; there is room and good food for us all. There is a kindly horse named Nelly, a cow, a calf, and a garden with flowers and an elm tree.’ Just then the old rat caught sight of young Arthur. ‘Are you coming with us?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know.’ Arthur sighed. ‘The roof may not come down just yet.’ ‘Well,’ said the old rat angrily, ‘we can’t wait all day for you to make up your mind; right about face! March!’ And they went straight off.

Arthur stood and watched the other little rats hurry away. The idea of an immediate decision was too much for him. ‘I’m going back to my hole for a bit,’ he said to himself dreamily, ‘just to make up my mind.’ That Tuesday night there was a great crash that shook the earth and down came the whole roof. Next day some men rode up and looked at the ruins. One of them moved a board and hidden under it they saw a young rat lying on his side, quite dead, half in and half out of his hole.

[1]See “Knowing Your Equipment” diagram in the ‘Resources’ section.