American Accent Training: Learn to Speak Like a Native

What American Accent really is

First, let’s discuss what the American accent actually is, how it differs from the British accent and what features set the American accent apart.

First, you should keep in mind that the term “American accent” is a gross oversimplification because there are actually many evolving regional American accents. What most people think as the typical “American accent” is the General American accent which is sometimes called Network English or newscaster English. It is spoken by the majority of Americans.

The modern American accent is older than the British accent and it is closer to how the English language used to be spoken than the U.K. accent is. Wondering why it is so?

The American English, as we know and use today, was the accent originally spoken by the first English colonists who established their first permanent settlement in 1607 in what’s now known as the U.S. They brought their native language with them. In 1776, when the USA declared its independence, British and American accents have not yet diverged and the pronunciation was the same in both countries. But in the past two centuries, the standard British accent has undergone a lot of changes while the typical American accent remained practically the same and we can notice only subtle changes.

The primary feature that separates the General American accent from the British accent is that it is rhotic. Americans pronounce “r” sound in all environments, including after vowels, for example, in such words as winter, car and hard while non-rhotic speakers in the U.K. do not.

Other prominent features of the American accent also include:

• Unrounded vowels in such words as rod and lot – they are pronounced as “rahd” and “laht”.
• The ‘short a’ sound becomes diphthongized before the nasal consonants, e.g. man, cat.
• Yod-dropping in such words as suit /sut/, new /nu/