British and American English Pronunciation
Differences
Paco G´omez
Contents
1 Pronunciation Differences between British English and American English 2
2 Rhotic Accent 3
3 Differences in Vowel Pronunciation 5
3.1 Change of Diphthong [@U] to [oU] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2 Change of Vowel [6] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2.1 The Main Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2.2 Changes to [oU] and [2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3 Change of [æ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4 Change from [ju:] to [u:] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.5 Minor Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.5.1 Change of [I] and [aI] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.5.2 Changes of [i:] and [e] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4 Differences in Consonant Pronunciation 9
4.1 Pronunciation of Letter t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5 Change of Stress 10
5.1 French Loanwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2 Ending -ate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.3 Suffixes -ary, -ory, -berry, and -mony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6 Changes in Articulation 12
7 Notes 13
1
1 Pronunciation Differences between British English and American English
One of the main difficulties a foreigner student may face when learning English pronunciation is the remarkable variety of accents. Like many other languages spoken in such a vast territory and by so many people, spoken English presents wide variation in pronunciation.
In spite of that wide variation, three standard pronunciations are