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General American


General American (abbreviated as GA or GenAm) is an umbrella variety of American English—a continuum of accents—commonly attributed to a majority of Americans and popularly perceived, among Americans, as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics. Due to General American accents being widespread throughout the United States, they are sometimes, though controversially, classified as Standard American English. The precise definition and usefulness of "General American" continues to be debated, and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness.

Standard Canadian English is sometimes considered to fall under the phonological spectrum of General American, especially rather than the United Kingdom's Received Pronunciation; in fact, spoken Canadian English aligns with General American in nearly every situation where British and American English differ.

The term "General American" was first disseminated by American English scholar George Philip Krapp, who, in 1925, described it as an American type of speech that was "Western" but "not local in character." In 1930, American linguist John Samuel Kenyon, who largely popularized the term, considered it equivalent to the speech of "the North," or "Northern American," but, in 1934, "Western and Midwestern." Now, typically regarded as falling under the General American umbrella are the regional accents of the American West,Western New England, the American North Midland, and arguably all of English-speaking Canada west of Quebec. By 1982, according to British phonetician John C. Wells, two-thirds of the American population spoke with a General American accent.


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