North American English regional phonology

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North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken North American English (English of the United States and Canada)—what are commonly known as the continent's regional accents or, simply, American accents. Though studies of regional dialects can be based on multiple characteristics, often including characteristics that are phonemic (sound-based, focusing on major word-differentiating patterns and structures in speech), phonetic (sound-based, focusing on any more exact and specific details of speech), lexical (vocabulary-based), and syntactic (grammar-based), this article focuses only on the former two items. North American English includes American English, which has several highly developed and distinct regional varieties, along with the closely related Canadian English, which is more homogeneous geographically. American English (especially Western dialects) and Canadian English have more in common with each other than with varieties of...

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