A Description of American English Phonology

The book, an updated and expanded version of the 2014 edition, focuses on the phonological system of American English (henceforth AmE), namely, the variety of English which was originally spoken only in the United States of America (cf. Map 1), but which has nowadays become the speaking model of many other countries in the world. The aim is to describe the phonological variation that characterizes AmE and distinguishes it from other Englishes by starting from the assumption that it is the phonological level of language which plays a crucial role in distinguishing varieties (Bauer 2002:69). A description of description of some of the most common mistakes made by Italian speakers of English and some of the Englishes around the British Isles are also offered in the Readings section, as a support for a contrastive and comparative approach to investigating AmE.