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American pronunciation

In the context of language learning, American pronunciation means General American (GenAm) pronunciation. This is the pronunciation used by educated Americans, on television and on radio. It is described in dictionaries of American English, such as the Merriam-Webster and Random House dictionaries.

Most Americans and Canadians speak something similar to General American. Whether you’re in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle or Toronto, you will generally hear the same accent. There are some regional differences, but they are usually very small. The only major exception is the South of the US (especially outside of big cities), which has its own distinct accent.

General American pronunciation is rhotic, which means that the letter r is always pronounced.

British pronunciation

When people talk about learning British pronunciation, they usually think of Received Pronunciation (RP). RP is the pronunciation of the British upper class; it is sometimes called the Queen’s English. This is the pronunciation that you will learn at a British language school; it is also the model taught in coursebooks and dictionaries from publishers like Oxford and Longman.

In the UK, only a small percentage of people speak something similar to RP — these are upper-class people, academics, actors, TV personalities, politicians and English teachers. Outside of these groups, RP-like pronunciation is used in the southeast of England — in the area near Oxford, Cambridge, Brighton and London — although most people in that area actually speak Estuary English, which is significantly different from RP.

“Normal” Britons usually speak with their local accents, which are often quite different from RP, and can be very hard to understand to untrained ears. Sometimes cities that are only 20 km apart have very different accents. (The British Library has an interactive map of the UK which lets you listen to someexamples of British accents from various areas.)

RP is non-rhotic, which means that the letter r is usually “silent”, unless it is followed by a vowel. Here’s how it works:

• In words like car, tower, inform and first, r is silent (r is not followed by a vowel).
• In words like red, foreign, print, r is pronounced (r is followed by a vowel).
• R is also pronounced at the end of a word, if the next word starts with a vowel, for example: number eight, far away.
• Most RP speakers also insert an r in phrases like: the idea(r) of, Africa(r) and Asia, law(r) and order. This r is not in the spelling; they just use it to separate two vowels.
  

The following pairs sound exactly the same in RP: or/awe, court/caught,sore/saw, farther/father, formerly/formally. In General American, they all sound different.