General American

General American (GA) is considered the “standard” pronunciation of American English and is the accent spoken throughout the USA except in the north-east (roughly the Boston and New England area) and the south-eastern states. It is geographically (largely non-coastal) and socially based.

It uses twenty-four consonant phonemes and sixteen vowel phonemes represented by the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

Vowel charts
The following table is used in Teflpedia. Note that in most of the United States /ɒ/ and /ɑː/ sound exactly the same. Includes /eə, ɪə, ʊə/ and /ɒ/ for compatibility with Received Pronunciation
 * Vowel chart for American English

Some speakers merge // with //, /ɪə/ with /ɪ/, and /ʊə/ with /ʊ/, and others have the FORCE lexical set with an /əʊ/ phoneme, sounding [oʊ], [oə] or [oː]. The table below shows the most common phoneme inventory.

It uses /oʊ/ instead of /əʊ/ and /ɛ/ instead of /e/, as is customary in American dictionaries
 * Vowel chart for General American (includes mergers)

Cot - caught merger
Around 40% of Americans have a different vowel inventory, in which /ɔː/ is merged with /ɑː/ (except before r). See Cot-caught merger. Another name for this merger (better for those who have it) is " LOT - THOUGHT merger".