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Accents and dialects vary widely across Great Britain, Ireland and nearby smaller islands. The UK has the most local accents of any English-speaking country [citation needed]. As such, a single "British accent" does not exist. Someone could be said to have an English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish accent, although these all have many different ...
An exception is the English spoken in the insular and culturally British-associated city of Victoria, British Columbia, where non-rhoticity is one of several features in common with British English, and despite the decline of the quasi-British "Van-Isle" accent once spoken throughout southern Vancouver Island, it represents one of only a few ...
Differences in pronunciation between American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) can be divided into . differences in accent (i.e. phoneme inventory and realisation).See differences between General American and Received Pronunciation for the standard accents in the United States and Britain; for information about other accents see regional accents of English.
Several pronunciation patterns contrast American and British English accents. The following lists a few common ones. Most American accents are rhotic, preserving the historical /r/ phoneme in all contexts, while most British accents of England and Wales are non-rhotic, only preserving this sound before vowels but dropping it in all other contexts; thus, farmer rhymes with llama for Brits but ...
The accent rapidly declined following the end of World War II, presumably as a result of cultural and demographic changes in the U.S. entering the postwar era. [15] This American version of a "posh" accent has disappeared even among the American upper classes, as Americans have increasingly dissociated from the speaking styles of the East Coast elite. [14]
Unlike American accents, the traditional standard accent of (southern) England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved a trap–bath split. Moreover, American accents preserve /h/ at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping, particularly in informal contexts.
The loss of postvocalic /r/ in the British prestige standard in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries influenced the American port cities with close connections to Britain, which caused upper-class pronunciation to become non-rhotic in many Eastern and Southern port cities such as New York City, Boston, Alexandria, Charleston, and Savannah. [9]
A diversity of earlier Southern dialects once existed: a consequence of the mix of English speakers from the British Isles (including largely English and Scots-Irish immigrants) who migrated to the American South in the 17th and 18th centuries, with particular 19th-century elements also borrowed from the London upper class and enslaved African-Americans.