English vs. American English – What’s the Difference?
1. The Rhotic Accent How exactly then have our accents diverged since the Boston Tea Party? Many books have been written about the precise phonetic details of different English dialects, but for now I’ll stick with just one: rhoticity. If you have a “rhotic accent”, that means you pronounce the letter “r” every time it’s written, and most American dialects (along with Irish and Scottish ones) remain fully rhotic. In England, on the other hand, most of us at some point in the last few hundred years stopped pronouncing the letter “r” when it comes before a consonant (or is at the end of a word). For example in my own name, George, which I pronounce like the word “jaw” with an extra “j” sound on the end, no “r” to be found. In most parts of England (the main exception being the West Country), people pronounce “father” identically to “farther”, “pawn” identically to “porn”, and “panda” identically to “pander”, while to most Americans and Canadians those word pairs are all distinct.
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