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what is the difference between the american and the english accent

Rsharma · Accepted Answer

Accentis a very large topic. I can shed a little light on one important difference between the dominant American accent (the typical accent of the mid-western US) and the British accent. US English is rhotic, and British English is, as a rule, non-rhotic. This simply refers to how speakers pronounce the letter "r" (rho, in Greek). Typically, US speakers pronounce every "r", wherever they appear in a word. Most British speakers (and you will note that there are some British Isle accents that are strongly rhotic, like US) do not pronounce every "r". When a word ends in "r", the last vowel sound tends to terminate the word. Examples are words like door [doo', or dooh] floor and car [cah, remeniscent of the old "pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd", a gentle mocking of the Boston accent. This "last vowel sound idea" doesn't always work (take tear and fire, for example). Even when the "r" is within the word but ends a syllable, it may not be pronounced by British speakers: Parliament would sound a little like "PAH le ment" when said by a British speaker, and more like "PAR le ment" in the US. The "r" in "word" would tend also not to be pronounced by British speakers. When a word or syllable begins with "r", and sometimes when the sound following an "r" is a vowel, British speakers pronounce it. "Go to the row at the rear of the theatre to hear the gorilla" would be a mix of rhotic and non-rhotic speech for a British speaker.

BaldKingOfFrance · Answer

You would have to be more clear which accents you mean. American accents in Boston, New York, Alabama, Texas, California, Pittsburg, Ohio, and Florida are quite different. Accents in London, Kent, Yorkshire, Sussex, and Norfolk are quite different. Perhaps you mean "Standard American" and "Received Prounciation"? (RP is "Standard British").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_English_language

http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_atlas.php where you can hear many of these dialects. Click on an area of the map to select a country, and then you can hear the different accents. Everyone reads the same paragraph, so it helps you hear the differences.

Deborah_d · Answer

Exactly - good explanation. Just to clarify, the UK English RP pronunciation of the sentence ""Go to the row at the rear of the theatre to hear the gorilla" would only pronunce the highlighted 'r's (at least if my RP accent is anything to go by). So it'd be something like "Goh tuh thuh roh at thuh ree of thuh theeatuh tuh hee thuh gurilla'.

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