What do you think the difference is between a Boston accent and a British accent?

Question

I think that in both accents, the "r" is dropped, but the Bostonians have a spread "a" like in "apple," while the Brits have a long "a" like in "father."

i know the brits say apple as everybody else does, my point is, is that they don't make use of the spread A like americans do period.

Answer 1

Britain has hundreds of accents.
My native London alone has dozens.
People in South East London do drop 'r's though... and 't's (water becomes wa'er)
People say this style sounds crude or stupid, but I quite like it. It has character.

Answer 2

You are very correct. The Americans of colonial Boston and New York were in closer contact with England than the American colonists living further inland - primarily through trade and shipping.

Consequently, some innovations that crept up in England in the latter eighteenth century affected the speech of people living in these cities that did not reach people in places like West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee which were already beginning to be settled by that time. One of these innovations was the loss of /r/ still heard today in Boston in words like "Uh pæk uv kædz (A pack of cards) ; another was a linking /r/ as in idea-r, drama-r and Cuba-r.

According to one story, the /æ/ sound was made popular in many English vernaculars in the 18th century by British Actor David Garrick (1717 -1779) who is said to have talked that way. More likely though it was a regional feature already in the East Anglian speech of the first English settlers in Massachussets.

Answer 3

no, brits say apple with the vowel in cat.


Brits say hut the way Bostonians say hot.

Answer 4

Boston is not as pleasant sounding as British...