When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents?
Slightly related to this.. much study has been done into the pronunciation at the time when Shakespeare's plays were originally performed (in the 1600s) principally so that the effect can be recreated.You can check out what it sounded like at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s and various other videos. (Jump to 2m50s for the actual speech.)The odd thing about this to my English ear is that the 1600s English pronunciation has a lot of similarities to that of the South West of England today, but perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising given this map of rhoticism in modern British English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RhoticEngland2.png