New England English
Eastern New England English encompasses Boston and Maine accents, and, according to some sources, the distinct Rhode Island accent. All Eastern New England English is famous for non-rhoticity, meaning it drops the "r" sound everywhere except before a vowel: thus, in words like "car", "card", "fear", and "chowder" (). The phrase "Park the car in Harvard Yard"—dialectally transcribed —is commonly used as a shibboleth, or speech indicator, for the non-rhotic Eastern New England dialect running from Boston north to Maine, and as far west as Worcester, which contrasts with the generally rhotic dialects elsewhere in North America. In all of Eastern New England, except Rhode Island, words like "caught" and "cot" are pronounced identically (both are often rounded, thus: ), because those two vowel sounds have fully merged. A phenomenon called Canadian raising occurs throughout Eastern New England, causing "writer" to have a different stressed vowel sound than "rider", and for the verb "house" to have a different vowel sound than the noun "house". and have relatively back starting positions. The "horse"–"hoarse" distinction is still present to some extent in some areas, as well as the "Mary"–"marry"–"merry" distinction in many speakers.
General American
Though General American accents are not commonly perceived as associated with any region, their sound system does have traceable regional origins: specifically, the English of the non-coastal Northeastern United States in the very early twentieth century. This includes western New England and the area to its immediate west, settled by members of the same dialect community: interior Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and the adjacent "Midwest" or Great Lakes region. However, since the early to middle twentieth century, deviance away from General American sounds started occurring, and may be ongoing, in the eastern Great Lakes region due to its Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS) towards a unique Inland Northern accent (often now associated with the region's urban centers, like Chicago and Detroit) and in the western Great Lakes region towards a unique North Central accent (often associated with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota).