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.
American English
The most marked accents of the country are New York City and Southern accents. Southern speech is defined by the vowel losing its gliding quality to approach , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a "Southern drawl" that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels. The strongest Southern sub-varieties exist in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas. Non-Southern Americans tend to stereotype Southern accents negatively, as "hick", "hillbilly", or "country" accents, while Southerners themselves tend to have mixed judgments of their own accents, including positive associations of easygoingness and humility. Southern accents, plus those spoken in the "Midland" (the vast band between the traditional dialect regions of the North and the South), tend to front the vowels of , , , and .