Western New England English
The English of Western New England in fact shows many sharp differences throughout rather than one uniform accent. In 2001, Charles Boberg, discussing that Western New England English was a likely direct influence on the Inland Northern English of the Great Lakes region, still identified as many as four or five English sub-regional accents within Western New England itself, based on data from the late 1990s:
Northern England
Northern English accents have not undergone the – split, and a common shibboleth to distinguish them from Southern ones is the Northern use of the short a (the near-open front unrounded vowel) in words such as "bath" and "castle". On the opposite border, most Northern English accents can be distinguished from Scottish accents because they are non-rhotic, although a few rhotic Lancashire accents remain. Other features common to many Northern English accents are the absence of the – split (so "put" and "putt" are homophones), the reduction of the definite article "the" to a glottal stop (usually represented in writing as "t"), and the T-to-R rule that leads to the pronunciation of "t" as a rhotic consonant in phrases like "get up" ().