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.
English-language vowel changes before historic /r/
In local (working-class) Dublin, the West and South-West Region, and other very conservative and traditional varieties of Irish English, ranging from the south to the north of the island, the typical English phoneme actually retains an opposition as two separate phonemes: and . For example, the words "earn" and "urn" are not pronounced the same in these varieties. In these traditional accents, this vowel, when after a labial consonant (e.g. "fern"), when spelled as "ur" or "or" (e.g. "word"), or when spelled as "ir" after an alveolar stop (e.g. "dirt") is pronounced as ; in all other situations, this vowel is pronounced as . Example words with include "certain" , "chirp" , "circle" , "earn" , "earth" , "girl" , "germ" , "heard" or "herd" , "irk" , and "tern" . Example words for include "bird" , "dirt" , "first" , "murder" , "nurse" , "turn" , "third" or "turd" , "urn" , "work" , and "world" . In non-local (middle- and upper-class) Dublin and in younger and supraregional Irish accents, this opposition is seldom preserved, with both of the phonemes typically merged as , the same as, or similar to, most American accents.