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/
Words that would have a stressed before intervocalic in the UK's Received Pronunciation (RP) are treated differently in different varieties of North American English. As shown in the table below, in Canadian English, all of these are pronounced with , as in "cord" (and thus merge with historic prevocalic in words like "glory" because of the horse–hoarse merger). In the accents of Philadelphia, southern New Jersey, and the Carolinas (and traditionally throughout the South), these words are pronounced among some with , as in "card" (and thus merge with historic prevocalic in words like "starry"). In the accents of New York City, Long Island, and nearby parts of New Jersey, these words are pronounced with like in RP. However, this is met with hypercorrection of , (thus still merging with historic prevocalic in "starry"). On the other hand, the traditional Eastern New England accents (famously, the Rhode Island and Boston accents) these words are pronounced with without hypercorrection, just like in RP. Most of the rest of the United States (marked "General American" in the table), however, has a distinctive mixed system: while the majority of words are pronounced as in Canada, the four (sometimes five) words in the left-hand column are typically pronounced with ; and the East Coast regions seem to be slowly moving toward this system over time.