North American English
There are a considerable number of different accents within the regions of both the United States and Canada, originally deriving from the accents prevalent in different English, Scottish and Irish regions of the British Isles and corresponding to settlement patterns of these peoples in the colonies. These were developed and built upon as new waves of immigration, and migration across the North American continent, brought new accents and dialects to new areas, and as these ways of speaking merged and assimilated with the population. It is claimed that despite the centuries of linguistic changes there is still a resemblance between the English East Anglia accents which would have been used by early English settlers in New England (including the Pilgrims), and modern Northeastern United States accents. Similarly, the accents of Newfoundland have some similarities to the accents of Scotland and Ireland.
American English
In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Western accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since the mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were fifty or a hundred years ago". However, a General American sound system also has some controversial degree of influence, for example, gradually ousting local accents in urban areas of the South and at least some in the Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, "General American" can be defined as any American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in the most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most "General American" native features include North Midland, Western New England. and Western accents. Typical General American features include rhoticity, the "father–bother" merger, "Mary–marry–merry" merger, and pre-nasal "short "a"" tensing.