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.
Phonological history of English low back vowels
As a result of the lengthening and raising, in the above-mentioned accents "cross" rhymes with "sauce", and "soft" and "cloth" also have the vowel . Accents affected by this change include American English and, originally, RP, although today words of this group almost always have short in RP. The split still exists in some older RP speakers, including Queen Elizabeth II.