The most important events which I will be describing in this chapter once again occurred during the nineteenth century, but our geographical focus is now on the Atlantic rather than the Pacific Ocean. Linguistically, too, I move from the consideration of an Eastern New England-derived variety of English to an examination of North American English as a whole, in comparison to other English varieties.

In considering differences between the North American Englishes of Canada and the USA, on the one hand, and British Isles English, on the other, it is fairly obviously the case that we should be able to ascribe these differences to one or more of a number of mechanisms (Trudgill 2004):

1. (1) North American English has adapted to new topographical and biological features unknown in Britain: for example, as is well known, the word robin in North America refers to a bird which is different from its referent in Britain; and the word bluff has been extended to refer to an inland cliff or headland along a river.

2. (2) Since the departure of English for America, linguistic changes have occurred in Britain which have not occurred in North America: for example, the glottalling of intervocalic and word-final /t/, as in better, bet [bɛʔə, bɛʔ] is typical of British but not of North American English (Wells 1982), and is clearly a nineteenth-century innovation that occurred in Britain.

3. (3) Since the arrival of English from Britain, linguistic changes have taken place in North America which have not occurred in Britain: for example, the voicing of intervocalic /t/ and the flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ as in city [sɪɾi] are typical of North American and not of British English (Wells 1982).

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