The fascinating tl;dr: The British lost their English accents around the turn of the 19th century. As far as rhotic r's go, Americans still mostly speak the way Brits and Americans did in the 18th century.
The ironic thing is, the way the English are perceived to speak isn't the way how 99% of English (let alone British) people speak. Even in London and it's overspills (the neighbouring counties), which is where our dialects are the least rhotic, most people don't pronounce themselves in the same way as they do in American TV. But I can understand why the stereotyped accent is used; it's a slower and more clearly spoken - which is ideal for broadcasting where the actor needs to be heard and understood by the audience. Many of the northern accents are spoken with such speed that it can be difficult for an untrained ear; even for some of us English! It's also a sexier dialect (few sane people would fall in love with a Geordie accent, Brummie or even Cockney, if they weren't already brought up in that area.
If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to find youtube videos for some of the more distinct dialects.
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Just been chatting to my wife about this. She's from the north east of England, I'm from the south. It seems I've overstated the amount of emphasis the north east places on their R's.
I'm not sure if I'm alone about this, but the funny thing about pronunciation is the moment you're asked to think about the way you pronounce a word, you've instantly forgotten how you normally talk!
Finding a good example of a Brummie accent as proven more tricky as I'm either stumbling across paradises where they over accentuate the "twang", or TV personalities where the access is suppressed a little. Ozzy Osbourne is from that area and in his interviews you can sometimes hear the accent showing through. The pronunciation itself isn't hard to understand; I highlighted it because it's a unique accent. I think these days it's mellowed quite a bit though.
This video isn't work safe, but it's the best example of a Welsh accent I could find. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUrMEZWj5o (this is also probably the accent I hate the most - I couldn't explain why, but it just grinds)
This is the Cornish (south west) accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80 It's probably the closest to the old Shakespearian English that someone linked to in these comments.
For the non-English readers, the two girls are Welsh, the two boys are from (if I recall correctly) south Essex (a suburb north of London).
Sunderland is about an hour away from newcastle.
EDIT: Oh gosh and there are some amazing clips from a local radio phone in show in norwich here: https://soundcloud.com/voices-of-norfolk/sets/radio-norfolk-...
This lady is particularly endearing: https://soundcloud.com/voices-of-norfolk/nancy?in=voices-of-...
Here's a recording of market traders in london with cockney accents, and some jamaican I think: https://soundcloud.com/london-sound-survey/brick-lane-market...
That soundcloud account is full of field recordings taken in london, lots have distinctive voices in them: https://soundcloud.com/london-sound-survey/wembley-cheapjack...
> Sunderland is about an hour away from newcastle.
Occasionally you'll find extras which sound Welsh, because the show is filmed in Wales. But for the most part it's a very neutral accent. Even Amy Pond's accent isn't particularly strong.
As well as the accent there is the question of the brummie dialect which can be much harder to decipher for a non native "yow" for "you" for example
Here's an interview with some of it's stars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fLiVKNuzjE
There's already this semi-interactive map that made to HN a while back:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AScottish_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis
To my ear, Scottish people would pronounce the 'a' in Karl as /ɑ/; an open back unrounded vowel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel
But I'm not sure, since in Canadian English, the 'a' in Karl would be pronounced as /ɑ/ and the one in Carol would be an open-mid front unrounded vowel (/ɛ/).
vs.
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/american/ca...
So probably for a brit's ear the difference is mostly in the schwa
(disclaimer, I'm not a native speaker. Living in Ireland though)
In other words, both dialects have a schwa inserted (even in NA English), but the difference is that Scottish people do not differentiate between the 'a' in both Karl and Carol.
Put differently, Scottish people pronounce Karl and Carol the same way to an English speaker (from England).
What I'm saying is that to my Canadian ear, I could hear a difference between the few Scottish people I've spoken to in Canada. But come to think of it, they were probably Canadianised.
However, the key player here is not laumars, but his friend Carol :-)
I mean, the interesting part is that she heard her name because the epenthesis process transformed a monosyllabic word into disyllabic one, and that changed the shape of the word: kar(uh)l has the same rhythm as carol, and small vowel quality differences are probably less important that the rhythm when the word gets parsed by the brain.
Unfortunately a google search of "philome" yields only pages about shakespeare pronounciation, especially by these two guys; I don't know what that means.
However, I think that thinking about the evolution of a language as a linear progression is misleading.
Is certainly possible that modern Irish pronunciation stems from what was spoken at that time, and the modern "mainstream" english pronunciation evolved later from a slighly different root, and epenthesis acted only in one of the two branches.
Film derives from west germanic filminjan, which in turn comes from proto germanic fello(m), and proto indoeuropean pel-, with cognates in lating and greek, pella and pellis respectivly.
So it's possible that epenthesis was applied on top of filminjan in irish scottish accents (possibly due to pressure of the gaelic substrate), while the dialect which originated RP didn't have this change.
I'm sure somebody with better knowledge of the matter can be more precise about that, however, it's strange how little (and often more misleading than uncertain) information is there about one the most widely spoken languages.
(Sorry, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter comment :-) )
(see http://goo.gl/TxMkG for an annotated extract of the text)
Welsh is subtitled but that's a different language...
Interesting maps - significant portions of England were still rhotic in the 1950ies.
Incidentally, it's fascinating how much accents and dialects can change in such a short distance in Europe. Within a few hours bicycling distance from Padova, people can tell that someone is from here and not whatever town they're in. Compare and contrast with my Oregon upbringing, which no one could place anywhere specific in the Western US with any degree of accuracy.
Another fascinating tidbit is New Mexican Spanish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexican_Spanish
Which became way more isolated from Spain than the US ever was from England.
[NB When the BBC did a TV series featuring fishermen from near where I grew up they had to give the show subtitles so it could be understood in the rest of the UK ;-)]
Most Brits would not notice the difference as Lincolnshire accents are broadly unrecognized nationally, though any Brit (and, perhaps, many Americans?) could distinguish a Scouse (Liverpool) accent from a Mancunian (Manchester) one - only 27 miles apart. Think Beatles vs Oasis here.
Sadly, though, this does only work on true, thoroughbred natives - a small percentage of the population in most areas now due to the frequent movement of people around England.
I do love it when you listen to someone talk and you can hear where they're from; occasionally I can do a Henry Higgins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady) and hear the overtones of where they moved on to as well. A strange delight.
The town where I grew up has a couple of dialect words that are only spoken by the working class in the environs. Fascinating stuff.
Boston really is "closest to England" in a lot of ways.
Jared Diamond uses this a lot, when trying to unearth the history of populations. This isn't a new thing - the 1956 Kurgan hypothesis suggests that PIE (the language which everything from English to Indian languages descended from) is a sign of a large empire, or a dominant culture which expanded across Europe. It suggests PIE may come from the Russian steppes, and that their secret weapon was the domestication of horses (due to the prevalence of "horsey" words in PIE). Diamand uses similar logic to trace the expansion of other cultures.
For contrast, New Guinea has lots of of languages, as until recently it has been very divided culturally and politically. Many villages were pretty much their own state.
Btw, anyone wanting to search for the "missing link" should visit Bermuda. Strange mix of GA and RP.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqLuIXwsLDw
I'd say (in Australia), our English was influenced to an extent by the local population (ie: Aboriginal Australians) to a degree in addition to British English.
Here's a few references: * "history & accent change" - http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/history-accent-chang... * "australian accent" - http://clas.mq.edu.au/voices/australian-accent * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English
Might also be a good idea (if you're curious) to contrast/compare Australian English with New Zealand English. Subtle differences, but they are there.
It's a mighty big topic if you really want to delve into it in any detail.
There are few major pronunciation differences, yet many subtle differences!