Comment by mathieuh
2 days ago
It’s a common misconception that American accents have changed less than British accents. Both accents have changed. There’s a pretty obvious example that American accents have changed in the fact that many American accents have vowel mergers that result in pronunciation mergers of syllables with different spellings that aren’t merged in non-American accents. Wikipedia gives the example odd-facade-thawed, which all rhyme in most American accents but which have completely different sounds in non-American accents.
Likewise some American accents have lost the distinction between the vowels in marry-Mary-merry, or merge the vowels in pin-pen.
If American accents had changed less then why would they continue to use spellings that no longer match pronunciation in their own accents but which do match in many non-American accents?
The reality is that both accent groups have diverged.
There are folks that do Shakespeare in the original accent, and it sounds modestly closer to the "average" American pronunciation than modern British.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_in_Original_Pronun...
Believe I saw a video on it on youtube or similar, where they have audio as well.
Presumably you're implying an average over British pronunciation also, but if you ask me that's even more of a leap than over the American.
Like the other chap said, it basically sounds like a West Country accent.