Fun, sun…and English ! Miami is the premier seaside resort on the east coast of the United States, thanks to its wide range of local and regional attractions: a sand beach over ten kilometres long, numerous opportunities for yachting in Biscayne Bay, and the exceptional richness of the marine life. A particularly mild subtropical climate (20°C in winter) earns it a worldwide reputation and allows visitors to enjoy its beaches all year round. Its nightclubs, pubs and fashionable bars are unrivalled for getting show-bizz stars and students dancing. Fuel, Bed or Mansion (to name only the most famous), will leave you spoilt for choice for unforgettable nights out with your new friends. Miami… a dream destination for combining learning English with beaches and parties!
North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken English by the inhabitants of various parts of North America. North American English can be divided into several regional dialects based on phonological, phonetic, lexical, and some syntactic features. North American English includes American English, which has several highly developed and distinct regional varieties, along with the closely related Canadian English, which is more homogeneous. American English (especially Western dialects) and Canadian English have more in common with each other than with the many varieties of English outside North America.
The most recent work documenting and studying the phonology of North American English dialects as a whole is the Atlas of North American English by William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg, on which much of the description below is based, following on a tradition of sociolinguistics dating to the 1960s; earlier large-scale American dialectology focused more on lexical variation than on phonology.
Regional dialects in North America are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard. The distinctive speech of important cultural centers like Boston, Massachusetts (see Boston accent); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New Orleans, Louisiana imposed their marks on the surrounding areas. The Connecticut River is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, while the Potomac River generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area (distinguished from the Highland Southern or South Midland dialect treated below, although outsiders often mistakenly believe that the speech in these two areas is the same); in between these two rivers several local variations exist, most famous among them the variety that prevails in New York City.