Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
PRONUNCIATION 2: AMERICAN AND BRITISH DIFFERENCES
There are several words that are pronounced differently in American and British English: laboratory is LAB-uhr-uh-TOR-ee or LAB-ruh-TOR-ee in American English, luh-BOR-uh-tuhr-ee or luh-BOR-uh-tree in British. Clerk rhymes with murk in the United States, but the British pronounce it to rhyme with mark. And what Americans call VEIT-uh-minz most Britons call VIT-uh-minz. But by far the largest number of words we think of as being peculiarly British pronunciations are pronounced much the same way in this country in one or another of our regional dialects (e.g., tuh-MAH-to, VAHZ).
The vowels we spell with the letters a and o have a different sound in some British uses from those in much of American English, but again, Eastern New England dialect has sounds for them that are very nearly like those of British English. And while most Americans retain their r coloration, those in New England, New York City, and the Southern dialect regions do not: they pronounce car as KAH, as in British English.
Americans notice the differences in stress and syllable count in words like secretary (SEK-ruh-TER-ee, SEK-ruh-tree) and extraordinary (ek-STROR-din-ER-ee, ek-STRORD-nree), and Britons are usually hard-pressed to tell the difference between American ladder and latter. And there are also differences in intonation, especially in short questions, wherin the American would say
All these differences are dialectal rather than signs of the development of separate American and British languages. Speakers of either Standard dialect can understand almost everything that speakers of the other say, even as each is aware of the other’s different ways of talking.
