How can Americans retain an English accent and dialect?

I did mean the latter.

What sort of grammar would that be, exactly? I agree. Incredibly interesting.

Apologies for the delay, but Somerset and surrounding areas has (historically, at least) sorta-retained conjugated uses of "to be" instead of plugging in uses of "are" for third-person pronouns, retention of a second-person informal pronoun "(th)'ee", and retained use of certain Late West Saxon words (consistent conjugation of "wend" instead of "go", "wapse" instead of wasp, "acks" instead of ask, all of which are truer to Old English). It makes for some interesting implications from a linguistic POV.
 
As close, I've seen sources for. Can you cite something for closer?

Anyway, it's not General American that's closest. The closest are isolated towns in Appalachian Virginia and perhaps islands off North Carolina. Even among large scale regional variations the closest is MidAtlantic American, not General.

Can't think of any sources of the top of my head.
Much has been written however on northern British retaining far more of its anglo saxon routes and maintaining a lot of mutual-understanding with Frisian. Sadly less so now than even 40 years ago alas.
 
Can't think of any sources of the top of my head.
Much has been written however on northern British retaining far more of its anglo saxon routes and maintaining a lot of mutual-understanding with Frisian. Sadly less so now than even 40 years ago alas.
That gets me thinking on maybe having Northern English Dialects, such as the Yorkshire Dialect, Scouse and/or Cumbrian somehow become dominant in the Thirteen Colonies and thus preserve a great deal of archaisms from Old English, Old Norse and IFIRC the preceding Celtic languages of the Area.
 
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