From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63477
Date: 2009-02-27
--- On Fri, 2/27/09, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:
. . .
>
> AFAIK Southwestern England today has retroflex r's
> including
> syllable-final, and I believe Shropshire does as well.
> There may have
> been more areas of England that were rhotic in the past,
> from which
> emigrants could have gone to America.
>
> Andrew
That's a good point. Bristol and Chester were major ports of emigration from Wales and the West Country in the mid-1600s. Most of my Welsh ancestors came via Chester. I've been to Chester and what I heard was something very close to RP. I can't believe that's the original dialect there.
BUT I'd still go with Ulster English because it sounds so much like American English --with the intervocalic -t- and -d- exactly as in the US