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Well, not really, since America didn't exist then, but the ye-olde British accent sounded a lot closer to the current American accent than it does to the modern accent.

I made this thread because Gatsby pointed out how funny a southern American accent sounds, even though that accent originates from Southern English speakers several hundred years ago. And the old British accent was much closer to a current American accent (which makes sense, because the country was originally a colony of Britain), and that the current British accent was a result of de-emphasizing r's, sort of the way southern accents slur letters.

The example the article use is this: "Park your car in the Harvard Yard".

In the past, the Brits had a 'rhotic' accent which pronounced the r's: “paRk youR caR in HaRvaRd YaRd”.

In the last few hundred years, the Brits moved away from r's after vowels: "pahk youh cah in Hahvahd Yahd". Or, removing the h's for accent, you get the more phonetic "pak you ca in havad yad".

Incidentally, the Great British De-Rhoticization (a term I just made up) also explains why Australian, New Zealand, and South African English are all non-rhotic, because these areas were settled after the British switched off their Rs, while Canada and the USA were first settled while everyone was still R-full.

http://the-toast.net/2014/03/19/a-linguist-explains-british-accents-of-yore/

tl;dr Brits used to speak with an accent closer to American or Scottish than their current accent.

inb4 Sprüngli

lol

It sounds a lot closer to an Irish accent to me.

And now they've evolved.

*devolved