I've stumbled into an issue of Viz

 
Sid!!

bitflipper
It depends on whether you're in Massachusetts or Great Britain, two places that have many placenames in common, but often with radically different pronunciations.  Oddly, it's the normally enunciation-lazy Americans who retain all the letters and the normally more-precise Brits who run them all together and/or drop them entirely.
 
I used to live in a town named Bicester, near Oxford. It was pronounced "bister". I didn't even attempt to say any town names out loud when I visited Wales.

Launceston is a good one, any Cornishman will tell you its pronounced Larnsen, if you are from west of the Tamar you will pronounce it Launston. There is a town with the same spelling in Tasmania called Lawn-Cest-Ton
 

According to the great documentary series The Story of English (which I admittedly haven't seen in a long time) if you want to hear modern English spoken close to the way it was in Colonial times, go to West Virginia or an island off the coast of Virginia. 

There's certainly a possibility that some parts of New England are close to some English regional accents 300 or so years ago. But only some.

When Shakespeare rhymed "found" or "ground" with "wound" (as in an injury, pronounced woond) all the "ound" word endings were probably pronounced "ow-nd". Shakespeare himself probably sounded quite a bit like the modern Birmingham (West Midlands, not Alabama) accent. Or should I say Brummagem?

Accents and dialect can and do change drastically over 40 miles in England. Even the Danelaw still has an impact. And as George bernard Shaw said, an English person only has to hear another English person speak a single sentence to get a very good idea of their class, educational level, whether they went to a public (which means private) school or not and where they come from.

As for spelling, that only became standardised relatively recently. And the English called the autumn "fall" until the posh fashion for Frenchifying in the 18th century.

The grate fing abart English is yoo the grammar and spelling scramble can but unnerstud still be. As proves, Yoda does. Try doing that in French or German. :-)

DUH-Chester.

While accents and dialect change over short distances in the UK, you really have to have an ear for dialect or have grown up in a place to be able to hear the differences. I can hear differences at a scale of about 10 miles or so in the Tyneside dialect, but I've heard people from the south of the UK unable to tell the difference between the Newcastle and Sunderland accents (a world apart if you're from the North East). Unless you're from there, you tend to hear it all as a "north east accent" and ignore the subtle differences. 
 
Also of note is that there are male and female forms of dialect. You hear this in the U.S. too. For instance, I hear American women talk on the phone and they say this drawn out "and" like "eeeyaaaaaand," and they say "thank you" like "thiiiink yeouwww." I never hear guys say those words like that. 

How do you say "Relegation" in Newcastle and Sunderland?  
 
The Black Cats did well against Everton to keep their chances of avoiding it!

craigb
How do you say "Relegation" in Newcastle and Sunderland?  
 
The Black Cats did well against Everton to keep their chances of avoiding it!

I gave up caring about football about 2 minutes after landing in the U.S. 
 
My Facebook feed is full of anger and bitterness from friends who can't seem to accept the fact that supporting the fortunes of N.U.F.C. is a mug's game, lol.....
 
They had one moment of genuine glory in the last 20 years, and that was in 1996 when they beat Manchester Utd 5-0. I lost my voice (and a little of my hearing) from watching that game in the pub, it was magic. Since then....MEH.