North American English is a collective term to describe the varieties of the English language that are spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of the considerable similarities in pronunciation, vocabulary and accent between American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages are sometimes grouped together under a single category, as distinguished from the varieties of English that are spoken in the United Kingdom, Australia, or New Zealand and the Hiberno-English used in Ireland. Despite the Canadian spellings being closer to Commonwealth English (which is spoken in e.g. Australia, the British Isles and India) the collective term "North American English" is sometimes also used to designate the written language of the two countries.
Many terms in North American English are used almost exclusively in the two countries alone, such as "diaper", "gasoline", and "elevator". Though many English speakers from outside North America regard these words as distinctive "Americanisms", they are just as ubiquitous in Canada. Differences between American and Canadian English are somewhat more apparent in the written form, where Canadians retain much, though not all, of the standard British orthography; however, this affects less than one percent of all words regardless of the dialect in the world.
There are a considerable number of different accents within the regions of both the United States and Canada, originally deriving from the accents prevalent in different English and Scottish regions and corresponding to settlement patterns of these peoples in the colonies. These were developed and built upon as new waves of immigration, and migration across the North American continent, brought new accents and dialects to new areas, and as these ways of speaking merged and assimilated with the population. It is claimed that despite the centuries of linguistic changes there is still a close resemblance between the English East Anglia accents which would have been used by the Pilgrim Fathers and modern Northeastern United States accents. Similarly, the accents of Newfoundland is similar to Scots while Appalachian dialect retains Scots Irish features.
Commonwealth English is sometimes used to collectively describe Australian English, British English, Canadian English, Caribbean English, and New Zealand English due to their historical Commonwealth connections and similarity of spelling. It should be noted that "Commonwealth English" in this sense is a misnomer because it implies the inclusion of non-Commonwealth nations such as the Republic of Ireland, Zimbabwe, etc.
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