From time to time I have had cause to travel to some other states, generally outside of the Upper Midwest, where for whatever reason the residents feel the need to mangle the English language so much that it's occasionally hard to understand them. They just don't seem to realize that they're speaking incorrectly. I mean why can't they sound like people from Michigan so that I can understand them?? Snicker. Whether it's people from Boston dropping "r's" every chance they get, people from the South taking ten to fifteen seconds to pronounce each and every vowel they come across, or people from New York throwing "au" vowel sounds seemingly randomly across their speech and trying to break North American land speed records for number of words spoken within ten seconds, accents have always been fascinating to me. I like hearing different people speak and trying to figure out where they're from.
Check out this dialect map and find your particular accent. Do you still have the accent that the map claims you do? Have you changed your accent since childhood? Do you switch back and forth between accents depending on to whom you're speaking?
