I got a cousin who sounds like a Canadian when he talks. "House" comes out "hoos" and "out" is "oot", "about" is "aboot" etc. Don't know where he got that. He was born and raised right here in Iowa.
The dialect that I recognize most quickly is the Boston Accent. Not so apparent is the New York City accent, but the Deep South accents and the Texas/Oklahoma accents are readily apparent to me. Strangely, I can't tell if there is a Southwest accent as from New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California. I don't believe that Nebraska has any accent at all, normal or otherwise. That's it..... H.P.
Maine has a pretty distinct accent, although not very many people exhibit it anymore. When I first moved here, I couldn't understand what our handyman was saying to me. He was pronouncing "quarters" as "kwahtahs," and I had him repeat it a couple of times and still didn't know what he was saying. The absence of accents on television has had a lot to do with the decline in accents, I think. Growing up in the UP of Michigan, I didn't think that we had an accent but a few people have guessed that I was from the UP despite not having lived there in years.
Even as an outsider , some accents are instantly recognisable to me ..Boston is one..New jersey/ New york... ( of course I couldn't tell which part)... Texas.. and the Carolinas ( I had friends who lives in different parts of the Carolinas.. )...I can usually tell a Canadian accent from an American..although again, I suspect the edges are blurred, the closer to the border Canadians and American folks live...
I've often been"accused" of being from Wisconsin! Why, I dunno. Many say I have a definite accent, but can't/won't place it. I've wondered if it could be due to the fact that in my pre-teens, my best friend and I spoke often pronouncing words spelled backwards, such as "zdraw-kab". Frank
Maine -- and I think Boston -- have a phrase they use that drives me nuts. It's "So don't I." It's used like this: Someone says, "I just love chocolate." The Maine response to that, assuming you also love chocolate, is, "So don't I."
We were once at a restaurant in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The server said to me, "You're from North Carolina, aren't you?" I said, "Yes, how did you know?" He said he lived here for a while and once you hear that accent, you never forget it.
I get that. Ken and I lived in Fayetteville for a couple of years when my daughter needed support. Ken didn't want to go, and in fact, I will not ever forget how he expressed that. He said, "If I were to write up a list of places I don't want to live, North Carolina would be on the first page." But we went anyway, It was great, I thought. We each had two jobs, which was a huge difference from Maine, where there simply were no jobs. Anyway, we were in an accident in Halifax, NC, and got a tow from a man in Rocky Mount. As we settled into the front seat of the truck, he started taking, and though I don't remember what he said, I DO remember thinking he sounded just like Andy Griffith. I was right.
I probably have a very slight accent since I was 5 before I spoke English but most people think it's an East Coast accent. Maybe it's just a Pittsburgh accent. I don't hear it.
In Maine, when someone wants to say that someone was fired from his job, they will say that s/he "got done' with it. It seems to be reserved for being fired because if they had quit, they'd simply that the person had quit. "Yeah, she got done over at Hannaford's."
We lived in Baton Rouge for a while back in the 90's; plenty of dialect in southern Louisiana. It was common for someone to go to "momanems". Also using "save" to mean put away. "I need to save the dishes." Then there's "pass the vacuum," which sounds quite painful.