sometimes, but something ive noticed is, people adapt quickly to their surrounding bodies. ive been in the Marines for 5 years now, and i have heard peoples accent change and lessen as they are surrounded by many different american language styles. its kinda wierd...

I've lived so many places, but currently the people where I live tell me I have an accent. haha. maybe cause I say ya'll? haha.

I was born and raised in Southern California. Then, when I was about 20, I moved to Oklahoma for about two years. When I was getting ready to move, I expected every one out there to speak with a Midwestern drawl. However, when I actually got out there, I was surprised to find that most people did not speak with a noticeable accent. I attribute this to two factors. The first is the much more mobile nature of our society over what it was just a few generations ago. Back before the automobile became ubiquitous, moving the family from one place to another was a very big undertaking that could take weeks or even months. So, most people stayed in the general region in which they were born. (This "isolation" is what leads to regional dialects in the first place.) However, as the population gained the ability to move around more easily, it meant that people had the ability to travel further in search of work. So, the nation's population became more homogenous. The second factor that I blame for the disappearance of accents is movies, radio, and television. Most of these feature people who are speaking a standardized form of English. So, even if people were to stay in communities that did not have much influx of people from outside, they are still exposed to the standard pronunciations via these media. This, along with the mobile nature of our society, just serves to further homogenize our language.

No. I grew up in Middle America, where U.S. English is probably the LEAST marked by regional accents. As U.S. regional accents go, I can hear Wyoming, West Texas, East Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and of course New Jersey, New York, and Boston. But in lots of places, what's spoken is "television network English." Plain vanilla.