Do you speak with the same accent as people in your area?

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When watching people speak, either locally or from a distant region, i'm struck by how often people pick up their local accent......down to the subtlest note.

Does this come with interacting a lot with other people socially, to the point where you consciously opt to speak a lot like the locals? It is hard to imagine that a complex accent is done instinctively but who knows.....

For example, i'm from the US and don't think i have any particular accent, just generic news anchor style - the words that roll off my tongue are a flat, generic pronunciation, yet other locals seem to have an affectation. Yet, who knows maybe i do have an accent and am unaware....or generic news anchor-speak is an accent in itself (as perceived by those residing elsewhere)...

Anyway, do you think having more (or better quality) social connections is correlated with a tendency to adopt the local accent in rich detail or is there no relation? Do you speak with a local accent yourself?

I'm probably one of ten people from Trinidad & Tobago in this city of a million. Some people I've even spoken to have not even heard of T&T. I'd say I'm a minority, but I could be wrong.

My accent is a little weird, but similar to the main accent here. In Alaska there are accents from all over, though - a large amount of people came here from elsewhere.

I am in Australia but many people seem convinced I am from England or New Zealand. One person was even convinced I sounded American! From what I have read, this can be an aspie trait (to have a strange "accent")

Flat news anchor is an accent.

I consciously avoided some of the affectations in my family and local to me. I recall that I hated how my paternal grandmother would say "mondee, tuesdee," instead of monday, tuesday. Or both she and my father would say "warsh" instead of "wash." Or talk about going to Warshington. To me, these were all wrong, wrong, wrong. But I could cope with the distinction between through and rough.

I used to practice faking accents, and I found faking particular accents made call center work more bearable (Americans seem to respond better to a woman speaking with a Southern-esque accent. Something I found intriguing but never really tried to work out why). I can't say they were perfect, and it's either harder for me to do now or I have a better sense of how off my attempts sound.

WTF? News anchor. I've been told I talk like a news anchor numerous times. WTF!

Of course one lady says I should be on the radio or on TV.... right....

I'm not gonna do a search, but I've read this post before. Verbatim.

Are you re-posting here, or did you post this on some other message board somewhere?

I'm a natural mimic when it comes to accents. Where ever I go, I pick up the local accent quick and no one ever asks where I'm from. It's kinda fun, actually.

I was born into a Canadian family and I speak with a Cockney accent.

I have a mid-western accent but when I used to visit family in Arkansas or North Carolina, I'd start talking with a southern accent within a day or two.

i have a standard midwest broadcast announcer accent, which differs from my immediate surroundings where everybody else sounds like transplants from west texas.

I live in Florida, so there really isn't much of a regional accent (unless pillhead redneck counts as a dialect). I was originally from New York though and I still retain some of the speech oddities of my native region of that state. However, I also try to incorporate speech and verbiage from all over the English-speaking world as I feel the language is too rich in heritage to limit myself to just one part of the world.

People ask me where I am from.

I've been accused of "sounding British" at times.