Where do you start/stop hearing accents??

[bing101]

Here in California people from other parts of the USA or outside the USA are most likely to have an accent.

[jp the roadgeek]

But other parts of the country I'm curious about. For example, how far do you have to drive outside of Boston where it's a "car"  and not a "ka" ?

Not far, because less than 10% of the people around Boston speak this way.

I've heard it as far west as Sturbridge (been to a Dunkin there and it was a mixed bag).  It's totally gone by the time you reach Springfield or head down 84 into CT.

Worcester County has a much harsher accent than Boston in my experience -- having grown up in MA.  Boston's accent has a "smoothness" or flow as the Rs are dropped off.  Worcester just sounds like a bunch of longshoremen to me in comparison.

It's not a huge difference, but it is significant.

Working and living in Worcester county for a decade allows me to concur with this.

It's a weird variant of the Providence accent, which is a weird, geographically isolated NY accent.

I've often thought that about the Rhody accent being a variant of the Brooklyn accent.  A couple people looked at me like I had 3 heads, but at least someone agrees.  I hear a little bit of it along the I-395 corridor in CT (if you ever heard former UConn assistant/CCSU Head Coach Howie Dickenmann in his press conferences, he was a prime example being from the Norwich area).

[wriddle082]

The most neutral accents I have ever heard in my travels have to be either in the Bay Area or in Kansas and non-rural parts of Missouri.  Even though I've never been in the PNW, I would imagine that their accents are pretty neutral as well.

Me personally, since I've been exposed to many accents throughout my life, and since I spent a good chunk of my childhood in Appalachia, I would characterize myself as an "Appalachian Switch Hitter" , which is a legit thing.  Many people who have relocated from Appalachia to other parts of the country can easily pick up and be assimilated by an accent.

[webny99]

The most neutral accents I have ever heard in my travels have to be either in the Bay Area or in Kansas and non-rural parts of Missouri.  Even though I've never been in the PNW, I would imagine that their accents are pretty neutral as well.

I'd have to agree with the Bay Area. This probably applies to SoCal as well considering how many transplants there are in both areas.

I also can't speak for the PNW, but I do know that once you cross the border into Canada, you'll find that British Columbians have the most delightful accent. I find the Ontario version of the Canadian accent distasteful, as it sounds annoying and put on. But Western Canada is so much better.

[Rothman]

Me personally, since I've been exposed to many accents throughout my life, and since I spent a good chunk of my childhood in Appalachia, I would characterize myself as an "Appalachian Switch Hitter" , which is a legit thing.  Many people who have relocated from Appalachia to other parts of the country can easily pick up and be assimilated by an accent.

HA!  Or they think so.  My mother was determined to lose her accent after getting out of the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.  She did pretty well, but even to this day, over 50 years since she left, she still says "window seal" rather than "window sill."  The accent never totally leaves.

[bing101]

The most neutral accents I have ever heard in my travels have to be either in the Bay Area or in Kansas and non-rural parts of Missouri.  Even though I've never been in the PNW, I would imagine that their accents are pretty neutral as well.

I'd have to agree with the Bay Area. This probably applies to SoCal as well considering how many transplants there are in both areas.

I also can't speak for the PNW, but I do know that once you cross the border into Canada, you'll find that British Columbians have the most delightful accent. I find the Ontario version of the Canadian accent distasteful, as it sounds annoying and put on. But Western Canada is so much better.

Applies to Sacramento, and Fresno  too given that if there were accents in California its most likely because they are from other parts of the USA or outside of the USA. 

[Henry]

Being from the Windy City, I'm accustomed to saying "da" for "the", as in "da Bears" and "da Bulls". I didn't begin to change that until I started college, and even then it was very hard to do.

[kphoger]

When I first went off to college near Harlem/Augusta in Chicago, I had a really hard time understanding the accent in the nearby Austin neighborhood of Chicago.  Having grown up in rural western Kansas, I was unused to the urban-black accent predominant in so much of Chicago.  I really was not expecting to be at such a disadvantage like that, and I felt really bad having to ask people to repeat themselves because I simply couldn't understand the accent.

For some reason, when I later moved farther west in the suburbs and got a warehouse job, the urban-white Chicago accent of the truck drivers was easy for me to understand, and I even started to pick it up myself.

Strange that one Chicago accent was more natural to me and one was less.