Back in the day I actually went to see a speech therapist to lose my Texas accent. I was going to college in Boulder, CO and got sick of being razzed by obnoxious Coloradans ("…howdy, partner! Where’bouts did ya’ll park yer’ horse? Haw, fucking haw haw!")
Nowadays, it still surfaces if I’m really comfortable around a person, or if I’m pissed off, or drunk (or pissed off and drunk).
No.
Everyone else does, though.
Haaa! Too funny. For the record, I swear on my life I don’t say roight when I mean ‘right’! I hear folks say it all the time though. I was born and raised in Rochester.
Whereabouts? I mostly grew up in Fairport, then as a teen we moved to Walworth.
It’s mostly gone now from years of cosmopolitan living, but until I was in my mid twenties you could tell I was from Pittsburgh almost instantly.
I have pretty strong southern accent. I don’t notice it normally, but when I travel or talk on a conference call with people in other parts of the world I’m a little self-conscious about it. (But the fact that I’m soft-spoken actually bothers me more than my accent.)
I’ve never put any serious effort into changing the way I speak. I can reduce my accent a little if I concentrate, but if I’m not careful I sound like I’m attempting a fake British accent. But I don’t think I sound like a hick, because my grammar is correct, and I can omit the “y’alls” and “fixin’ tos” when I want to.
Someone called into my office at work once, and had obviously called the wrong number. I told them so, using no more than a dozen polite words, and they snickered and said, “I know I’ve got the right state, anyway.” Kind of pissed me off.
Have always lived in the city. In the ‘crescent’ as we call it. I still live in the city, but I love my area now. It is really close to East Ave, but not close enough to have one of those awesome apartments! But it is great because the art district is right there on University. The science museum, the art gallery, downtown*, Monroe Ave, Village gate, the Auditorium, the Armory where you can see some great reggae concerts. As a matter of fact, they close East Ave down in the summer for a big reggae concert. Man, I love Rochester.
*R.I.P. Rochester Downtown.
My dad hasn’t lived in Pennsylvania for nigh on 40 years, and he still got picked out a few years ago by a fella who knew the accent. What gives him away I think is the days of the week - Mondee, Tuesdee…
I have a West Virginia accent which can best be described as a mix between a southern accent and the Pittsburgh-ese yinzer accent (dahn-tahn for downtown). As soon as someone starts talking I can tell if they grew up in WV…
Speak for yourself!! (I live about 30 miles from CAT.) I try NOT to sound like that, even though I also grew up around here. I think I can attribute a large part of my success to the fact that I don’t eat bratwurst. 
But I do drink out of bubblers. (My mom’s relatives, however, should just give in and have OH YAH HEY DERE tattooed on their foreheads.)
Last fall I went to a conference held in Rochester, NY, and many of the attendees either were local or came from the NYC area. One person e-mailed me afterward and told me that my “slight accent” (Midwestern) reminded me of a friend of hers. Ooo-kaaayyyy . . .
I have a fairly light Southern accent. Since I live in Northern Occupied Virginia, they think I have an accent, I reckon. I’m from Arkansas, but my fambly valued book learnin. I can moderate it when I’m talking business; I can “pass” if I want to. Some people told me like to hear me talk, actually, because I have a sort of booming voice with a twang and I use somewhat colorful phrases. The key distinction between a “good” Southern accent and a “bad” Southern accent is dependent upon the words and phrases you use, the difference between Shelby Foote and Junior Samples…or something…
I have a strong Lancashire accent (neighbouring village), which causes no end of amusement amongst my friends. The overwhelming majority of people in Edinburgh don’t have such an accent, with the dominant accent being some form of Scottish or southern English accent, although it’s common back home to speak as I do, and many foreigners I meet admit to not being able to understand me, or mistake me for being Scottish.
As for what people think about me: they probably think I’m an uneducated idiot 
Now, see, if we’d had more people from Rochester in Toronto saying things like this, maybe the Rochester-Toronto ferry wouldn’t have gone under. (Well, that and the fact that it was way too big a vessel for a starter service, and the way the Toronto end was a year late in finishing its terminal, and the unfavourable political climate during a time of thickening borders, and the fact that they didn’t get the approval for freight service for a year, and… No, advertising it in Toronto as a “shortcut to New York City” ddin’t quite do it.)
Now I want to visit.
This is a bit complicated. I grew up in French, and live in English now.
In French, I have a pretty strong Quebec accent, which is to say that, to a Frenchmen, I sound like the English equivalent of someone from the deepest, darkest corner of Mississipi or Alabama. That’s ok, European French sounds incredibly feminine to my Canadian ears, which is good for the MaDemoiselles, and, err, not so good for French guys.
In English, I normally have a regular Canadian / accent (I say pr-oh-ject, not pr-aw-ject), but when I’m tired or a little drunk, then my French Canadian hh-accent comes out ( 'I, HHI’m 'appy to see yooo).
Oddly enough, after a 1 week business trip in Dallas, I came back with a “Southern” accent I had to work to get rid of. It irritated my wife to no end. Now it comes out when I’m mad, esp. at my son, or if I talk to an American with a similar accent for more than 15 minutes. Sometimes I think I sound a bit like a cheesed-off Foghorn Leghorn.
Born and raised in Maine, but I don’t sound it. I think I sound pretty bland and am quick to pick up an accent when visiting an area whose people have a strong accent. I like how I sound after spending a week in the South or in New York.
My dad had a very strong Maine accent. I was a young adult before I realized that tortion (or is it torsion?) bars on a truck hitch were the same things as the “toshin” bars Dad had been bitching at for years. I always assumed he was leaving off the final “g” and that they were correctly called “toshing” bars. (I still have only the vaguest idea of what they are or what they do, but I know they were critical to pulling our camper. And they were a bitch to put on.)
I can do a wicked Maine accent when I want to though. I can even say “ayuh” without sounding like a poseur.
I spent my childhood going back and forth between upstate New York and southern Virginia, being raised by a military brat mother and a father who spent his early years on the beaches of San Diego and went to high school in small-town Arkansas. I suppose you could call what I have an “accent”, but you sure as hell wouldn’t be able to place me by hearing me speak.
Of course, there are advantages to such a mixed background; I can switch quite naturally between upstate New York (or, in less PC terms, North Country cricker), southern Virginia, and rural Arkansas accents well enough that I don’t raise eyebrows among the locals. My natural speaking voice, though, is pretty geographically neutral.
I’ve been told I don’t have much of a noticeable accent, which is surprising to me as I grew up on the border between an anglophone community and a francophone community. I guess they canceled each other out–both accents are pretty strong in most people who have them, but somehow I didn’t wind up with much of either one.
What language? My Dutch is pretty much standard Dutch. I got rid of most of the accent before I was 12. My English is probably a mixture of British and American.
My Southern accent is fairly light, but it does begin to creep in when I’m stressed or surrounded by people with more prominent accents. My mother’s side of the family, on the other hand…
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
My accent is 'Straian*, with more Simpsonised American influence than I’d like. When I get tired, stressed or drunk, sometimes the American part grows stronger.
Oh, and my accent can easily shift towards British if I’ve been watching Doctor Who/Coupling/Red Dwarf/etc too much.
That’s why there are so many 'Straian* actors in Hollywood - our accent can easily be changed into someone elses. Chameleons of the tongue, we are.
*Australian - when the word ‘Australian’ is pronounced with an Australian accent, the resulting word is one, maybe one-and-a-half syllables. The way nature intended.