I had to go from Deep South to SoCal Broadcast at age 10, so it took me only a year to shed the southern accent. Two things I learned right off the bat was that it’s prounced “Can’t” not “caint”, and that “I” is a diphthong: “ah-ee,” not “ah.” Those simple alterations got me through the worst of it.
I’m told I have a strong Chicago accent by people from elsewhere. I can tell the difference between a North Side and South Side Chicago accent, but mine is a bit of both, as I grew up on the North Side but was reared by Sout’siders. I can do a convincing Brooklyn and a pretty good Long Island accent. Boston and Philly accents evade me entirely. Other Chicagoans say I can do a pretty good rural Southern accent, but my friends in Tennessee say I just sound drunk when I try. I can’t do a posh English or a Cockney, but I can do a sort of vaguely rural English accent. Scots and Irish I can do only if I concentrate, so they don’t sound at all natural. I do tend to pick up an accent’s rhythm and cadence, though, when I’m around people with strong accents.
I speak some Spanish as well, and while I learned a Mexican dialect of Spanish in high school, I apparently picked up a Puerto Rican accent as a child from family friends. I’ve had Mexicans ask me MANY times why I speak “Mexican” with a Puerto Rican accent.
I honestly have no idea what my accent sounds like.
I was born and raised in Eastern Tennessee but have been told by a wide variety of people that I sound a number of different ways. When I was working my first job, I was told by a co-worker from Oklahoma that I sounded like I had a Northern accent and, months later, was told by a customer that I sounded Canadian(?!). About a year later, when a cousin I had never met from Illinois came to visit, she said I had a really thick Southern one.
Years later, I get told I have only a slight Southern accent by most people but, by others, I’m told that there’s “a trace of something” that they can’t identify.
I do think I’m losing part of the accent though… not only can I hear it more distinctively in my mom (who, ironically, was born and raised in NYC but has the thickest Southern accent I know) when we talk on the phone, I could hear it creeping back into my voice every once in a while when I was visiting friends in Alabama a few months ago.
Interestingly enough, one of the people there, a native Alabamian, thought I sounded like I was from Michigan and one of the others, a woman from Ohio, sounded pretty Southern even to my tin ear.
I just wish I could remember what the New Zealander said about it other than the instances where he’d point out my accent was coming back (which were the same instances I recognized too).
I was born and raised in NYC, and my father has a thick accent. Somehow, my mother does not, even though she was born in the coal country of Pennsylvania but grew up in NYC as well. I have a slight NY accent, mostly in words like “chaw-klit” and “waw-ter.” For fun, I can thicken up the accent at will, for that Brooklyn cabdriver effect. It makes my students laugh. My brother, who never left NY except for a stint in the Marines, has as thick an accent as my father. Go figure.
I was born in Mexico, but moved to the US when I was still a child. For a long time I spoke with a very thick accent, but I’ve worked pretty hard on anglo-cizing my accent, so I now mostly just sound like I’m from the South West (I lived in Maryland/DC for several years, and you could really tell the difference between a SW accent and an Eastern accent). I’ve actually met people who don’t know I was born in Mexico…they take me for a native, which is pretty much what I always strove for.
My kids don’t even speak spanish for the most part.
-XT
I was just talking about this in a thread in GQ, but what the heck.
I am a myna bird. It’s pretty embarrassing, honestly, because I am always afraid people will think I am mocking them. In simple conversation I am more likely to imitate rhythm than actual accent, though.
I’m from Northern California and I live in Chicago. I think my accents sort of fade back and forth depending on what sort of mood I’m in. I’ve had coworkers tease me about my California accent (the one who does it the most has the most hysterical “Superfan” Chicago accent, btw) and family members tease me about my Midwestern accent. I can feel my accent switch. When I’m in a really good mood or have had a couple drinks, especially, I sound very Californian.
In case you’re wondering what the difference between Northern and Southern Californians’ speech, I got one word for you: hella.
I was born & raised on Long Island, NY. Speaking as someone who’s unfamiliar with lingustics, I’d say the accent’s a cousin of the Brooklyn accent.
My relative lack of accent has been remarked upon; I think my accent’s lighter than those of many of my neighbors because my parents’/close relatives’ accents are lighter than “normal” (& not 'cause they developed them elsewhere; my older relatives are from Queens, my cousins from L.I.). I try to tone my accent down a bit when I’m speaking in class or to higher-ups; I think that there’s still a stigma attached to the Long Island/Brooklyn accent. When I’m with friends, I don’t watch myself.
Getting to the point: I can adopt accents fairly easily, but whether I pick one up unconsciously depends on the accent. If I’m speaking with someone with an Irish accent, for example, I’ll tend to pick that up. I’ve also found that to be the case with the Minnesota accent & the Nuyorican accent; don’t know why that is.
With regard to the California accent(s): I’ve almost always been able to tell when someone was raised in CA - I can’t explain what it is that tips me off, but it’s there & it’s obviously distinctive.
Sorry if that sounded defensive. I was just being snarky because it happens to me sometimes. It’s not too bad where I live (DC metro), since there’s quite a few southerners around here. Mostly, I’ve seen the smirk from people from NY or New England, and the West Coast. Hey, it happens. Some people’s only exposure to southerners is shows like The Beverly Hillbillies or The Dukes of Hazzard.
I’m sort of a unique case: I was born in Israel to American parents, but we movvd to New York City when I was just an infant. When I moved back at age 6 I didn’t know a word of Hebrew. I grew up in an English-speaking household, so my accent - and vocabulary - came completely from my parents and from television. Now, my dad is from Manhattan via Teaneck NJ, while my mom is from Atlantic City, and neither have strong regional accents (my dad lost his at Yale). The result of this upbringing is that while I speak English with no foreign accent, I also speak it with no regional accent I can discern. People have tried to place it, but he best they can do is “generic American”, albeit slightly less nasal than usual. I do have a very slight American accent in my Hebrew which I’ll probably never lose.
The fact that I can speak two very different languages nearly accentlessly also means that I can master a very broad range of vowls and consonants. There are ver few European or Middle-Eastern words I can’t pronounce correctly.
But you said you do have an accent, an American one in both languages. How is that accentless?
No one is accentless.
True; however, in an American context, I speak English with no discernable regional accent. To you I’d just sound American.
I was born & raised in Macon, GA where the norm for black people, like me, is an almost unintelligible southern “Ebonics.” Uncle Remus sounds like Shakespeare compared to the noises people make down there.
I tend to speak with the aforementioned “broadcast” American accent (much to the consternation of white and black people alike). Most of the time, when I meet someone new, they end up asking me where I’m from. I tell them and then there’s usually a brief pause and they say something like “you don’t sound like it” when what they really mean is “you don’t sound like those people I saw on Cops last night when they were in Fulton County.” 
I do slip into that accent whenever I’m talking to my mom. My husband is a white guy from Pittsburgh, and I usually have to translate for him whenever we go visit. He just smiles and nods a lot otherwise. 
At one job I had for seven years, almost the whole time I was there we also had this computer operator who was from Mexico. When we first met, his accent was so thick I had a hard time understanding him, although I think he probably understood me better. But by the time I left, six years later, his accent had virtually vanished. Then the software manager was ex Scotland by way of South Africa, and he had virtually no accent–other than occasionally uttering non-Americanisms like "The Bakersfield branch want this change. His boss, the Director of IT (or Data Processing as it was called then), had a thick Scottish burr you could cut with a knife.
For some reason, some people lose their accents and others keep theirs.
Whoa, rackensack, I’m from Fayetteville (Going to school in Arkadelphia now.) That’s creepy.
But on-topic, I have had people not believe that I’m from the south. I don’t like the way the typical southern accent sounds, and I don’t know if that’s why I don’t talk that way or if I don’t like it because I don’t talk that way. (Or for other reasons?) My dad’s from Indiana, but doesn’t have much of a northern accent from living here for almost 20 years, and my mom is southern, but can talk passably well. Except “orange” (“ahrnge”), “foil/boil” (“fowl/bowl”, bowh long “o” sounds, like the bowl one eats from.")
Don’t know whether this is positive or negative. I kind of like the reporter neutrality. I’m decent at replicating accents.
Except Germans mistake me not for an American, but for a Dutchman when I speak German. I’ve had more than one person tell me that. 
HSU or OBU? I’m a Hendrix alum myself. There’s a few more of us with Arkansas ties on the board – carnivorousplant and Arden Ranger come to mind right away, and jesuslynch was a contemporary of mine at Hendrix.
I think that most people who lose their accents either want to lose them or are myna birds. Many people retain their accents decades after immigrating. It takes either a distinct effort or a very good ear or both to lose an accent.