Reply To: Fly the flag of the Confederate States of America?

[SteveInCO]

I know people who have schooled themselves to get rid of either a foreign or regional accent, and they even get upset when I detect it. (One man was upset I noticed a Swedish accent; I don’t know why he cared, a slight accent is probably a good thing.) Anyhow, unwinding that process is probably straightforward.

I suspect it works better when your accent isn’t considered “standard” and you’ve tried to conform to the standard. Not trying so hard might thicken it.

A northern or “General American” accent is considered the standard in the US, so it’s kind of hard to make it more so. But someone from Boston who tried to get rid of that Bostonian accent can probably revert to Bahston “why’d you pahk yah cah so fah from the bah” mode pretty readily.