@gailcalled You probably have not been to that same poor part of Alabama I was in where I talked to a woman who I could only understand about every fifth word. My husband could not understand one. Same with that other woman from Mississippi. It’s rare, but there are some parts of the US the people have incredibly difficult accents to understand. Again, it is rare. It has only happened to me in the south, and I don’t think it is because I am from the northeast. I am very good at understanding people with accents. I don’t give up easily like some people do. I also have lived many places east of the Mississippi, so I am accustomed to many different accents.
I don’t think the OP was saying northeastern Bronx. He was saying accents in the northeast and gave examples of New York and the Bronx. I make fun of my mom’s Bronx accent. I like it. It’s not severe, but she does tend to add R’s to words that end in A, and A’s to replace ER at the end of a word. The NYC accent, like everywhere else, varies even within an individual burrough. That more extreme NewYoRican accent isn’t the same as your accent ever was I would bet. Actress Rosie Perez would be a very extreme example of it.
In MI some people were confused when I would say I would meet someone at quarter of 12. They don’t use of in that context.
In TN some people refer to downstairs as the main floor, even if you are on the main floor and there is a basement. The first time it happened to me was in a museum. The woman at the entrance explained to us what exhibits were downstairs and what was upstairs. We thought there was a downstairs from the main level, she said the miscommunication happens often with people from put of state.
Some parts of the country say next Tuesday to mean a week from Tuesday rather than meaning this coming Tuesday.
All sorts of little miscommunications can happen from region to region if you spend enough time in them.
The southeast would be the southeast ai would think. True we don’t usually say southeast as a region, but it seems pretty self explanatory that the OP must mean states like GA and SC. They are in the southeastern part of the US. I don’t know why you are being so critical. Maybe the OP actually simply means the south, or deep south, and doesn’t know that automatically excludes the southwest, but we don’t need to pretend it is impossible to know basically what states he is referrring to. We have at least a vague idea and can clarify it with the OP. I used to get confused when southerners call MI a northern state and lumped in MI with Vermont and New Jersey. I always referred to MI as a midwestern state, Jersey is northeast and Vermont is New England.
@linguaphile True, the south is the closest to the King’s English (I personally would say more in terms of dialect than accent, would you agree?) but it also sometimes seems like it is the farthest from it. Brits almost always pick on a southern accent as being an American accent to make fun of. Have you ever watched Top Gear?
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