David Gerard wrote:
I was amazed when I moved to Walthamstow (London E17). I heard accents from people obviously born here that sounded like NOTHING ON EARTH I'd ever heard before. The Australian accent is incredibly homogeneous by comparison.
American, too. I pride myself (more or less) on speaking a very standard American English with a very standard American accent. This has become more important as I speak to people whose first language is not English, because a very mainstream American accent is easy to understand (for people who watch American movies, at least, which means a lot of people).
Germans and Dutch and French have reported to me that I am easier to understand than Angela, for example. (She has a beautiful accent in my opinion, but it sounds Very British.)
Now, even so, I once took a fun little quiz/survey online (which I can't find now) which was able to identify that I'm from the south -- it utilized vocabulary and pronounciation questions and in some cases I had no idea that there were regional variations at all.
--Jimbo