Tam is having fun with accents at the moment. Now I was born and raised just north of Boston MA by parents from the Mid-west part of the country. I was publicly made fun of (by my dad) if I ever dared mangle my R’s or do much else that resulted in improper pronunciation. If anything I sound vaguely mid-western, but generally have not much accent at all unless I’ve been hanging round someone who does, then I have to put conscious effort into NOT copying their accent. Though I can crack up my husband in a heartbeat by trotting out the old standard of “pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd” in pure Bostonion.
The stories in the comments of her posts reminded me of the experience of a co-worker a while back. While I was working for Home Depot one of the front end supervisors came up to me quite horrified by a miss-translation he’d just had. Seems he’d had a customer ask him for a “dough”. My co-worker was quite confused, and it took several back and forths before he realized the customer was looking for a “door”. He was horribly embaressed by it, I just laughed.