My accent is "almost impossible" to master :) How about yours?

[meem]

I was chatting with some folks at a party in Raleigh years ago. One of the guys said, "You're from NY". I asked him how he knew (as I'd worked hard to get rid of my ax-cent). He said it was the way I pronounced water, that all the New Yorkers he knew pronounced it as: waw-der. He was right. That's the one word I can't pronounce properly.

 

[el henry]

I was chatting with some folks at a party in Raleigh years ago. One of the guys said, "You're from NY". I asked him how he knew (as I'd worked hard to get rid of my ax-cent). He said it was the way I pronounced water, that all the New Yorkers he knew pronounced it as: waw-der. He was right. That's the one word I can't pronounce properly.

Keep your accent for "water", it's still proper!

Water is still the one word, even when I am speaking "professionally", I pronounce like a Philadelphian. I keep seeing it spelled "wooder", which is not right though, we say the "t" like a "t" but the vowel is very much like the "oo" sound in wood.

I guess "water" is always a tell

 

[Amei]

I was chatting with some folks at a party in Raleigh years ago. One of the guys said, "You're from NY". I asked him how he knew (as I'd worked hard to get rid of my ax-cent). He said it was the way I pronounced water, that all the New Yorkers he knew pronounced it as: waw-der. He was right. That's the one word I can't pronounce properly.

My grandmother was born and raised in the Bronx, left NY in the 50s for California, even in the early 2000s before she passed that NY'er accent still came out.