Quote Originally Posted by davedove View Post
The dialects are all blending through a combination of factors: mobility of the population, mass communications, etc. However, it is a slow process and the more remote an area, the more pronounced the dialect.

It's amazing how much speech patterns can vary over a small area. I was raised in the lower portion of Illinois (near St. Louis), and our accent is different from that of the most southern part, the central part, and definitely different from Chicago.
Also, dialects can magically come back in certain circumstances; my mother-in-law, for example, immediately picks up her South Louisiana dialect around my wife's brother and other folks from Louisiana.

Regards,

Todd