Massachusetts

If you move to an area where the accent is different or imperceptible, you don't fare well and you don't get a job as commercial spokesperson, either.

Someone once asked Conan to do his own Boston accent, meaning drop that fake broadcasting accent and show us what you really sound like, Conan.

He tried a few times, but he couldn't even do a good imitation of a Boston accent anymore. Suppressed too long. And I don't think he knew until that moment, on national TV, that he could not even fake it anymore.

When I first moved to Boston, I was talking to some older women. (Sadly, I spend a lot of time at the neighborhood health center and Mass Gen, waiting to see a lot doctors then and so did a lot of elderly widows from the neighborhood.)

I don't think most of them had ever been outside Boston, maybe even not very far outside their own neighborhood. Poorer women, families never owned cars, etc. They had no clue they had an accent. Except for one woman who had lived in San Fransisco fouor a time.

When she first moved out, she got lost and needed to find a very prominent street. She asked on person after another if they could tell her how to get there. Everyone said they never heard of it. It was Market Street. No one knew what she was saying.

I didn't know you were from Mass, though. Hi! No wonder you are not rightist.