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I think that it would have to be Virginia. You have a different accent in every region of the state and the accent can vary from town to town. Our different accents are also well documented such as the Tidewater accent and the Tangier Island accent which is said to be very similar to our friends across the pond. We have Appalachian accents in the mountains, Antebellum accents in some smaller towns, Non-regional accents in Northern VA, southern/northern hybrids in Richmond, thick southern accents in the southern portion of the state etc.
Yeah I know. I find it kind of a shame honestly; I think that was a pretty neat way of talking.
But you get my point: people in NYC and on LI might say “Cwoffee” with that very low and elongated o sound. People in Rochester might say “oh my Gahd” with that very high and up-turned o sound.
I concur in that I think all states have differing accents.
I grew up in N.Y., upstate, southern tier, central N.Y..
We are considered to "have no accent", though to others I am quite certain we do. No replacing "a"s with "er"s, no distortion of vowels or words.
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BUT: to those elsewhere, we DO have an accent, I assure you.
Norther country N.Y. the upstate northern territory, speaks differently than us in the southern half, who speak differently from western N.Y., who speak differently from NYC, who speak differently from longg-eyeland, and anywhere else in N.Y.
What we have to remember is several things: one is thst differing peoples from other countries settled in different parts of each state, and their accents in English learned along the way developed differently.
Also each state has differing areas, developing offering accents along their way.
Take a look at our language, English. We do NOT speak the same as UK citizens, and our language CAME FROM them! Also ever territory England "owns" or "owned" came to develop a totally different accent, just like Australia developed differently from the USA, yet both were settled from old England.
Also, the language we speak today us entirely different from 150 years ago, say. A "bit" was a part of a horse griddle or past tense of "to bite". Now it generally means a computer term. "Bite" is now also used as,in a dog bite, but also the spoken word can mean "byte", another computer term. "Computer " wasn't even used in 1776, though "computation" might have been used to refer to a mathematical series or equation.
So yes, having been all over half the USA state's, each state will habe differing accents in different parts, even the smaller states.
Let's not even get into how computers smart phones and "damn autocorrect " has changed our language!!!! And the ever present typo that leads autocorrect to put in something we didn't mean!!!
Basically any state spread across a vast geographic area that contain or border multiple influential cities or regions?
Hell, Illinois has Chicago's accent dominating the top northeast corner, St. Louis dominating the Metro East in Illinois, and, to be overly simplistic, a rural twang in parts of central and northern Illinois and an almost Southern / Southern influenced accent down by Kentucky. This isn't counting any of the regional quirks that places like Peoria, Bloomington/Normal, Urbana/Champaign, Rockford, the Quad Cities, etc, might have.
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I find it kind of a shame honestly; I think that was a pretty neat way of talking.
