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The best accent is much easier to identify: the one found in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland south of the Bay Bridge.
When I drove down to ocean city a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that people on the eastern shore didn't have much of an accent at all. I also talked to people born and raised on OC that didn't have an accent.
I feel like that might be a Philadelphia thing because I do that a bit and my grandmother definitely did that (and she's never lived anywhere but Philly). I actually have things I wrote when I was in 1st, 2nd and 3rd Grade and "warsh" is one of my misspellings (along with "R" for "Our.")
My dad (grew up in the Boston area) always thought it was Chester Drawers (pronounced Chestah Draws). I guess to a Boston kid, Chest of Drawers and Cheser Drawers sounds the same.
Btw, it's common for kids to have trouble with accents (when adults can figure it out from context). A linguist was describing this father-son interaction in Philly. The dad was telling the kid to "Balance on the beam." But in Philadelphia, the "L" between two vowels gets swallowed (other consonants too; see: Walt Wi'min Bridge). So, while the dad was saying "ba'ance on the beam," the kid heard "Bounce on the beam." So, the kid got really excited and kept saying, "Bounce on the beam," while jumping up and down.
Lol. White people say warsh here in Baltimore too. I grew up thinking it was called Cheser drawers also...
Oh, when I said Philadelphia, I met Baltimore because there is some overlap (although not as much as some pretend).
There are differences, but the biggest differences are between black people from each city. In philly, "down there" sounds like "down ear", in Baltimore it sounds like "down air."
new york and boston accents bug me the most. Only because when I hear them here in California, there's a good chance I am hearing it from someone who moved from there and is now making the traffic worse on my freeway and there's a good chance they'll wear their yankee or red sox cap at my Dodger Stadium or Angel Stadium while rooting against my home team.
My friend has a NY/Boston Hybrid accent..... Just horrible. The absolute worse.
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