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Do you find yourself mimicing speech patterns when around people with different accents and dialects? Are you multilingual? Then you may adopt some features of the place you move to.
I grew up in NY but have been in NM for two decades. While my accent has become a lot more rhotic, I have not picked up the pin-pen merger that is common here, nor many other common, local accent features such as high rising teminal (uptalk) or the tendency to pronounce 'ing' as 'een' (ex. exploring --> exploreen).
While my accent has changed, it has verged more towards some General American traits rather than the local accent. Enough that people often take me for a transplant, but don't always pinpoint me to New York unless I go non-rhotic on something or use NY pronunciation for Italian food :-)
Over a long period of time you will. My aunt lived in the Chicago area for 20+ years and has lived the last 30 years in Dallas. She has a southern accent.
I guess it depends on the age of when you move. I had a teacher in high school who was born and raised in Chicago, and then moved to Miami, and got a southern accent. Another teacher who was from California and also moved to Florida, and had a southern accent. And now in college in Texas, I know someone in the faculty who is originally from California, and has a southern accent. I dunno what age they moved but it can happen.
Anyway, no shame about sounding different. Embrace that! I love sounding different from locals, and I love meeting people who have interesting accents from far away.
It really depends on the person. I knew a guy who moved to rural Texas from Brooklyn as a teen and in his late 40's, he STILL sounded like Andrew Dice Clay.
What is most likely to happen, though, is that if you stay there a long amount of time, you might develop a mix of both your natural accent and the local accent. It's REALLY hard to "lose" a natural accent completely, though. Especially after a certain age (your accent is usually formed around or between the ages of 12 to 14).
Just look at most people who have learned another language as an adult. I guarantee you that unless they are some sort of actor or voice over artist who has had training, 9 out of 10 of them still have their original accent, or at least retain most of their original accent to the point where it's still very noticeable.
Generally speaking, your accent has pretty much set by the time you're 18. You'll no more be able to alter your accent to meet the local version than you would be able to learn a foreign language and speak it flawlessly.
That said any children you have will pick up their accent almost entirely from their peers, not from you as a parent. So even if you settle down with another transplant, presume that your kids may end up with southern accents to some degree.
This + Rep
My wife is a Linguistics major... This poster got it spot on.
I have a cousin who took a job in London from Wisconsin for a few years... (I think three). Her family includes three children under the age of ten... I dont know if they have picked up their accent still being in the "developmental" stage as far as speech/accents go.
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