For this ELL.se group, in might be useful to know that I live in Texas and grew up a native speaker of American English. The metropolitan area north of Dallas is populated by people who moved here from somewhere else, so does not exhibit any kind of regional accent that you might associate with old cowboy movies or “the south”. I listen to nationwide TV and Hollywood movies, and the generic American Accent sounds normal to me.
Occasionally people do suppose I might be from “the east”, because I speak carefully and anunciate well. “cot” and “caught” are different. I make sure that “there” and “they’re” sound different. “Father” has an R in it.
