With some effort I have perfected my speech so as to be international. However, there remains residual regional identification. I had a lunch with Stallone in Beverly Hills many years ago during which, after a while, we discussed origins. He has a characteristic manner of speech that is sophisticated, a version not that of the movies, but more in keeping with a silk shirt and nicoise at the Peninsula Hotel. Yet as we spoke, I noticed an almost satiric increase in complementary genesis pronunciations, such that after a while we both laughed. One giveaway word is the very verb to talk. Talking is daunting, even haunting, over coffee--each occurrence a threat of revelation and discovery. You would think it a bond, but it's not. Or at least not, with a movie star.
Yet we all succumb. Listen to my wife on the phone and you are suddenly in Mississippi. But if I mention it, she threatens to snatch a knot in my tail.