Recently, The New York Times published an interesting article about regional and social dialects in the United States -- especially the strong New York accent portrayed in movies and on TV shows (the article specificly mentions MTV's "Jersey Shore" as exemplifying the use of a particular dialect by Italian-Americans).
If you're interested in learning more about regional speech, check out The Speech Accent Archive, from George Mason University. This website allows you to listen to the same piece of text read by different people all over the world. The archive is meant to allow users to "compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers."
If you're interested in learning more about regional speech, check out The Speech Accent Archive, from George Mason University. This website allows you to listen to the same piece of text read by different people all over the world. The archive is meant to allow users to "compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers."