What if this was standard English in the US (like "received pronunciation" in the UK?)

[raccoon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-szx8DJinBk&feature=rela...

It would work for me.

[Odin2005]

1. I love coastal southern accents like Foote's

It's how I imagine Jefferson and Washington spoke. Coastal dialects became R-dropping under influence of the prestige dialect in London (what became RP). Inland accents kept their Rs. The speech of western New England and up-state New York became the basis of the accents of the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest. The speech of Pennsylvania was the basis of the speech of the Ohio River valley and the in-land South.

[SheilaT]

2. Because I grew up in, and have lived in

other parts of the country, I hear that as distinctly southern, and so to me "foreign". So no, I would not like that pronunciation to be the standard one of American English.