Wouldnt an interactive sound data test be wonderful?
Id like to know how much of My Midwest Accent I have lost...since moving to God Forsake Northern California... forty some years ago.
theres probably some Broadcast industry consultant willing to run such tests for a few grand....../s
I’m told that Brown Broadcasting Institute in Minneapolis will cure just about any accent...
There was a fascinating documentary on the history of English that ran on PBS a few years back.
It traced the development of English from Chaucer’s England to the present day, and made some predictions on the future.
The regional dialects in England are VERY pronounced. Often the local accent shifts markedly if you go just a few miles. The East Cost of the United States started out in a similar way (Boston, NY, Philly, Baltimore, etc.) But as populations moved west they intermixed, until the dialects on the West Coast were fairly homogenous.
The final episode predicted that the future of English will be determined in India, due to the sheer number of speakers (1.3 billion). So someday we may ALL be doing the needful.