My native accent is the
New York Dialect. This thread made me reflect on the influence that this element of happenstance has had on me.
How it is received: This accent is catnip to girls, as my older male relatives have been pointing out since I was a teenager. To North American girls outside the New York metro area, this is how they think everyone in New York speaks because they saw it in a movie. So I cash in on New York's connotations of worldliness and sophistication, etc, with a touch of urban roughness thrown in. The girls in college tingled for it right away, lucky me. Ironically, within New York and probably Boston and DC too, the accent carries almost the opposite connotation: these old non-rhotic accents were pushed to the urban periphery two generations ago and they now signal a blue-collar origin and a high chance of being a civil servant (cop, fireman [that's me], etc.). However I still consider it an asset. It excites the urban office-slave SWPL chicks who are locked up w/ all those indistinguishable betas all day long, and it's a rock-solid conversation piece from which I can take off in a dozen different directions based on the situation.
How it has messed with me: Class distinctions among whites are alive and well in New York even if these days white is technically no longer a majority here. When I was young I started going to high school in Manhattan in a phonologically foreign environment: my new classmates spoke
rhotic dialects pretty close to Standard English, or else they were immigrants with immigrant accents. This made me a provincial novelty, something I learned to play up, but with the predictable consequence of always having a certain social distance from the mainstream social structure there. I often thought that I'd be less noteworthy in that place if I were born in Hong Kong than Staten Island. I've had a chip—some say a boulder—on my shoulder ever since, which I think formed part of a strong foundation for running game.
Downside:
Lizards love novelty, and I love lizards, so I'm not complaining. But I think we all know that the consciousness of the truth about cats and dogs that RVF is based on, that forbidden knowledge that we come here to share, carries a price. So sometimes I don't want to be a novelty, and I don't want to be some SWPL chick's dirty stable boy. And if it's a girl from outside NY, I can't help thinking, this chick is blowing me in an alley basically just because I talk funny.... wtf?
Other notes:
I can segue pretty easily into Standard English, or even better
Mid-Atlantic English (like William F. Buckley). I learned how from high school and then from having to speak to non-English speakers in a way they could understand when I travel or when I host couchsurfers. Mid-Atlantic is a nice option because it's novel and distinctive (chick crack) and it is a prestige accent, for when I need that. Also having this accent sparked my interest in phonology generally so I've read up a bunch on that, fascinating subject and helpful if you're going to learn some foreign languages.