Hearken unto me, my people! It is hugely flattering to be singled out for attention, on the basis that "all publicity is good publicity". Accents develop for many and diverse reasons: physiology, class, the influence of "those odd folk from across the border", incoming migrants in sufficient numbers, and methods of teaching. This last is especially true in the English of Canada and the USA (but not Australia or New Zealand, where societies developed along very different lines). The thinking is roughly as follows: in the early days of non-English migration to North America, the newcomers had to be taught English fast, to enable them to function in the new land. They were taught phonetically, thus leading to such oddities of pronunciation as "Thee Ayzores" for the Azores. With increasing influxes of non-Engoish speakers, the number of first-language users of English available to teach and correct the newcomers became smaller and smaller, so vaguely competent newcomers were pressed into service - remember, we are now talking about teachers of English for whom it was at most a second (if not third) language. With time, what started out as mispronounced English became enshrined as regular usage... and so it goes. In much of Canada and in almost the whole of the USA, what we have today is an odd situation whereby many people have English as their first language of acquisition, but who have in fact acquired it in the same way and to the same level as you would acquire Ancient Zulu at a local evening class, i.e. badly. Still, all is not lost. It is better for a language to survive in *some* form, than not to survive at all... or is it? Your thoughts would be welcome.