Howdy folks,
In regards to this snippet

Also, I do not SOUND like I'm from New York. The fact is, I am from there.
Born in Rapid City, SD and moved to NY at age 3 mos. I'm not ashamed to sound
like I'm from there. I'm not white bread, but thanks for the little Texan in
You driven little lesson.

Actually the idea of ' watching your language' was a reference to
choice of words and usage, and not accent. As the good Dr.Bordie, a
retired UT prof who taught language acquisition, ( and literacy
acquisition , and is a serious gardener here in town ) used to say:
Accent is arbitrary and local and studies have shown that one's accent
is strongly correlated to one's identification of place, which
explains why some folks drop their accent's quickly upon moving to a
new region and other's hang on for a lifetime.

More important than accent, I try to be very aware of language
because aside from the notion of 'right speech' being critical to
'right thinking', words are your little ambassadors you send out into
the world to represent you, and particularly in a technology like we
are using, they are stored and archived and will be available for
browsing, by who knows how many and for who knows how long to come.

I can imagine my grandchgildren long after I'm going pulling files
off the net to get a sense of who I was ( "Hey mom, in real life, was
gramps always such a windbag?" ) So yes, I think one should stay
attuned to how they communicate.

take care,have fun
Steve Coyle
www.austingardencenter.com