Local accents are part of local dialects. Dialects of English have unique features in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. I have learned that the term "accent" describes pronunciation. It is interesting to listen to non-native speakers of English carry over the intonation and phonemic inventory from their mother tongue into their English speech. This is evident when a student from Senagal had asked, “ Mai hab da ticken lunsh.” No one had any idea as to what the student was asking, until he got up from the group sitting on the rug and went to the table and pointed to the chicken they were having for lunsh (lunch).
Among native English speakers, there exist many different accents. Some regional accents are easily identified by certain characteristics. But you can also find variations within the regions. There is room for misunderstanding between people from different regions, as the way one word is pronounced in one accent (for example, fix’n used in the South) will sound like a different word in another accent (for example fixing in English). We fix’n ta go to da stoe (South). We’re getting ready to go to the store (English).
The most noticeable features characterizing regional feature of a language is accent. Some people speak with an accent and others do not, is not true. Every speaker uses words with some kind of accent that can tell the listeners where the speaker is from. Accent, is the way of pronouncing words that are characteristic to a group of people, depending which country, or part of country the speaker is from. I realize that accent, is confused with dialect which affect pronunciation together with words