I want to learn to recognize the various American accents

Partly because of my career, partly out of curiosity, I want te learn more about American accents. Where do people speak SAA and what accents "belongs" to what state, and how can I recognize it?

Does anyone know a website that deals with this? Phonetics? Pronunciation? Example clips?

thanks,
Jules

Jules,

I am curious...what's your occupation, which requires you to distinguish different american accents? Are you a native speaker of english?

No, I'm not a native speaker (and I noticed some spelling, or rather: typing mistakes in my above message).
a) I'm a film fan, and I often read the critics and comments and can't figure out why someone says that some actor has a lousy Boston accent, as I don't hear any difference from other accents (except the southern accents). I do recognize the New York accent, but someone once wrote that Helen Hunt has a louse Brooklyn accent, and I don't hear that.
b) Hoping to become an actress myself one day, and not just in my home country.

Try the Idea dialect archive. I don't know the exact web site, but just type in "Idea" and "languages" into a search engine and you should be able to find it. It has got a great selection of different people from all over the U.S. (and the world for that matter) speaking English. Try typing in "university of kansas" into your search too....they run the web site.

This is very helpfull indeed! Thanks so much.

I've tried the links as well, as now I'm looking for the written phonetics, because now I 'easily' recognize the Californian accent/dialect, but like to see the phonetics of the more difficult states. Any idea?

thanx again.