Hey Joel:
I agree with you of course that accents are not dead...yet...and maybe they will never be completely gone...but my point was that I hear less and less of the strong accents in young people.
I can still spot a Texan or a Louisiana Cajun or a Minnesotan or as you say a New Yorker/New Englander in people say, in their 30s and above, but in young people, especially teenagers I just don't hear the accents like before. I'm speaking only of my experience in Texas...and Texans have a distinct accent too...where it just seems to me that the teenagers all sound alike wherever you go.
It would be interesting to hear Dragona's comments on this, as well as others who were raised in New York and other places where there is a strong regional accent. Do the teenagers still speak Brooklynese
?
From my own experience I know that I have lost the North Carolinian accent that I had as a child and I can remember when I began to deliberately try to get rid of it after moving to Miami when I was 12. My classmates made fun of the way I'd say certain things and I was embarrassed. Not only that, I began to reallize that some people equated a Southern accent with lack of education so that further moved me to lose it. It wasn't that hard since Miami was a melting pot in those days and many of friends had no accent. My point is that accents tend to fade if you are young enough and are exposed to other accents. Just as in our examples of immigrants where the various accents tended to neutralize each other over time and become one.
Certainly, there will always be, at least for generations to come, pockets where accents will remain.
I got a laugh from your comment about the guy speaking Spanish with a Southern accent...hahaha. It reminded me of the guys I know down in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. If you have ever been there you know there is distinct accent among some native born Mexican-Americans. It isn't what you would think though, i.e., it's not a Mexican accent. It has a uniqueness about it that no gringo can duplicate. It's hard to explain but you can spot it immediately. Freddie Fender (R.I.P.) and Johnny Rodriguez, especially Johnny, have it.