In today’s New York Times WesMention column, a Wesleyan alumna is quoted in an article about people attempting to get rid of their New York accents. Read for yourself:
Lauren LoGiudice sought help for similar symptoms. “I would have sessions and I started to cry,” she said
[…]Miss LoGiudice’s accent didn’t matter when she was growing up in Howard Beach, a heavily Italian neighborhood in Queens where dropping r’s in words like doctor (doctuh) and water (wawtuh) just happens to be the way many people talk.
[…]“I grew up with people who could be the cast of ‘Jersey Shore,’ ” Miss LoGiudice, 27, said. It was not until she got to Wesleyan University that she realized how much her speech pigeonholed her. And as a young actress who is “tall and Anglican-looking,” she worried her accent would be a roadblock. “If I had looked like Meadow Soprano,” Miss LoGiudice said, “I wouldn’t have had to worry about my accent.”
From my experience, there’s still people with somewhat of an “heavily Italian neighborhood in Queens” accent around, though rarer than ever.