Phonology of accents

One downside of Canada is that we just don't have many native accents. Not including the accents that people bring with from whatever country they've emigrated from, we have four: the Territories, Quebecois, East Coast, and the rest of the country. So, it's quite a treat to my ears every time I cross the border and pick up on regional accents that seem almost as plentiful as the states.

It's also no secret that I'm just terrible at mimicking what I hear, but that I can talk about why and how an accent happens. Here's what I've learned so far:

Buffalo: the vowels /a/ or /ae/ in words like 'cat' or 'Allen' get fronted and made into a different diphthong so that it now sounds like /ia/- instead of /caet/, it now sounds like 'kee-yat' or 'ee-allen'
the vowel found in words like 'but' and 'cut' changes to sound like the vowel in words like 'spore' and 'court'

Charlotte: what a great number of accents here! Some of the most common characteristics I picked up on were the diphthong /ai/ as in words like 'time' changes to sound more like the vowel in 'dance' or 'con'; palatalisation occurs in words like 'pat' and 'pet' so that they sound more like 'pjat (pee-yat)' and 'pjet'; NoDa isn't pronounced 'no-dah', but 'know-daw'; and the vowels in words like 'gas' and 'you' pronounced like 'gee-ass' and 'yew', respectively so that a sentence that I'd say pronounce as 'yoo have a gahss station', they'd say 'yew haeve a gee-ass station'.

Portland: sounds like just the rest of Canada so far, and I can't say too much because I've only spent one night there so far.

Thus are my bus-to-Seattle ramblings. That, and I'm just putting off finishing Walden.