I loved the story told by Drea DeMateo - she spent years in acting/speach training getting rid of her heavy NY accent. And what job does she get as her big break? Adreana on The Sopranos, where she had to do a Jersey accent.

Poor dear. I'd like to comfort her...

hearing a brit do an american accent badly is an interesting lesson on how the rest of the world perceives the way we speak. strangely enough, apparently we sound more like they did in the 17th and 18th centuries than they do now.

my misspellings tend to come from my rapid "hunt'n'peck" typing style. rather than visualizing the written words, my brain instructs my fingers to to hit the key that corresponds to the phonetic sound within the word being typed. (for example, a moment ago i had to stop myself from hitting the "s" while typing "perceives", even though i knew it was wrong!)

scotpens, this thread could go on till doomsday, and farrell would still suck.

[M]y misspellings tend to come from my rapid "hunt'n'peck" typing style. rather than visualizing the written words, my brain instructs my fingers to to hit the key that corresponds to the phonetic sound within the word being typed. (for example, a moment ago i had to stop myself from hitting the "s" while typing "perceives", even though i knew it was wrong!)

Ha! :p I do the same thing sometimes with the five-finger method of typing. It's as if my brain is short-circuiting the tendency to type an entire word at a time fully aware of the way it's spelled and going instead to typing out the way it's pronounced.

Regarding the superfluous "r" sounds, I once heard the tale of a Yankee driller calling up a fellow worker--a Southerner named Earl--and telling him, "Hey, Oil! We have an Earl fire!" :D