My wife is one of the people described under "Real Life" who unconsciously acquires the accents of people around her -- she even picks them up off the TV, with enough exposure. It can be amusing and annoying at times. Whenever we visit the American Southeast (we're from New Jersey), the locals invariably think she comes from the next town over from wherever we're visiting. Of late she's been watching a lot of British crime dramas on Hulu and Netflix, so I often come home from work to find I'm married to an Englishwoman, usually from London or nearby. (I dread the day I find she now comes from Yorkshire.) And back in 1990, when we bought our wedding rings from a Turkish jeweler in NYC, she acquired his accent so perfectly that he actually stopped and asked her if she had been born in the United States. Which, she assured him in his accent, she had.