How funny of a question for me to answer. I like in the USA, there are many accents because people from all over the world live and work here. I don't have any way to relate, but I'm not uncomfortable around those who have strong accents or don't speak very good english. I'm used to it and like having my children interact with children from other cultures and backgrounds, it good for them to learn about people different from them.
Yes yes!
There are not as much so accent in Japan as regional, but more according to your class status... people seems to mesh with other people who speaks like them.
In China it is more regional. Beijing people speak the best Mandarin, where as Shanghai have thier own langauge practically... All region of China are almost always classified by their accent. My Ayi was from An Hui and she speaks everything 'Sh' and 'ss'! Sometime it can become very hard to understand other Chinese.
Not so many, strange that there are some in such a small country as the Netherlands, but I have trouble understanding some dutch people and some I can not understand at all... it is like another language.
Most are regional in nature, but at least one I know of I tend to think of as more cultural then regional even if it is spoken only in Friesland, which is one of our 12 provinces, it seems almost a different country, to me the language is even more alien than some other countries !
We have many accents in Argentina. People from the province of Cordoba for instance have a "singing" accent very particular. When you just heard an accent you can quickly determine where they are from.
Here in Trinidad and Tobago where I live, there are many different accents too, I notice the accents are tightly connected to race and class status.
The US has so many different accents. Even if you were to take away the different cultures we have here, such as Mexican, Asian, etc., and just focus on the American bred accents ,there are so many. We have your typical country lilt, we have the 'Northern' accent, we have the 'Mid west' accent. Then, within those accents are other accents. Florida's country twang is completely different from that of Alabama's twang which is different than Tennesee's. Lousiana has a strange accent. It's sort of like a cross between country and nothern. The north has a tendency to enunciate moreso than the south, and their tones are a bit more round. It's crazy, but it's so much fun.
There are hundreds of different cultures in Australia so of course there is a diversity in accents. But I think the question is aimed more at the native accent.
Because we are a fairly young country, the Aussie accent doesn't vary too much. But country folk do speak a bit different to city slickers. And different states can pronoundce words a bit differently, but its fairly similar.
The indigenous population have quite a distinctive accent. Speaking of which, before white colonisation, Australia was split up into many little coutnries with different languages. Unfortunately most of them have been lost to British guns.
I know in Indiia almost every state has its own culture and vernaculars can differ quite a lot.
There are many regional accents here in Great Britain, most I can fully understand..but not all I find to be nice!
There are a couple of accents that I sometimes find hard to pick up on, and they are the Scottish accent, which isn't helped because they tend to talk quickly, and the other one is the 'Geordie' accent from people who originate from around Newcastle..this is a very strong accent.
My sister married a 'Geordie', and they now live close to the Newcastle area, I sometimes can't tell what my Nephews and Nieces are saying, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to get it right!
One example of this would be spoon- I would pronounce this 'sp-oo-n', a Geordie would pronounce this as- 'sp-un', sorry I've set the words out like that, it's the only way I could think to show the example, but as you can see, that's just one example, it gets confusing when you're trying to hold a full conversation!