Where are you from?

Yesterday, I was walking back from the football game with a few people. The conversation turned towards where we each were from. One girl was from Long Island. She then proceeded to explain to us how some people from Long Island pronounce Long Island. (I would try to explain it here, but I have no idea how I would explain it, or even exactly how it sounds when a native speaker pronounces it in this particular way.) A few of us then tried to imitate this particular pronunciation. To our ears, our pronunciation sounded exactly the same as when the Long Island native pronounced it, but this girl could tell that we were not saying it correctly. This is what I found interesting: that we can only hear certain differences in pronunciation when we are actually from that specific area that happens to pronounce certain words differently. If our ears are not used to hearing words pronounced a certain way, we can not tell if we are actually mimicking the pronunciation or not. Only when we have lived in that particular area for a long time can we tell a real speaker from a fake.