Love and am fascinated in all accents - in several languages, and pick them up easily. Never ever have been able to come anywhere close to imitaing Geordie- just can't do it.
Grammatical mistakes are often an indication of the old languages used locally, whether Danish, or Saxon, etc, based.
Used to take a small group from the local estate to visit gardens and castles a few times a year, and just loved their 'propa Lesta' and the use of 'I were' and 'you was'. Always amazed at the amount of snobbish people can display re accents.
At the inaugural lecture when I started my teacher training as a mature student- the Dean went on re the need to get rid of a local accent if anyone wanted to succeed and quickly climb the ladder. He had the thickest South African accent.
Where I live now, I am VERY close to the French border - and the accent on either side is totally different - only in adults though.
Merwyn (sp) Bragg, in his book on the English language, explains how as a kid from Lancs, he was mocked and bullied for his accent as he went to High School and Uni - and had to acquire 'received pronunciation' accent to get on in life.