>So does that make me a verbal chameleon?

That's kinda how I feel too. My mother is from the Pittsburgh area, my father is from New Jersey, and I was born in upstate NY. I don't seem to strongly show any of those accents, but when I am just talking informally to friends and family and what not, I tend to slip into local speach patterns (but I still don't say you'uns *s*).

When in the army and living in the south though, I found myself doing the same as you both with cadences, and in general.

So I have this uncomfortable feeling that I take on the accent of whomever I am talking to. I watch out for it, because I don't want them to think I am mocking them, but I've often wondered if its from changing my local accent during those formative years??

Your the first other person I have ever heard refer to this chameleonism, and given that you leared to speak in one region, and grew up in another, I wonder if there is something to that?

Best,
Bill