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Notes -
Most Canadians sound similar to most Americans, but there are Newfoundlanders who sound like they're from Ireland.
Can you really not recognize a strong New York accent or southern US accent? These are very distinct.
My impression is that there is a larger average difference between the French spoken in Canada and the French spoken France than there is between the English spoken in North America and the English spoken in England.
Mapping accents to class in North America is easy. The higher class you are, the closer your accent is to a general North American accent that you hear in movies and on TV. The lower class you are, the closer it is to the strongest version of your regional accent.
I can recognise a New York accent because I have been to New York on business a lot. Most Brits couldn't. I could recognise that a sufficiently strong southern accent is a regional accent, but I wouldn't know which one unless the context gave it away.
I think most Brits could recognize an extremely strong stereotypical ‘New York’ accent (“cawfee”) or a Southern drawl. Maybe they know the stereotype of the Canadian “aboot” too. Not much beyond that, though.
That one doesn't help because we don't actually say that -- it's more like ab-ow-t.
'Aboot' is something Americans think we say because they have no ear for accents.
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