I grew up in Wisconsin. The local accent to to make a's before g's long. So the a in bag, dagger, dragon, wagon, etc. It took me until college to realize that people from other areas couldn't distinguish between "beg" and "bag" when I said it. And once I did realize it, it took me a while to differentiate between bag as I said it, and bag as most people say. And yet longer to fix my pronounciation.