Accent evaluation

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PeterMollenburg
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:27 am

I have no idea, but it's not a native English accent of any kind unless this person's parent(s) raised her and had learned English as a second language then spoke it to her from birth with similar patterns of pronunciation. Then it could be native, just not representative of any region in the world. A native speaker without a homeland? Possible, but I don't actually think it's the case here.

I have no experience with Asian languages, so I'm not able to compare against such languages. However the pronunciation of the letter "L" is odd and I'd imagine that this would be particularly tricky for an adult learner of English coming from certain Asian language backgrounds.

For whatever reason I have Eastern European in my mind. Again, I've no experience with Slavic languages nor Finnish/Hungarian, so I'm not sure why I'm going there and why I'm prepared to guess this time but not with an Asian language, but perhaps one of the Baltic countries like Latvia? That's my stab in the dark and I'm probably way off.

The pronuciation of the world "situation" sounds really bizarre. It's like it's really close to native but by being that close but strange somehow makes it stick out by a country mile. The 'ch' sound from the first letter 't' in 'situation' could be too 'ch'.

I wonder if this is what I sound like speaking French to a native French speaker - close to native but still obviously foreign.

Edit: What about Singapore? Mandarin is one of the main languages right? English too. Why not a Chinese immigrant living in Singapore keen to learn English. It fits the former colony picture too. That's my second guess.
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språker
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby språker » Mon Jun 13, 2022 12:15 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:For whatever reason I have Eastern European in my mind. [...] but perhaps one of the Baltic countries like Latvia? [...] The pronuciation of the world "situation" sounds really bizarre.

That might be! I live in Lithuania, and I have heard that kind of "situation" by speakers that speak grammatically well, but with stronger accents. To me, it sounds like she is trying hard to read as natively (British) as she can from a transcript.
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Le Baron
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jun 13, 2022 12:22 pm

The word "situation", at least the first instance, isn't all that curious to my ears. Lots of people say it like that in the UK, even around the north. Odd pronunciation is in words like 'senior' - "and then one day he took a call from someone very senior..." which is pronounced as 'sinnier'. It's a dead giveaway that it isn't a UK person.
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby tungemål » Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:28 pm

Le Baron wrote:Odd pronunciation is in words like 'senior' - "and then one day he took a call from someone very senior..." which is pronounced as 'sinnier'. It's a dead giveaway that it isn't a UK person.

I didn't even understand this word. In that case, it could be someone with a language that doesn't differentiate long and short vowels. That rules out Scandinavian languages. But could point to a Slavic language.
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Adrianslont
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby Adrianslont » Tue Jun 14, 2022 4:58 am

I don’t think she is from Hong Kong. She doesn’t sound like any Hong Kongers I’ve known and I’ve worked with a couple.

It would be great if smallwhite noticed this thread and could offer us an opinion on that. Or maybe Axon.

I also don’t think she is from Singapore. Peter’s thought that she may be a Chinese migrant to Singapore is intriguing but I don’t think so. I think Chinese migrants would pick up a Singapore accent or an “americanish” accent. Singaporeans with a British type of accent seem to be diminishing to me - as an outsider who occasionally visits Singapore.

I initially thought she wasn’t Chinese at all but rather European. Then I thought she may possibly be Chinese. Then I was glad someone else thought she was European! :lol:

To add to my own confusion, I think she pronounces “book” like she’s from Manchester or surrounds.

And I also detect a bit of an Australian accent. I’d feel more confident about that if Peter had mentioned it.

My conclusion? She’s Chinese Latvian who has studied in Manchester and watched a lot of Neighbours!

I have no idea where the crow is from.
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BeaP
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby BeaP » Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:01 am

She can be Hungarian but I wouldn't say she probable is.

Things I've noticed:
Her native phoneme system is probably similar to the English phoneme system. She doesn't really struggle with the sounds.
In her native language sounds are probably pronounced in a clearcut way without blurring things together. Everything seems a little 'over-articulated' compared to a lot of languages.
Her native language doesn't have a very characteristic rhythm or stress pattern. It would give her away.

For me it's a non-native British accent. 'Over-articulation' is the feature that makes it non-native for me the most. It doesn't sound natural. (Maybe it's just because she's reading, but it feels a bit robotic anyway. There's a kind of effort in it.)

The 'senior' thing is the strangest, a Hungarian wouldn't put the accent in the wrong place. We'd pronounce it almost well, just with a very clear (too clear) 'r' sound at the end. I didn't understand this word either, and it's weird that someone who imitates British accent pretty well can say a frequent word in an incomprehensible way. I agree, her native language probably lacks the 'long i'.

It might be easier to identify the bird and its habitat. :D
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Jun 15, 2022 3:17 am

So when does she come back and reveal all?
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språker
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby språker » Thu Jun 16, 2022 9:53 pm

It wood be cool if there would exist an accent analyser online, which worked using a big corpus of sound samples together with some artificial intelligence or statistical analysis or something in that way. Record yourself (for example) and BANG. Maybe someone will do that before the OP returns? :-)
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Le Baron
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby Le Baron » Fri Jun 17, 2022 9:14 am

Adrianslont wrote:To add to my own confusion, I think she pronounces “book” like she’s from Manchester or surrounds.

It does have that regional sound (I still say it like that), though in Manchester itself and even many of the regions, especially education places, it has been almost entirely superseded by the standard pronunciation.

You can hear the speaker use the same/similar sound in 'looked' near the end. I think it might be coincidental though, because if someone had had enough exposure to pick up that pronunciation, they wouldn't be saying 'asked' and 'dire' and 'choices' in that distinctly non-Northern way. Though it's impossible to say for sure, because when people move around or have different language histories it can feed into the sound systems. And you can pick up inconsistent pronunciations.

I tend to drop letter 'h' a lot from northern English and this has never been detectable in French, but colours people's perceptions of how I speak Dutch. I also clearly transferred some sounds from French to Dutch and it masks my origin even though there is a trace of an accent. No-one has ever guessed me as English, they say either Belgian or French. Yet on Monday someone said 'Portuguese!' which was bizarre. Though I only spoke to him for ten minutes. So listeners' perceptions must also play a role.
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Gill21
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Re: Accent evaluation

Postby Gill21 » Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:17 pm

Thank you all for your answers! As some have guessed, it’s myself speaking. I just wanted to make it more comfortable for people to tell me the truth. Anyway, the answers are quite surprising for me. I am from Crimea and my first language is Russian. I started studying English at 7 when I went to school, where I studied it for 10 years and went on to study English at university. It was my major. Now I teach it. At university we sort of had a focus on RP, and yes, I believe we studied the old-fashioned version (I’m just thankful, they didn’t choose the Old English as our standard). As for the reason why someone would want to speak RP, for me that’s twofold: first, because people like it when the teacher has this accent and the closer to native the better, and second, it’s some kind of a challenge for me to reduce my accent and learn to imitate a native accent more effectively. No, I don’t desperately need it, I have never had any work-related problems because of my pronunciation. Also, I’d like to comment on the other regional influences that you have suggested. I feel that a lot (really a huge percent) of responses suggest Eastern Asia, because I cannot do natural intonation, I mean when I intentionally try to fake it, I overdo it big time, and it must make people think I have a tonal first language. If you know what I can do about it, I’d be grateful if you shared. As for American, I could be taking some elements from there of course, because I often listen to Americans. But not Australians, any similarity here is coincidental (probably because I tried to imitate some sounds and failed). Finally, I have never been abroad, and my family doesn’t speak foreign languages. I think I have mentioned everything you were curious about, so thank you all again!
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