Accent evaluation

[Gill21]

Hi everyone! Can you help me to define what kind of accent this is? Is it native? Where would you say the speaker comes from? https://voca.ro/1cjmsgTjKj4j

[jeff_lindqvist]

Hi everyone! Can you help me to define what kind of accent this is? Is it native? Where would you say the speaker comes from? https://voca.ro/1cjmsgTjKj4j

Most likely a speaker of English as a second language. I think some features were "British", others not. I'd say this could be a speaker from anywhere in the world, and that the speaker has done some deliberate work on pronunciation but that it still sounds exaggerated / artificial.

Maybe native speakers of English have other opinions.

[Le Baron]

I agree with jeff. When the person says "but in the early days of his career.." the accent is very different from the RP-style English accent overall. There are also lots of giveaways in the vowels which are sometimes flat or elongated, where they would be more rounded and clipped. The prosody is also odd sometimes: "is there anything you can do to help?" is said in an odd way.

No idea where this person is from.. I'll guess Hong Kong. Although these days even people from the UK have unusual anomalies in their accents.

[jeff_lindqvist]

The thought struck me that the speaker has some variety of Chinese as a first language. I agree that the sentence Le Baron highlighted is very different. Shortly thereafter, we hear the word "theoretical" which also sounds, well, non-native. As do "situation/s" (at least three times in the clip), "talking", "textbooks", "concentrated" (←here, my bet is on HK), "earthquakes", "chances", "almost" and "offer".

[Le Baron]

'Translated' and 'chances' are giveaway words too.

On the whole though it's a very good approximation of an RP accent. Perhaps the person will now say "but I am British!"

[Lawyer&Mom]

I’d say it’s a very, very good non-native accent. The speaker should be proud of the work they have done. Some of the vowels sounded off, particularly in “translated” and “tsunami.” I really don’t know where the speaker is from. I got hints of Scandinavian and hints of Chinese in the vowels. But the prosody is wrong for a native Germanic speaker. So if I had to guess, Hong Kong, why not?

[tungemål]

On first listening I'd say this was a British person. It's that good. After reading the comments, I have listened a couple of times more to try to catch "mistakes" in the pronunciation. I guess nobody would actually talk like this? because the accent sounds too studiously well-planned.

"concentrated" is pronounced with a "d" sound, like in American English, so that crashes with the British RP accent.

Another thing I noticed: the "L"-sound is mostly pronounced as a dark L. English has two different "L"-sounds. Listen to "early". It should have a clear "L" because a vowel is following, but it's pronounced dark. The same for "realize".

The recording has to be from somewhere with crows and a train. But why do you suspect Hong Kong?

[Lawyer&Mom]

The recording has to be from somewhere with crows and a train. But why do you suspect Hong Kong?

Hong Kong was a shot in the dark, but I thought perhaps a former British colony because otherwise why put that much effort into an RP accent?

[Le Baron]

The recording has to be from somewhere with crows and a train. But why do you suspect Hong Kong?

Someone from Hong Kong could be in the vicinity of crows and a train. They might even have both in HK.

Hong Kong was a shot in the dark, but I thought perhaps a former British colony because otherwise why put that much effort into an RP accent?

The same shot I took, so there may well be something in it if two people suspect it.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Now we have to evaluate the accent of the collared crow…. Personally, I think it sounds like a match.

https://ebird.org/species/colcro1