zompist bboard

I wanted to record myself reading a text. I don't like Please Call Stella because of its weird prosody, so I used Arthur the Rat instead. You can find the text here:

http://www.howtodoaccents.com/sg_userfi ... e_Rat.docx

I recorded myself with two different accents:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0T2geRHhLNo
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0eiZHHE950p

Now, can you guess where I'm actually from?

(Also: holy hell does my voice really sound this nasal in real life???)

Liverpool? The first one sounds a bit Ringo-ish.

Someone else? Please? Pretty please?

I couldn't tell you were French from the first one, only that you were non-native. (As someone else said, the intonation is wildly off.) But I heard it right away in the second version.

Okay then.

Here's me: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1vMJMjETfF4

Can you guess where I am from (without looking at my username, duh)?

(It is slighly edited as I had to remove a few bloopers. Also, the [r] is due to listening to too much Scottish English.)

linguoboy wrote:I couldn't tell you were French from the first one, only that you were non-native. (As someone else said, the intonation is wildly off.) But I heard it right away in the second version.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I was focusing too much on the vowels, and screwed up the overall intonation. At least I know what I should work on.

@Ryusenshi:
Well, I already knew you were a French speaker before listening, and I also read previous people's comments, so both of those may have biased me. That said, I did hear a bit of "sing-songiness" in the first recording, and I heard more of a French accent in the second. I am an American English speaker, so part of that may just be my greater familiarity with rhotic accents. The vowels phonemes generally sounded distinct from each other to me; just some of them were a bit off from what I would expect--for example, the /aʊ/ in the first clip in a few places, such as in "down came the whole roof."

@Pole, the:
Well, I saw your username and also I'm not familar with a Polish accent ☺ So it's not really possible for me to guess. It did sound non-native, mainly I guess because of the /r/, the a-like realization of /ʌ/, and maybe some of the realizations of /oʊ/ and /eɪ/ which were off in some way, although I'm not sure how (maybe not diphthongized enough?).

Sumelic wrote:@Ryusenshi:
Well, I already knew you were a French speaker before listening, and I also read previous people's comments, so both of those may have biased me. That said, I did hear a bit of "sing-songiness" in the first recording, and I heard more of a French accent in the second. I am an American English speaker, so part of that may just be my greater familiarity with rhotic accents.

I think my English accent is better than my American one, anyway.

Sumelic wrote: The vowels phonemes generally sounded distinct from each other to me; just some of them were a bit off from what I would expect--for example, the /aʊ/ in the first clip in a few places, such as in "down came the whole roof."

I was aiming for a London-ish [æʊ].

Ryusenshi wrote:

linguoboy wrote:I couldn't tell you were French from the first one, only that you were non-native. (As someone else said, the intonation is wildly off.) But I heard it right away in the second version.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I was focusing too much on the vowels, and screwed up the overall intonation. At least I know what I should work on.

That was very much the impression I got. Youn nailed the vowels, but at the expense of prosody.

To be fair, prosody is also the hardest thing to master. You have to learn a whole new way to express yourself and it sounds so fake to your ears.