Feedback on my accent, too =D

Brandon Stoughton   Sun Oct 26, 2008 5:36 am GMT
I came to Canada at 10 and have lived here ever since (I'm 20 now). I want unbiased opinions on my pronunciation.
Please offer any comments, good or bad, as long as they are HONEST!
How far am I from sounding like a native speaker? How can I have improvements?
What do you think my native language is?

I picked two paragraphs from random articles:

http://www.supload.com/listen?s=UN4J7K3C1LLZ

"The restaurant has made changes to water at the table, too. Until last month, Eve was buying nearly 1,200 bottles of water each week, and the enormous amount of glass to be recycled and deliveries by truck increased the restaurant's carbon footprint. To fix that, Eve implemented a water filtration system that comes with its own elegant and reusable bottles. Guests no longer pay for water, and the Armstrongs' initial investment and monthly equipment rental is covered by having raised the price of one menu item by 25 cents. At the Majestic, where the system is also in place, a bottomless bottle of filtered sparkling or still water costs $4.25."


http://www.supload.com/listen?s=4OZXI3HRTGER

"In the first flashback accounting for his improbable knowledge, we find the seven-year-old Jamal trapped in a wooden outhouse built on a rickety pier that overlooks a private airport. Desperate to greet his favourite Bollywood star, Jamal realises that there’s only one thing for it. He takes a deep breath and plunges into the stinking cesspool beneath the pier. Covered in crap, he walks up to the star and demands his autograph. The sequence may be shamelessly contrived, but the close correlation between money and excrement speaks volumes about India — and not just India, for that matter."
ESB   Sun Oct 26, 2008 5:59 pm GMT
The accent is definitely strong. You are very far from sounding like a native speaker. (Sorry, no offense or anything.) Your intonation is unnatural and robotic, there is no fluency, no linking the words together, you mispronounce some sounds and words.

It's highly unusual to have this sort of accent if you came here at 10, in my opinion.

In terms of improvements, the first thing I'd concentrate on is the intonation of the voice. Make it less robotic and more fluent and "alive." Learn to link words, rather than pronouncing them separately.

By the way, the word "pier" is pronounced PEE-er (not PIE-er)