Where does she come from please?

Leana   Sat Jan 31, 2009 12:21 am GMT
I'm learning English. Please help me with this audio sample and tell me where the speaker comes from if you can thank you!
http://www.zshare.net/audio/5488863583254ecf/
Caspian   Sat Jan 31, 2009 11:01 am GMT
Sounds American to me...
T   Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:28 am GMT
;) is that by any chance you recording a piece of text to see if we catch on? It's either a foreign speaker or an awkward, ungrammatical American one.

If it's a foreign speaker, that's a great accent, but not perfect (sounds a bit eastern european to me, especially 'voice recognition'). If it's American, it's someone nervous (from the choppy rhythm), and she's dropping articles ('has developed application'). I will go out on a limb and guess it's not a native speaker.
Another Guest   Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:12 am GMT
I don't think it's "has developed application" but "US-developed application". It's just that with her accent, it sounds like "You has developed". Also, "accent" sounds like "ax sent".
T   Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:22 am GMT
Yeah, you're right. I couldn't make out what was coming right before 'developed' (I thought it was some kind of company name by the way the sounds blended together), but I hear it now. So it's grammatical.

And yeah, the 'accent' sounds a bit weird. I think it's because it lacks a secondary stress on the second syllable (making it a schwa), which is not the most common way of pronouncing the word (though I believe I've heard native speakers do it). What really says accent to me is some of the intonation and rhythm for 'voice recognition has hit a stumbling block'.

That said, it's always possible that this is just someone not used to reading aloud from a page. There's a skill to it - if you listen to professional audiobook readers, they are very good about isolating potentially confusing phrases - such as 'US-developed' - and making them crystal clear. I suppose someone not used to it could just sound very stilted reading aloud. But I'd still guess foreign.
Lazar   Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:19 am GMT
She is definitely a non-native speaker of English; it's quite clear when she says "voice recognition has hit a stumbling block".

<<And yeah, the 'accent' sounds a bit weird. I think it's because it lacks a secondary stress on the second syllable (making it a schwa), which is not the most common way of pronouncing the word (though I believe I've heard native speakers do it).>>

American English uses an [ɛ] in the second syllable of "accent", whereas British English uses a schwa; she's pretty clearly trying to use an American accent, so I suppose her use of the schwa there is a mistake.
Uriel   Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:38 am GMT
She's definitely a foreigner and not a true American. But it's not a bad try. Just doesn't fool the native ear.
Caspian   Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:46 am GMT
<< American English uses an [ɛ] in the second syllable of "accent", whereas British English uses a schwa; >>

In British English, we tend to use a schwa for all unstressed syllables - as a rule, anyway. Isn't this the case in American English?

<< She's definitely a foreigner and not a true American. But it's not a bad try. Just doesn't fool the native ear. >>

Interesting, because she fooled me!
lica   Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:54 am GMT
It sounds American to me, much more comprehensible than Britney Spears' accent though :-)
Johnny   Sat Feb 07, 2009 11:49 am GMT
I'm not a native speaker, but I really can't understand what exactly is so wrong with that accent. And by the way, in a thread of mine we are currently discussing the fact some people say "com-mint" instead of "com-ment", and I say "ak-sint"... and this seems to be a partial pin-pen merger.

So what makes her non native? Forget about the rhythm, she's probably reading, nervous, whatever, and it doesn't sound off to me once you consider that.
Are you saying she can't be native just because of one different vowel in a word? You must have heard every single accent in the US to be sure that's not part of any possible accent, which is impossible. The only two things I noticed:

1) US sounds a little like "you ass", but I have already heard it that way from Californians (Cali vowel shift?)

2) Some final consonants and connections sound different, either because of a speech defect or something (non native speaker, as you say?). These are:
- speech recognition, voice recognition = speesh, voish (CH => SH)
- US-developed Google application = develops Google application (PT => PS)

Some guesses as a non native speaker:
1) She's Californian and she's speaking sloppily like she's just got out of bed
2) She's British and trying to put on an American accent.
T   Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:57 pm GMT
You can't just forget about the rhythm, no more than you can forget about the intonation - those are vital parts of an accent (and some of the hardest to learn). I'm not an American either (I've just lived here for many years), hence my caveats to what I said above, but I got a pretty strong sense from the intonation and rhythm of 'recognition' (especially 'nition') that she was foreign. It's not just phonetical - I can't necessarily just say this or that sound is phonetically inaccurate. It's also how long you hold certain vowels, whether or not you move your voice up or down within a single word, etc. The 'a stumbling block' gave me that same sort of feeling.

At its most subtle, accent recognition is almost physiological. Sometimes you can't tell what's wrong, but you can tell something is. That's what's so frustrating about trying to completely eliminate your accent, by the way - you can get pretty damn close and still have a native speaker pick you out, without being able to tell you exactly what's wrong (not even if the speaker is well-trained, sometimes).

The fact that a British speaker here accepted it for a native accent makes me wonder again about something I've thought about for a while - maybe as a non-native speaker I should aim to speak BrE while in the US and AmE while abroad! That way people might just assume I'm native but from somewhere else ;). (Just kidding, but I do wonder).
Jef   Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:18 pm GMT
She is not American. She isn't even native. In her attempt to sound more native and American, she has slurred her words too much to that point that it sounds like she has a speech impediment. The part that really gave it away, though, was "stumbling block". It's just...definitely not American, or native.
eeuuian   Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:16 pm GMT
It definitely does nt sound like any native native US speaker I've ever heard. Of course, it could be an American trying to sound like a Eastern European student of English.
American   Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:46 pm GMT
>> The fact that a British speaker here accepted it for a native accent makes me wonder again about something I've thought about for a while - maybe as a non-native speaker I should aim to speak BrE while in the US and AmE while abroad! That way people might just assume I'm native but from somewhere else ;). (Just kidding, but I do wonder). <<

That does work very well actually. I've done the same with German. And I've met several people here in America that I thought were British, but they actually turned out to be foreigners. But your accent has to be at least as good as this one for it to work.
Uriel   Sun Feb 08, 2009 8:26 am GMT
<<In British English, we tend to use a schwa for all unstressed syllables - as a rule, anyway. Isn't this the case in American English?>>

No, not always. In "accent" we have no schwa -- it really is "ak-sent", with a clear short E sound. In fact, accent can't really be said to have an unstressed syllable per se -- it's more like it has two stressed syllables, with one more pronounced-- like a three or four-syllable word might. Another word that has this pattern is raccoon. I say this as rack-coon, giving both vowels their full sound. There are some people who say ruh-coon, but I don't hear it often.

<<Interesting, because she fooled me!>>

Well, she's trying for MY accent, and I know it intimately -- I can tell when it's a little off. It's just like when British reviews lambaste American actors' attempts to do British accents -- they're good enough for my purposes; I can't tell the difference or hear the mistakes. But a Brit can.

<<So what makes her non native? Forget about the rhythm, she's probably reading, nervous, whatever, and it doesn't sound off to me once you consider that.
Are you saying she can't be native just because of one different vowel in a word? You must have heard every single accent in the US to be sure that's not part of any possible accent, which is impossible.>>

I listened to it a couple of times, and I tried to keep the fact that people often read aloud awkwardly in mind each time. It still didn't account for the differences in some of the vowel qualities. "Stumbling", for instance, sounded more like "stahmbling", which is a U-sound that exists in no variety of American accent and immediately sounds like a foreign mistake. Yeah, there's a fair amount of variation across the country, but there are basic patterns to that variation, and they tend to affect only a certain group of sounds. The short U isn't one of them.