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Can you tell the native language of the people from these clips? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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I thought I might share a small phonetic game/challenge with you. All 3 individuals in the attached clips were born and raised in the same non-Anglophone country and speak the same native language. Can you tell, based on the peculiarities of their English pronunciation, what language it is?

  1. https://vimeo.com/1205985914
  2. https://vimeo.com/1206296678
  3. https://vimeo.com/1206827782
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[–] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

The first two sound native UK to me, but I'm a yank.

I can clock the third one as foreign because she overdoes our rhotic r which isn't uncommon for assiduous US-English learners.

No idea where they're all from... but I will say blended accents are so delicious to my ear; like a Korean who learned English in Texas or (much more common), a German who learned UK pronunciation.

[And, yes, I know it's bias to not hear one's native accent as an accent.]

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    "but I will say blended accents are so delicious to my ear"

    Yes, they sound unique, hence I'm interested in the question of the degree to which they can be decomposed into their individual elements in the ears of linguistically sensitive listeners. Insofar as they can't - which seems to be the case here, at least as far as you are concerned - they can be said to add an authentically novel quality to the phonetic repertoire of human speech. Also, I have an impression that, unsurprisingly, they tend to be particularly clear and crisp, since they are used by individuals who consciously want to be understood. As a result, the phonetic features of their constitutive languages tend to be articulated very distinctly, which is a pleasure to listen to.

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