6 ms·

Victor's problem isn't really the vowels or pacing. The final consonants are soft or not really audible. I am not hearing the /ŋ/ of "long" as the most marked e

Victor's problem isn't really the vowels or pacing. The final consonants are soft or not really audible. I am not hearing the /ŋ/ of "long" as the most marked example. It sounds closer to "law". In his "improved" recording he hasn't fixed this. I sometimes see content on social media encouraging people to sound more native or improve their accent. But IMO it's perfectly ok to have an accent, as long as the speech meets some baseline of intelligibility. (So Victor needs to work on "long" but not "days".) I've even come across people who are trying to mimick a native accent but lose intelligibility, where they'd sound better with their foreign accent. (An example I've seen is a native Spanish speaker trying to imitate the American accent's intervocalic T and D, and I don't understand them. A Spanish /t/ or /d/ would be different from most English language accents, but be way more understandable.)

anadalakra 1y ago
"If Victor wanted to move beyond this point, the sound-by-sound phonetic analysis available in the BoldVoice app would allow him to understand the patterns in pronunciation and stress that contribute to Eliza’s accent and teach him how to apply them in his own speech." Indeed Victor would likely receive a personalized lesson and practice on the NG sound on the app.
JoshTko 1y ago
Thank you for pinpoints my confusion/disconnect on what lack of improvement that I was sensing. There was an improvement on pacing, and cadence, yes, but that was not the main challenge with Victors accent. Visually I'd say victor improved by at most 5% and not 50% as indicated by the visualization. In some regards it was even harder to understand than the original due to speed and cadence without improvement in core pronunciation.
gxs 1y ago
Yeah, as long as it’s intelligible an accent is perfectly fine It’s also perfectly fine to want to sound like a native speaker - whether it be because they are self conscious, think it will benefit them in some way, or simply want to feel like they are speaking “correctly” Sorry to pick on you, it’s just amazing to me how sensitive we are to “inclusivity” to the point where we almost discourage people wanting to fit in
- orbital-decay 1y ago
  Intelligibility heavily depends on what you expect to hear, and that depends on your native language or even locality. Even a tiny amount of French accent in English makes it sound like gibberish to me (but not others, and I don't have this issue with other thick accents). I'm sure my native accent is also incompatible with someone else's ears. That's the reason people pay accent coaches.
  - gxs 1y ago
    Yes, should go without saying that intelligibly is perfectly provided it’s intelligible in whatever context you’re in
  - vintermann 1y ago
    I understand the feeling, but I can usually adapt pretty quickly when someone speaks in a very unexpected accent. Sometimes I can even remember the sounds well enough that I can reinterpret it on the fly without having to ask them to repeat.
- matsemann 1y ago
  Being legible also means to cater to your audience. I work in an English-speaking company in a country where English isn't the native language, with loads of non-native speakers from around the world. Sometimes the native/best English speakers are the ones being misunderstood, because they use idioms or advanced words. None of us are bad at English, and I don't mean that I need to "dumb it down" (if anything, verbally I'm one of the worser ones), but I don't feel like I'm missing out on speaking simple with an accent.
  - dhosek 1y ago
    Generalizing from my own experience, it’s easier for me to understand a non-native Spanish speaker than a native Spanish speaker and I would guess that the same applies with ESL speakers. One thing I found really fascinating is that even though I’d never studied French¹, I actually had an easier time understanding a conversation between my ex-wife and her aunt in French than when they spoke Spanish in which I was functional (my skill in the language has gone up a great deal since then so that I now read fluently, and speak and listen reasonably well, albeit less well than I would like). ⸻ 1. Thanks to my kids studying French on Duolingo and my joining them, I can no longer say that I’ve never studied it.
vitus 1y ago
It's fascinating that "long" is the biggest tip-off you have, given that Mandarin Chinese (based on the mention of "a noticeably strong Chinese accent") does have words that have the same IPA pronunciation (if you set aside tone) [0] as an American whose speech follows the cot-caught merger [1]. Meanwhile the thing that stood out to me in the initial recording were the vowel sounds: for instance, "young" sounded almost like it rhymed with "long" before training. (That makes sense, since Mandarin similarly has a word with that sound, as can be found in the common last name Yang [2].) Incidentally, Mandarin has words that sound like "lung" (e.g. the word for "cold" [3]), but if you replace the "l" sound at the front with a "y" sound, depending on which of two transformations you use, it turns the vowel sound into a long o [4] (near rhyme with "lone"). (There is another transformation that you can use that results in a leading "y" in pinyin, but in that specific case, the vowel turns into a long e, and the "y" is largely silent (e.g. the word for "solid" [5]).) In the last recording, Victor is clearly rushing through the sentence, and you can tell that where he previously had a clear "s" ending for the word "days", it's now slurred into a "th" sound. Agreed that that's actually a net negative for intelligibility. The wiktionary links below have clips of pronunciation. I will note that not all native speakers have a Standard Chinese accent [6,7], so there are assuredly some differences in pronunciation to be expected depending on exactly which region said individual hails from. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B5%AA https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B5%AA [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/long https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/long [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/y%C3%A1ng#Mandarin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/y%C3%A1ng#Mandarin [3] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%86%B7 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%86%B7 [4] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%A8 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%A8 [5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A1%AC https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A1%AC [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin
screcth 1y ago
A very important part of people trusting you is them being able to understand what you say without making extra efforts compared to a native speaker. An easy way to improve intonation and fluency is to imitate a native speaker. Copying things like the intervocalic T and D is a consequence of that. It would be easier for a native Spanish speaker to say the Spanish /t/ and /d/ but intonation and fluency would be impaired. The sounds don't "flow" as they should.
- asveikau 1y ago
  The specific problem is that American intervocalic /t/ and /d/ is very similar to Spanish /ɾ/. But if they don't get it right it's not perceived as the right phoneme. The Spanish /t/ is more dental and the undervocalic /d/ is more of a [ð] but they will sound correct in English.
- yodsanklai 1y ago
  > An easy way to improve intonation and fluency is to imitate a native speaker. There are lots of variations in English pronunciation. Singaporean, Australian or Scottish native speakers do sound very differently. I don't know to what extent they benefit from adjusting their accent if working in a different English speaking country to match the local dialect. Also, as a non-native speaker I wonder if it's worth practicing my accent considering that everybody has a different accent anyway. Rather than trying to mimic a north american accent (which I'll never be able to do anyway), I'd be more interested to identify and fix the major issues in my prononciation.
oscarfree 1y ago
People have all sorts of motivations for learning languages and accents. Right now, I'm using this tech to work on my accent in Spanish. Honestly I would rather mumble almost unintelligibly with an decent Mexican accent than speak Spanish slowly and clearly with an American accent. There is a difficult but necessary period of learning an accent where intelligibility drops. For a while, I made a strange [ð]-like noise when learning the alveolar trill (rolled R), and it would have been more intelligible to use something like alveolar tap. But, I built up the muscle memory, and can now make the correct sound. Hearing a version of myself (rather than a different speaker) gives me a more useful target to mimic, and the distance metric gives me a useful measure of whether I'm closer or further from the target.

anadalakra 1y ago

"If Victor wanted to move beyond this point, the sound-by-sound phonetic analysis available in the BoldVoice app would allow him to understand the patterns in pronunciation and stress that contribute to Eliza’s accent and teach him how to apply them in his own speech." Indeed Victor would likely receive a personalized lesson and practice on the NG sound on the app.

JoshTko 1y ago

Thank you for pinpoints my confusion/disconnect on what lack of improvement that I was sensing. There was an improvement on pacing, and cadence, yes, but that was not the main challenge with Victors accent. Visually I'd say victor improved by at most 5% and not 50% as indicated by the visualization. In some regards it was even harder to understand than the original due to speed and cadence without improvement in core pronunciation.

gxs 1y ago

Yeah, as long as it’s intelligible an accent is perfectly fine It’s also perfectly fine to want to sound like a native speaker - whether it be because they are self conscious, think it will benefit them in some way, or simply want to feel like they are speaking “correctly” Sorry to pick on you, it’s just amazing to me how sensitive we are to “inclusivity” to the point where we almost discourage people wanting to fit in

orbital-decay 1y ago
Intelligibility heavily depends on what you expect to hear, and that depends on your native language or even locality. Even a tiny amount of French accent in English makes it sound like gibberish to me (but not others, and I don't have this issue with other thick accents). I'm sure my native accent is also incompatible with someone else's ears. That's the reason people pay accent coaches.
- gxs 1y ago
  Yes, should go without saying that intelligibly is perfectly provided it’s intelligible in whatever context you’re in
- vintermann 1y ago
  I understand the feeling, but I can usually adapt pretty quickly when someone speaks in a very unexpected accent. Sometimes I can even remember the sounds well enough that I can reinterpret it on the fly without having to ask them to repeat.
matsemann 1y ago
Being legible also means to cater to your audience. I work in an English-speaking company in a country where English isn't the native language, with loads of non-native speakers from around the world. Sometimes the native/best English speakers are the ones being misunderstood, because they use idioms or advanced words. None of us are bad at English, and I don't mean that I need to "dumb it down" (if anything, verbally I'm one of the worser ones), but I don't feel like I'm missing out on speaking simple with an accent.
- dhosek 1y ago
  Generalizing from my own experience, it’s easier for me to understand a non-native Spanish speaker than a native Spanish speaker and I would guess that the same applies with ESL speakers. One thing I found really fascinating is that even though I’d never studied French¹, I actually had an easier time understanding a conversation between my ex-wife and her aunt in French than when they spoke Spanish in which I was functional (my skill in the language has gone up a great deal since then so that I now read fluently, and speak and listen reasonably well, albeit less well than I would like). ⸻ 1. Thanks to my kids studying French on Duolingo and my joining them, I can no longer say that I’ve never studied it.

vitus 1y ago

It's fascinating that "long" is the biggest tip-off you have, given that Mandarin Chinese (based on the mention of "a noticeably strong Chinese accent") does have words that have the same IPA pronunciation (if you set aside tone) [0] as an American whose speech follows the cot-caught merger [1]. Meanwhile the thing that stood out to me in the initial recording were the vowel sounds: for instance, "young" sounded almost like it rhymed with "long" before training. (That makes sense, since Mandarin similarly has a word with that sound, as can be found in the common last name Yang [2].) Incidentally, Mandarin has words that sound like "lung" (e.g. the word for "cold" [3]), but if you replace the "l" sound at the front with a "y" sound, depending on which of two transformations you use, it turns the vowel sound into a long o [4] (near rhyme with "lone"). (There is another transformation that you can use that results in a leading "y" in pinyin, but in that specific case, the vowel turns into a long e, and the "y" is largely silent (e.g. the word for "solid" [5]).) In the last recording, Victor is clearly rushing through the sentence, and you can tell that where he previously had a clear "s" ending for the word "days", it's now slurred into a "th" sound. Agreed that that's actually a net negative for intelligibility. The wiktionary links below have clips of pronunciation. I will note that not all native speakers have a Standard Chinese accent [6,7], so there are assuredly some differences in pronunciation to be expected depending on exactly which region said individual hails from. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B5%AA https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B5%AA [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/long https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/long [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/y%C3%A1ng#Mandarin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/y%C3%A1ng#Mandarin [3] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%86%B7 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%86%B7 [4] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%A8 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%A8 [5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A1%AC https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A1%AC [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin

screcth 1y ago

A very important part of people trusting you is them being able to understand what you say without making extra efforts compared to a native speaker. An easy way to improve intonation and fluency is to imitate a native speaker. Copying things like the intervocalic T and D is a consequence of that. It would be easier for a native Spanish speaker to say the Spanish /t/ and /d/ but intonation and fluency would be impaired. The sounds don't "flow" as they should.

asveikau 1y ago
The specific problem is that American intervocalic /t/ and /d/ is very similar to Spanish /ɾ/. But if they don't get it right it's not perceived as the right phoneme. The Spanish /t/ is more dental and the undervocalic /d/ is more of a [ð] but they will sound correct in English.
yodsanklai 1y ago
> An easy way to improve intonation and fluency is to imitate a native speaker. There are lots of variations in English pronunciation. Singaporean, Australian or Scottish native speakers do sound very differently. I don't know to what extent they benefit from adjusting their accent if working in a different English speaking country to match the local dialect. Also, as a non-native speaker I wonder if it's worth practicing my accent considering that everybody has a different accent anyway. Rather than trying to mimic a north american accent (which I'll never be able to do anyway), I'd be more interested to identify and fix the major issues in my prononciation.

oscarfree 1y ago

People have all sorts of motivations for learning languages and accents. Right now, I'm using this tech to work on my accent in Spanish. Honestly I would rather mumble almost unintelligibly with an decent Mexican accent than speak Spanish slowly and clearly with an American accent. There is a difficult but necessary period of learning an accent where intelligibility drops. For a while, I made a strange [ð]-like noise when learning the alveolar trill (rolled R), and it would have been more intelligible to use something like alveolar tap. But, I built up the muscle memory, and can now make the correct sound. Hearing a version of myself (rather than a different speaker) gives me a more useful target to mimic, and the distance metric gives me a useful measure of whether I'm closer or further from the target.