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 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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[–] [S] 2 points 4 hours ago

The correct answer is:

spoilerPolish. Thanks for your guesses and congratulations to all those who were close or even hit the nail on the head, even if somewhat hesitantingly.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago

    1 and 2 sound very British but something sounds a bit off. Number 3 has a stronger accent, but it's still hard to identify, maybe Latvian

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  • [–] 7 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    Absolute wild guess that it's Wales. Mostly based on how there is an expectation it's not well known as a country and vibes on physical appearance.

    My favorite whelsh pronunciation:

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 19 hours ago

    That’s an interesting and unexpected guess. It would seem to me that no. 3 in particular doesn’t sound even remotely Welsh, but perhaps absolutely wild guesses (to use your phrase) dispense with such stereotypical assumptions🙂

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  • [–] 5 points 18 hours ago* (1 child)

    It's not initially obvious but there are hints. Especially with the last and first one (2nd is teaching English peculiarities in slang so is an overly forced accent), but they all appear Slavic-ish too. 20 years ago... immigration from only one country into England comes to mind and that's Poland so their first language is Polish.

    Note that it wasn't the accent that made me choose there. It was to say they weren't native English speakers

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  • [–] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    Listening to 1 and 2 I was wondering whether there was some clever twist I wasn't seeing because they both seemed fairly easy to identify. Then 3 hit me with surprise rhoticity and now I'm confused.

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  • [–] 3 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

    I'd pick Czech overall, for no real reason - they just remind me a bit of one Czech person i know who has spent a long time here. Not strong evidence.

    Otherwise I might have gone for Poland or Baltics somewhere, Swedish/Finnish/Estonian did cross my mind as possible.

    I just don't know enough people from enough countries - especially smaller ones to have confidence. I think you'd have to be quite familiar with the native language to really be sure.

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  • [–] 3 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

    The answer to your question is no, I cannot.

    The accent I hear appears to be based on where they learned English instead of where they are from.

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

    The first speaker had a couple of vowels that gave away he isn't a native speaker, but he's walking the line between uncanny and mastery, so it was hard to pick out enough to guess what his native language might be.

    The second I'm not allowed to watch without a Vimeo account, probably because I'm in Britain. I won't be setting one up today.

    For the third there was a lot more unusual vowel articulation, especially 'a', that made me think Slavic, but I couldn't be any more specific than that.

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  • [–] 3 points 18 hours ago* (1 child)

    Halfway between posh English and Irish...

    I'm guessing Manx.

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  • [–] 1 point 16 hours ago* (1 child)

    Either Estonian or Finnish, would be my guess, based on the soft, shortened ‘s’ and the distinctive short o (‘so’). It doesn’t show the melodic signs of Germanic Scandinavian languages nor the v/w or v/f fusion I’d expect in Latvian etc.

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  • [–] 2 points 18 hours ago (1 child)

    what language it is?

    I didn't catch this before I posted my answer. Are you telling me that English is not their native language?

    Now I'm surprised and curious.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 18 hours ago

    That's right, none of them is a native speaker of English - their English is learned via the standard combination of school, extracurricular courses, media exposure, and other typical means available in largely monolingual countries, and subsequently polished up abroad (at least two of them moved to Anglophone countries for university). Thus, I figured that the undercurrent of their native pronunciation should be sufficiently conspicuous to allow for making some educated guesses about their origin 🙂

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  • [–] 1 point 18 hours ago* (1 child)

    1 sounds slightly NZ to me
    2 sounds like non-english, trying to come off as English
    3 sounds slightly Scottish

    So my answer is one of these:

    • South Africa, because the saffers I've met spoke wildly different dialects
    • UK, because I don't know all of the UK dialects, and person 1 and 2 can just be from an area I'm not familiar with

    Just for the record, English is not my native language.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 hours ago

    spoilerIt's neither South Africa nor the UK, though I'm surprised how often the native speakers of this particular language are mistaken for South Africans, given that I can think of hardly any salient connections between the two🙂

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  • [–] 1 point 18 hours ago (3 children)

    The first two are British. I know regional dialects vary, but I can't identify one from the other.

    The third one sounds like an American, but has a very "professional" dialect. Some people will talk like this for recordings, but since you said she's from the same country as the other ones, I'm guessing she learned her American accent from media, and not from regular conversations.

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  • [–] 4 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

    No way are they English.

    The first two may have spent several years in south east England or spent a long time there - but they're not native speakers. I wonder at what age they stopped being "raised" though as I'd think at least a few formative years spent there to pick up that much of an accent.

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