JCC Test your fake British or American accent

It is a softer Scottish accent so that might be the case.

Also, being a British teenager, she might be drunk.

 

If she's a Scot she's definitely pissed.

 

Interesting. Very interesting. I'm going to sleep, but I'll be curious to see what the likes of @Diggy, @Darth Punk, and @a star war have to say.

 

3 sounds the most genuine. 1 sounds like the one that has spent time away from Scotland to me. There were a couple of words that sounded a bit off.2 sounds the least genuine, but is very good.

 

It's a trick question because she is all 3.

 

I don't see how that's any of your business and I'll thank you to forget what you think you saw because you don't know what you're talking about actually.

 

Okay team, here's the verdict:

#1- that's me. I'm a nerd on a Star Wars board.

#2- a 25 year old who grew up in Edinburgh until she was 18, then moved to London.

#3- a 23 year old who has lived her whole life in Edinburgh.


Unfortunately IDEA didn't have any samples from Edinburgh that were quite my age. It's all very young or old people. They had Glasgow ones my age, but like I said, I don't do a Glaswegian accent. Not yet anyway. Much harder.

I think the most important thing is that Diggy thought #2 was the least authentic-sounding. The real question is.. Was my accent better than you thought it would be?

For the record, my own assessment of how good my accent is was "better than most American actors". So that's the benchmark. The very, very low benchmark because I can't even think of a good one

 

I thought your accent was very convincing, though as I said accents are not my thing. The first time I heard it I thought "that one's genuine for sure", but then I heard the other two and they sounded genuine too. In the end it really came down to #2 and #3 being more relaxed (and it helped that Ender had indicated he thought it was #1).

As for Glaswegian, I tend to be able to understand only one word in three.

 

Ha, 1 sounded far older to me than you are.

As for whether it was good or not...did we have a wager of any kind?

 

I called out #2 too, and first. How dare you.

But seriously, I don't know we can judge. I think it would depend on how convincingly you could carry on a conversation in that accent. I could imitate a number of accents whilst reading text, but I could only really convincingly do a proper Cape accent for hours at a time without giving away I wasn't a japie ('yarpie", not jaypee).

 

I actually know this passage by heart and tried to recite it by actually reading it, because I actually didn't want it to seem like I was too practiced at this passage. A lot of readers on this particular database are less relaxed than the samples I wound up going with.

So basically, I overthought it. I'm sure this shocks no one

 

Oh, we are going to need you to get a Sound Cloud account.

 

I wanna hear it! I haven't tried learning any South African accents. Although by "learning" I just mean absorbing. I've never tried to read up on how to do any particular accent. Just go by war.

Honestly languages and accents are my thing. I did get offered a 3/4 scholarship by USC if I'd do linguistics in undergrad, but a liberal arts study of multiple things seemed better suited to my writing goals. So now I just learn languages for fun, like a total non-dweeb.

And Ender, I actually think I'm better at it while carrying on a conversation than at reading. And I recorded mine before I listened to the others. I definitely didn't break them down and imitate any particular phonemes. I didn't want to cheat, as it were. And I picked a part of the passage with some of the harder phonemes for Scottish accents (goose in particular. Not remotely like the American double o).

 

I will set it up just now.

 

I wanna hear your fake American accent, too, Ender.

 

I'm eager to here his greek.

 

Can we hear your jaypee? @jp-30

 

South African will be as easy for you as Australian, because there's something about the climate in the southern hemisphere which makes people warm and lazy, and so we probably do the least amount of work in our accents. It makes it easier therefore for us to train ourselves to do the work and impersonate accents, since we don't have to "unlearn" subconscious muscle movements. Watching Americans try to reshape their mouths around Mandarin, and failing, showed that it's not just English either.

White saffers have one of two distinct accent types - depending on if you're English or Afrikaaner. The Afrikaaner accent is the "diplomatic immunity" accent we know from films. It's very harsh due to the Dutch influence. It also sounds like you're being an arrogant, condescening w anchor - the perception of Saffers we often get.

The Cape, though... if you listen to a Cape accent, a general Australian accent, and a softer Kiwi accent like Jaypes has, and they're really similar. If you want in, that's where:

 

But was it better than David Tennant's American accent?

 

I only know some New Zealand English, due to having watched the successful documentary series we all also saw: "“Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.”".

 

In fairness, most Americans can't even tell the difference between, say, Australian and South African accents. I don't understand how because to me they sound distinctly different.

I'd actually like to hear some foreign language stuff, too. Your Mandarin, for instance. Maybe I can convince @JoinTheSchwarz that there are *some* white people who can roll their Spainish RRs

Yes. Because David Tennant's American accent is terrible. I don't really blame him, because I can't think of any Scottish people who can do American accents really well. Ewan McGregor's has gotten better over time, but it still doesn't sound close to authentic.

General American is, I think, one of the hardest English-speaking accents actually. Hence why I'd love to hear some people's attempts.

 

Not happening!