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I listened to the sample again. I just can't hear the words well enough to judge an accent, but I insist--insist!--that her intonation is strange!!
Need-some-help, please have the speaker repost; the volume is much too low.
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I have never heard any Chinese speaking English like she did. Clearly, that's not a Chinese accent.
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Even when I turn the volume down and focus more on intonation than phonology, she still doesn't sound non-native to me.
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<<I listened to the sample again. I just can't hear the words well enough to judge an accent, but I insist--insist!--that her intonation is strange!!
Need-some-help, please have the speaker repost; the volume is much too low.>>
If you can't even hear the phonology, then how can you jump to the conclusion that she's Chinese? I can hear the recording pretty well when I put my computer at full volume, and the phonology sounds completely native. The intonation just sounds like someone reading a text aloud for the first time.
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Lazar, I can see your point of view.
I am handicapped with my speakers; even at "full blast", what I hear could be described as somebody in the next room speaking just loudly enough to be overheard. With this in mind, the intonation is the first thing that is heard. I--along with two or three other posters---maintain that the intonation is odd to say the least.
If you want to assume that she's a native, then I would submit that the intonation she's using is a deliberate affect; a tone that one would use if she were reading a fairy tale to a child.
This is possible, Lazar. I hear a sing-song, clipped intonation very similar--if not identical--to a Chinese native. But as we have said, this could be a deliberate affect.
If I put my ear all the way to the speaker, individual words are heard. I agree with you that she probably sounds native in that aspect, with some AAVE influences. I submit to you, however, that some of the pronunciation is odd; did you notice this? If she is indeed an African-American native, she certainly does not sound like the African Americans around Reno.
I probably shot at the hip by trying to assess her accent with a much-too-low volume, but please remember, Lazar, two or three other posters did the same thing.
I hope she rerecords.
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<<If you want to assume that she's a native, then I would submit that the intonation she's using is a deliberate affect; a tone that one would use if she were reading a fairy tale to a child.>>
I agree; I think it's a kind of reading intonation. Maybe spontaneous speech would be better.
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Lazar, you can say that again!
Also, it needs to be louder, so we can hear the words without putting our ears directly on the speaker...
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An afterthought: This has been a learning experience for me. I guess I am a little embarrassed because I was fooled.
From now on, I don't think I will try to assess an accent unless I can hear the speaker clearly...
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She is definitely a native speaker. People rarely have proper intonation when they are reading some random text. It's not like she's a newscaster or a professional voice artist. She sounds like a bored teenager reading something random she doesn't care about just for the sake of proving she speaks English.
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Guest, you--and Lazar--are right. I made a hasty judgment based on a very low volume with inadequate speakers; never again. (I should have believed Lazar the first time--I consider him a reliable source.)
That being said, I did hear some of the words--the words that I could HEAR--pronounced oddly, seemingly inconsistent with AAVE. Do you agree?
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Doesn't sound very AAVE to me. Sounds like general American English.
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Did anyone else hear her trill some of her r's? And her s's and sh's sound a little odd to me. She could be a native portuguese speaker. Or a native english speaker with a latin american influence to her accent who isn't the greatest at reading aloud.
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Ok, some new info: she refused to provide a better sample, however, she fessed up she's not a native. She's a Pole, having lived in the US (dunno the exact location) for quite a few years and graduated from an American school.
Thank all of you for your contribution.
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