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Am I understandable?

Appropriate-Care6332
Hey fellas, My job requires me to interact with clients in the USA, and I want to make sure that they can understand me. I have received both positive and negative feedback regarding understandability. How can I improve my accent to get a neutral accent? Is it realistic for me (32 M) to aim for a standard North American accent? Please find the audio at [https://voca.ro/1c5lGHGHLT4M](https://voca.ro/1c5lGHGHLT4M) The audio sounds so different from how it sounds in my head. Additional notes: I am not musically trained and have difficulty understanding tonal variations in speech. In my first language, 1. /z/ is replaced by /s/ 2. /v/ sound is between the English /v/ and English /w/. There is no distinction between /v/ and /w/. 3. /th/ and /dh/ are not fricatives. I cannot get these phonemes correct, especially when they appear at the beginning of a word 4. /p/,/k/,/g/,/t/ ,/b/,/d/ don't have that plosive air release. 5. Vowels are so confusing that I don't know where to start. None of the English vowels are in my first language. I have a hard time distinguishing between various American English vowel sounds.

5 comments

freegumaintfree•
You are understandable but reading a text does not necessarily indicate your understandability when you speak spontaneously.
SpanishLearnerUSA•
You are easy to understand. You have an accent, but you sound fine.
Allyc80•
Just speak slowly and you will be fine
PrincessaLinda•
Whoever said they cannot understand 40% of what you say is either lying or hard of hearing. Ignore that. One thing you might try to do is pay attention to differences between British vowels and American vowels, specifically "a". You said "rather" in the first recording and "drastic" in the second one with what I would consider British pronunciation. "Rahhhther" and "drahstic" with the A sounding like the word "father", or "cot". Americans will say these words with a hard A, like the A in "cat" or "fat". Post another recording with you pronouncing these two specific words differently, I wanna hear how they sound. I have a feeling if you could Americanize those vowel sounds you would be even more understandable. But please understand, overall, your accent is very understandable, I had no trouble understanding you.
IrishFlukey•
You can be understood perfectly. You have nothing to worry about.