Please, can you guys tell me what makes my accent so strong that the accent machine can detect it every time I try with 100% confidence?

I would work on your closed vowels and your voiced/voiceless consonants. I wouldn't be able to distinguish between "sounts" (...ts) and "sounds" (...dz) with your accent. All your vowels also feel like they're very open which is a classic give away, especially for western romance and Asian languages. English has a ridiculously large inventory of vowel sounds. If I had to randomly guess, the quality of your Ls and Rs sound Southeast Asian to me. The L in relax, for example, should be much darker than the L you're producing.

A couple thoughts: 1) your English is fantastic and 100% of native speakers would be able to clearly understand you. 2) I most definitely cannot tell you with certainty what accent that is, but maybe someone with more familiarity of your region could. 3) there is nothing negative about having an identifiable accent! The goal of learning a second language is to be able to communicate quickly and clearly, which you’re already doing!

I'm not sure why you see this as a problem in need of addressing. Your accent is distinct but your English is clear and intelligible, as well as good. Native English speakers have accents too, and I frankly understand you better than I understand the accent of many other native English speakers. I wouldn't really worry about it, me personally.

I hear southeast Asian. Laotian, Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese. In your recording the most heavily accented words are "average life". Rather than two very distinct words sounding like AVRIJ LIFE, your accent sounds like "AVIJJALYE(f)" The parts that stand out most are the heavy stress on the I sound in "life", the lack of a well pronounced R in average, and the slight "ah" sound that connects average and life. There should be a harder separation. Usually those words would not run together when spoken by a native speaker. Edit: re listened any you are saying "everyday life". Similar problem with the words running together but in addition your D sounds like Dj. In US English the D is very hard (no jokes thx). In certain accents of British English "day" can sound a bit like "jay" to someone in the States. The Y sound in every is much too short. You're looking for "EVREE-DAY" and instead saying something that sounds like a rushed "evrijè". In fact this specfic word sounds the way a person from India would say it if they learned it from a Brit.

I would guess you’re Filipino maybe from this accent. Definitely southeast Asian. Your English is excellent. I wouldn’t be worried about your accent at all

I couldn't be any more precise but it sounds East Asian to me.

It took me a few listens to get “or birds chirping”, but that’s probably more to do with my ears than your accent 😅 Everything else was perfectly understandable and your accent isn’t what I would call strong. Some of this is subjective because native English speakers can have quite a lot of different vowel sounds amongst themselves depending on the area they live or grew up in. It sounded native until you said “ocean waves”. You hid the “n” a little bit and over exaggerated the vowels a little bit. In general most of your vowel sounds are perfect but some of your vowel sounds are 95% native and have a tendency to sound a little bit away from where they should be. But it’s so hard to say exactly where or in what direction. “Great way” was another one, those two words sounded a bit too short and separated. “Everyday life” - the end of “everyday” was a bit cut off. “Birds” sounded a bit short. “Buuuurds chuuurping”. (I exaggerate). But in general these are very tiny clues that give me an impression that you might be from China or Singapore or Hong Kong or Philippines or Vietnam or Malaysia or anywhere really around that region. It’s not strong enough for me to say where. Which basically is a testament to how powerful the app or website is that you are using. I wonder if it could say what city I was born in too, haha. Anyway, I love accents, they are awesome. So don’t get hung-up on striving for 100.00% when you are already 99.65%. I feel that the minute extra step will take an absurd amount of effort that you could spend on much more exciting journeys of learning.

Friggin egg, this website is good, busted on first try 😂 Tried again and it got a different result, which happens to be the country I currently live in, so that also makes sense. https://start.boldvoice.com/accent-oracle For those who want to try.

I would guess that you’re from somewhere in East Asia? (Vietnam maybe?) I’m East Asian myself and the accent sounds kind of similar to ours, although yours is very subtle imo. I would also argue that AI is better at detecting accents than humans do since AI has enormous datasets of people speaking with accents.

AI is very good these days. I think an average native speaker could tell you have a little bit of an accent, but wouldn't know which country you were from. I also think an average non-native speaker would probably think you sound native.

Ironically, you're speaking too clearly. Especially the way you stress "to" every time. Makes you sound like you're from India or something. https://youtu.be/WxmEQsI_epM

It's definitely the vowels that are giving you away to the accent checker. Especially the Os in "ocean" and "photos".

Sounds fine to me. You don't need to reduce your accent anymore

My guess from listening to you is that your first language is tonal. People whose first languages are tonal tend to keep elements of that in their English, but it sounds unnatural to native speakers because tone doesn't convey meaning in the same way-- or alternately they overcorrect and their English sounds too flat and monotone. Try listening to some professionally produced English content, like audiobooks from big publishers, and pay attention to the volume and pitch of the reader's voice and how it varies through the flow of the sentence.

You can try our app to improve your accent. After Sign up click on Tutor and then select English as second language, you can practice speaking, vocabulary, etc. It also has pronunciation evaluation: https://rogfy.com/demo

Confidence isn't enough if you can't even tell what you're doing wrong. DM me if you want. I do free assessments, esp regarding accent.

One item to consider, Americans have accents too. Some are more pronounced but I can tell whether someone is from north or south even inside my own state. To sound truly American [or other native English] you would have to adopt an accent. Even non regional like Ashton Kurcher has a accent to it. Side note you sound great. I would have been confident you were south east Asian but you are very clear and any native speaker could understand you.

I wish I was as good with the Bajan accent, doubt it would be able to identify it. It is the native language here but full of dialect and figgers of speech

You do sound like a native Mandarin speaker to me (I’m very familiar with the accent) but I just want to emphasize that your pronunciation is excellent. Honestly, improving past this point may require an accent coach.

I would’ve guessed Filipino

You sound great! Two suggestions for you, since you asked: 1. Pay attention to the letter s at the ends of words. It makes an “s” sound when it follows a voiceless sound like in “cats” but it makes a “z” sound when it follows a voiced sound like in “dogs.” Here is a good lesson: [https://www.grammar.cl/english/pronunciation-final-s.htm](https://www.grammar.cl/english/pronunciation-final-s.htm) 2. The to gets reduced when it isn’t stressed. The vowel sound changes to a schwa sound.

I think the biggest give away was the control of tone in your sentence. When you said 'has a calming effect' - you did a raised tone for calming - which no native speaker would really do.

Youre perfectly understandable, although if I had to say, I think you are over-pronouncing your vowels a little. But theres nothing wrong with having an accent.

Sounds Asian maybe Chinese or SE Asian to me? Something about the vowels and the cadence

Your accent is very understandable and pleasing, but does not sound native. Assuming you're going for a North American accent, your vowels need to sound ... well, uglier. The most noticeable thing to me was that your long A sounds like a short E. Your TODAY sounds like "todeh", ESCAPE sounds like "escep". That's probably why the program was 100% sure about you. That said, English has a wide variety of accents, and yours is lovely and understandable. TODAY and ESCAPE are two words that would sound completely different with, for example, a US accent vs. an Australian accent. Yours is neither, but should be perfectly understandable anywhere.

You definitely have an Asian accent but that's not a bad thing. I am a native speaker and I have still had other native speakers from the same country think I have an accent.

To me it sounds like you're probably from China. The big giveaway is your vowels. Your e sounds more like an a in words like "better" which you pronounce closer to "batter".

I would guess Chinese? Definitely east asian. Others have mentioned the vowel sounds and enunciating certain consonant clusters so I'll just mention one thing I noticed that I haven't seen anyone mention yet. One of the giveaways is where you put your stresses in your sentences. If you listen to native speakers there's a certain cadence to our speech patterns in terms of which words and syllables get stressed. For example in one sentence you say something like "to escape the stresses of everyday life". Your voice goes up in pitch and stresses the first syllable of "everyday" and then your pitch falls with the rest of that phrase "everyday life". Most native speakers would put more stress on the word "life" I see this a lot in people whose native language is Chinese. They seem to struggle with which words in a sentence to stress so their speech patterns often sound a little awkward. That said, you're perfectly understandable. I wouldn't worry about your accent too much. I can't imagine anyone having any difficulty understanding you.

I tried it as a Native English speaker and accidentally said close (like closing a shop) instead of close (proximity). Forgot how to English for a second there.

Many times, not always, I can tell when someone answers the phone if they’re black or white or Asian or Hispanic or Indian by the way they speak. So it’s probably like that.

I would guess East Asian maybe Japanese. I don't think there's shame in having an accent. It shows you know how to learn another language! That's actually a huge flex. I'm only able to converse in one language. Your English is really clear and easy to understand.

I noticed in "effect" the second "e" was mispronounced as "a" like in "fact." It should be the "e" as in "February." Everyday was not stressed properly either, you over shortened the a in "day." Everyday is pronounced like "every day," for the most part. Some social dialects shorten it, for example pronouncing "Tuesday" /tuzdi/

I know this isn’t really what you are asking, but I would not worry about accent reduction!! I understand that people do have their own reasons for wanting to have more neutral accents but in most circumstance it is not necessary! There are English speakers all over the world that speak legitimate English and they do NOT all have native accents. All the different accents and varieties of English are what make our language beautiful. English speakers are very forgiving with accents and different dialects (because there are just so many of us) so accent differences don’t always lead to confusion or miscommunication. I also say to the people who try to learn only a specific accent that they are only hurting themselves by setting themselves up to not be able to identify other accents. Talk to and learn from people of all accents! Okay getting off my soapbox now.

The rhythm of your speech at the end of recording 1 is off. "Everyday" has the stress in the wrong place and the end of the word is elided excessively. For example. Your speech is generally good and easily understandable but the accent is nearly as obvious as listening to Emanuel Macron speaking English, for example.

I’m an NZer who’s lived 2 decades in the U.K. My NZ accent is flat, but still identifiable to native Uk population. Accent Oracle couldn’t place my accent “You sound like a native English speaker – whether from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or elsewhere. I couldn’t identify any distinct non-native accent.” What a load of bollox. I have a clear accent. Pay no attention to that app.

You’re easy to understand, but you may want to look into activities to improve speaking with the rhythm of English. I could hear that you spoke a tonal language because the rhythm was off. You may also want to work on speaking less clearly. It sounds like you’re trying to enunciate really clearly, but native English speakers don’t actually do that. Remember that everyone has an accent, even native speakers. Language is for communication and it sounds like you can do that.

Your accent is barely noticeable and sounds nice to the ear.

My guess would be that your native language is Asian and tonal. Your speech is very clear and easy to understand though, so I hope you don’t worry too much about your accent! One thing that could maybe help is paying attention to the rhythm of English speech… listen to natural speech and repeat/imitate it, paying attention to the stressed parts of the whole sentence, and HOW they’re stressed— is it volume, word length/word reduction, etc? Mimicking the rhythm of English speech will help you overall, I think!

I tested my accent using this site, and I'm 99% sure it's guessing by your IP address or just randomly. I'm from Eastern Europe, living in a Mediterranean country, the 2 places' local language could not have any more different accent / sound. Based on the expats I'm surrounded by they can never guess where I'm from, I have a fairly neutral accent... I got the country I'm residing in as my result, I don't even speak the local language, whenever i greet locals they immediately know I don't speak their language.

r/judgemyaccent might be able to help you too, in case there isn't enough good advice here already. Just fyi :)

You're going to have an accent if you're a non-native speaker. I've learned to just roll with it :)

1.) First off you have great English! Excellent job I can tell you’ve worked hard 2.) There is nothing wrong with having an accent 3.) I personally think that the thing that is your give a way is your sound annotation. I think you tend to put stree on the wrong part of the word, And pacing of the word For example “calming effect “ you said “calming e~ffect”. Also your pacing tends to pick up and drop at times This let me know that your at least not where I am from as we have a different pacing of speech in the south but again there is no right or wrong accent ;)

Everyone on the entire planet, who is able to speak, has an accident. I’m not sure why you are concerned about it.

Try the IPA pronunciation chart, YouTube has a lot of videos with examples of all American English sounds, that will help you a lot

I can't tell where you're from, but I can tell within somewhere between a few words and a sentence or two that you are likely not a native speaker. That isn't really a criticism, it's just how it is for most people. Maybe you have a tonal native language, something is just a little bit off in that regard, but it's hard for me to pin down exactly what, sorry! A mix of fluctuating where it shouldn't and being flat where it should. You pronounce "weekend" and "cleaning", a little strangely. You slightly tripped over "calming" and "everyday". The length of pauses between words and phrases is a little off. In general the vowel sounds are a bit of a mish-mash of different native (US) accents. (Eg "I even find", the "I" is pronounced a bit like AAVE to my non-American ear, ie like "ah" rather than "eye"). Having said all that: you speak very clearly and with a fairly slight accent. It's not at all a barrier to comprehension.

Your vowels tend to be "tighter" and higher than General American, which sounds like what you are going for. It isn't what I would consider a "strong" accent. Almost all your consonants are how an American would say them, and your vowels are close.

It’s important to keep in mind that, especially in major Anglophone metropolitan areas, hearing heavily accented English is really really common. No one really cares that much about perfectly pronounced English especially in America.

Something Asian. Final consonants are missing or not said clearly. The vowel in work was wrong. You may be retroflexing your R. It sounds like you have learnt American English, so I hesitate to comment beyond that because I'm not sure which aspects are your native accent and which are due to an American accent.

I'm not French but it gave me a french accent. I'm 🥖 now. Oui oui

I’m also not a native english speaker and I definitely have an accent but I don’t mind! English is spoken in so many places in so many different ways (eg. T&T accent), none are right or wrong. I would say embrace your accent as it makes you unique😌 we don’t need to sound like everyone else 🧚🏼‍♀️✨

You speak very clearly

What stood out to me is how you said "ocean" and "everyday." I don't think I would have understood the individual word out of the context of the sentence.

Your accent isn't strong. After the first several words I really didn't think I could place it. By the end of the first recording I could hear east Asia. Here's the thing though, everyone has an accent. I sound like someone from Oklahoma. You sound like someone from Asia (but not India, that's a different accent) unless you are trying to audition for a role as an American you are good. There are accents that are so strong many people can't understand them easily, yours isn't one of these. I have worked with people whose grasp of English is bad enough that I know it caused me to discount their input (requiring a conscious effort to remember that the person isn't dumb, I just can't understand them) you are very easy to understand and shouldn't run into this.

I just tried the site and as an American from the south it said I sounded Filipino... I am currently living in the Philippines so I think it's relying heavily on location data over actual analysis.

vowels are somewhat over pronounced and there is a small issue with distinction between similar consonant sounds (specifically with diphthongs), but, honestly, i wouldn't call your accent strong as a native speaker. i can tell it's not your native language, but you're very easy to understand and have good pronunciation.

To me your accent sounds like a native Chinese speaker but with the pattern of Werner Herzog when he speaks in English! It has a kind of documentary style to it. I like it.

I would have identified you as a native speaker of a Chinese language, primarily by the vowel sounds. But your English pronunciation is excellent and IMO trying to "erase" your accent wouldn't be a good use of your time.

Your English is really good. I hear two things to work on if you’re trying to sound like a native speaker. The cadence. What I mean is, you’re enunciating each word fully and it makes it sound “choppy”. Native speakers slur the words together. Your vowels, particularly the letter O. I’m sure there’s a name for it, but they’re flat. When you said “over” it sounds great, copy that. When you said “I” it sounds like “ah”. Practice it with an e sound; ah-ee.

1. You do have a very obviously East Asian accent. It is subtle but there is no way you could miss it listening to it. 2. You have excellent English pronunciation. You do not need to get rid of your accent, you just need to make sure that you can be understood. I can't believe anyone would have a hard time understanding you as you speak right now. Just don't stress out about it and make sure you focus on being understood, not necessarily losing the accent.

If i were that chatbot, i would simply take a look at your ip address...

Taiwan is my guess

Your accent is detectable. That doesn't mean it is bad. Your english sounds pretty flawless, and your diction is clear and not 'foreign' sounding. I lived in a predominantly Asian neighborhood in San Francisco for over 30 years. Your accent is less noticeable than most of the people I knew. If I was talking to you at the bus stop, I would assume you were an Asian American whose parents immigrated to the USA. In other words, a native speaker with a trace of accent from home life.

I've tried the same website (at least it was the first link for "Accent Oracle") and it also gave me the correct result with 100% confidence a few times in a row, that's a bit scary lol Your words "ocean" and "life" give me some... maybe Indian vibes? Something Asian? I'm sure I hear an accent mostly in these two words, but idk what the accent is. I wonder what the correct answer is.

As a French and Spanish speaker (although English being my native language but advanced in both others) you are over pronouncing your vowels. They're far too open for a technical native speaker. English has much more closed vowels and focus more on emphasis on consonants unlike many romance languages.

I have no confidence beyond suggesting SE Asia somewhere? If I was asked to be more specific I would say not Japan or Korea but that still leaves a lot of countries. I dunno, man. I'm not about to be able to get it right that's for sure, you're good!

Taiwan was my guess.

When you pronounce words It feels like you're using the front half of your mouth cavity and not making your sounds coming from a deeper place

I'm terrible at guessing people's accents but the way you said ocean waves was a giveaway that you're from East or Southeast Asia

I'm terrible at guessing people's accents but the way you said ocean waves was a giveaway that you're from East or Southeast Asia

I'm terrible at guessing people's accents but the way you said ocean waves was a giveaway that you're from East or Southeast Asia

It’s mainly your vowels. I saw a video once on YouTube where a guy was teaching English to Chinese learners and explaining how the English sound was “some Chinese word” with some modification. It was eerie how much the students sounded like natives in just a few tries. I’m not saying you are native to China but it sounds Asian, maybe there is a similar style video for your native language that can help?

I would not call your accent strong **at all**. I had no problem understanding you. I know native Your accent is milder than what I typically hear from Mandarin speakers who have lived for decades in the US. What most makes Chinese speakers difficult for me to understand is the omission or extreme weakness of syllable-ending consonants. This is not a problem with your speech at all. You can continue to dial in your accent if you wish, if your goal is to pass as a native English speaker. That would be an awesome accomplishment! But it is not necessary for people to understand you.

You honestly sound native to me, I have no idea what "foreign" influence is supposed to exist. A word or two might be stressed somewhat strangely, to an extent I guess, but not enough that I would notice without listening like 10 times.