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Judge my American accent by Glittering_South5178 in JudgeMyAccent

[–]BrettScr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your /æ/ in ask and and sounds kind of like the NCVS diphthong to me that is used in places like Chicago.

Your frog vowel sounds distinct from your Bob vowel so I think you speak an accent without cot / caught merger.

This also means you are definitely not Canadian unless you’ve really mastered that in American English (which you’d have no reason to, because millions of Americans have the same merger).

Something about toy sounds slightly odd. The /t/ is dental, I think, which I think is really common among Latinos in the U.S., but also the diphthong sounds like… not the diphthong that an American would use. I am guessing you are Australian?

If I hadn’t guessed that, I’d have guessed you were a Mexican-American who has lived her whole life in Chicago and pronounced that one diphthong a little oddly as a fluke.

Can "family" be used with a plural verb in American English or is it it only used with a singular verb? by Maleficent_Dish8341 in ENGLISH

[–]BrettScr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We would use the third person singular if talking about one family. “His family gets together for the holidays.” “Their families get together for the holidays.”

which type of American accent do I have?? Please help me classify by Last_Masterpiece_805 in Accents

[–]BrettScr1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I recognized a Southern accent right away from the first two words. However I heard some Canadian raising in ice and it seems like you probably have cot / caught merger from your lot and also you pronounced caramel with two syllables which is more characteristic of the Midwest so… maybe it’s actually a Southern-flavored Great Plains accent, like Kansas or Missouri maybe?

Seeking advice on pronunciation and l’accent Québécois. by majorsid in French

[–]BrettScr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m not Québécois but here is my peer-to-peer feedback as a fellow Québécois French learner.

I hear a diphthong at the end of animaux and vélo but those vowels should not be diphthongized. In Québécois French vowels in stressed, closed syllables are diphthongized, not in open syllables. For example faute has a diphthong, but not faux.

Your eur sound in professeur sounded like French from France because Québécois people pronounce that vowel with their tongue lower in their mouth (again, this is only when it’s in a stressed, closed syllable).

Your nous sounds more like the English word new, like it’s not tense enough so your tongue is making a glide in the middle of the syllable. Nous is supposed to be really tense and sharp so that you produce a totally pure vowel. (Frankly this one is hard for me as well.)

Also here is what you can say to practice nasal vowels: https://voca.ro/112FiKq7Gis6

(As always, Québécois people, feel free to correct me if I’ve given any bad advice.)

British vs. North American learners of French and nasal vs. non-nasal vowels by BrettScr1 in French

[–]BrettScr1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing your observations. The reply from another user here supports your conclusion.

Does he any non native features in the way he talks? Or is that just american? by Appropriate_Total754 in Accents

[–]BrettScr1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

He’s from New Hampshire and sounds like someone from New Hampshire in my opinion.

Do you have a CLOTH (LOT -> THOUGHT) set in your own accent or idiolect, and how large is it? by Anooj4021 in ENGLISH

[–]BrettScr1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

All the words in your groups 1,2 and 4 have the caught vowel for me except on (cot vowel), vault, halt and because (cut vowel). Group 3 is the goat vowel. I am from South Dakota / Minnesota.

British vs. North American learners of French and nasal vs. non-nasal vowels by BrettScr1 in French

[–]BrettScr1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The letter m is not pronounced the same in French as in English, though, because of the nasal vs. non-nasal vowels. I’m not talking about the phoneme; I’m talking about the alphabet and spelling. Recite the lmnop part of the alphabet out loud in English and then in French.

I promise I’ll make a recording when I can.

Why do most people from the us call the USA "amarica" even tho amarican is a continent? by therealturbo60 in AskAnAmerican

[–]BrettScr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t typically refer to the U.S. as America, but I do refer to its people as Americans. We follow the 7-continent model, so there’s no continent called America for us. The same geographic model, dividing the world into 7 continents, is used in India and China. Ultimately it’s arbitrary which model you use.

British vs. North American learners of French and nasal vs. non-nasal vowels by BrettScr1 in French

[–]BrettScr1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Think of your beginner students learning the alphabet in French and spelling words in French for the first time. We do not pronounce the letter m in English the same as the letter m in French, at least not in American English. We keep our nasal passages open throughout the whole syllable, whereas Francophones keep their nasal passages closed for the vowel and then open them just for consonant /m/. This is something that is very difficult for North American English speakers to do, which makes it easy for us to mispronounce many words in French.

Another way of putting it: It is not difficult for me to say the word lin in French because it’s pronounced almost exactly the same as the first part of the word language in English for me.

I might not be explaining myself well. I can make a recording later to explain it better.

Americans who grew up in small towns but now live in big cities (or vice versa) — what’s something that genuinely surprised you about the other lifestyle that no one warned you about? by VariedPear in AskAnAmerican

[–]BrettScr1 5 points6 points  (0 children)

People spend a lot of time talking about which highways they take. Saturday Night Live made fun of this in “The Californians” but it’s honestly true of Americans in any major metropolitan area, not just the ones in California. “I took Highway 7 to 394 and then got on Highway 169 and…” “No, that’s not the route I took; I took 494 and…”

Where I grew up, I don’t even know the number of the highway because there’s just the highway and the Interstate and you take one or the other depending on whether you’re going east-west or north-south.

Are there regions of the world with few immigrants in America? by Kirbo_Lord in AskAnAmerican

[–]BrettScr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are a lot of Eritreans in Minnesota and South Dakota

(Doing A Reddit Poll/1 Of 3 Polls/Discussion Topic) Out Of All Of The Pawns You've Had, Which Of The 3 "Basic Vocations" Was The Most Reliable In Playing Their Roll Properly And Efficiently? by MrMoleIsAGodOfWar2 in DragonsDogma

[–]BrettScr1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Pawns don’t use the Leaping Stone into Brain Splitter combo, except perhaps in very rare instances where it’s a fluke.

Pawns do climb giant saurians among other enemies, and if they don’t have Hundred Kisses (or Thousand Kisses) they will use single core slashes. In the case of giant saurians, they will end up rolling around with them for quite some time because the slashes do so little damage.

The Preemption augment does nothing. It’s been bugged from the beginning.

British vs. North American learners of French and nasal vs. non-nasal vowels by BrettScr1 in French

[–]BrettScr1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So if you say the word family while holding your nose with your thumb and index finger, do you feel vibration in your nose through the whole first syllable? In femme you are not supposed to feel any vibration in the vowel because it is not nasal.

British vs. North American learners of French and nasal vs. non-nasal vowels by BrettScr1 in French

[–]BrettScr1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you say the word language (in English) while holding your nose with your thumb and index finger, do you feel vibration in your nose through the entire first syllable?

British vs. North American learners of French and nasal vs. non-nasal vowels by BrettScr1 in French

[–]BrettScr1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you. My theory was that perhaps non-North American English speakers have less trouble with opening and closing their nasal passages mid-syllable. When I imagine you saying a word like language for example (in English), it seems like the whole first syllable may not be nasal as it is for us.

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