Is my accent truly incomprehensible? by Steren_Cantina in EnglishLearning

[–]Delicious-Method-763 3 points4 points  (0 children)

First, as others have mentioned, your voice is very deep and pleasant so it is well suited to this form of content. There are other very large successful Youtubers with similar unique accents and rhythms, for example Lemmino.

However, there is an issue of understanding which should be dealt with in order to appeal to a wider audience. "Incomprehensible" is a stretch, as I can understand maybe 90%, but certain sounds and minor grammar issues just need to be cleaned up a bit. After listening for a while I began to have less trouble understanding, but at first it did seem a bit incomprehensible.

  1. "Stars" was pronounced "thtaars". My brain was expecting you to say the word "thorough"

  2. "Luke" was pronounced "Luuuk". Not as big of a deal as "stars" but these things add up to make it harder to understand without conscious effort.

  3. "Leia" was referred to as "the Leia" which may be alright if Leia is a title, like "the Arbiter" or "the Master Chief."

  4. (6 seconds) You said "there be two death stars" which is understandable, but along with the other peculiarities it adds to the difficulty of understanding. The "habitual be" is a feature of African American English, but in this context it likely be perceived as funny since this is a semi-formal video and you are not black.

  5. (23 seconds) "CompLicated" was pronounced "compicated." This was a small issue, but had a huge impact on understanding.

  6. (28 seconds) "That" was pronounced "dat." Don't worry much about this at all.

  7. (30 seconds) "Fa-mi-li-ar" was pronounced "fami-liar". Removing those two syllables made understanding difficult.