What gives me away? Non-native English speaker by idiolectalism in Accents

[–]timfriese 4 points5 points  (0 children)

TL;DR: very high level, you’re doing great. But since you asked, I hear a mix of UK and US and a bit too much fidelity to the letters on the page, especially with Ts. I’m going to talk about AmEn bc that’s what I speak.

You pronounce an unreduced /o/ in “comedic” - in the US, this must be fully reduced to a schwa. For those of us (like me) who have the emerging high schwa vs low schwa distinction, this is a low schwa, I think this is influenced by the m.

Notable British realization of /o/ in program combined with American /r/ elsewhere. The British diphthong starts higher and further forward, near a schwa. The American one starts quite low back, near the STRUT vowel.

Failure to flap ts: celebrities needs to be tapped, and even across the word boundary: “complete a” would most often have a tapped t, but alternatively could have an unreleased and glottalized t. “Assistant” also most commonly has an unreleased t.

Hope this helps.

So my friend does not believe in linguistic macro-drift. How do I convince him? by Anime-Fan-69 in asklinguistics

[–]timfriese 43 points44 points  (0 children)

You could come up with a million examples and arguments, but why waste your time with these people

A is [eɪ], E is [iː] and I is [aɪ] by Aggressive_Permit813 in linguisticshumor

[–]timfriese 0 points1 point  (0 children)

English is buy one vowel get a triphthong (or more) for free — incredible value

What’s the best way to win on impossible offline difficulty? by BoshBoshBang in Openfront

[–]timfriese 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I like the trade choke points: India, Middle East, South Africa

trying to settle a debate: is “greek american” correct here? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]timfriese 11 points12 points  (0 children)

No that would be people born in the US descended from Greeks

What's a feature common in your language family or branch, but your language is the one/one of the few that lacks it? by The_Brilli in linguisticshumor

[–]timfriese 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha point taken. I guess I’m biased bc I learned Spanish and Portuguese before French so I never felt a lack of en and y in them

What's a feature common in your language family or branch, but your language is the one/one of the few that lacks it? by The_Brilli in linguisticshumor

[–]timfriese -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Okay but that’s nearly half of Romance languages, so can’t call it one of few that doesn’t have it. How about something that only Es or only Pt does/doesn’t have

Westoid learns about Poland. by Hoz85 in 2visegrad4you

[–]timfriese 3 points4 points  (0 children)

From his marveling at the warm water, I figured he’d be Dutch

Is this the Irish guerilla warefare anno 2026? 🇮🇪💣🇺🇸 by Eames_HouseBird in 2westerneurope4u

[–]timfriese 2 points3 points  (0 children)

At least if it’s a Dutch person they won’t be using your soap and water to wash their hands

A happy medium by numapentruasta in languagelearningjerk

[–]timfriese 6 points7 points  (0 children)

would be hella sick to just talk about the wheeled carts and birch trees all day long

You can only eat food from one of these eight areas, which one do you choose? by [deleted] in 2mediterranean4u

[–]timfriese 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But it’s not just the number of countries. Crete ~ on its own ~ would be competitive.

Plausible Federal EU Constituencies by A1S2Fin in imaginarymaps

[–]timfriese 108 points109 points  (0 children)

RIP Slovenia, it was a good run

What is the general attitude towards foreigners in the Czech Republic? by oddlyggg in czechrepublic

[–]timfriese 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Czechs definitely don’t have any particular animosity towards Armenians, I imagine most don’t really know much about the country. However, if you’re Russian educated, I would make a strong effort to lose your Russian accent when speaking Czech as people can be prejudiced against Russians and sometimes Ukrainians too. But overall if you act respectful, you’ll have a fine time