re: My American Accent page 2

Again, thank you for the compliments on my voice.

Kooyeen, you did hear correctly, there are some certain features in my accent which may make me sound a little Southern.
You are also right on me not being a native speaker. If I may ask, how did you find out?
Indeed, I have been spending a lot of my energy working on my English skills and on my accent in particular. I have been studying English since I was about 6 years old, which was 20 years ago.

RaymonddYou are also right on me not being a native speaker. If I may ask, how did you find out?

I cheated. I didn't hear it, I read it. Anyway, as I said, if I hadn't known that, I would not have thought you were a non-native speaker of English, even though every time someone posts a clip and says something like "Criticism is welcome", as you said, people get biased and suspicious, and often over-analyze everything thinking there must be something peculiar. I don't know what that's called... observer bias? If you re-posted it along with some other clips of native speakers reading a random text, and then asked, like "What do you think of these accents and voices?", I guess most listeners would pay much less attention to any syllable you might say, and wouldn't try to convince themselves you are not a native speaker before they play your clip.

RaymonddIndeed, I have been spending a lot of my energy working on my English skills and on my accent in particular. I have been studying English since I was about 6 years old, which was 20 years ago.

Well, no wonder you can speak that way then! I also like to learn about pronunciation, but I stopped obsessing about it when I realize there are so many way of speaking that it would make no sense to say "this must be pronounced this way and not that way". Also, I wouldn't know what to focus on in particular, since I don't live in an English speaking country. I might never move, but if I do, will I end up in Texas, in California, in London, or in Glasgow? That's why I realized getting too obsessed over a particular accent is useless for most people. I am still obsessing over pronunciation, but much less than I used to. I have been focusing on American English, but I have recently discovered that British accents are good too, and I think I would love to be able to use two kinds of accents, an American one and a British one. Too difficult for me, LOL, I will see.

I must second that. It would be amazing to being able to switch between AE and BrE, but I end up over-doing the one I'm not so familiar with. Then again, not even all native speakers are able to do this, so I'm not going be stressed out because of this

That's actually what I've been doing for quite some time. Trying to master both an American accent and a British one.

I'm American from California and I think you south like you're from Texas or somewhere in the south.