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Is Your English Accent British or American?

myaccent.cambridgeconsultants.com

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Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#131

Post by gilleain »

jcranmer wrote: post #126
baxtr wrote: post #117

Side question. I’ve been always wondering: how has the American accent evolved? Where does it come from? Is there any region in Britain that sounds American? Or did just evolve independently as a mix of British and something else? And: since when is it that different? Did Lincoln had an American accent?!

There's not really any such thing as an "American accent" or a "British accent," particularly when you're looking at the evolution of accents. Accents tend to evolve based on regional tendencies; what people refer to as "General American" (effectively the Midwestern US, but not including the Northern Cities Vowel Shift) and "Received Pronunciation" are accents that lack any recognized regionalism markers, such as the…

As for a 'British' accent, there is huge diversity within the UK. Cornish, Northern Irish, Yorkshire, Aberdonian, etc.

It used to be even more pronounced, with neighbouring villages in England having distinct accents. Nowadays, i suspect that the differences are disappearing - although perhaps some will always remain.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#132

Post by zmk_ »

forinti wrote: post #103
tbabb wrote: post #66

It's hard to tell if the speech recognition is working, or even if the microphone is on. If I hum the star spangled banner, it rates me as 79% British.

I said the sentence in Spanish and it gave me 62% British. I tried Portuguese, and it gave me 55% British.

There should be a third mapping there---"neither". I got 99% British with my normal (more or less foreign-accent-free) speach and a whooping 88% British with the heaviest Polish accent I could produce.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#133

Post by emodendroket »

acranox wrote: post #115
emodendroket wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's machine learning-based it probably just doesn't know how to handle weird invalid input like that.`

“Weird invalid input” is an interesting description. That’s the reason I don’t use the voice features on my phone. I have to spend too much time tailoring my input for its expectations rather than Speaking as I normally do, and having it know how to interpret better.

Well however you want to phrase it it's a common problem. I remember reading about an AI that played Super Smash Brothers and it was really good, but it would start to go haywire if you just ran to the edge of the stage and stood there.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#134

Post by ilamont »

I am from the Boston area (without a Boston accent) and I rated 90% US. My teen daughter who is also from this area and to me sounds like she has an even "flatter" American accent rated 64% US, with the words "call" and "small" flagged as moderately British. My teen son (who sounds identical to her) was 95% U.S.

I lived in London when I was younger and can imitate some local accents; my "upper crust" accent was rated about 65% U.S. on the first try and 86% British on the second. My "Norf London" was 50/50 on the first try, 65% U.S. on the second.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#135

Post by emodendroket »

cillian64 wrote: post #118
acranox wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Weird invalid input” is an interesting description. That’s the reason I don’t use the voice features on my phone. I have to spend too much time tailoring my input for its expectations rather than Speaking as I normally do, and having it know how to interpret better.

Getting any use out of voice recognition personal assistants is a learned skill (just like effective googling or using the command line) but pretty handy once you get it figured out. I'd be interested to see a voice-controlled personal assistant with a specific machine-friendly syntax you have to learn instead of it trying to deal with natural language. In exchange for me learning the syntax I'd probably have a much…

I find the set of commands I want is usually limited enough that it's not a big deal to learn the expected phrasing.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#136

Post by emodendroket »

emodendroket wrote: post #113
nerdponx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than some slang, I wouldn't call any of these accents mutually unintelligible.

Yeah, I can't think of any American accent that I just altogether can't understand.

My wife, who is not a native speaker of English, initially had trouble understanding AAVE and people with heavy Latin American accents when she moved to the US, for what it's worth, so maybe we could consider those particularly challenging, but I doubt any native-born American would struggle with those really.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#137

Post by kpil »

ilamont wrote: post #134

I am from the Boston area (without a Boston accent) and I rated 90% US. My teen daughter who is also from this area and to me sounds like she has an even "flatter" American accent rated 64% US, with the words "call" and "small" flagged as moderately British. My teen son (who sounds identical to her) was 95% U.S. I lived in London when I was younger and can imitate some local accents; my "upper crust" accent was rated…

I doubt it's that nuanced actually. My best RP gives 99% although all my British friends would classify that as 'evil nazi overlord' owing to my Swedish accent.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#138

Post by IncRnd »

robjan wrote: post #27
IncRnd wrote: post #16

When I said, "bleep da doop de blah bleep nah," this classified me as 80% American. Then, I clapped my hands twice (and didn't speak), which classified me as 72% British. As a final test, I did both at the same time: 90% American.

Sound legit. Noisy: American. Subtle and understated: British

Hmmm. Some statements, by their existence, contradict themselves.

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#139

Post by praulv »

jsnell wrote: post #108
praulv wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*password I believe. Upvoted.

No, "passport". It was clearly a reference to the voice authentication hack in _Sneakers_.

We have something very similar in the UK tax service (HMRC) which is "password".

Re: Is Your English Accent British or American?

#140

Post by fbonetti »

no1youknowz wrote: post #98

LMAO. I am British and I managed to fool this by doing an American accent. Well more concisely, by sounding like a Texan. Or at least thats what I think it is.. very fun! https://i.imgur.com/dWkBnXF.png

I’m American but I scored 83% British with a crappy Cockney accent ;)
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