cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53177215
I thought I might share a small phonetic game/challenge with you. All 3 individuals in the attached clips were born and raised in the same country and speak the same native language. Can you tell, based on the peculiarities of their English pronunciation, what language it is?
First one no idea, only a couple of vowels are not English-sounding.
Second, blocked in the UK
Third, Slavic - there’s a characteristic touch of palatalisation/raising of her pronunciation of the “a” vowel. I would never have guessed she had the same native language as the first person though - I don’t hear that in his speech.
From my own knowledge, someone with an extremely good English accent (like #1) whose native language is Slavic is most likely to be Polish, due to the number of polish people who settled in the UK, and many of them will have brought young children with them who therefore have near-native accents.
spoiler
Correct, they are Polish. Except all of them moved to Anglophone countries in young adulthood - none of them is what you would call a heritage speaker.
yay!