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?

1. https://vimeo.com/1205985914
2. https://vimeo.com/1206296678
3. https://vimeo.com/1206827782

Listening to 1 and 2 I was wondering whether there was some clever twist I wasn't seeing because they both seemed fairly easy to identify. Then 3 hit me with surprise rhoticity and now I'm confused.

Absolute wild guess that it's Wales. Mostly based on how there is an expectation it's not well known as a country and vibes on physical appearance.

My favorite whelsh pronunciation:

That’s an interesting and unexpected guess. It would seem to me that no. 3 in particular doesn’t sound even remotely Welsh, but perhaps absolutely wild guesses (to use your phrase) dispense with such stereotypical assumptions🙂

„Then 3 hit me with surprise rhoticity and now I’m confused.” Hopefully at that point the challenge became entertaining 🙂

Halfway between posh English and Irish...

I'm guessing Manx.

The first two are British. I know regional dialects vary, but I can't identify one from the other.

The third one sounds like an American, but has a very "professional" dialect. Some people will talk like this for recordings, but since you said she's from the same country as the other ones, I'm guessing she learned her American accent from media, and not from regular conversations.

what language it is?

I didn't catch this before I posted my answer. Are you telling me that English is not their native language?

Now I'm surprised and curious.

It's not initially obvious but there are hints. Especially with the last and first one (2nd is teaching English peculiarities in slang so is an overly forced accent), but they all appear Slavic-ish too. 20 years ago... immigration from only one country into England comes to mind and that's Poland so their first language is Polish.

Note that it wasn't the accent that made me choose there. It was to say they weren't native English speakers

No way are they English.

The first two may have spent several years in south east England or spent a long time there - but they're not native speakers. I wonder at what age they stopped being "raised" though as I'd think at least a few formative years spent there to pick up that much of an accent.

1 sounds slightly NZ to me
2 sounds like non-english, trying to come off as English
3 sounds slightly Scottish

So my answer is one of these:

• South Africa, because the saffers I've met spoke wildly different dialects
• UK, because I don't know all of the UK dialects, and person 1 and 2 can just be from an area I'm not familiar with

Just for the record, English is not my native language.

That's right, none of them is a native speaker of English - their English is learned via the standard combination of school, extracurricular courses, media exposure, and other typical means available in largely monolingual countries, and subsequently polished up abroad (at least two of them moved to Anglophone countries for university). Thus, I figured that the undercurrent of their native pronunciation should be sufficiently conspicuous to allow for making some educated guesses about their origin 🙂

The answer to your question is no, I cannot.

The accent I hear appears to be based on where they learned English instead of where they are from.

They both initially moved to England for university - him at 19 and her at 21.

I'd pick Czech overall, for no real reason - they just remind me a bit of one Czech person i know who has spent a long time here. Not strong evidence.

Otherwise I might have gone for Poland or Baltics somewhere, Swedish/Finnish/Estonian did cross my mind as possible.

I just don't know enough people from enough countries - especially smaller ones to have confidence.
I think you'd have to be quite familiar with the native language to really be sure.

Wow, seems faster than I'd have though to pick up that much of an accent.
Then again if they were students they'd traditionally be expected to watch a lot of 'Eastenders'.

I suppose that's a pretty solid indication that they learned it well 🙂

Swedish?

The first speaker had a couple of vowels that gave away he isn't a native speaker, but he's walking the line between uncanny and mastery, so it was hard to pick out enough to guess what his native language might be.

The second I'm not allowed to watch without a Vimeo account, probably because I'm in Britain. I won't be setting one up today.

For the third there was a lot more unusual vowel articulation, especially 'a', that made me think Slavic, but I couldn't be any more specific than that.

Either Estonian or Finnish, would be my guess, based on the soft, shortened ‘s’ and the distinctive short o (‘so’). It doesn’t show the melodic signs of Germanic Scandinavian languages nor the v/w or v/f fusion I’d expect in Latvian etc.

1 and 2 sound very British but something sounds a bit off. Number 3 has a stronger accent, but it's still hard to identify, maybe Latvian

The correct answer is: