[General] Is it a general American accent?

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tedmc

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I thought that is quite distinct American accent.
 

bubbha

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Yes, but he has a slight but evident foreign accent, especially in the way he says "world" (wuold), "more" when he says "more than" (moh), "recorded" (recordet), and an aspirated "t" in "seventy" (most Americans would pronounce it more like a "d" or a flap). He also pronounces "artists" as "artis".
 

jutfrank

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I would say he has a Chinese-American accent. That is, mostly American with a hint of Chinese.

I'm guessing that he was raised from a fairly young age in the US by Chinese parents. For me, it's the pronunciation of seventy that most gives the Chinese away.
 

GoesStation

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Oddly, his slight foreign accent was clearer to me in the audio clip than when I watched the video.
 

emsr2d2

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Oddly, his slight foreign accent was clearer to me in the audio clip than when I watched the video.

That's often the way. When we are watching a clip, our attention is not fully on the voice. We are distracted by the surroundings, the people etc. When we listen to an audio clip, we have nothing else to distract us so we listen more attentively to the sound.
 

probus

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This almost-native accent with just a hint of Chinese is actually pretty common where I live, in the Toronto area. We have more than 600,000 people whose origins are in China.
 
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HaroldTwinss

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Yeah, sounds like a bit of Chinese to my ear. No offense.
 
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probus

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Are we now accepting teaching from heavily accented non-native-speakers who even fail to state that they are not teachers?

I hardly think that is the best thing: not for our students, and not for the quality of our collective work.. Sounds like a bit of Chinese indeed.
 
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jutfrank

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Are we now accepting teaching from heavily accented non-native-speakers who even fail to state that they are not teachers?

I hardly think that is the best thing: not for our students, and not for the quality of our collective work.. Sounds like a bit of Chinese indeed.

Do you really think that this person's speech is heavily foreign-accented? It really isn't at all. The Chinese part is very, very slight.

At what point in the past are you suggesting we didn't accept accented non-native-speakers as teachers? This is nothing new. In fact, worldwide the number of non-native-English-speaking teachers of English far outweighs the number of native-speaking ones.

In what way does a person's foreign accent negatively affect their ability to teach effectively? Do your reasons also apply to people with non-standard, native accents?
 

probus

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I did not say that that this speaker has a heavy accent. See my earlier post in this thtread. I was mocking Haroldtwinss's use of an unnatural turn of phrase.

Also I did not say that teachers must not have a foreign accent, nor that we have not accepted teachers whose native language is not English. So much for straw man arguments.

Some problems with Haroldtwinss are as follows.

Her English is not very good. She makes elementary errors such as forgetting to invert subject and object in questions. She writes tho for though, and 100$ for $100. She uses various unnatural expressions that a fluent speaker would avoid, such as the one I mockingly quoted. In another thread , What State is She From, she poses pseudononymously as a native speaker.

To make matters worse, she has.claimed both here and elsewhere to be a qualified teacher under both CELTA and TEFL. She has also claimed elsewhere to be a professional tutor of AmE.

My biggest concern is that her unchecked activities here may impair the reputation of usingenglish.com as a reliable source of high-quality information.

I also worry that her false claims about her qualifications will lead unsuspecting Russian learners to waste their money on her. Private tutoring is costly and students who choose it should get a lot more for their money than she can offer. I don't think we should abet scammers even a tiny bit. I understand that other teachers here may not share that concern, and that's okay. I will pursue it elsewhere.
 
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jutfrank

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I did not say that that Haroldtwinss had a Chinese accent.

Are you confusing this post with the other one discussing which state Stacia Galila is from? 'It's called What state is she from?'.

HaroldTwinss is one of the users here. He/She was the member asking in the other post which state the girl was from. He/She has at no point claimed to be a teacher of any kind. You must be thinking of Stacia Galila.
 

probus

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Do you seriously think that Harioldtwinss and Stacia Galila are not the same person? Who created the Youtube video that Haroldtwinss posted?

P.S. I have slightly edited my preceding post.
 

jutfrank

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Do you seriously think that Harioldtwinss and Stacia Galila are not the same person? Who created the Youtube video that Haroldtwinss posted?

I did, yes, but now I'm having second thoughts. The video you mention has 'coincidetally' been removed.
 

Tdol

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All links to that YouTube video have been removed.
 
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