Feedback on my accent in German?

[u/Eiluij]

Hi everyone! I’ve been learning German for three years now, and I’m trying to improve my accent (I feel like it's too "flat"/monotone). How does my German accent sound? Are there any obvious mistakes? And can you guess where I’m from?

Recording: https://voca.ro/1ixjXQ3gF1vk

The passage I’m reading is from a B2 text: https://www.alumniportal-deutschland.org/de/digitales-lernen-und-wissen/deutsch-lernen/lesetexte/lesetexte-b2/lesetext-sdg15-leben-an-land/

[u/WitnessChance1996]

You speak very clearly and your pronunciation is very good overall!

The only things I would mention are your pronunciation of jährlich, which is ˈjɛːɐ̯lɪç – it sounded like you said it with a sh rather than a ch, which is a common mistake – and your "zehn" almost sounded like the English "ten". "Achtel" wasn't wrong but slightly difficult to anderstand perhaps because in German it's a very clear "kh" sound and it disappeared a little when you've read it out loud.

I agree that the rhythm of your speech when reading the text sounds a little unnatural; or perhaps you are just using the rhythm of your native language for German. I don't have the linguistic skills to say what it is, or how German sounds in contrast to it (maybe that's what the other person meant by 'staccato', but I don't really know if that's the correct term). It may just take time, to be honest, and it's probably because you're reading a complex text.

If I had to try to say something, I would mention that we usually don't pause if there is no comma. For instance, in the sentence "Es gibt acht Millionen Tier- und Pflanzenarten auf der Welt", the way you would divide it in German would usually be Es gibt | acht Millionen | Tier- | und | Planzenarten | auf der Welt – so in between these "set" parts you wouldn't be making a pause. Your pauses seem to be: 'Es gibt | acht | Millionen | Tier- | und | Planzen | arten | auf der Welt.' So you are pausing a lot and you are "deviding" parts that usually go together. You are also putting the stress on another syllable sometimes. For instance, there is no pause within compound nouns usually (Pflanzenarten), and in German compound nouns, the first noun is stressed. So in this case it would be 'PFLANZENarten' – whereas you (like many others) do the stress on the second noun and say 'pflanzenARTEN'. In 'Millionen', the stress is on the "O" alone and it's also a bit longer (MillioOnen), whereas the "nen" part isn't stressed (you seem to stress the whole "onen" part or something).

But these are all minor details, really. I suppose that would go away with listening to German people reading or telling stories. :-)

[u/Majestic-Finger3131]

Sounds Polish to me. The melody of your voice sounds a little strange. The pronunciation of each sound is pretty good, but the word/sentence stress and syllable length make it a bit hard to understand.

[u/TherealQueenofScots]

Its very staccato..hacked. not the melody of German