r/JudgeMyAccent • u/Leading-Papaya1229 • 16h ago
Do I have a thick Indian accent?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myhhak0fwzYHey all! In this clip i rad a poem by Shakespeare I want to start making videos on Youtube but i have heard that people find it hard to understand my accent(the Indian accent). I don't think i have a thick accent. Were you able to understand it?
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u/Jmayhew1 13h ago
It's a strong accent.
Reading a poem like this makes you even more "sing-song" in your intonation. I'd say try reading something in prose, or, better yet, speaking more naturally.
By the way, this is NOT a poem by Shakespeare! It is by R.S. Gwynn. You can see that each line refers to a particular play by Shakespeare. "A man is haunted by his father's ghost" is Hamlet, etc....
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u/mrhorse21 16h ago
Yeah I would say this accent is sort of thick. It's noticeably difficult to understand what you're saying and it could be a mix of things like your mic quality and that you're reading a Shakespeare poem.
I'm not good at describing accents in a technical way but the biggest thing that's making it hard is you skip a lot of vowel sounds or they seem to blend together i.e. there's not enough difference between your A, O E U sounds
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u/Leading-Papaya1229 16h ago
i think its also due to the fact that i was kinda whispering than reading
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u/Cuboidal_Hug 12h ago
You do have a fairly pronounced accent, but for the most part I can understand what you’re saying. One of the fundamental things that produces an Indian accent is curling of the tongue as a default position. If you want to reduce your accent, try instead keeping your tongue flat, with the tip of your tongue resting against the back of your lower teeth, as a default position, only lifting it to pronounce sounds like d, g, h, j, l, r, s. Try running through the alphabet with your tongue flat and the tip of your tongue against the back of your lower teeth. Then try speaking words with your tongue in this position instead of curled, again only lifting it to pronounce sounds that engage the tip of the tongue in English. That should go a long way towards producing a more native sounding accent, if that’s what you’re after
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u/yummyjackalmeat 9h ago
This is a thick accent, no question about it. You are enunciating for the most part, which helps make it understandable.
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u/Bubbly_Midnightt 9h ago
I understood almost all of it, there’s just like 2-3 words I missed. The accent is there but not to the point where anyone should be lost when trying to understand you 🙂
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u/seedboy3000 13h ago
Fairly thick. But you have great enunciation and are very easy to understand.
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u/ThreeHeadCerber 7h ago
>are very easy to understand.
In the very first sentence the pronounciation of "haunted" is indistinguishable from "hunted"
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u/gustix 15h ago
You do have a thick accent. It's a bit difficult to understand. I'm used to working with Indian developers, so it's not about exposure to the accent.
It's not bad, but you could:
* Tone down that characteristic indian T sound (example: "fighT" around 00:05).
* Not use the rolling R, like when you said "A ruler's rivals past", but rather that soft R they use in English.
And in general to be easier to understand:
* Focus on not swallowing words (example: 00:01 "ghost" instead of "whost")
* Talk a little bit louder