Does my cousin have a difficult voice to understand?

[zenithfreedom]

By voice I mean accent. He's given me permission to post a short soundclip of his voice. He's moved abroad and learned English quite later on in life.

vocaroo.com/aKPfKojiOvC1

He sounds like a nice young man.

My guess is age 25, slim and intelligent with an Asian ethnicity. Sounds like he might have a connection to Singapore or KL.
Possibly attended an international school and now happily settled in Ireland?

Research has shown that people are pretty good at guessing someone's race from voice alone.

Nothing wrong with his voice and she he speaks slowly and clearly.

Saw a documentary on Fogo island in Canada and his accent is similar to the islanders - mix of candanian and Irish.

I'd have guessed Canadian with a bit of something else going on (Irish? Dutch?) if I'd been asked to guess cold. He sounds a bit like a friend of mine who is Canadian (from Montreal) with Italian family. I'd say sounds youngish - 25 - 35 years old.

Irish American, mid 30's

No idea on accent or age but I could understand everything except his name? Does he always speak that slowly though? If he normally speaks quicker then I could see how someone who possibly doesn’t have English as a first language may struggle. But if that’s his normal speaking speed then I think he’s perfectly understandable

I found him ok to understand apart from his 'name', but his accent felt off in so many ways. For me it sounded like someone who does not actually speak the language, and is reading a crib sheet made up of phonetic sounds (e.g. like all the Russian in Killing Eve). I wonder if his 'name' was the only thing he actually said in his normal accent, as it feels like the other stuff was said very deliberately.

I couldn't make a guess on age/race at all.

I'm guessing this is a research project of some type. FWIW the accent has elements of Irish and American English, I would guess from learning English initially from an American source and then living in Ireland. He doesn't sound like he learned English later in life - I'd say he is only late 20s/early 30s and has been speaking English for a while.

It’s a right mish mash of accents.

I dont hear any Dutch or Irish
I just hear "American"/"Canadian". I cant pinpoint a specific region. Cant tell race or age by voice either.

Is this one of those experiments to see how easily people are influenced by false info?

I'll go for Northern Irish American account and late 20s early 30s. Very easy to understand (listening as an English person). He also asks about race, I'd expect him to be white American, but really not sure how appropriate it is to guess someone's race from their accent? Interesting.

The "roit" was super-Irish, presumably as he was just about to mention Ireland.

In "my name is", he pronounces the S as an S rather than a Z (same later on with "years" - something he could work on if he fancied), and the vowels all sounded more foreign than later; "my name is" is presumably something he learned very early on and still pronounces a bit like he originally did. From that I would have guessed that he learned to speak well as an adult.

The voice sounds young as it's relatively high for a man, but he could just be a youthful 40/50. Pleasant accent, could go into broadcasting and it wouldn't be annoying. Could be any race; obviously he doesn't speak Black English Vernacular as he hasn't grown up in an English-speaking Black community.

I hear Canadian ish and Irish and a bit of something else. Can’t tell race and I often can from intonation rather than accent.

Can you tell us what his background is?
Is someone saying he’s hard to understand? He wasn’t at all in that clip.

I found him easy to understand.

His accent reminds me a little of our Flemish speaking relatives who pick up a lot of English from watching American TV and films. In your cousin's case though there was also a hint of Irish.

I can't comment on the accent etc. - I can tell you that he had fewer glitches than most people do in my auto-captioning system so his voice must be clear.

I haven’t read the thread because I only want to give my opinion. His accent is American with an irish twang. I know he said he's from Africa, but my head tells me he's white, aged 30 - 34. He looks a little like Zac Efron.

I'm an American. His American accent is called mid-Atlantic, which is considered quite neutral and what you would hear from most news presenters on TV or radio.

The Irish accent comes on like a switch being thrown when he says "I moved to Ireland.."

No trace of an East African accent as far as I can tell but a mixture of Canadian/Irish..very slight clipped vowels that sometimes British Asians have....

I forgot to add, he’s 100% easy to understand

I suspect is a native Afrikaans speaker, who learned to speak English after the age of 12, probably predominantly self taught, listening to mainly American tv and music. If not self taught in quite that way, she spent a lot of time listening to speakers of American and/or Irish English. I think he’s learned different words and phrases off different groups of speakers.

His name isn’t clear, but I think that’s because he gives a Twitter handle rather than his actual name.

His enunciation is clear, possibly too clear (as in he is trying hard for this clip) but his cadence is off so it makes it hard to predict/ fill in the bits you dont hear properly. The cadence thing is what makes me think he learned a bit later in life, and not off speakers of English English.

Dutch, thirties, white

@Progress2019

I forgot to add, he’s 100% easy to understand

Did you catch his name? I don’t think any else could.

Op, I think it’s best he is recorded in normal conversation without knowing, and he’d get a better idea.

I should add, I had to concentrate a little to understand him perfectly

I listened after reading most of the comments. Initially I guessed that he might be Japanese, there were a few swallowed words then he was trying to speak more clearly. There were some words in mixed Irish accents, e.g. right, Oireland and Martin, presumably learnt from different people / American films. The American part of his accent I would guess as being from Boston, rather than the general American twang which some Dublin people speak with.