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

I struggled understanding quite a few words but overall I understood him. More so towards the end

There is a BBC correspondent with a similar sort of mix - but I can't remember her name !

Lyse Doucet?

@SkodaKodiaq how are you finding it? That or the Karoq is on the list to replace our starting to age Octavia Estate but we are not sure we need anything as big.

Sorry for the interruption OP.

I hear a lovely tenor speaking voice with Irish and American sounds, like a man between 30 and 40 who grew up speaking English with a regional accent, possibly from Africa, but who has overlaid it with accents and inflections collected along the way. In employment terms, I think that takes you into either a world like hospitality where people with nice manners and good interpersonal skills can be highly valued with an international clientele at four and five star levels, or into a professional world. I don't think his voice would be an advantage in a regional blue-collar job, eg as a mechanic in a Sheffield car maintenance garage.

I understood him but sometimes the words blended into each other a bit

It would be a good BBC World Service voice.

He sounds American Irish to me, early 20s? White sounding, but would imagine he is not?

He sounds white about 25-30 and Dutch American with an Irish twang .

I am answering his questions:
I think he has an American and an Irish accent with a very slight ‘SS lisp’.

I think he is about 25.

I don’t know his race but would have imagined he was Caucasian if he had not asked.

Because he asked, and because he said he was born in Africa, I wonder if he is perhaps African but I would not have known. I don’t think he sounds African or African American.

I can understand him.

@zenithfreedom

He's actually 21 and fully black..lol. He does regularly get told that he sounds "white".

What do they mean?

What country did he live in mainly when he was a boy? Were his parents from there?

@ravenmum

He lived in Kenya up until he was eight. Both his parents are Kenyan and black. He then went to live in the U.S. for two years and finally came to Ireland.

@user1495884211

Given that at least two posters didn't catch him asking how old people think he is and what race they think he is, perhaps he isn't that easy to understand!

If you're just listening to his accent, you're listening to the individual words and sounds, not the content. I mean, his username ends 1999, so you can guess that he's probably 21, but people haven't commented on that, have they?

Surely people don't sound black or white or whatever other colour on the spectrum they may be? They sound like the accents of the place or places they were brought up. My SIL is fully Chinese in terms of her parents and speaks like the queen.

Apollo. Most of the time I can tell by someone’s voice whether they are black, or of Indian, Pakistani descent, or like me whether they are Jewish. There’s a timbre to certain voices that for me is very distinct. Sometimes I’m wrong but generally I’m not.

I though he said he was called Fenella.

He's perfectly understandable, but his accent jumps about. It isn't difficult exactly, but some words are jarring because they don't sound they way you'd predict they would based on what he's said so far. I could understand why somebody might find it difficult if he spoke more quickly.

I would think some words sound the way they due to who he picked them up from in the first place. It's really difficult to get rid of that. I had a South American Spanish teacher and a tutor from the same country, so in general I don't lisp my s or z sounds. However, my very first year, I learned from somebody who spoke Castilian Spanish, and I still lisp when I count!

I can understand him fine, a combination of accents clearly but not a problem.

There’s a timbre to certain voices that for me is very distinct.

I agree. There is a certain depth of tone that I associate with black voices. It doesn't seem to happen with white voices although not all black voices have it. I find it interesting.

Surely people don't sound black or white or whatever other colour on the spectrum they may be?

Many Black people in the US use African American Vernacular English; it's a combination of accent and vocabulary and very recognizable. They often code switch when speaking with white people. Interestingly, the word "woke" actually comes from AAVE.

@SenecaFallsRedux

Surely people don't sound black or white or whatever other colour on the spectrum they may be?

Many Black people in the US use African American Vernacular English; it's a combination of accent and vocabulary and very recognizable. They often code switch when speaking with white people. Interestingly, the word "woke" actually comes from AAVE.

But this guy did not grow up in a community that speak African American Vernacular English (or similar). I guess he could have lived in a community with that shared accent when in the US, but then so could I, and I'm white.

I would assume that he was asking if he sounds Kenyan? And that people expect him to have an "African" accent as he was born there?
I might guess at a Nigerian accent, for instance, and would tentatively imagine someone as black if they had that accent. But I have no clue what a Kenyan accent sounds like.

@ravenmum I was responding to a general statement that "people don't sound black or white" and just pointing out that, as a general statement, that is not true for many people in the US.

Just pondering on how the point would affect the answers we give here. I'm still not sure why the guy was asking what race he sounded like.

I guess because the OP says lots of people think he sounds "white" and he is curious.

Interestingly, OP's cousin has some similarities to President Obama's accent, but not when Obama moves into AAVE, but when he speaks his usual Midwestern accent. OP's cousin's "s" sound is very like President Obama's.

Many Black people in the US use African American Vernacular English; it's a combination of accent and vocabulary and very recognizable. They often code switch when speaking with white people. Interestingly, the word "woke" actually comes from AAVE.

For me it’s more than vocab and accent. It’s more the timbre of an actual voice that makes it distinctive to me. Like a person of Pakistani descent with a Yorkshire or Birmingham accent sounds very different to the voice of someone of black or Jewish descent with the same accents if that makes sense. My voice sounds typical of a Jewish person from the part of the country I’m from. I can recognise it when I hear my own voice and when I hear the voices of other Jewish people in this area. I’d love to understand more about voice/speech and what influences the voices we have.

For me it’s more than vocab and accent. It’s more the timbre of an actual voice that makes it distinctive to me.

Is that not to do with picking up the accents within your community though? I know what you mean for some people for example, I think I would guess Baroness Warsi is from a Pakistani community as well as being from Yorkshire. But, I'm not sure I'd guess Nigella Lawson was Jewish if I knew nothing else about her and just heard her voice.