Re:Accents in Latent Spaces: How AI Hears Accent Strength in...
by asveikau on Tuesday May 06, 2025 @10:10PM
(#43911576)
The specific problem is that American intervocalic /t/ and /d/ is very similar to Spanish /ɾ/. But if they don't get it right it's not perceived as the right phoneme. The Spanish /t/ is more dental and the undervocalic /d/ is more of a [ð] but they will sound correct in English.
Re:Accents in Latent Spaces: How AI Hears Accent Strength in...
by yodsanklai on Wednesday May 07, 2025 @06:00AM
(#43913855)
> An easy way to improve intonation and fluency is to imitate a native speaker.
There are lots of variations in English pronunciation. Singaporean, Australian or Scottish native speakers do sound very differently. I don't know to what extent they benefit from adjusting their accent if working in a different English speaking country to match the local dialect.
Also, as a non-native speaker I wonder if it's worth practicing my accent considering that everybody has a different accent anyway. Rather than trying to mimic a north american accent (which I'll never be able to do anyway), I'd be more interested to identify and fix the major issues in my prononciation.
An easy way to improve intonation and fluency is to imitate a native speaker. Copying things like the intervocalic T and D is a consequence of that. It would be easier for a native Spanish speaker to say the Spanish /t/ and /d/ but intonation and fluency would be impaired.
The sounds don't "flow" as they should.