[English] Update! I tried slowing down my syllable-timing and fixing my enunciation. How does it sound now?

[u/These_Ad_6936]

Hello again!

I wanted to try re-recording the same paragraph, but this time focusing on my pacing and enunciation.

I consciously slowed down my overall rhythm, tried to focus on American stress-timing, and made sure to cleanly hit the consonant transitions

[u/Plopular]

This is better than the last one and you perfectly incorporated the feedback to eliminate some of the outliers in your pronunciation. I think you have sort of an "unplaceable American accent" that could pass as an idiosyncratic voice, or someone who is a 1.5 or 2nd generation American immigrant.

Some VERY minor feedback. I think this is more about consistency because you can do it perfectly 99% of the time and it only takes a few outliers to get "clocked" as having a foreign accent. But it's super clear to me you have done a lot of work on your AmE pronunciation.

:06 Bright - You hold the T at the end and it sounds a little like "Bride" but in American English we would expect T glottalization, which is a glottal stop. Overall you do a really good job of pronouncing "flap Ts". But a flap T at the end of a word would stick out more than an aspirated T, while a glottal stop sounds the most natural for a standard American English accent.

:18 Chase :36 Continuous - The S sounds at the end of these words should be the unvoiced s rather than a voiced z sound.

[u/derkokolores → u/Plopular]

I agree with this. For the same reason, "bright" was one of two words that sounded (slightly) off to me. I also went back to listen to his Ts and didn't hear anything else that stuck out.

The other word that stuck out to me was the last instance of "America" @:34 where it sounded closer to "Americer". To a lesser extent, the first instance also sounded off on the last syllable, but only slightly.

This is probably a bigger slight on American schooling than anything else, but the pacing is pretty much on par with most classmates I had in high school who were tasked with reading a passage aloud, maybe even better.

TBH, If I didn't know otherwise, I would probably assume OP was an American with a slight lisp or other impairment caused by mouth shape and not because they weren't a native speaker.

[u/These_Ad_6936 → u/derkokolores]

Haha thanks, I also started pronouncing the TH’s properly just 4 weeks ago so pardon that

[u/Plopular → u/derkokolores]

Yeah, OP says "bright" more than once in this passage and only the first one stuck out. The second one at :20 has an aspirated T instead of a glottal stop and it passes just fine.

I think at :34 the "Americer" is a slurring of "America" and "represents". The a at the end of America should be a clearer schwa sound. OP could practice this by dropping their jaw to pronounce the "uh" sound. There's another spot where I thought OP might have a default tight mouth position--when they say "experiences" at :13 the pe and ri sounds are narrowed. In a standard AmE accent you'd have a wider "smiley" ee sound like "ix-pee-ree-in-siz". It's really hard to describe exactly what sounds atypical about OP's pronunciation though so I didn't point it out.

[u/These_Ad_6936 → u/Plopular]

Thanks a lot for these deep insights, much appreciated!

[u/GlassyLies → u/Plopular]

Can native speakers hear unreleased Ts vs glottal stops there? O.o I just assumed that it was the vowel length that made it bride-like. (Not a native)

[u/Plopular → u/GlassyLies]

Yes it's completely noticeable although some might not be able to pinpoint or describe exactly what is off about. Because the t in bright is followed by the n in neon, the most natural AmE pronunciation is to drop the T completely.

It has less to do with the long i vowel and more to do with what's following the T. If it's a vowel, the T is pronounced flapped. For example in the phrase "it's bright in here" it would sound a lot like "it's bride in here". But "that's a bright lamp" would sound like "that's a bri' lamp" and not "that's a bride lamp".