There’s more, but this video is an excellent example because it has multiple people from Europe assuming the video creator (the annoying troll) is American:
On other videos like this where the guys does the same schtick, the European players are constantly calling him American…I’m American and I can tell before half a sentence that this guy is not American.
Where is this guy from? Sometimes he sounds very Canadian to me, but he is usually playing against European players so I think he might be Irish too? I’m not sure, but I can definitely tell he’s not American.
Brits are supposedly hyper-sensitive to various English accents down to the neighborhoods, etc. So why can these players not hear that he’s definitely not American, especially considering how much exposure they have to American accents in media? It’s not just one person in one video, but many Europeans in many videos calling him American, and this is surprising to me.
I think that he sounds Midwestern American, or maybe Canadian, for the most part, but at certain points, his accent sounds “off”, which leads me to maybe think he’s a European (British or Irish, perhaps), trying to do an American-style accent.
Generally, his "A"s are pretty flat, which is probably what’s making the other players think he’s American, but certain words (like “rank”) sound funny.
He sounds mostly American to me. He slipped up a couple places that make me think he’s not, but then he could have been mocking the other guys’ accents.
It was the other guys who sounded like they were faking a Brit accent or something, and not doing it very well.
Sounds computer altered, actually. There’s Canadian elements, for sure, but mostly it has the kind of weird inflection and odd sound quality I associate with a voice synthesiser. Not as bad as most, but it fairly obvious, to my ear.
It sounds Irish to me. But a very “mild” version of an Irish accent. My guess is that the guy spent part of his childhood in Ireland and the rest of it in America, leaving him with a mostly American accent but retaining traces of the Irish sound.
Sounds North American to me. In fact, the way he says, “C’mon” & “You’re” so forth, I would say he’s from the US. Why anyone thinks he’s not a Yank I don’t know.
Oh, wait, where he says, “how I play the game,” yeah, maybe some Irish influence or something. But he still sounds more like a Yank with some foreign influences than a foreigner with Yank influences.
Nah, they were British with various regional accents. The lovely sweary guy, for instance, has an entirely normal Manchester accent.
To the OP, he sounds American to my Brit ears, albeit with some voice synth effect. And the Brit voices are clearly kids, so they wouldn’t be finely tuned to different N. American accents.
He’s faking. When he says “Oh my gawd” at 2:20, it doesn’t sound right. Overall it’s a little north midwestern/minnesota but not really. And no American would say “haitch”. Although if he is an expat he might have picked that up. He did mention not being in America, and I wouldn’t expect him to be playing on European servers if he was, due to high pings.
There’s no reason for the other players to pick up on the oddness. I’ve heard someone put on an authentic sounding Irish accent, then be told by a native that he was mixing up the accents of 3 different counties.
Listening to a couple other videos, I am sure he is faking. There is a a certain amount of over enunciation, like he is being careful to get all of the sounds right. Like giving full weight to the second “t” in a word, ie “starTing” rather than “starding” and "going to’ instead of “gonna” and “wanna”.
Actually he sounds very much like a Norwegian buddy of mine, he has spent a fair amount of time in the US and England, and he normally speaks with an entirely american accent unless he is tired, then the britishisms sort of creep into his voice.
I vote euro that has spent a lot of time in the US, and some time in Britain. For a while I was thinking eastern Euro [was sounding like a Polish gaming buddy, something about the vowels but after running it through a second time, I think scandanavian]
There are parts where he sounds what sounds to me, Wisconsinish or North Dakotanish, for spurts, and then he pronounces something completely in a way that is not native to ANY part of America at all. The way he plays coy and Just says “I’m not American” is part of the reason I’m so interested, but also because I can’t place his accent.
For a long time I assumed he was Canadian because he sounded like an American but different, but upon paying closer attention if I had to guess only one country of origin I’d say Ireland (And I haven’t meant many Irish people so it’s just a wild guess).
I find the fact that they assume he’s American, and insist he IS American after denying it very interesting.
Obviously, the ability to identify an accent depends on familiarity and exposure – a British listener can identify a British accent as belonging to a particular region, and if they’re familiar with that region they can narrow it down further. We typically don’t get enough exposure to American accents to be able to do that – what we hear in American film and television is a haphazard selection of a limited range, usually without any clear context or identification. The best most of us can manage with the majority of American accents is to recognise a fairly broad range of characteristics that create an overall impression of sounding “American”.
To British ears, that’s how this guy sounds – there are certainly elements that don’t fit, but the overall impression is very definitely “American”: he has elements to his voice that don’t belong in any British accent. And not like someone faking an accent, either –if anyone were to try to imitate an American accent, they wouldn’t choose that one unless they were an expert on American accents (in which case you’d think he’d be better at it).
I’m inclined to agree with aruvqan that he sounds very like someone who has a naturally mixed accent: he’s very likely spent some time in the US (or possibly Canada) and is now in the UK.
