In a recent Planet Money podcast, they interview a girl who questioned the lack of female characters in video games, or specifically the need to purchase a female character as an upgrade, when the male character is free. I don’t think they mentioned where she is from, and she has an accent I can’t place. It’s East Coast, I think. Boston, maybe?
I think her first language is not English, so that’s not a regional accent, but rather a foreign “accent” (technically “L1 interference”).
Which language? I would guess a Germanic one – maybe Swedish or Dutch, or German, or perhaps even Icelandic.
I was also going to say Icelandic. Or Dutch if not.
To me she sounds like an American kid with a speech impediment.
Yes, it sounds like a rhotacism to me.
Agreed.
It’s not a typical Dutch accent, for sure. Her name isn’t exactly Dutch either, and it certainly is not Icelandic. TBH I think **Acsenray **might be on to something.
In my experience, small children have the hardest time learning the American alveolar approximants, R and L /ɹ/ and /l/.
The postalveolar approximant /ɹ/ often becomes heavily labialized /ɹʷ/ or fully moves toward /w/ or /ʋ/.
The lateral alveolar approximant /l/ often becomes velarized /l̴/. This is the “dark L” or “swallowed L” or “liquid L” sound.
You can think of this in a way as R being articulated too far forward in the mouth and L articulated too far backward in the mouth.
In some cases, this continues into older age—think Elmer Fudd for an extreme example.
Are you guys sure it’s a speech impediment? I also heard written “s” being pronounced as “s” in situations where standard English pronounces it “z.” This indicates to me a non-native English speaker (Da Bearss notwithstanding).
I listened to it a second time. There’s no question in my mind that it’s an ordinary American accent, with no obvious regional markers.
Most of the articles about Madeline “Maddie” Messer say she’s 12 years old and in the sixth grade, but they don’t say where she is from. This is the only one I found:
http://onbiu.com/6717-female-in-smartphone-games-characters-and-story-of-maddie-messer.html
However, this article keeps referring to Maddie as “he” and seems to be written by someone for whom English is not the first language.
Her Washington Post editorial — http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/04/im-a-12-year-old-girl-why-dont-the-characters-in-my-apps-look-like-me/
— notes only that “Madeline Messer is a student in the 6th grade.”
I listened to this podcast episode recently and didn’t think Maddie had any sort of foreign accent. I don’t remember noticing anything unusual about her voice at all, but since she is 12 there’s a decent chance she has braces or a retainer and that might be interfering with her speech.
Yes, that occurred to me as well.
I think her pronunciation of the long “o” at various times and the word “girl” (at 3:20) as well as some clipped word endings give her away as German or Scandinavian.
One thing’s for sure, her voice is nowhere near as irritating as that of Jess, the NPR correspondent.
Yes, a typical American teenage girl with a slight speech impediment, I’d say.