There is a face reveal around the 2 minute mark in case that might bias your opinion.
I’ve been subscribed to this channel for a while now and I have often wondered about this. I am not American and to me his accent sounds American-ish, but there is something different about it.
I currently live in the UAE and meet plenty of people who grew up here going to western schools and end up with an accent that I would describe as American-ish but not quite the same as this YouTuber.
Does this sound like a typical American accent to you?
In a perhaps imaginary world - certainly nothing like the Trump-inspired world we now live in - genuine “Americans” could come from birthplaces anywhere in the world. If they loved the country, consciously chose American citizenship, and passed all requirements for residency and test-taking, they could become bonafide Americans. I even have a friend or two like that.
So, yeah. In that fairy-tale, starry-eyed, version of America, this guy sounds just as American as anyone.
But - does he sound like he was born and learned to speak English within the confines of the American mainland? No, not quite. Nor does he sound to me like a native speaker of English from somewhere like Singapore or India, where - gasp! - people can be native English speakers despite not being American.
Weirdly and unhelpfully, the way he speaks English reminds me of the (Persian/Iranian) character Aristoo Vaziri from the old TV show “Bones.” Not sure why I think that.
Probably, but not certainly. He definitely learned English from American speakers, based on his pronunciation, but the specific faint flavor of his accent is not necessarily foreign, if that makes sense. It’s possible he grew up in the US, but spent his first few years in an enclave of immigrants, and that he initially learned English hearing it exclusively spoken with that accent.
My wife is Middle Eastern, born overseas and naturalized as an American. She speaks excellent English with no identifiable accent. However, there are people in her cultural circle who were indeed born in the US, but who still have a very slight rhythm to their speech that suggests something other than mainstream American English, the result of having been highly insulated in the community during the initial years of their childhoods.
So while I think it’s reasonably possible he was born abroad and learned English as a child and has worked hard on it, using primarily American* instruction and resources, I think it’s also plausible that he’s American born and grew up with English but in a particular cultural context that has influenced his pronunciation and cadence of speech.
Now I’m curious. Is there a way to find out for sure?
*Just as a side note, where I live in Europe, when you hear someone speaking English as a learned-later language, you can immediately tell whether their instructor was American, British, or neither, i.e. a local native who passed on their own accent when teaching English (fairly common among the French people I’ve met).
Not at all American. South East Asia or India would be my guess. With a lot of exposure to USA accents via collegues or movies.
ETA: the phrase “yahoo actually has a very similar origin story…” marks him as Indian, and in my limited experience, I would further guess that he is from central India, somewhere like Pune, Bangalore or thereabouts. This is based on working with people from those two cities.
I was pretty off-base… I was hearing an Asian inflection, like say, Chinese. Is a little surprised when I saw his face. I’m obviously not very good at this
I guessed Japanese before the face reveal. Now my guess would be that he grew up in Bangalore. The immediate cue was the forced nasal tone. American voices sound quite nasal to some foreigners, and they will try to imitate that with varying level of success. The second clue was just taking breaths in unusual places. And the third was incorrect use of “thuh” and “thee” pronunciations of “the.” It should be “thee” before a vowel, and “thuh” before a consonant. Most Americans couldn’t tell you that, we just know when someone does it wrong.
