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by jessriedel 1951 days ago
You are reading something into my comment that wasn't there in order to pick a boring fight. There is of course no such thing as no accent a priori, but there is such a thing as "accents understood by (vastly) more people" and "accents closer to the mean accent of native speakers". When I learn Russian, my English accent is not on the same footing as a Muscovite's; the intended notion of "de-accenting" the English accent on my Russian is obvious.

Consider responding to the substance of the comment instead.
2 comments
enriquto 1951 days ago
> accents closer to the mean accent of native speakers

Notice that, for the case of English, most speakers are not native, by a huge margin! Native English speakers are a biased minority, and with a lot of variation within. Not sure that an "average native" accent is a useful concept at all. I, for one, tend to find most non-native English speakers vastly easier to understand than many native speakers.

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jychang 1951 days ago
This is a dumb fight to pick. Dude just wants some ML software to figure out how to change accents.

Maybe he wants to change the accent to a Texas accent, or the Queen's english, who cares, it's the ML part that's interesting.

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jessriedel 1951 days ago
> Notice that, for the case of English, most speakers are not native, by a huge margin!

I'm well aware, and this does not rebut any of my points.

> I, for one, tend to find most non-native English speakers vastly easier to understand than many native speakers.

That "many" native speakers in a language of hundreds of millions of speakers are hard to understand does not challenge the claim that a non-native accent brought closer to any native accent, much less the mean native accent, will for the large majority if listeners be easier rather than harder to understand.

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_-___________-_ 1945 days ago
What is the "mean native accent" for English? Would it be possible to somehow synthesise that? I'd love to hear what it sounds like!
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_-___________-_ 1945 days ago
I responded to the part of the comment that I had a response to, and I didn't mean any kind of hostility, much less to pick any kind of fight.
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