Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blagie 996 days ago
... they're good enough.

I have an accent. If not for that, I'd be a great presenter.

If I could translate my voice into a poor Neil deGrasse Tyson, a poor Patrick Steward, a poor Carl Sagan, a poor Morgan Freeman, etc., my presentations would be... better.

2 comments

If it makes you more comfortable and confident, that is helping you.

This isn't autotune for the spoken word, though. It's not fixing pacing or vocabulary, and in the audio above it isn't even fixing intonation. Yes, a thick German accent will give you away as being of German extraction. But you're also using the word 'since' when Brits and Americans would use 'for', and it's not going to fix that. Any more than it'll fix my french when I make the exact same mistake going the other direction (for=duration vs for=purpose vs for=interval). If I hear 'since one month' you're likely German or Indian. If you ask how long I've been in Marseille you'll know I'm American in about half that time.

Finally a way to not have to fix societies Prejudices just give everybody the tools to emulate the ideal of perfection no matter what color their skin or what their accent sounds like.