Community! Me and my sister decided to find out whose pronunciation/intonation is better. Can you please help us out?
Answer
As far as pronunciation goes, from the point of view of RP standards, the recording 2 is of a somewhat better quality; the reasons are that in the first recording
1/ the vowel of "said" is a little too long (no problem in the second),
2/ the "th" digraph is tather /t/ (pronounced correctly in the second recording)
3/ the -ing part of "thinking" is rather /in/ (the ing sound seems preserved in the second)
4/ an intrusive sound is found between "wished to" and "ask" (sounds like a t) (no such problem in the second),
5/ the c in Lucy is pronounced z (it’s pronounced right in the second recording)
6/ there is a liaison between the words "it" and "out" (this does not occur in the second recording, as it normally should not),
and in the second,
1/ "was" can’t be made out, not because it could be reduced but because neither the sound /w/ nor /z/ can be heard (in the first recording there is no reduction but the consonants can be heard),
2/ the w in "written" seems to be appear a little (whereas in the first recording there is no "hint" of it and only an r can be made out)
3/ "for" is not reduced (it is reduced in the first recording, as normally it should).
On the count of pronunciation there is less divergence from the standard in the second recording, hence my appreciation of it as being somewhat better.
As concerns intonation, which is more difficult to judge, there is not, in either recording, any remarkable divergence from what one might expect, no trace of an even light foreign accent. (My foreign ears can’t however detect barely perceptible accents in the English language, so I can’t tell whether the accent is perfectly English English or not, and that for either speaker.)
The accent could be called British English, not much different from RP.
On the whole the second speaker performs a little better.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Eugene Kovalev , Answer Author : LPH