Wht accent do these German speakers have?

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They both sound distinctly Irish to my ear. There are occasional vowels that scream southern Irish. But my German is basic, so I cannot be sure. Perhaps they are just fans of Father Ted.

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What a question… !?
It’s standard German without an accent.

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I wish German ladies could speak German as clearly as it is spoken in this video esp in real life. :blush: In real conversations they mingle words. Since you are just starting it is just a beginning…perhaps listen to this video at 1.5x speed for simulating real conversations

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It is standard German. And it’s so accentless that it sounds unnatural and sterile. Normally there is no such thing as “accent-free”. Everyone who speaks German (or whatever language) has the accent of the region they come from. I suspect that this almost creepily accentless German is made by an AI.

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I agree with @DJTembo , it sounds to me like AI-speech.

They mostly speak standard German but every once in a while, a weird r-colored “burr” slips into their speech that is typical of both American and Irish accents in English - that may be where your impression came from.

A few particular details that make me suspect AI-speech:

  • the rhythm is almost metronomic, one syllable following another, where a human speaker would have some variation in speed
  • related to the above, it is particularly noticeable that unstressed syllables such as endings are spoken with an unnatural care – in “human” German, they are usually shorter and may even lose their vowel altogether (such that e.g. “machen” becomes “mach’n”, as is sometimes reflected in informal spellings). Upon re-listening, I notice that sometimes it does indeed cut them short in this way, e.g. “backen” being pronounced like “back’n”. Again, what gives it an uncanny-valley feel is the unnatural all-or-nothing variation - either fully pronounced or fully left out.
  • the melody is speech is very uniform. Yes, it goes up and down, but “all at once” instead of gradually, the way you’d expect from a human speaker
  • Listen to how “Anna” pronounces Kundenservice early on. It slips into a General American pronunciation for -service. Indeed, this one was what made me decide it must be AI. No human would do that, not if they otherwise speak accent-free.
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Thanks all, very helpful.

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Thanks. That’s exactly it, there is a colour or burr that occasionally slips in.

I have to say this is the best German AI speech I’ve heard. A lot of German videos for learners have appeared recently, all using AI speech and cartoons. Generally the speech is obviously unnatural.

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I have noticed the same happening with ChatGPT Voice when I’ve experimented with it in different languages. It weirdly slips in and out of a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) American-English accent while speaking, almost at random. “Traditional” text-to-speech doesn’t seem to have that issue. (Although it has its own issues, such as misidentifying the language to hilarious results like reading your entire English sentence with a heavy German accent.)

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