I have questions for native english speakers

Well bro, I'm not Native American, I'm Dominican and I can tell you that yes, I mean Dominicans, we don't use any accent, we speak in a way that we don't call that an accent, I don't know if I make myself understood, we Dominicans don't have accents, we speak that way by birth. But when we talk to a Puerto Rican, their accent is combined with ours and of course they have different pronunciations than us, meaning it is different. Although there are the same words but different pronunciations.

Different people have different accents based on their sociolinguistic backgrounds. Race doesn't really enter into the picture. I'm from the Caribbean and still have some of the speech patterns typical of folks from my island. I'm white-passing, but raised in a country that's majority POC. I'm sure to some people, I sound black because the majority of people with my accent are black or brown.

It’s not quite that simple but people of different races do often have particular dialects or sociolects that influence how they talk

I’m not a native speaker and grew up in S Korea, but yes, I can tell between some races, especially east Asians from white/black Americans. Asian Americans who were born and raised in the states still sound distinctly Asian for me, especially males. To me, they sound more clipped and articulate than their white counterparts. People who are fluent despite not being native (like people who immigrated at a younger age) sound conspicuously different. My guess is that they adopt the tonal patterns of their native language and the patterns seep in. edit: this is obv a “nurture” trait rather than a “nature” trait

Yes and no. Many subcultures have distinctive voices that are easily recognizable (voices would be the word you want to use here rather than vocalization by the way). Usually it’s due to a combination of dialect and identity signaling, meaning it’s the vocal patterns they grew up hearing so it develops naturally, and also we subconsciously mirror the inflection patterns of the groups we are a part of in order to signal belonging. It’s often noticeable for people of Hispanic or Latino origin, even if they grew up speaking mostly English, because they use the inflection patterns they’ve learned from their family and community. In my experience it can be noticeable with people of Asian descent but not always. A similar thing is true of “gay voice” too though, where gay men often share a manner of speaking, demonstrating that we not only learn to speak a certain way from childhood, but we can be influenced to adopt speaking patterns of the communities we are a part of as we age.

Yes and no. In the U.S., many black people speak in what’s referred to as AAVE, or African-American Vernacular English. There’s a lot of nuance to it, more than we can get into in Reddit comments. Some people speak AAVE in informal or casual situations like with family and friends, but then use more “standard” English in formal and professional settings. AAVE is distinguished from other English varieties by different grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation—almost like a distinct dialect. AAVE stems from/shares a lot in common with Southern U.S. dialects because the south is where there was the most slaves. I’m sure someone smarter than me can explain it better, but the difference with other groups of people is that generally their English is *accented* rather than them intentionally speaking with a different variety or dialect of English. I might be able to tell that someone is Asian or Hispanic because their accent is consistent with accents of other people who speak English as their second language and come from the same places. But it’s not because they’re using a distinct variety of English like AAVE.

I think everyone has a dialect in English.  New York sounds different from Texas, sounds different from California, which sounds different from the UK.  And none of them are more right than the others.  Then, even very fluent people have different styles.  People from India… seems to often sound a bit clipped to me, even if their vocabulary is perfect.  And it often sounds a bit British too. But there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just different. As a native Texan, I once asked my wife (native to NE US) to bring me a pin (I was doing some sewing).  With my accent, she couldn’t tell if I wanted a “pen” to take notes about my sewing, or a “pin” to hold the fabric together.  But that problem is only present in some accents, but a few clues like that and it’s obvious where I learned English.  She asked me if I wanted a pen or a pin and I replied “the first one”.  She has two different words for those, I don’t.

Whenever you have two groups of people that don't get along that speak the same language they will naturally diverge culturally. Each group will go out of their way to be different from each other and self enforce the cultural differences within each group. This also goes with language. African Americans due to generations of persecution in America, have gone out of their way to develop their own sub culture and dialect that is different from typical American English called African American Vernacular English, formally known as Ebonics. Similarly, white Americans have spent generations demonizing those cultural and dialect differences in an attempt to dissuade white youths from adopting the other's culture. A similar thing happened to the Scots and English. Scots is the closest language to English because it diverged from English some time ago. Hispanic Americans (especially Mexican often have similar dialect differences, but they also intermix Spanish words. Another thing to note about African American culture is that it has spread to pretty much all ethnic groups to some capacity. It is common to hear an Asian American talking with a lot of African American pronunciations depending where they grew up for example. The main take away here is that it isn't a race distinction, but a cultural one. This is all aside from accents which tend to come from regional and first language differences. You can easily tell over the phone if someone's first language is Japanese for example because they often approximate English sounds that are absent in their native tongue.

I work at a call center so I speak to people from all over the US. I can’t tell a difference with between whites and Asians who both are native English speakers. I can sometimes tell a difference with native Hawaiians. I can usually tell a difference with Hispanics. I’m Hispanic. However, I have a different way of speaking among my Hispanic friends than I do at say, work, or among white friends. It’s not simply the words that I use but how I say certain words. I do a “white” customer service voice for work. Haha.

It’s not black people in general, but black Americans have a unique cultural and social identity and degree of exclusivity that causes many of them to have a shared accent referred to African American Vernacular English, but the accent is not a result of racial morphological traits or anything like that and some black people do have accents in line with other ones. It’s also heavily influenced by the accent of the regions of Tennessee and north Mississippi and Alabama alongside some older African creole languages. Hispanics have a different phenomenon where many bilingual and ESL hispanic Americans develop an accent called Chicano English that most notably co-opts Spanish syllable timing and some Spanish letter pronunciation differences, although this is a result of language mixing via Spanish mannerisms and phonology loans and has little relation to AAVE. Asians that speak English as a first language have no such phenomenon unless you’re referring to Indian English. There’s also various prominent regional pidgins, creoles, and accents largely spoken by non-white racial groups such as Nigerian Pidgin, Indian English, Jamaican Patois, Singlish, Manglish, Kreyol, Ghanaian Pidgin, Krio, Black South African English, and Cameroonian Pidgin.

Yes, but it's not universal; plenty of Black people who are raised in predominantly white areas will sound white, and vice versa. There are definitely linguistic differences that separate cleanly across races, but for the most part it's geographic. It just so happens that most people tend to live around people of the same race. But yes, it is a thing where even if a Black person isn't speaking AAVE, there's a certain tone or accent they might have that would sound Black to my ears.

There is no physiological or biological grounds for accents, they are entirely learned characteristics. Where accents are associated with racial groups, it is due to cultural factors. It is common for immigrant populations to live within a community of people with a shared background/heritage, and in some situations, populations will form communities based on racial distinctions, that can develop distinctive accents/dialects. For immigrant populations, it is common for the accent to be influenced by the accent or language of the language environment that the immigrant population originated from, and this can persist for a few generations. In situations where communities are fully integrated with no division on racial lines, within a generation or two accents tend to fully normalise within the community (it takes a couple of generations because people's accents are strongly influenced by their home environment, so accent differences will persist for a generation or two as they are transmitted from parent to child).

Well, bro, I'm Latino, and I don't think so. I'm not sure about that

Some. It's more of a regional thing, of course, with people who mostly live in communities where everyone speaks the same way. You're bound to meet people who don't have that voice because they were exposed to more different people growing up.

I can usually tell if someone is black without seeing them-it's just the way it is. As others have said, they have a unique dialect/way of speaking. Whether the same can be said of other races or ethnicities is a lot more complicated...like are they immigrants or not for example. Also, latinos from CA/out west tend to have a distinctive sound.

Do you mean by someone's accent and manuerisms? They're many dialects of american English, and some are based around ethnicity. African American English is one you hear a lot about in English learning as it has more complex grammar than standard English and is often a source of posts on here, but another widespread and well known dialect of american english is *Chicano English* (Mexican-American English), which takes some changes or unique aspects from Spanish

It's all a social construction (or invention). Certain linguistic features are associated with people from certain backgrounds/regions/races, etc. These associations are invented over time throughout history, and often the most standout ones (at least in the US) are of marginalized groups in society, whether that's by race, class gender, sexual orientation, or something else. No race or ethnic group inherently sounds a certain way. Academics, public figures, and general society decided (often in a way that depicts white middle class men as having "no accent") that certain groups of people sound a different way. So, the idea of "sounding black" is socially constructed in that there are linguistic features that some black people may use, but not all black use these features and non-black people may use these features. To answer your main question, some people can guess someone's 'accent' if they have had enough exposure/interaction with people from a certain background, but no one has some inherent, natural accent. Your language use is entirely influenced by your personal identity and the people you interact and associate with, and somewhat biologically but only to the extent that you have a higher or lower pitch or have certain speech tendencies like a "lisp".

Well in the context of the US this is true and also not true. Black people have their own dialect, Latinos kind of have their own dialect called Chicano but only a subset of them speak that, and Asians I’m not really sure about. They may speak with a slight accent unless they were born and raised here in which case I think they’re indistinguishable.

Accents are biological. They are just artifacts of how a person first learned to speak. Forign accents are common in people who are fluent in English, but who's first language was something else. My grandmother's first language was Swedish. She immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 16. She died just past her 90th year with a Swedish accent. She often pronounced "j" as "y. " And her speech had a Swedish rhythm: daa da daa da da daa da. My grandfather's parents were also Swedish, and he too had a little bit of an accent. Their children have no such accent. It isn't biological. It's an artifact of their first language. People who's first language is Japanese often confuse "r" and "l' sounds. Their American born children don't. The list could go on forever. Regional accents aren't biological either. There are a couple of identifiably black accents in the U.S. meaning that the vast majority of people with those accents are black. But most black people don't have one of those accents.