On January 01 2009 06:24 PanoRaMa wrote: always wondered what british and australians thought about the various american accents, if they're as funny to them as their respective accents are to us
I have always wondered this too, because sometimes I just start laughing when I hear them talk.
We always make fun of strong british accents and strong southern USA accents, but when I listen to the USA guys casting VODs and stuff, nothing really stands out. Strong British accents make the person sound incredibly stuck up and pansy, while strong american accents just sound plain retarded lol.
A strong australian accent is also pretty funny to us. Everyone says they love plexa's accent but I don't see what's so distinctive about it haha. The New Zealand accent was developed way back when ppl from britain and stuff started colonising the country, and apparently the mix of Irish + British + French + native Maori children at schools was where the accent came out from, so it's kinda mix of everything and doesn't have anything too distinctive.
Interestingly South Island has a much more Irish accent because of the history of gold mines and stuff. It's also a tad "backwards" like southern USA
Wow, this thread is so interesting to me, thanks op.
I agree about Hugh Laurie, it always shocks me when I remember what his real voice sounds like when I am watching house.
Anyways, about speed, a lot of people have mentioned that english is slower than most languages, and that brings up an interesting question to me.
Most native english speakers that I know that have learned another language, even when they have been learning the language already for several years and have become proficient at it, still would be incapable of translating at a conversational speed. Infact, my mother, who speaks five languages, and has taught Russian, German, and Spanish for the last 35 or so years of her life, admits that in at least Russian and Spanish, she would need a native speaker to slow down for her to understand completely.
My question is this: Is this a side effect of the fact that english is so slow, or do people of all languages have trouble picking up speed with their new languages?
I imagine that a bunch of you are english as a second language students, so how long did it take you to gain enough speed in english to follow a conversation with a native speaker?
Aside: I work on the south side of chicago, and a side effect of our diversity is that there are a lot of people that don't speak english. The largest group of which (at least in my area) are mexican immigrants that have yet to master english. So I have often found myself (With 3 years of spanish under my belt) trying to hold a conversation with people that know less english than I know spanish, and still it is almost always them attempting english and me just speaking english instead of me attempting spanish (I try, but we usually return to english as they are able to speak it faster to me than I can speak their language to them), so I am curious if this is based on the speed of the languages.
Edit: A lot of that might not have made sense, I was in a hurry, sorry.
On January 01 2009 08:19 0xDEADBEEF wrote: Hmm... British English speakers sound a bit funny but "classy" American English speakers sound very colloquial, "chewing gum English". I never liked that Americans pronounce "can't" like they pronounce "can"... this is confusing sometimes. British speakers pronounce "can't" with a long aaa sound, it's more clear but doesn't sound so badass. Still, I prefer AE over BE in every other case. I absolutely hate German accent when speaking English... for example if you watch a Mondragon interview you'll immediately know what I mean. It's ugly. I always take care not to sound like that when speaking English. In general I like English very much... always did. So it doesn't really sound strange to me... it has almost become as familiar as German since I read and write so much English, and also watch a lot of English movies, and play English games all the time. Oh, and my operating system and programs, even my keyboard layout, is all US English.
Ahh nice post! this is the type of description i wanted to hear!
I too was curious about how others perceived our accent!
Also, this is a question to english speakers. Are you guys able to recognize the difference in spanish accents? For example, can you tell the difference between someone from Mexico speaking spanish or someone from colombia or cuba? The reason i ask is because to us spanish speakers the difference is extremely obvious and we're usually really good at telling where someones from by their accent. Can english speakers distinguish it as well?
On January 01 2009 09:16 HeavenS wrote: Also, this is a question to english speakers. Are you guys able to recognize the difference in spanish accents? For example, can you tell the difference between someone from Mexico speaking spanish or someone from colombia or cuba? The reason i ask is because to us spanish speakers the difference is extremely obvious and we're usually really good at telling where someones from by their accent. Can english speakers distinguish it as well?
Personally, no. Unless they have a really thick, cartoon-like accent.. Can sometimes tell mexican spanish that way, but generally spanish just sounds like spanish.
The thing I found most interesting about the first vid is that even without seeing the video and the subtext, I could understand what language he was trying to imitate. I'm not sure if this was due to him just being really good at that, or maybe we just pick up more of foreign languages then we think we do.
PS- This thread reminds me of the UCB show with the skit invloving the GrandMaster Dialectition. Hilarious.
Thread needs more non english people doing other foriegn langauges.
I know there are lots of people on here who do not have english as a spoken language (or first language) and should do the best they can do in that as well as other languages. For example, I would be neat to see how chinese speak german and french.
the "bird" wowel is Very VERY usual in scandinavian languages, even in german too i think. Finnish too.
To me it seemed stupid how you have to pronounce stuff in english. In finnish (and most asian languages too i think) pronounce vowels the same every time, not like , for example the E letter(when, we). In finnish its always the same. When we say A alone, its like "aah" and when it is in a word, its always just "aah". In english its like "hey" alone, and "ah" or even "ooh" in some cases. It was kinda disturbing first.
I dont know how it sounded when i didn't know it though.
Also at first, i could understand some of the swedish they talk in finland (i used to live in a town with like 60% swedish talking people), but the swedish they talk in sweden sounded just like so different, i couldn't understand it.
I've yet to find a country with as varied accents as my home country it's ridiculous. Though makes for a really broad spread of voices. But maybe that's just my head playing tricks with me?! I understand for example the difference in northern spanish to southern, but it doesn't seem that much. Maybe if I were spanish it would be absolutely huge and the english different accents not.
Though I doubt it because most foreigners who come here find scottish and northern (mancunian, yorkshire, newcastle, liverpudlian) completely unintelligble lol.
On January 01 2009 10:17 HamerD wrote: I've yet to find a country with as varied accents as my home country it's ridiculous. Though makes for a really broad spread of voices. But maybe that's just my head playing tricks with me?! I understand for example the difference in northern spanish to southern, but it doesn't seem that much. Maybe if I were spanish it would be absolutely huge and the english different accents not.
Though I doubt it because most foreigners who come here find scottish and northern (mancunian, yorkshire, newcastle, liverpudlian) completely unintelligble lol.
Chinese dialects are so different from one another, it would be impossible for two Chinese to speak to each other if they do not know a common dialect. You'd be able to pick out a couple words that sound similar, but not enough to understand. Good thing most Chinese know Mandarin in addition to whatever their local dialect is, if any. It's not difficult to understand someone who speaks English with a different accent than you do.
who would understand that without subtitles?
The meaning was just impossible for me without subs lols.
I don't know if its just me or not, but when I watch American movies, I know it is suppose to be an American accent, but I can't really pick it up, but 100% of the time when I have spoken to an American straight away I can tell where they are from.
It is also amazing how quickly your ears tune themselves to an accent and you start to imitate it, I start talking with an English/Irish/American/Euro-English/Asia-English accent depending on where in the world I am.
I was speaking like a fucking retard when I got back from Europe last year since I was talking a lot slower and using smaller worlds.
In regards to what I think of the different accents, I love the Irish and English accents, specially if I hear a girl talking with those accents, I fall immediately in love. We use a lot of similar words so I never have any problem understanding them, the American accent I am extremely use to, so its nothing out of the blue, although I also find the souther accent adorable, again with the girls as well. Scottish and Welsh I still struggle with and are two that are not as pleasant on the ears.
To be honest the only one I find funny and it really has nothing to do with them being our inferior neighbours, is the New Zealand accent, I just can't take it serious for some reason, although I might not be one to talk. But that is one accent you could never use in a serious situation, like the Indian-English accent. Can you imagine the president walking out in front of press after a tragic event with an Indian accent or a Kiwi one? Albeit if you have ever seen our Prime Minister do a speech he just pronounces words correctly so the accent is heavily diminished.
Chinese dialects are so different from one another, it would be impossible for two Chinese to speak to each other if they do not know a common dialect. You'd be able to pick out a couple words that sound similar, but not enough to understand. Good thing most Chinese know Mandarin in addition to whatever their local dialect is, if any. It's not difficult to understand someone who speaks English with a different accent than you do.
Having never studied it, I think for me Spanish would fall into two categories: Mexican and Not Mexican. And I'm not even sure I'd be very good at making that distinction.
Potentially a stupid question but I'm curious: in other English-speaking countries do accents have the same chick-magnet reputation that they do in the US? I guess I see it most with English, French, and Italian accents here (although the last 2 are cheating). And if so, does it apply to American accents? I want to know for -- uhh, no reason.
While I was reading this thread, it occurred to me that it would be pretty funny to try to imitate an accent while visiting a foreign country. I guess it would be pretty awkward to explain when someone asked about it, and it might offend some people. I don't know -- I think for some people learning different accents could be a pretty cool hobby, and it would be interesting to see if you could get away with it.
I was going to say I was surprised no one had mentioned the South African accent, but then it occurred to me that South Africa is too diverse to have a single accent. I'm also not sure if it's fair to qualify those who speak the accent to which I'm referring as native English speakers. But I'm going to include it anyways.
The accent to which I'm referring is one that I've only ever heard spoken by white South Africans. If anyone knows where it comes from (meaning, are these people with Afrikaans as their first language or English or do they grow up fluent in both?), I would be interested to hear about it.
Anyways it's probably tied with Scottish for my favorite. For me, any girl speaking with a Scottish or South African accent instantly becomes 5x more attractive. Australian/Kiwi is 3x(I think I'd have to hear them side by side to tell the difference though, to be honest). English/Irish is 2x(I think I'm referring to an "average" accent because a "proper" or a "ghetto" English accent can sound very ugly). American/Canadian 1x. Most American South accents are like x.7, although that probably has to do with culture and with the fact that a lot of actors fail at imitating it.
omg, how did I forget about the South African accent, it is one of my favorites to imitate (Although one of the hardest for me, for some reason), I work with a South African guy at work, so it's a lot of fun =). For me, it is the same as the kiwi accent, hard accent to use in a serious situation.
didn't read nothing of this thread but to answer the OP
it's difficult to answer this question because everyone is so used to (american) english nowadays because of music/movies/pop culture, but in my personal subjective opinion it sounds arrogant, loud, shallow, stupid, ignorant (add all negative adjectives you know).
On January 01 2009 11:33 Energies wrote: For me, it is the same as the kiwi accent, hard accent to use in a serious situation.
You have a good ear:
"The New Zealand accent is distinguished from the Australian one by the presence of "clipped" vowels, slightly resembling South African English."
"The trilled 'r' is also used by some Māori, who may also pronounce 't' and 'k' sounds without aspiration, striking other English speakers as similar to 'd' and 'g'. This is also encountered in South African English, especially among Afrikaans speakers."
I never thought of them as similar, but I can definitely hear it in my head now.
EPT
