[Q] What does English sound like to foreigners? - Page 8

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Velr

Switzerland10606 Posts

January 07 2009 21:19 GMT

#141

Dialects? Yay.

Random videos:

+ Show Spoiler +

Basel:

let's go 100 KM to the east
Zürich:

(just the beginning, found nothing better.

Another -100KM to the east
St. Gallen:

Let's go into the mountains (100 km south) :

Let's go.. basically over some Hills to the West ^^:
Wallis (this is a really *soft* version of that dialect, other swiss can't understand them normally, this here is *easy*):

and finally Bern:

And that are just some of the big ones... All swiss... :p

Carnac

Germany / USA16648 Posts

January 07 2009 21:27 GMT

#142

On January 08 2009 05:38 Itachii wrote:
I am learning french atm, and really loving it, not only becouse of how it sounds but also cuz of its grammar( it seems exciting for me, heh)

I am so thankful I was raised German+French, so I didn't have to learn French as a foreign language, personally I think it must suck to learn it.

On January 08 2009 05:56 Warrior Madness wrote:
Interesting. I've never heard ANYONE with that sort of accent before. But then again I've never been outside of Toronto. The weird thing is that my cousins from florida once said that I and all my friends, and everyone on tv (much music) had a heavy Canadian accent, whatever that means. I'll be going to manitoba and then vancouver for a little while and it'll be interesting to see whether I can pickup any differences in how people sound.

I don't find that weird actually. Your own accent and the accents of the people whose pronunciation you are accustomed to will only be noticed by others, but not by you. That's very natural.

And to give you a first hand example: my mom is French, my dad is German. My mom didn't speak a single word of German before she met my father (and she was 31 when she met him). She married my father, moved to Germany and started learning German here. I know she has an accent when speaking German, but I don't hear it, because I grew up with it. I do, however, notice the French accent of all the other French people who speak German.

On January 08 2009 05:41 Pholon wrote:
[...]We're still working on testing German and French people (*cough* volunteers?) so we can compare those outcomes to the D/E results.

*raises hand*

himurakenshin

Canada1845 Posts

January 07 2009 21:51 GMT

#143

Actually I figure japanese people think the american accent is cool because in lots of songs there are japanese people singing Japanese with an american accent.

Its liek wut

Pholon

Netherlands6142 Posts

January 07 2009 21:57 GMT

#144

Stupid coincidence, but I think I just found my answer. Watching the film Snatch at the mo, and I really have to strain my ears making our what the 'pikeys' are saying. I remeber not understanding any of it when I saw the film before but I reckon it's a good representation of what English used to sound like to me: a lot of short vowels syllables closed with a glottal stop (the thing you hear in bottle when the tt is omitted in British). I'll transcribe one sentence: Ri, i'se'tunuresepase wi te se bloobas (no idea what he's saying, something about a caravan)

On January 08 2009 06:27 Carnac wrote:

Show nested quote +

*raises hand*

Cool, 4 more and I'll start PMing people.

jgad

Canada899 Posts

January 07 2009 22:02 GMT

#145

On January 08 2009 05:41 Pholon wrote:

Sure many words are cognate but in my opinion the phonetic systems of the three languages are still quite different in many ways.
+ Show Spoiler +

For those interested let me illustrate with a partly result from my MA thesis. Among other things we investigated the perception of sibilants (the sounds s and sh as heard in see and she) by native speakers of Dutch and English. 8 speakers of each language listenened to a range of sibilants, going gradually from s to sh. These 11 items (on the x-axis below) were rated as s or sh by the speakers. Reduplicated results (y-axis: 8 = definite s, 0 = definitely no s (sh therefore):

The interesting item is no. 6, which received an 's' judgement by the Dutch speakers, but an 'sh' judgement by the English speakers (If you're English, this may explain why a Dutchman offering you to sit on his couch may sound funny). Pretty interesting outcome, since most people dont expect this to happen since both languages use the same two sounds. We're still working on testing German and French people (*cough* volunteers?) so we can compare those outcomes to the D/E results. I kinda lost my train of thought now so I'll close of by hoping this information was valuable in some way.

Nice study! I still think that Dutch, especially Flemish, is the closest (as in there are none closer) phonetic match to English. The hard consonants (r's, n's, l's, etc), meter... I dunno, something about it, but it always strikes me every time I hear it spoken.

diehilde

Germany1596 Posts

January 07 2009 22:02 GMT

#146

I think English, as French, is a language that is pretty much like a constant mumbling to someone who cant speak it, a load of almost indistuinguishable sounds. German and Spanish, on the other hand, are languages where the single phonemes are articulated comparably sharp and distinguished from each other. Thus, for someone who cant speak those languages they sound pretty rough and torn apart. Italian is somewhat in between those two groups.

jgad

Canada899 Posts

January 07 2009 22:08 GMT

#147

On January 08 2009 06:51 himurakenshin wrote:
Actually I figure japanese people think the american accent is cool because in lots of songs there are japanese people singing Japanese with an american accent.

Its liek wut

it's like a bad case of diarrhea...
+ Show Spoiler +

jgad

Canada899 Posts

January 07 2009 22:15 GMT

#148

Ri, i'se'tunuresepase wi te se bloobas (no idea what he's saying, something about a caravan)

Right, and she's terribly partial to the perriwinkle blue, boys

lol, I've watched that film too many times.

IzzyCraft

United States4487 Posts

January 07 2009 22:16 GMT

#149

Lol wut well i know that the vast majory of them aren't speaking english with an american accient although some people always supprise you and can speak quite clearly

Excalibur_Z

United States12226 Posts

January 07 2009 22:36 GMT

#150

When I started learning Spanish and Japanese, and noticing that the pronunciation of syllables was always uniform and without "exceptions" and "special cases", I realized just how hard English must be to learn for a foreign speaker. English in particular "invents" new words (like "Keynesian" for example) regularly so the vocabulary is always expanding fairly rapidly. On top of this, there are so many homonyms and context-specific definitions of words that it must be daunting for foreigners. It makes me relieved that English (particularly American English) is so widespread throughout the world, because if it wasn't, nobody would want to learn it because it's too confusing and self-contradictory.

Carnac

Germany / USA16648 Posts

January 07 2009 23:16 GMT

#151

English grammar is not exactly hard though, so developing a solid foundation on top of which you can then gradually expand your knowledge (vocabulary wise among other things) is rather easy.

Wysp

Canada2299 Posts

January 07 2009 23:30 GMT

#152

jamaican guest workers who come to the valley during the summer are very hard for me to understand. When I worked at Zellers I couldn't tell if they were speaking english or patois most the time. They would try to speak to me in english and I'd just determine what they wanted through trial and error.

Itachii

Poland12466 Posts

January 08 2009 09:02 GMT

#153

On January 08 2009 07:36 Excalibur_Z wrote:
When I started learning Spanish and Japanese, and noticing that the pronunciation of syllables was always uniform and without "exceptions" and "special cases", I realized just how hard English must be to learn for a foreign speaker. English in particular "invents" new words (like "Keynesian" for example) regularly so the vocabulary is always expanding fairly rapidly. On top of this, there are so many homonyms and context-specific definitions of words that it must be daunting for foreigners. It makes me relieved that English (particularly American English) is so widespread throughout the world, because if it wasn't, nobody would want to learn it because it's too confusing and self-contradictory.

English is considered as one of the easiest languages to learn, and not only becouse of its popularity but also becouse of its grammar - it seems to be rather easy and understandable for most people learning it.
Just for comparison, see how hard polish is on this example^^:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Most_Difficult_Languages_-_Polish

Some of the comments there are also really good.

United States3249 Posts

January 08 2009 09:15 GMT

#154

English sounds like a clown language from those youtube videos, lol. Also it sounds nearly identical to dutch.

United States3249 Posts

January 08 2009 09:16 GMT

#155

On January 08 2009 18:02 Itachii wrote:

Show nested quote +

The opposite is true if you try to read/write English -> the spelling is nonsensical.

Boblion

France8043 Posts

January 08 2009 11:39 GMT

#156

I hate when American women speak with a loud accent. That's so vulgar ewwwwwwww.
-10 to sex appeal.

I don't have this problem with American men. I'm straight.

edit: Bristish accent is wayyyyyy better for women.

qrs

United States3637 Posts

January 08 2009 13:26 GMT

#157

Bristish accent is wayyyyyy better for women.

I think the British accent is best for children. It's so cute.

niteReloaded

Croatia5281 Posts

January 13 2009 23:35 GMT

#158

On January 01 2009 05:54 PiSan wrote:

This is a guy who had a similar question. The video responses have fake english of varying quality.

That's a freakin great idea for a video, respect to that guy.

freelander

Hungary4707 Posts

January 14 2009 00:04 GMT

#159

On January 08 2009 18:02 Itachii wrote:

Show nested quote +

I think this is the only competition where my nation (language) can stand on the top
Hungarian is the hard language to learn.

Tekin

2711 Posts

January 14 2009 00:41 GMT

#160

Oh man i remember a while back when i was a kid in the Philippines i never understood english, every summer my cousin came from the states to visit my grandparents and I never understood them cause they speak so FAST

. As i remember everytime they have a conversation i was like "huh? huh? huh? what? to everything they said" it was like a new language to me. Watching american cartoons helped with my english ^_^

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