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The sound of English to non-speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| CrumbsInTheBed Newbie United States Joined 5878 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 20 10 October 2008 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Dr. Arguelles, my name is Sean McDonnell. I am twenty years old and a Japanese/Asian Studies major at
Temple University in Philadelphia. I apologize if this topic does not seem appropriate for the Lessons in Polyglottery forum, but I wanted your specific expertise and input in this matter which has troubled me for a great while now. You see, for the past year or so I have, for reasons I am not entirely sure of myself, become utterly obsessed with catching even a small glimpse of what I, and other English speakers, sound like to those who speak no, or next to no, English. The obvious answer is quite simply, "It sounds the same to them as it does to you, you just understand it and they don't." But this does not satisfy my curiosity. When one hears a language simply as a mess of meaningless sounds, and another hears it as a stream of comments and ideas, these are two very different experiences. As a native English speaker, I don't believe I'll ever be able to truly hear how it sounds from the other side of the fence, but I want to get as close as I can, and, with your expert advice, this is how I propose doing it: As an intermediate student of the Japanese language, I have no trouble distinguishing many Asian languages from one another. Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, I can easily determine which one is being spoken upon hearing it, even though I have almost no knowledge of any of them except Japanese. However, I have noticed that others who have had no interest or encounters with these languages often are not able to make these distinctions. For example, I learned upon testing my mother that she is unable to distinguish between spoken Korean and Japanese. This is hardly surprising of course, as I myself am in the exact same position regarding most other languages of the world. Upon hearing recordings, I would find it immensely difficult to distinguish between most North Germanic languages, and Slavic languages as well. It is my belief that this inherent inability to distinguish between related languages that one is not at all familiar with is the key to my catching a glimpse of what I sound like when my words are interpreted as meaningless sound. This is where I need someone with your depth of linguistic knowledge. My question is this: through your extensive knowledge of various languages of the world, in your opinion, what language(s) do you feel is sufficiently close enough to modern English (in my case Northeastern American English) that someone who does not speak English or a related language and instead speaks an etymologically unrelated language, perhaps somewhere in Africa or Asia, would not be able to distinguish between the two (or more)? I must of course also stipulate that the related language be one that is not mutually-intelligible to me at all. Many thanks and my best regards, -Sean McDonnell Edited by CrumbsInTheBed on 10 October 2008 at 6:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6175 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 20 10 October 2008 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sean McDonnell, obviously I am not the professor, nor am I a person with nearly as much credential as him, but I would like to offer an answer while you await his response. My answer is based not so much on linguistic knowledge as it is on the culture I grew up in: Hawaii.
No, I am not saying that you should find a recording of the Hawaiian language to listen to, as that language has nothing in common with English. What I propose you do is seek out a recording of a conversation between two people using the Hawaiian Pidgin Creole. Yes, it is based on English primarily, and yes, you will be able to catch most of the words being spoken, but I can almost guarantee you that if you have never been exposed to it before, and if you find a recording with a heavy enough usage of slang, you will understand only a handful of the ideas being expressed. Pidgin is often spoken faster than standard American English of most dialects, it features its very own unique set of slang and expressions, it has its own distinctive grammatical features, an accent, and so on. The number of people traveling to Hawaii with no exposure to Pidgin who actually understand it is next to none. Adding to that, there is a small subset of people who speak nothing but Pidgin, and thus have a difficult time understanding standard English of any kind. I have a difficult time using Pidgin, personally, but I understand about 99% of it with no problem. Evan McKinney 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dancinghobbit Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5645 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 3 of 20 31 May 2009 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I share your curiosity, and am interested in your strategy. But will it work? Things
look different depending on what color glasses you're wearing. English probably sounds different to a speaker of Japanese than to a speaker of French. I have a friend who speaks an Indonesian language with native fluency, and she says that in this particular Indonesian language there is no "s". Therefore when they mimic the English language they mock it with a lot of "sssss". On the other hand, clearly speakers of a language WITH the phoneme "s" would not hear English the same way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6131 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 4 of 20 31 May 2009 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | ||
I am also quite interested and also do agree with dancinghobbit. I know that when many of my peers (native American English speakers) do imitation of German, they exaggerate the amount of the "ch," "ü," and "ö" sounds because these sounds do not generally exist in English. I also know of a way that could possibly work in giving you a foreign sense to English... When I write or say a word or phrase repeatedly, it begins to acquire and odd foreign and unknown nature. This often happens with me with the some of the most common of words. For example, I write the words "not," "the," or "you" over and over and eventually they don't seem like words anymore, and if they do, it appears that they are spelled incorrectly. I think, "Is this REALLY a word in English? It can't be! I have never heard or seen it before!" And then I realize how peculiar this is because these are some of the most commonly used words in the language. I don't know if this experience is just on account of my mental oddities or if it is the same for everyone. I would also be interested to hear the Professor's input on this. I hope that this made sense. Philip Georgis Edited by ellasevia on 31 May 2009 at 6:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| oz-hestekræfte Senior Member Australia Joined 5667 days ago 103 posts - 117 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 5 of 20 31 May 2009 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Heres how you do it.
Write out a script of made up words, that sound English. Learn to read and say the script fluently and record yourself doing it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sabato Pentaglot Newbie Brazil Joined 6629 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Russian | Message 6 of 20 31 May 2009 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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From a Brazilian's perspective, the "r" sounds in English are those that most stand out. They are also prominent in the Brazilian Caipira dialect, which is spoken in the countryside and is commonly associated with less educated people - therefore, it has a negative connotation. Maybe because of that, many people complain that English sounds "annoying".
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6253 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 7 of 20 01 June 2009 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I hope you don't mind me responding... The question of what English might sound like to nonspeakers came up one time. I think it was on these forums. Anyway, here's a couple youtube clips of people speaking fake English. It's strange to listen to. It kind of feels like I should understand it, but I can't catch a thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAA_qbiOQ5k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou9vd8EfLaY&feature=related 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7000 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 8 of 20 01 June 2009 at 3:51am | IP Logged | ||
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You can also check out Mr Doubletalk's Youtube Channel to watch him saying things you feel like you should be able to understand, but can't quite catch what he's saying.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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