meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5958 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map
| Message 1 of 4 02 September 2012 at 9:57pm | IP Logged |
If you watched the Muppet Show as a kid - or as an adult! - you must remember the "Swedish" chef. It seems that a lot of people actually believed that he spoke real Swedish! Now he has been "translated" so that everyone can know the truth.
The Swedish Chef
I hope there is an equivalent Scandinavian character out there somewhere mocking English speakers!
Edited by meramarina on 03 September 2012 at 3:39am
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6900 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 4 02 September 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
The closest thing I know is the fictitious character Mike Higgins (from the show "Hipp Hipp") who teaches Swedish words and expressions using a weird phonetic system (loads of r:s for some long vowels, obviously totally useless for English speakers with a rhotic accent).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkHRNrMmkvg
Then of course we have these clips (already posted here):
How English sounds to non-English speakers
What American sounds like to non-English speakers
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meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5958 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map
| Message 3 of 4 03 September 2012 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
I never saw the first two clips - hilarious!
I posted this without realizing that two related articles had preceded it, so here they are:
Don't talk about the Swedish Chef!
Real Swedish Chef is not amused
I promise, should I ever visit Sweden, to NEVER, EVER mention the Muppet chef! In fact, I won't speak of him at all. I remember him from long ago, but I don't recall ever believing that his "words" were anything much more than gibberish. I
Early Nerd gets the terms ! (As nonsensical silliness - how oddly prescient)
I'm glad that the English language is mocked, too. As long as it is all in good fun, I love it!
Edited by meramarina on 03 September 2012 at 4:23am
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 4 03 September 2012 at 12:54pm | IP Logged |
My first thought was to check Elmer Fudd's version of Google to see how much comprehensible English there was left in it. At first I couldn't find it, but then hit upon a forum with the solution: https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-elmer. You can also get Klingon if you use the code hl=xx-klingon and ... the Swedish chef is also on the menu: https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-bork.
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