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What does English sound like? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dangre37 Newbie United States Joined 5389 days ago 12 posts - 16 votes Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 39 18 March 2010 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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We all know know how various languages that we are unfamiliar with "sound" when spoken. Some sound very rough-edged, even quite unpleasant to the ear (these I won't name), some sound very beautiful, such as spoken Italian or French. I have often wondered what spoken English sounds like to a non-English speaker. Is there another language that would come close to sounding very similar to spoken English, so that if an English-speaking individual were to hear it, they could catch the flavor of how English sounds to someone who does not understand it?
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| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes  Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 39 18 March 2010 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I always wondered about this. Since I'm a fluent English speaker in a non-English environment I am always curious to know how does English sound to those who don't understand it. I sometimes if I concentrate can get into a state of mind where I only listen to a language that I know but try not to understand anything, just listen to the sound not the words. It sometimes works and to me English sounds as a bit lazy, slaking language, it has a lot of what we call "half sounds", incomplete sounds, unclear, even when clearly pronounced. I don't know what other language is like this. Edited by Delodephius on 18 March 2010 at 7:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 3 of 39 18 March 2010 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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The only other language I can think of that mumbles unstressed vowels in a similar way is Russian, and even there it isn't taken to the same extreme as English.
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| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 4 of 39 18 March 2010 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
I can say in St. Petersburg I often overhear Finns speaking and often initially take them for Italians or Englishmen. But that's because I don't hear them clearly.
Edited by Siberiano on 18 March 2010 at 8:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rustyosier2134 Newbie United States Joined 5386 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish, Esperanto | Message 5 of 39 18 March 2010 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is an interesting video i found that mimics the way that English sounds to foreigners. The man who wrote the song just for that purpose, to show English speakers how English sounds to people who do not speak it.
http://boingboing.net/2009/12/17/gibberish-rock-song.html 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6437 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 6 of 39 18 March 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's a vid of faking languages, including English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRR_gKFT6ds Edited by IronFist on 18 March 2010 at 10:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lindsay19 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5821 days ago 183 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC1 Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic | Message 7 of 39 18 March 2010 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
If this is vvhat English really sounds like, I can't say I'd very much enjoy learning it as a foreign language xD Sounds really gross to me... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 8 of 39 18 March 2010 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
I think this depends more on the person speaking it and their accent. I find Received Pronunciation very clear for example. All the consonants are pronounced distinctly and the vowels are nicely rounded, which is often part of the difficulty in learning this English accent over others I guess. Edited by Teango on 18 March 2010 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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