What does English sound like? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

What does English sound like?
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39 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 Next >>

Levi
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Message 17 of 39

19 March 2010 at 3:18pm | IP Logged

Korean and Japanese aren't too hard to tell apart. One giveaway is that Japanese syllables can only end in vowels or "-n", whereas Korean syllables often end with other consonants.
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Arekkusu
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Message 18 of 39

19 March 2010 at 3:50pm | IP Logged

Levi wrote:

Korean and Japanese aren't too hard to tell apart. One giveaway is that Japanese syllables can only end in vowels or "-n", whereas Korean syllables often end with other consonants.

And you can pick that out in a natural conversation between 2 other people? When I started learning Japanese, I'd occasionally hear Koreans talk, and it would take me a while to confirm my initial hunch that it was probably Korean.
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dangre37
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Message 19 of 39

19 March 2010 at 4:05pm | IP Logged

Perhaps my original question was not very well framed. Is there another language that sounds very similar to English, so that by hearing that language spoken I might be able to hear what English sounds like to a non-English speaker?

Several languages which I think sound very similar to English are Danish and Swedish. I don't think that Russian, or any slavic language, even comes close to sounding like English.
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Pyx
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Message 20 of 39

19 March 2010 at 4:06pm | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

Levi wrote:

Korean and Japanese aren't too hard to tell apart. One giveaway is that Japanese syllables can only end in vowels or "-n", whereas Korean syllables often end with other consonants.

My only clue is usually that Korean sounds a bit softer to my ears than Japanese. But who knows how reliable that is :) Maybe I'm just bad with these things - it often enough takes me more than a couple of seconds to determine if I'm listening to Mandarin or another Chinese language. As in "don't understand that.. don't understand that.. don't understand that.. WTF?!??...oh..wait..not Mandarin..."
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psy88
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Message 21 of 39

20 March 2010 at 2:39am | IP Logged

I am not sure if this is relevant but as far as how English sounds to non-English speakers, the late Mexican-born actor, Ricardo Montalban (Star Trek, Fantasy Island, etc.) once said that to him spoken English sounded like dogs barking.
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GREGORG4000
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Message 22 of 39

20 March 2010 at 2:41am | IP Logged

I can't tell apart tonal languages well enough either >.<

As a native English speaker I'd say that Dutch and French sound the closest... which is reasonable considering language families/influence

Edited by GREGORG4000 on 20 March 2010 at 2:42am
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elvisrules
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Message 23 of 39

20 March 2010 at 5:01pm | IP Logged

GREGORG4000 wrote:

I can't tell apart tonal languages well enough either >.<

As a native English speaker I'd say that Dutch and French sound the closest... which is reasonable considering language families/influence

French and Dutch?! They have a completely different pronunciation!
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Johntm
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Message 24 of 39

21 March 2010 at 5:42am | IP Logged

elvisrules wrote:

GREGORG4000 wrote:

I can't tell apart tonal languages well enough either >.<

As a native English speaker I'd say that Dutch and French sound the closest... which is reasonable considering language families/influence

French and Dutch?! They have a completely different pronunciation!

And they don't even come from the same language family!

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