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What does English sound like? | ||
Tags: English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| commo Newbie United States Joined 5511 days ago 13 posts - 20 votes Speaks: French | Message 25 of 39 23 March 2010 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I once had a Chinese friend who had been raised in Hong Kong but was also fluent in French and English. One day she asked me whether I thought French or English was the "more beautiful" language. I told her that I really was not well positioned to make such a judgment but, since she was a fluent non-native speaker of both, I would be interested in her opinion. She thought for a few seconds and said, "probably English".
Obviously this is just one opinion but it is offered for what it is worth (and as a counterpoint to the remark supposedly made by Ricardo Montalban posted above). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dangre37 Newbie United States Joined 5389 days ago 12 posts - 16 votes Studies: Russian | Message 26 of 39 24 March 2010 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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commo, your post reminds me of a statement the novelist Nabokov once made. He contended that English, French, and Russian were the "most beautiful languages". I have no idea what he meant by "most beautiful", but I suppose he meant beautiful sounding. But what standard does one use to determine the beauty of a language? Surely it is a very subjective judgment. Before I began studying Russian, I would never have considered Russian to be a very beautiful sounding language. And various accents can make English very unpleasant sounding, in my opinion.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6865 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 27 of 39 24 March 2010 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Every "fake English" video I've ever seen seems to show the people talking like someone from The Sims computer game.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| commo Newbie United States Joined 5511 days ago 13 posts - 20 votes Speaks: French | Message 28 of 39 24 March 2010 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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"And various accents can make English very unpleasant sounding, in my opinion."
This is definitely true. For me, it would be ludicrous to compare Ralph Fiennes or Robert Redford speaking English with "dogs barking". But then again...there's always Fran Drescher, Rosie O'Donnell and Spongebob Squarepants! :) Edited by commo on 24 March 2010 at 7:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 29 of 39 24 March 2010 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | ||
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awxy9V4TutE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucYv1zX13zU Edited by Delodephius on 24 March 2010 at 10:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5351 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 30 of 39 01 April 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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hmm, I wanted to say that I can easily tell Japanese from Korean because of the sounds Korean has that Japanese doesn't.
I've heard some Shanghainese and I didn't notice an obvious way to tell it from Mandarin (except that I couldn't understand it). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6120 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 31 of 39 01 April 2010 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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the fake English of some french kid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls-RvDXPMdo 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5641 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 32 of 39 01 April 2010 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Somebody has tried to subtitle the Italian gibberish song in comprehensible English. It's even more bizarre!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S00Br2SSrY8&feature=related 1 person has voted this message useful |
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