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The sound of English to non-speakers

 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery Post Reply
20 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
CrumbsInTheBed
Newbie
United States
Joined 5648 days ago

1 posts - 1 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 20
10 October 2008 at 3:04pm | IP Logged 
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 5945 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 
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
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dancinghobbit
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5415 days ago

9 posts - 11 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 3 of 20
31 May 2009 at 6:31pm | IP Logged 
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 5901 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 
dancinghobbit wrote:
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.

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

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oz-hestekræfte
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 5437 days ago

103 posts - 117 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Danish

 
 Message 5 of 20
31 May 2009 at 9:16pm | IP Logged 
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 6399 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 
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 6023 days ago

281 posts - 332 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 7 of 20
01 June 2009 at 2:49am | IP Logged 
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 6770 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 
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.


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