Not an earth shattering question, and strictly out of curiosity, but I am looking for more fact than opinion, so I am posting it in GQ. If we have to move it later, so be it.
Here in the US, it is not uncommon to pretend to speak a language you can’t. The TV show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” has one type of skit they do where the comedians pretend to speak a foreign language and the other players must translate.
In this pretend speech, if one wants to pretend to speak Chinese, several words that end in “ng”, such as “Hong” are used. If one wishes to pretend to speak French, words with sounds such as found in “Chapeau” are used profusely. Pretending to speak German includes lots of gutteral sounds and Russian uses words with sounds like those in “nyet”.
So, I am wondering, how do other cultures pretend to speak English? Is it different for different countries? Do the Chinese mimic English one way and Italians another? I am not looking for stereotyping of Nationality (as such, I don’t want to hear that pretending to be American means you must use a whiny voice or anything along those lines), but strictly of which sounds other cultures perceive to be most common in English.
I realize cites might be impossible, but first hand witness testimony from someone who has traveled is acceptable to me.
Thanks!
Well, in China English is known as the “hissing language,” because the presence of the “s” and “sh” sounds are disproportionately greater than in other languages. I would imagine that in China, imating English would involve using some gutteral noises, along with a liberal helping of “shhhh” sounds
I once saw a Web site that generated random, mimiced Spanish, German, French, Dutch and English text. The German and Spanish looked like German and Spanish, but the fake English seemed … well, it seemed very strange.
I can say that English-only speakers in southern New Mexico and West Texas imitate Spanish MUCH better than those in the rest of the US. While Spanish is generally imitated by just Speaking English and ending most words in “o”, New Mexicans do it by combining random sounds commonly found in Spanish words and names, and speakign it in a northern Mexico accent (speak in a sleepy monotone, and draw out the last syllables of a sentence). For instance, imagine these snacks sitting on store shelves in Cuidad Juarez …
Chuvalitos
Charriscolitos
Panalochitas
Locovaristas
Vendadores
All imaginary words, but all sounding VERY real to my ears, much more so than “lighto,” “computero” and “railroado.”
Thank you DarrenS. I tried searching but there were so many different ways to phrase the question I obviously didn’t think of them all.