Probably most native English speakers can imitate the accents of people from other countries. To sound like a German, we replace the W’s with V’s, and speak in an aggressive monotone. To sound like an Italian, we stick an A on the end of every word and speak in a sing-song voice.
But to all the foreigners out there: what do we English-speakers sound like when we speak your language?
What does a British person speaking German sound like? Or, what does an American speaking Mandarin sound like?
What pronunciation mistakes do we make? Does our accent sound aggressive, or silly, or friendly?
Probably the most famous attempt to replicate an english sound is Adriano Celentano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol. The linked video doesn’t have much of it; most of the other versions have stupid fake english lyrics pasted over the video which is not the point.
There’s also Skwerl but I think that’s more English heard by a sufferer of Wernicke’s aphasia rather than a non-native.
To a native German speaker, the most distinct feature of an English accent would be the perceived lack of separation of words. In standard German, each word is preceded by a small glottal ('Ein 'Mann 'kommt 'in 'den 'Laden). Now if somebody unaware of that fact says that sentence, it sounds like einmannkommtindenladen to us.
Probably loud, due to the abiding belief that many people have that just saying things in English, but more slowly and loudly, will enable communication with people who speak other languages.
“He say, ‘He can shout, don’t hear you.’”
-Firesign
My great-grandmother used to say that the English speak French “as if they had a hot potato in their mouth”.
To my ear, French vowels sound “sharper” than their English equivalent. So, I guess that what she meant was that their vowels sounded all the same, like some kind of melted mess.
Funny Rs! The English R is a retroflex approximant, like this.In Dutch that’s very funny, for some reason. That’s what people imitate when pretending to be English.
The English also can’t say the ei/ij and eu very well, but really can’t say the ui.
My mum, who is English, struggles with the “eer” sound. She always says beer instead of bear (bier/beer) and pier instead of pear (pier/peer). We tease her about it: “Mum, what’s the first fruit tree on the left in the garden, was that an apple?” Tehehe! (OK it’s not that funny, but her face is really funny when she realises she said it wrong.)
I can’t really give a “what” for what English speakers sound like speaking Dutch. They sound like my mum?
I once asked a French friend of mine what American English sounded like to non-speakers (talking about how beautiful and flowing French sounds). I would think it would sound harsh, as it’s a Germanic language, but she said pop music. It could be worse.
Anglos tend to overdo the Rs and pronounce the V as an F (it’s a B). Also, same as English tends to have stops in places where we would never put one (you guys stop in the middle of words), when speaking Spanish they again put stops that shouldn’t be there. In movies, they often sound like children painfully reading afer they’ve been ordered to stop following the text with their finger.
An example from The Expendables (not high literature but you guys can get it easily):
There was a scene where the Local Tinpot dictator is personally bullying some imprisoned farmers (because that’s what tinpot dictators do, as the pool in their palace is reserved for the exclusive use of the American Evil Guy) and the farmer says, with about as much feelin’ as a flower pot:
Pero yo. Nunca. Te he. Robado. A tí.
Most of the other theoretically-Spanish-speaking people in American movies sound like that (the Chick didn’t; she’s Mexican-Brazilian and grew up in Brazil). The grammar itself is wrong in that the double “you” (te + a tí) makes it mean “but, even though I’ve stolen from everybody else whenever I could, I’ve never stolen from you” rather than “but I’ve never stolen from you!” The stops make it sound like that guy’s ancestry may be from south of the Rio Grande but he can’t speak Spanish - he may pepper his English with more Spanish than your average American, but that’s all.
First thank you, I knew that us foreigners sounded different from the Germans but couldn’t put my finger on why. All I knew was that we tend to sound more “like piled-up words” than you guys, no matter at what speed we speak.
And second, I think what you describe is true of any foreigners, not specifically Anglo.
I remember hearing a Spanish-speaker say that there seems to be a large number of words in English that end with “tion” and that he’d imitate us by saying “shun” a lot. Kind of like how an English speaker tacks o’s on the ends of words to imitate Spanish.
True, but it’s much more exaggerated in English, like in the song I linked to.
When I read back my post I noticed I didn’t mention that English people of course can’t pronounce the harsh Dutch G, often substituting a K. My mum is actually very good at the G sound.
Heh. I remember a scene from an issue of the comic book, Justice League America (from the late 1980s/early '90s, when the JLA was going through its “comic relief” phase), wherein two of the heroes find themselves shipwrecked on an island. They encounter a young native man on the beach, and promptly begin speaking to him in simple English, speaking very loudly and slowly and waving their arms around. “TAKE US TO YOUR CHIEF” and such. After a bit of this, the young native calmly asks them, in perfect English:
“Why do you Americans always assume that, by speaking loudly and slowly, you can make yourselves understood by somebody utterly unfamiliar with your language?”
(It was later revealed that the young native had a degree from Harvard.)
This sounds VERY similar to a scene in the 1967 movie Dr. Dolittle (with Rex Harrison, not the 1998 abomination with Eddie Murphy). Here, the natives have become educated and cultured via the English books they’ve found among the flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecks over the years, and have named themselves after their favorite English authors. The tribal chief calls himself William Shakespeare.
When I first started to learn German, I thought the entire language was one single word that didn’t end.
My pronunciation got very good and I would actually have arguments with Germans I would meet who didn’t believe I was an American.
However, I would meet other Americans who had just horrible accents - I will never forget listening to a woman from Atlanta, Georgia speaking German with the thickest Southern Drawl you have ever heard - it was simply bizarre to listen to.
My guess is some people might have a better talent (ear?) for the fine points of pronunciation. Another woman I knew had majored in German - she would never make a grammatical error, but she just couldn’t shake the American accent when she spoke.
Part of this might be how you learned the language - from a native speaker or from learning it in the country is probably the best.
One funny story - I was teaching English and a big German guy from a working class Berlin area started to speak, and he had a French accent when speaking English! I then asked where he learned English and he told me his girlfriend taught him - she was French.
My best friend is a big anime fan, and he told me once about watching an interview, in English, with a Japanese voice actress. Same thing - she had actually learned English from her French teacher, so here was this Japanese woman speaking English with a French accent.
