I was having difficulty articulating this in the subject line. What I mean is, it seems like when we Americans speak, it’s very monotone. Yet, when I hear any other person speak any other language, it seems very animated. They speak in high tones, low tones and exasperations.
So is it really the case that they are more animated? Or does it just seem that way to me because I don’t speak it?
Even Brits seem more animated to me (not by much) and I can understand them.
If you’re speaking of literal rising and falling of tones, I think quite a few of the Slavic languages sound flatter than American English.
I think Latinate languages are usually a little more animated, pitch-wise, than English. And languages like Vietnamese, where rising and falling pitch is a necessary part of pronunciation, are obviously going to be far more lively-sounding.
More than one French person has told me that English people sing a bit when they talk, due to the importance of word stress and the stress timing in the language, and so, on the whole, I don’t think English is as flat as you are assuming it is.
Kiwi English anyone?
Czech is much flatter than American English. To hear flat English on par with Czech, listen to some of the (few) English announcements on Czech public transportation. They were recorded by a native Czech speaker.
Arabic sounds pretty monotonic to me.
Korean sounds like a person reading a list of random one-syllable words.
American English has pretty varied syllabic stress, both within words and within phrases, compared to a lot of languages.
One thing we do, though, is reduce our vowels. Lots of things end up being schwas, instead of different vowel sounds.
It’s been my impression that Canadian English isn’t much different in this respect.
Curiously enough, judging from audio samples on an Encarta disk I owned years ago, Canadian French sounds a bit flatter than that spoken in France. The cadences heard as the speaker counted un, deux, trois,… reminded me a lot of Upper Midwest English in the United States.
Are you talking about emotional tone overall, or more about the language.
i.e. the stereotypical WAPish white guy with a stick up his butt is pretty emotionally controlled. The stereotypical ethnic Italian-American is animated, gesticulating madly, and using 4 adjectives where the WASP might use 1. Yet both are speaking US English.
Are you seeing that effect, or do you really mean the language itself sounds different?
Around here I hear a lot of Spanish spoken by Cubans and various Central and South Americans. It seems about as flat as my English unless they’re excited. Then it goes wild. White New Yorkers speaking English as their first language seem more animated on average, but don’t go as far out when they’re excited.
Yes, the emotional tone overall. I guess that’s a better way to articulate it.
No, Canadian English is the most homogeneous with the least stressed phonemic and syntacticly linear version of English. The sestern US speaks in Canadian English, but not spell.
The Divided States of America have a wide range of local dialects. Like how many are there anyways? Canadian English is the easiest to understand for both English and non-English speaking people.
There are over 50 recognized local dialects of American English, or “Murican English” if you prefer:
Canada has 6.