There seems to be a consensus among English speakers about how other languages “sound”. German is guttural — somewhat unpleasant and mechanical. Spanish has a distinct staccato quality. Italian is lively and flamboyant. French is smooth and flowing — the language of love and poetry.
Being completely immersed in the English language myself, I find it difficult to extricate the actual sounds of the words from their meanings. My question is, how do the native speakers of other languages perceive English? What mood does it evoke? Is it pleasant? Ugly? Funny-sounding? Also, are there other langages that sound similar to English?
Interesting area for discussion. I’ve also pondered the “sound” of languages. My disjointed thoughts:
The Inuit natives of the Arctic seem to talk with the front of their mouths - say “Tuktoyuktuk” - and I thought this was to preserve calories. The Inuit used to endure a lot of hunger and starvation and my wildassed theory was that their language evolved so that they did not spew out priceless heat and moisture when talking.
The Russian formal greeting “drastvutia” can be, and often is, hissed without moving the lips. After a thousand years of oligarchy, repression, and domestic spies and secret police people might develop a verbal greeting that is not visible so they could politely greet each other without being observed to speak.
English is the biggest language with the most words and has constantly evolved. England and America have been the centers of English and have also been rich powerful civilizations. In my opinion, English evolved as the language of the rich and powerful. I am grossly generalizing but English may have had no need for discretion or conservation of calories and consequently might strike some non-English people as loud and assertive.
English seems to also have avoided difficult sounds such as German or Arabic gutterals, or the French/Russian/Scottish rolled “r"s, or the Chinese characteristic where the same word can mean twelve different things depending on slight nuances in tone. But I’ve seen a lot of foreigners wrassling with “th” in English with “the” coming out as “de” or ze”. Once again I make a wildassed guess that English evolved into a relatively easy to learn and pronounce language, very forgiving of mispronounciations and accents.
A lot of learning English is learning phrases rather than individual words. Someone learning English has a lot of trouble with phrases like “how’s it going” that are not really clear. A classic is the English question “jeet” which means “did you eat?”.
Anyway, I’ve babbled enough. I’ll be very interested to hear the opinions and impressions of people who are not native English speakers. My theory is that English gives the impression of a loud, powerful, dominative language.
I’ve heard speakers of other languages refer to English as a “lazy” tongue. Not all the letters are pronounced and there’s a tendency to slur.
A Spanish speaking announcer doing a commercial for Furr’s Supermarkets pronounces Furr’s with a strong S at the end that almost sounds like a hiss(he’s actually pronouncing the letter). An English speaker slurs the S into a Z.
Most English speakers slide through the T in “water” and give it a d sound.
I have often wondered this, along with the additional thought: Does English sound the same to ME as it does to someone who does not speak or understand it? For instance, when someone is talking in French, does what he says sound the same to me as it does to his friend Jaques standing next to him? Does the understanding of something change the way we perceive it?
On one of my language lists, this topic came up. One of the posters said that his friend, a native speaker of french, thought that English sounded like two cats having sex. As for french being the language of love and poetry, well i think it sounds nasally and blurred. I heard someone say french is “A lyrically flowing language for people who speak out of their noses”.
One of the things that’s always struck me is how flexible it can be and I wonder if other languages have the same potential for such varied national and regional accents.
As for what English sounds like for a non Mother tongue speaker, doesn’t it depend on which accent ?
For example, I still have no idea what someone is saying if they have a thick Glaswegian accent - but whatever it is, it sounds like they want to fight.
“But I’ve seen a lot of foreigners wrassling with “th” in English with “the” coming out as “de” or ze”."
I live in the cajun french parishes of Louisiana and have always said d instead of th. I never noticed it before because thats how most people here speak. eg I went to de barn to get dat hammer.
"Most English speakers slide through the T in “water” and give it a d sound. "
I do this also. eg I want a glass of wader.
"One of the things that’s always struck me is how flexible it can be and I wonder if other languages have the same potential for such varied national and regional accents. "
I have known french people who have trouble speaking to other french speaking people because of the different dialects. Southern Louisiana french vs Canadian french vs Parisisan french. I also seem to remember that this was a improtant topic in the classic book KIDNAPPED. The educated kidnapped boy had trouble speaking his educated french to a group of uneducated french speaking sailors.
Sightly off topic. My grandfather used to alway say in french “politicans are crooked like a barrel of snakes.” I was watching a show on PBS where a french farmer was being interviewed about Frances agricultural policy, and he said the same phrase. My french ancestors came to america about 350 years ago so I thought this was quite remarkable!
michael
I agree, accents make a lot of difference. For example, European French (e.g., Parisian, Swiss, Belgian) sounds fine to me but Canadian French grates.
By the way, when discussing regional accents, a French teacher of mine once told me about an interview she had seen on French television with a Cajun man active in the preservation and teaching of French in Louisiana. She said it was broadcast with subtititles.
A good book, turned into a PBS special a few years ago, was The History of English (I think that’s what it was anyway - it’s benn some time). Basically, English came about as a meeting of several other languages (notably some forms of German) and as such developed the ability to be all inclusive of other languages. It assimilates other languages and their meanings easily, so the work detente, becomes an acceptable English word, meaning “working together mutually.” This ability has been especially proven in many parts of the world where pidgeon is spoken. Pidgeon, is not a language in oand of itself, (i.e. no formed rules of grammer and spelling), but instead it is a language that one group of people use to communicate with another. This happened mostly with trading colonies and new found peoples and with England being all over the world in the last few hundred years, it’s no wonder that English became known so well.
The idea of assimilation of one language into another, is the thing that will eventually mean that English will conquer all other languages. Recently,for instance, the French had to have a convention of the French speaking countries of the world in order to “invent” French equivilents for words such a cyberspace to mention only one.
English does this this automatically and borrows or steals any word in the world and makes it it’s own.
"a French teacher of mine once told me about an interview she had seen on French television with a Cajun man active in the preservation and teaching of French in Louisiana. She said it was broadcast with subtititles. "
I don’t doubt it. After 350 years the languages divirge a lot. You ever try to understand an Irish person. Whow.
LabDude: Here’s a helpful hint. When you want to quote something, copy, and paste it, and type {quote}Helpful hint{/quote}. But, when you do it, use the , instead of { }. It’ll look like this:
It’ll make your life easier, and your posts clearer.
I hear Spanish all day, and know the language fairly well, although I wouldn’t say that I’m “fluent.” If I compare Spanish to English, I’d say English is an “uglier” language, and that is spoken with a “lazier” tongue.
I think anyone who is bilingual, or learning another language will tell you that one’s native tongue sounds different to them, than to a foreign speaker. (did that make sense?) E.g. English sounds different to me, than to a foreigner. When somebody mumbles in English, I can understand them fairly easily. But, if someone mumbles in Spanish, I have a much harder time picking up the meaning, because it’s not my native tongue. To someone who has no grasp of English at all, my speech is just mumbo jumbo, it’s just noise…or two cats having sex.
About six years ago, my ex-girlfiend hosted a German exchange student for a while. I told the German student what I thought German sounded like:
“Ich zeube der angekantliche nuerdlebuder splankte hinabgeblorfen,” a nonsense phrase which rendered in American English pronunciation might be something like
“Ikh TSOIbeh deh angheKONTlisheh nyoodluhboodah shplonkteh hinAPgheblowfen.”
She giggled, and I asked her what she thought of other languages.
Her idea of American English: “Wa wa wa wa wa wa yeah!”
Her idea of Spanish: “lalalalalalalala (rapidly)”
{QUOTE}**
I have often wondered this, along with the additional thought: Does English sound the same to ME as it does to someone who does not speak or understand it? For instance, when someone is talking in French, does what he says sound the same to me as it does to his friend Jaques standing next to him? Does the understanding of something change the way we perceive it?
**{/QUOTE}
Off on a tangent, but I’ve always thought about how we think a word is pretty- or ugly-sounding based on its meaning, so if you don’t know the language it may all sound the same. I think we can’t help but interpret a set of sounds differently based on whether it is describing something positive or negative.
That’s true of American English speakers. I think English English speakers tend to make a different sound, not a ‘t’ or a ‘d’ but a glottal stop maybe, something like war…-…er.
Some time ago this topic came up on a message board–I don’t remember which one–but I do remember one person–from the U.S. if I remeber correctly–said they went to mainland China, where few people spoke English, and the children there called English “the hissing language”, probably because there are a lot more “s” sounds in English than Chinese.
There’s quite a lot of regional variations of pronunciation in Britain. Coming from North London, I used to say water.
(Translated into how I used to say that phrase)
It has always seemed to me that English is a language of consonant sounds while Spanish is a language of vowels. That is why Spanish sounds much smoother and lyrical. It is also difficult (in Spanish) to pick out the individual words because the vowels all run together. Speaking for myself, if someone speaks Spanish slowly, separating each word, I can usually understand. But if the Spanish is spoken conversationally, I’m lost. Reading is much easier.
On a related note, what gives words gender? Such as, (again Spanish) el libro (the book) is masculine while la mesa (the table) is feminine. Why the difference? I’ve never known English to divide its nouns (and corresponding adjectives) in this way.
Side note: When my daughter was three years old, she used to play with a three-year-old little girl who lived in the same apartment building as us. It didn’t bother either of them that they spoke different languages. It was fun to watch them work things out. Unless you spoke to them, you wouldn’t have known that they spoke different languages. Each girl just used her own language and whatever the other girl picked up was okay with them.
Regarding gender, I know that in Spanish, gender is usually decided by the last letter of the word, i.e. la mesa is feminine because it ends with an “a” and el campo is male because it ends in something else. However, there are lots of exceptions, and I honestly can’t tell you what the justification is for any of it.
I think gender seems to be a latin influence, since Spanish and Italian and other Latin-based languages have it but English and German (I think–I don’t know much about German) don’t. English is basically a hybrid of German, brought to the island by the Anglo-Saxon invaders in the dark ages, and French, which was brought by William the Conqueror in 1066. Then besides that we shamelessly pick up words from every other culture we bump into and oftentimes make up our own words from Latin and Greek.
The French, I have heard, actually have a government committee devoted to eliminating words from the language which are considered to be improper French. And Americans think OUR lives are over-regulated!
I’ve also heard that Dutch is actually the language that is most similar to English, and as for the Inuits-conserving-body-temperature theory, one study has shown that languages originating in warmer climates rely more on vowel sounds than languages from colder climates. Just think about Hawaiian. Spain is in the southern part of Europe, too. The theory attached to this survey when I read about it was exactly what Al was saying–that vowels require the mouth to be open, expelling body heat.
By the way, I know all this stuff because my dad is a professional English teacher and an amateur historian. I have an English degree too, and I like to read about etymologies and stuff like that. That’s one of the reasons I love Cecil!
German does have gramatical gender, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with physical gender. A well known case is “Mädchen”, girl, which is in the neuter gender in German. English also had grammatical gender centuries ago, but it was lost somewhere between Old English and Middle English.
I believe that most countries in Europe have such governmental agencies. England is one of the few that doesn’t. And if they did, Americans would no doubt consider it a matter of patriotism to ignore its dictates.
Actually, that honor goes to Frisian, a language spoken along a part of the North Sea coast (Netherlands and Germany).
