# The Sound of English **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 7, 2000, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826 "2000-05-07T14:00:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SuaSponte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2000, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/41 "2000-05-15T02:45:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\* > still thinking about butterflies: why do we call it a “butterfly” and not a “flutter-by”? > \*\* My mammy told me that the word originally was “flutter-by”, but got changed at some point in time in Merrie Old England. Ma is a smart lady, and does have a degree in biology, but she might have told me this just to shut me up. I was an uppity brat. V. ---
**Author:** ![jayron\_32](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@jayron\_32](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayron_32)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2000, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/42 "2000-05-15T15:52:18Z")
> [@](#): > > Icelandic is the “purest” language. They have > been using the same words forever, and anyone > who speaks it today can read the Old Norse > legends from the 1100’s with ease (try that > with Shakespeare). What I had heard was that Lithuanian was the oldest unchanged language among European languages, with the evidence being that native speakers of Lithuanian could make sense of spoken Sanskrit, which is probably the closest language to the Indo-European mother tongue. But this is all just hearsay anyways. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2000, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/43 "2000-05-15T23:24:21Z")
Charlotte Bronte’s book, _Villette,_ although fiction, chronicled the author’s real life learning French in Belgium. Her book’s protagonist works as an English teacher in Brussels. She tells of her students’ opinion that they hear English as a “hissing, lisping” language. From Sailor’s post: “People who only speak one language fluently do not realize how much they are conditioned by that language and culture. Please do not try to overstep your area of knowledge because you can end up saying some very stupid things. Only foreigners analyze the language at that level. Natives just speak it without analyzing it. Don’t try to draw any conclusions.” You got that right, Sailor – I’m just starting to learn French, and it’s a real eye-opener. The first thing the teacher stated was that French, like every language, is its own tongue – don’t try to just do a direct interpretation of English into French, or you will make no sense at all. Studying another language makes me see English in a whole new light. We go to town, but we go to “the” city. Take a walk, but walk the dog. Run for President vs. go for a run. If you think other languages say things strangely, stop and think how we English-speakers express ourselves. I mean, how did we come up with some of these expressions? Get out of town! What’s the big deal? That’s a real how-do-you-do. Straight from the horse’s mouth. And don’t get me, like, all, you know, started on mallspeak. ---
**Author:** ![VeraGemini](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e9bcb4/32.png) [@VeraGemini](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VeraGemini)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2000, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/44 "2000-05-16T03:09:46Z")
This topic came up when I was studying Russian in college. The Russians of my acquaintance thought English and German sounded similar, in the same way that Spanish and Italian sound vaguely similar to native English speakers. They also thought that English was the hardest language to learn, because of the bizarre spelling rules, and because the language is loaded with double and triple entendres. Vera ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2000, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/45 "2000-05-16T04:39:32Z")
I’m a second-language speaker of Québécois French. The usual Montréal variety sounds the most ‘normal’ to me; the more strongly accented rural variety sounds sort of like how American English sounds to me; and Parisian French gives me almost exactly the same experience as a plummy British accent. Geenius: Labaronta genijo. (Esperanto.) ---
**Author:** ![zeenard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/85e7bf/32.png) [@zeenard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zeenard)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2000, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/46 "2000-05-16T06:44:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\* > > It’s just that the French have picked a different distinguishing characteristic: they think the most significant difference between a bat and a mouse is that a bat doesn’t have as much hair. The French call a bat a “chauve-souris” (literally, a “bald mouse”). > > I mean, what the ?? First of all, bats have hair, and second, the amount of hair is the most significant thing distinguishing a bat from a mouse??? > > \*\* One thing you’ve got to keep in mind is that most of french words emerge from langages like latin and roman. Many of them have kept a certain form, modified or not. “Chauve-souris” originate from the end of the XIIe century from the lower latin “calvas sorices” which is a modification of “cava sorix” (owl mouse). Now you cannot translate a word literally and make such a deduction. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2000, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/47 "2000-05-16T09:14:18Z")
Eh bien, et la cantatrice chauve? ---
**Author:** ![Geenius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f475e1/32.png) [@Geenius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geenius)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2000, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/48 "2000-05-16T18:18:13Z")
matt\_mcl: Thanks, but I’m only interested in translating it into _real_ languages. _grin_ ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2000, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/49 "2000-05-16T21:12:15Z")
As opposed to what? Languages with two million speakers, advocated by UNESCO? (sigh) From the OP: > [@](#): > > German is guttural I’m told that this is the lingering impression from lots of bad WWII films, and that spoken German is actually kind of lilting and singsongy. ---
**Author:** ![junebeetle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@junebeetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/junebeetle)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2000, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/50 "2000-05-16T23:17:27Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m told that this is the lingering impression from lots of bad WWII films, and that spoken German is actually kind of lilting and singsongy. Yup. I just rented a German film with English subtitles, allowing me to listen closely to normally spoken German for the first time. The language isn’t nearly as bad as the Nazis in those old movies make it sound. It has an interesting ring to it. But I’ll stick with French as the best “sounding” language — at least to my ears. - JB ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2000, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/51 "2000-05-17T01:48:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\* > From the OP: > > > [@](#): > > > > German is guttural > > I’m told that this is the lingering impression from lots of bad WWII films, and that spoken German is actually kind of lilting and singsongy. > \*\* In high school, our German teacher sounded pretty much like a movie Nazi, but I later met people from southern Germany whose accent was more “lilting and singsongy”, I guess you’d say. I think there would be a marked difference in accents between Austria and Berlin, as an example. DHR ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2000, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826/52 "2000-05-17T15:31:27Z")
Now that I think of it, each of the sounds that the OP mentions are related to the stereotype that the anglo world has about the language in question. I bet if the French had been the Nazis and Maurice Chevalier had been German, we’d think of German as musical and romantic and French as staccato and guttural. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sound-of-english/18826.md?page=2)