When I spent a year in Germany I remember there was a German girl in our circle who spoke English with a stereotypical Southern accent, so…ha!
While in college, it sometimes happened that I’d go to bed while there were still some guys out in the common room talking, and I would try to get a feel for how English would seem to a nonspeaker, or at least a non-native speaker. Right off I noticed that we use lots of /s/ and /sh/ sounds. Not only is /s/ perhaps the most common of our few remaining grammatical inflections, but a huge number of words begin in /s/. There’s a good reason that in enyclopedias that use the unit-letter arrangement (each letter of the alphabet has its own volume), the “S” and “C” volumes are among the biggest.
Indeed, English is apparently the “hissing language” to some non-English speakers because of all the sibilants, as mentioned in this old thread: What does English sound like to a foreigner?
“Horses talking” is another memorable description from that thread.
There is a Welsh idiom, mae fy nwylo yn siarad Saesneg, “My hands are speaking English.” It refers to the way people rub their hands together when they’re cold (palms together, sliding back and forth), which produces a sort of hissing sound.
It’s interesting. I worked years ago with some women that were Asian immigrants (I believe Vietnamese). English was definitely their second language. I tried do describe how their language sounded to me and asked how English sounded to them. One said "It all sounds like the wind. Alll <ssssss noises>. I see from reading the threads , that this is very true for English. (Even here in Texas, ya’ll!)
But “sounds like the wind” is very pretty, isn’t it?
My friend who grew up speaking only Welsh, aged five, characterised English speakers she’d heard with the phrase: “Shing shelane ahome on all a days”. That’s what we sound like.
To be exact: Norwegian and Danish have æ, ø and å. Swedish uses ä in place of æ and ö in place of ø.
To tell Danish and Norwegian apart I guess you could count g’s and k’s. Norwegian will have more k’s and Danish more g’s. I’m not sure how reliable it is though.
Do you mean that “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs” means nothing to you? It’s my favorite (both sarcastically and seriously)!
