One side of my family are not native English speakers. They tell me English sounds very flat. Compared to polytonal Chinese dialects, I suppose English is spoken in a dull monotone. (In contrast to Cantonese, for example, words in English carry the same dictionary meaning, regardless of the tone of delivery.)
So they say English sounds rather duck-like: “Qua, qua, qua”. Rather mono-tonous.
This thread has cleared up a question I’ve had since i was a tiny tiny mammal. I grew up speaking both Japanese and English, (now i pretty much just speak english) and I asked my grandmother and mother this question. My mother speaks perfect english and doesn’t have much of an imagination, so no answer from her. My grandmother told me it sounded like water running over alot of rocks and when pressed for specifics got frustrated and told me all gaijin sounded alike to her. Heh. THANK YOU FOR THIS THREAD.
Brits say Americans are too harsh with their “r.” So our language sounds like “are are are…”
Uds. hablan cómo gatos…
I think North American accents (Canada included) seem louder than other dialects because of the harsh “R”'s. I’ve done my share of hopping between Canada and Australia and everytime I switch from one country to the other I notice how Canadian voices seem louder, but really aren’t.
For loudness as a characteristic of a language look no further than South East Asia :).
So far, we have it that English sounds like loud, noble, barbaric, mellow hissing horses playing a flat wah-wah guitar in a babbling brook while sipping tea and chewing gum: “Shella, shella!” 
Yup, that’s how it sounds to me. And I speak it like a native.
“La-la-lalla-rah-rah-sheshilla-garah-garah-gimma-pitcha-pitcha-
manna-mamina-poo-”
Oh wait… thats Ozzy Osbourne talking. :smack:
Anyone else just hear Monty Python…?
Not at all, I think you’re at least partially right about that, though here again I think the reality doesn’t go as far as the popular imagination suggests. I think our perception is tremendously affected by movies and TV, and observe that the British upper classes seem to be endlessly fascinating to Americans–far more than our own elites are to us, and probably more than they are to their own countrymen. Witness the popularity of shows such as Masterpiece Theatre. These shows so frequently seem to feature beautifully dressed English aristocrats, who never need to raise their voices, since no one else ever does, and the noise of the ordinary world doesn’t penetrate into their rarified spaces.
I think this exaggerates the perception that English people are quieter and more refined, even if there is a kernel of truth to it.
This question has been bugging me ever since I was a little kid. I was fascinated with Sid Caesar doing his foreign language impersonations on the early television show, Your Show of Shows. Sid Caesar was a genius in voicing jibberish which sounded like he was really speaking in a foreign language. He was a master at French, German, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, and Italian.
Here are some video clips of Sid in action.
I wondered at the time what English would sound like if someone were to spout jibberish in an attempt to mimic English.
While all of these posts are helpful, I sure would love to hear the foreign equivalent of Sid Caesar.
There was a German comedian who did a bit in his live shows where he taught Germans to say the “th” as in the word, “with”.
As this sound is not in the German language, he said it a few times and said, “All together now…th…”
To see an audience of 100’s of Germans all basically doing nothing but spitting into the air was pretty hilarious.
There are subtitles in one scene, and they appear in the UK version as well.
Once, I was talking to a Japanese girl who spoke English and some Japanese, and her mother who spoke Japanese and very limited English. Out of the blue, I spoke some gibberish sentence in what I thought Japanese sounded like to me. They both turned to each other, and said, in unison, and in English, 'What did he say?"
Think I posted this before, but a Welsh friend of mine, when she was five and spoke no English, thought English people sounded like:
Wrong thread. Oops.
Strange. I’m a Canadian and to me, the loudest Anglophones in the world, by far, are Australians. Amazingly loud, far more so than Americans. Every Australian I’ve ever met speaks very loudly. Or so it sounds to me.
On the other hand, strangely enough, South Africans always seem to speak quietly, white or black (even though they’re different accents.)
In my corner of the US, we have a lot of people from “the islands, mon.” i.e. Jamaica. They speak English, you know it’s English, but it sounds like a foreign language. I tell people who can speak and understand it that they are bi-lingual.
People who think Americas speak slow have obviously never been to New York City.
Or to the Valley. “Okay, soIwasalllike ‘Idon’tthinkso’ andhe’sall ‘Likefersure’… blah…blah…” I wonder what that sounds like- a dog yipping?
Really? I’m Canadian, my girlfriend’s an Aussie. On a few occasions, she’s told me “Australians talk through their teeth.” Calling Oz once and getting her family on the line – well, they couldn’t understand me.
Major part of it is that I talk too fast (even for an Ontario Canadian, I talk WAAAY fast). So, then I got the idea to “talk through my teeth.” A-ha! Worked like a charm!
I’ve never found them to be loud. Unless it was a fun, rowdy occasion, but then my Canadian friends get loud and boisterous when we all get together too.
More related to the OP:
I stopped by a Korean stand in a food court. The guy had his back to me and when I realized he was oblivious to my presence and would be busy for awhile, I said a Korean greeting I know (roughly seven syllables) and did my very best to pronounce it all properly.
What really struck me, was that to get the words out the way they’re supposed to sound, I used a completely different register of my voice. I swear, I thought for a second that it must have sounded to those around me like I’d sucked back some helium. Similarly, my co-worker speaks Japanese to his wife and sounds like he goes up an octave too (he sounds like he’s trying to immitate the voice of a child).
So I’ve been wondering if we sound deep, mumbly and “mushy.”