# What does English sound like to foreigners? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 28, 2011, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052 "2011-10-28T07:36:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Beast\_Model](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3e96dc/32.png) [@Beast\_Model](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beast_Model)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/1 "2011-10-28T07:36:05Z")
I told a Chinese friend (who speaks English and Hokkien) that Chinese sort of sounds like “ching chong wow bow” (or something equally inane) to Americans. She told me that her grandmother (who doesn’t speak English) says english sounds like “shhh shhh shhh shhhh” to her. I thought that was pretty interesting and kinda wondered if anyone else has ever heard of anything like that? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/2 "2011-10-28T07:49:25Z")
This question has been asked here very often; if you search through the archives you’ll probably get some interesting threads to read. That said, here’s a video of Germans mocking American English which I don’t think I’ve posted here before: [Bullyparade - Giant Burger](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUorCzi04e4) ---
**Author:** ![VanillaGorilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f9ae1b/32.png) [@VanillaGorilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VanillaGorilla)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/3 "2011-10-28T07:51:22Z")
I’m sure [this link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8) will be very helpful here. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/4 "2011-10-28T08:08:55Z")
I like this one. It’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol”, a 1973 Italian gibberish song meant to sound like English. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00) ---
**Author:** ![Beast\_Model](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3e96dc/32.png) [@Beast\_Model](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beast_Model)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/5 "2011-10-28T08:13:44Z")
Oh man, those were awesome. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/6 "2011-10-28T08:13:50Z")
Doh…sorry, I see you posted the link. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/7 "2011-10-28T08:35:13Z")
Link to a [previous thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=563204&highlight=adriano) on the subject. [Another](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=544287&highlight=adriano) one. And yes, I found them by looking for the name of that singer 🙂 Good thing he isn’t a Johnny, uh? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/8 "2011-10-28T13:51:13Z")
Here’s another YouTube video showing you what it’s like if you know a few words of the shorter common words of English but no other words: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Vt4Dfa4fOEY/maxresdefault.jpg "How English sounds to non-English speakers") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY) My response to this when I first watched it was to assume that I wasn’t listening very closely. It took me a few sentences before I realized that most of the words were nonsense. Yes, the song is in French. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/9 "2011-10-28T15:53:05Z")
This question has to be on our list of most asked questions. But, yeah, the “shhhh” and “thhhhh” sounds are quite prominent. The “v” sound sticks out for Chinese, too, since they do not have the sound in their language. **"The vivacious thespian shut the thatch"** Say that and you can here an exaggerated version of our language. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/10 "2011-10-28T16:20:31Z")
> [@Beast\_Model](#): > > I told a Chinese friend (who speaks English and Hokkien) that Chinese sort of sounds like “ching chong wow bow” (or something equally inane) to Americans. She told me that her grandmother (who doesn’t speak English) says english sounds like “shhh shhh shhh shhhh” to her. There was another thread where someone asked this, and another person said that they asked some chinese people and they said the exact same thing about “shhh” and also that it sounds like wind blowing to them. Every now and then I can zone out and ignore the meanings of the words and just listen to english phoenetically for a few seconds, it does sound very odd, like a bastardized german with random french smatterings (which I guess it is). ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/11 "2011-10-28T16:27:33Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I like this one. It’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol”, a 1973 Italian gibberish song meant to sound like English. > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00) Watching that makes me kind of sad that the wonderful, mellifluous Italian didn’t become the world’s first language, instead of this hideous thing that we’re speaking. ---
**Author:** ![grama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@grama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grama)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/12 "2011-10-28T16:32:44Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I like this one. It’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol”, a 1973 Italian gibberish song meant to sound like English. > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00) Wow… that really sounds like english, if not told it was gibberish I would be trying to figure out what it says and looking for lyrics lol. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/13 "2011-10-28T16:41:57Z")
Hm I guess it depends what the language of the other guy is. I know that to Russian speakers, American English sounds fairly rounded and mellifluous in a rather elegant way. British English is rougher, especially when someone speaks the cockney-style cut-off-ends-of-words way. Italian, on the other hand, sounds wimpy and mincing. You want to hear really harsh sibilants, Polish can’t be beat. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/14 "2011-10-29T00:00:00Z")
My high school English teacher was born in Germany and didn’t learn English until later in primary school. She remembers hearing English before she had learned it, though, and told our class it sounded like people talking with mashed potatoes in their mouth. A lot of very harsh R and SH sounds. Like SHRORSHRSHORSH, kinda. ---
**Author:** ![Arjuna34](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Arjuna34](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arjuna34)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/15 "2011-10-29T00:08:43Z")
> [@grama](#): > > Wow… that really sounds like english, if not told it was gibberish I would be trying to figure out what it says and looking for lyrics lol. There are several attempts to produce lyrics for it - here’s one: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S00Br2SSrY8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S00Br2SSrY8) ---
**Author:** ![gwendee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@gwendee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwendee)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/16 "2011-10-29T00:11:15Z")
When I was studying in Argentina my host family told me that to imitate English they added -tion to everything. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/17 "2011-10-29T00:16:22Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Hm I guess it depends what the language of the other guy is… Yes, and for speakers of languages with only tense vowels (Japanese, Spanish, Italian, etc.), the preponderance of lax vowels in English is probably the most characteristic thing about English to their ears, though they usually are not aware of this fact. When pushed to actually identify it, they often say that English sounds “lazy.” But also it’s the stress-timed (rather than syllable-timed) pace of enunciation. (It’s the combination of these two characteristics that gets emphasized in that Italian video.) Focusing on the consonants to describe English (and many other languages) for foreigners usually isn’t going to capture the full effect, since there are few specific consonants in English that are really all that specific to the language, and they don’t occur as frequently as the lax vowels. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/18 "2011-10-29T00:24:44Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Yes, and for speakers of languages with only tense vowels (Japanese, Spanish, Italian, etc.), the preponderance of lax vowels in English is probably the most characteristic thing about English to their ears, though they usually are not aware of this fact. When pushed to actually identify it, they often say that English sounds “lazy.” But also it’s the stress-timed (rather than syllable-timed) pace of enunciation. (It’s the combination of these two characteristics that gets emphasized in that Italian video.) > > Focusing on the consonants to describe English (and many other languages) for foreigners usually isn’t going to capture the full effect, since there are few specific consonants in English that are really all that specific to the language, and they don’t occur as frequently as the lax vowels. I learned English at 17, and when I was learning, I found two things: 1. After a day of speaking English my tongue would hurt. Apparently there were muscles being used that were not used when speaking in my native language. 2. My pronunciation would get better if I opened my mouth wider when I was speaking. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/19 "2011-10-29T17:44:30Z")
Doesn’t the English “R” sound stand out? In other Romance languages it is shorter and more like a “D” or “T”, or often has a sort of a drum roll to it. I know a teacher of English to foreign adults, who says she looks for fun ways for them to practice our “R”, like singing along with Sting in “Roxanne”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052/20 "2011-10-29T22:14:51Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > Doesn’t the English “R” sound stand out? Not to me, since it’s similar to what we call (and yes I know it’s not proper phonetics) “a soft r” in Spanish. OTOH, an Anglo trying to pronounce Spanish Rs does stand out a lot, specially since those who don’t really speak Spanish always try to make every R “strong” and make them a lot longer than we do (where we say RRahmeero you say RRRRRRRRRRR-ah-mee-RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-ow!) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-foreigners/601052.md?page=2)