# What does English sound like to people who don't speak it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 16, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135 "2009-02-16T18:57:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/81 "2009-02-17T21:23:22Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Would you say it’s the same vowel as in “go”? I’ve wondered before about the terminology here. For me the vowel in “go” and the first one in “photograph” is at least _like_ a diphthong in that, during the course of pronunciation, my mouth begins in one position and ends in another. That’s when I’m e-nun-ci-at-ing. The one in “photograph” probably loses this character in rapid speech. But the sound I’m aiming for when I say these two words and several others is the one I described–it starts with one mouth position, and moves to another. In both cases, the sound is just the same as the one I make when I simply pronounce the name of the letter o. So, as I said, it seems like the sound is at least _like_ a diphthong, but I’ve never been sure if simply the movement of the mouth during the pronounciation suffices to make it a diphthong or not. Does it? -FrL- ---
**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:** [February 17, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/82 "2009-02-17T21:24:56Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > In North America, it isn’t a diphthong. I should correct myself. It is a diphthong, technically. And as **arsceny** says above, in some places a triphthong, now that I think of it. English glides are elusive. ---
**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:** [February 17, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/83 "2009-02-17T21:35:18Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So, as I said, it seems like the sound is at least _like_ a diphthong, but I’ve never been sure if simply the movement of the mouth during the pronounciation suffices to make it a diphthong or not. Does it? I think you and **hibernicus** are correct. And your questions probably indicate how the English vowel system can confuse people who speak other languages. NAE [əɪ̯] (as in “I”) sounds different from Spanish “hay.” The glide is less pronounced. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/84 "2009-02-17T21:35:29Z")
Wonderful thread, even if it’s now changing course and losing steam. I’ve heard that many non-EL speakers think that Americans, at least, sound as if they’re talking without opening their mouths, which may be a version of the reduced vowel idea that’s floating around here. Frankly, I think the Brits sound like that. To me, they sound as if they’re speaking while holding their teeth clenched. And, for my last trick, my favorite language-oriented clip from YouTube: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/tFWY2Qt4qd8/hqdefault.jpg "Great Advertising") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFWY2Qt4qd8) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/85 "2009-02-17T21:35:31Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So, as I said, it seems like the sound is at least _like_ a diphthong, but I’ve never been sure if simply the movement of the mouth during the pronounciation suffices to make it a diphthong or not. Does it? > > -FrL- If I’m reading the Wikipedia article on diphthongs correctly, then the sound I’m describing should be transcribed as [oʊ̯] and is, indeed, a diphthong. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/86 "2009-02-17T21:36:36Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > I think you and **hibernicus** are correct. And your questions probably indicate how the English vowel system can confuse people who speak other languages. NAE [əɪ̯] (as in “I”) sounds different from Spanish “hay.” The glide is less pronounced. Less pronounced in the Spanish case or on the English case? -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/87 "2009-02-17T21:57:31Z")
The first vowel in photograph is definitely a dipthong in British English (əʊ), but it’s a different dipthong in American English - oʊ - which doesn’t stand out as much. (That’s for the kind of American English you hear most of the time on TV, at least). Check out the [dictionary pronunciation of the word.](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/photograph) That doesn’t mean every American from every region says it that way, but it is a pretty certain way of checking how an average speaker of that Mid-West AE pronounces the word. A glide is a sound which is halfway between a vowel and a consonant. Y and w are glides. Dipthongs and glides are not the same thing, though they are related. IPA does sometimes use the term pure vowel to refer to vowels that aren’t dipthongs, but a less value-laded, more technical term is monopthong. When describing pronunciation, it’s best to use the accepted terminology rather than make your own up. Australians don’t add an r to Cuba in the same way that people from Boston do; what Australians, Irish people and Brits do is add an ‘intrusive r’ between words that end and start in vowels. So there’d be a slight r sound between the words ‘Cuba’ and the word ‘and.’ ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/88 "2009-02-17T21:59:54Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I came in to mention precisely this – only my recollectrion is that it was **Ricardo Montalban**. > His rendering of “English” as “dogs barking” was pretty good – it really did resemble both English and barking dogs. Well, my recall at this late date may be “RUFF!” 😃 Glad to see someone else remembers it. - “Jack” ---
**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:** [February 17, 2009, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/89 "2009-02-17T22:18:32Z")
> [@scifisam2009](#): > > Australians don’t add an r to Cuba in the same way that people from Boston do; what Australians, Irish people and Brits do is add an ‘intrusive r’ between words that end and start in vowels. Have you ever heard Ian Masters talk about Obama? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/90 "2009-02-17T22:20:25Z")
> [@Sr\_Siete](#): > > Looking around youtube, I found this guy: > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqIikRYu\_0Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqIikRYu_0Q) > > It’s about a spanish-speaking dude singing “Moonlight shadow”… making up the sounds. I guess this is more or less what you wanted. Thanx for this. Sounds about right to me. ---
**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:** [February 17, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/91 "2009-02-17T22:28:57Z")
> [@scifisam2009](#): > > A glide is a sound which is halfway between a vowel and a consonant. Y and w are glides. Dipthongs and glides are not the same thing, though they are related. Yes, that’s the traditional use of the term, but it’s also used as “accepted terminology” to refer to English diphthongs that aren’t as pronounced as diphthongs in other languages. It’s a basic concept: starting to articulate one sound and then shifting to another. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/92 "2009-02-17T22:58:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Japanese, at least, is easy to distinguish, because of the characteristic alternation of vowel and consonant sounds. You never get two consonant sounds in a row in Japanese, nor a word ending in a consonant sound. Except for s. And n for final consonant (though it takes a whole syllable when it does that & is thus distinctive). And sometimes other consonants in a way with the “u” dropping out. But yeah, mostly. I notice that sung Japanese, at least, can be very good at giving each vowel its own syllable, where my Indo-European tendency is to diphthong some of them. ---
**Author:** ![Rapier42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/90db22/32.png) [@Rapier42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rapier42)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/93 "2009-02-17T22:58:35Z")
Fascinating thread. For what its worth, I pronounced “cats eat mice” several times, ranging betweem .86 and 1.14 seconds. The quickest I could recite “The cats will have been eating the mice” while remaining intelligible to my ear was 1.76 seconds, and if I attempted to recite it “naturally”, it was almost always over 2 seconds. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/94 "2009-02-17T23:06:27Z")
> [@Rapier42](#): > > Fascinating thread. > > For what its worth, I pronounced “cats eat mice” several times, ranging betweem .86 and 1.14 seconds. The quickest I could recite “The cats will have been eating the mice” while remaining intelligible to my ear was 1.76 seconds, and if I attempted to recite it “naturally”, it was almost always over 2 seconds. Wouldn’t the true test be if it was intelligible to somebody else’s ear? After all, if you already know what you are saying, it’s going to be no problem for you to interpret. ---
**Author:** ![Rapier42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/90db22/32.png) [@Rapier42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rapier42)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/95 "2009-02-17T23:14:40Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Wouldn’t the true test be if it was intelligible to somebody else’s ear? After all, if you already know what you are saying, it’s going to be no problem for you to interpret. Yeah, but I don’t have a guinea pig handy. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/96 "2009-02-17T23:22:22Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Many languages have very distinctive sounds that allow us to recognize the language even though we don’t speak it ourselves Or think they recognize the language. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/97 "2009-02-18T00:06:07Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Have you ever heard Ian Masters talk about Obama? No. Does he say Obamar even when the name isn’t followed by a vowel sound, then? > [@guizot](#): > > Yes, that’s the traditional use of the term, but it’s also used as “accepted terminology” to refer to English diphthongs that aren’t as pronounced as diphthongs in other languages. It’s a basic concept: starting to articulate one sound and then shifting to another. I think it’s a little confusing to refer to a dipthong as a glide, especially when you’re talking about whether a sound is a dipthong at all and then saying ‘it’s not a dipthong, it’s a glide at best.’ If you were using glide as a synonym for dipthong, then you wouldn’t have said that. And English dipthong that isn’t pronounced as a dipthong in other languages is not a dipthong in those languages. Dipthong is a description of a sound, so if the sound is different, you use a different term. 😕 Like ‘might’ includes a dipthong in British RP, but not in American Midwestern. They’re different sounds - nobody would claim they’re both dipthongs. Not really sure what you mean here, to be honest. I wasn’t just thinking about that when I commented about using accepted terms, though. I was thinking of this: > [@](#): > > Personally, I think the terms “hard” and “soft” don’t do justice to describe the sounds that humans speak. For consonants, I suggest voiced vs. unvoiced, aspirated vs. non-aspirated, stopped, etc. Which sounds as though which terms you use are a matter of personal opinion rather than accepted standards. I was also thinking of the voiced/unvoiced confusion (which wasn’t you - but my post wasn’t about you specifically). ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/98 "2009-02-18T00:15:53Z")
> [@Rapier42](#): > > Fascinating thread. > > For what its worth, I pronounced “cats eat mice” several times, ranging betweem .86 and 1.14 seconds. The quickest I could recite “The cats will have been eating the mice” while remaining intelligible to my ear was 1.76 seconds, and if I attempted to recite it “naturally”, it was almost always over 2 seconds. Would you mind saying generally where you’re from? My results are much more in line with the theory. I also wonder whether it has anything to do with how musical a person is, so if you would divulge your level of knowledge of music theory (or practical experience) it would be helpful. I kind of look at the whole sentence as a measure, and the three main words are quarter notes in 3/4 time. When extra words are added, they must be done basically as grace notes while quickening the quarter notes as little as possible. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/99 "2009-02-18T00:39:10Z")
When I lived in Japan I went to a pool with a Japanese friend once, and a little boy of about 5 years old started talking to us. “I can swim underwater, do you want to see me swim?” that kind of thing (in Japanese of course). Then suddenly he says “PING PONG PASHA!” My friend (in English) says “Oh, he’s speaking ‘English’.” I laughed and said (in Japanese) “Yes, I understand.” So to that one kid at least, English apparently sounds like “Ping pong pasha!” Some Japanese popular music includes either very bad English or English-sounding gibberish, which I remember this same friend found annoying. “They think they’re so cool, speaking English. But it’s not even English! Why don’t they learn to speak English the right way if it’s so cool!” ---
**Author:** ![Rapier42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/90db22/32.png) [@Rapier42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rapier42)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135/100 "2009-02-18T00:49:55Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Would you mind saying generally where you’re from? My results are much more in line with the theory. I also wonder whether it has anything to do with how musical a person is, so if you would divulge your level of knowledge of music theory (or practical experience) it would be helpful. I kind of look at the whole sentence as a measure, and the three main words are quarter notes in 3/4 time. When extra words are added, they must be done basically as grace notes while quickening the quarter notes as little as possible. I’ve spent most of my life in Oregon (Willamette Valley), though I’ve been in Salt Lake for 9 years now. I haven’t seriously picked up an instrument since high school, but I understand your analogy. I don’t grok it, though. I can’t fit the extra words in there intelligibly without lengthening the tempo of “cats eat mice”. How long does “cats eat mice” take you, roughly? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-english-sound-like-to-people-who-dont-speak-it/486135.md?page=6)