Thanks back, since I think some languages sound perpetually pissed off, Chinese being one.
Anecdotally, I was once walking in Montreal with a francophone coworker, when we were approached by someone who asked us for directions in an Australian accent. Out of curiousity, I asked my coworker if he’d noticed that the guy who asked us had an accent. He’d had no idea.
Here’s one. A prank call with some Cantonese kids speaking in a mock foreign accent.
This classic advert from the 70s pretty much sums up the stereotypical accent of Westerners speaking Cantonese.
The most noticeable thing is that the tones are all messed up. The other thing is probably the excessive voicing of many consonants (voicing as in the words sue and zoo: the s is unvoiced, but the z is). Except for l/m/n/ng, Cantonese does not have any voiced consonants, but foreigners often mispronounce many other consonants as voiced.
Interesting. A friend once told me that when she was on a trip to Latvia, she had asked some of her friends there what English sounded like to them. They all answered that English-speakers sounded like snakes, what with all the ess sounds.
Other than my native tongue? And a masters degree in teaching English as a second language? I can dig up something, if you want.
Exactly. Except “lazily” is not fair. It’s just how the language is spoken. Still, it seems like you at least know how to speak your own language. Just listen to how people talk. Not how someone thinks they talk.
N.B. My transcription was for American English, so the medial /t/ was a glottal stop.
I’d appreciate it. My own status as a native speaker of English, and my experience (not at the Masters level admittedly) in Linguistics and ESL, tend to lead me to a conclusion opposite yours. Intuitions clash! We need documentation.
I’ve already pointed out documented claims in Wikipedia and at Language log that the phenomenon you’re describing doesn’t exist. Do you know anything about that research?
-FrL-
That’s a little hard to beat, but I have to link to the Rahmens, a Japanese comic duo. That skit is part of a series of Japanese language classes given in various countries. This is the American version. The script is made up of token English and Japanese words (mostly names of important historical figures) in nonsensical order. The delivery is meant to sound like American English. By comparison, here’s the French version.
That ad is funny. “This foreigner likes our alchohol, so it must be awesome!”
I spent a year in Spain living with Spaniards, and during that time my ear became unaccustomed to hearing American speech, although I am American. When I returned to the States, TV announcers especially sounded ridiculous to me. “Why are they all talking like exaggerated cowboys?” I thought. To me, the American accent seemed extremely loud and slow.
In Spain, when comedy shows parodied British speakers, they always replaced the Spanish rolled “r” with the English hard “r.” There was also a puppet comedy show where the voice actor did a dead-on impersonation of George W. Bush, but in Spanish. In Spanish, the vowels are much more clipped. The Dubya puppet spoke with hard “r’s” and elongated vowels. I still laugh when I remember him saying the word “treinte y tres.” (Thirty three.) “Traynta trays!”
Well, except for the “n” (sometimes m) sound. The word for newspaper is shimbun. Chanto means properly. Kantan means easy.
They also “double” consonants, like with chotto. It’s really more of a clipping of the “o” than anything else, kind of somewhere between cho-to and chot-to. On top of that, they drop the vowel “i” a lot when it’s in the syllable shi. Shippai, meaning failure or mistake, is pronounced shp-pai.
I asked a man from Denmark how English sounded to Danes. He said that it sounded snobbish.
Everyone speaks English in a dialect. There is no such thing as “generic” American. A melodious Montgomery, Alabama “drawl” is as authentic as Brian Williams reading the news. John Kennedy’s pronunciation of “Cuba” as Koob r (as close as I can come) was certainly a correct pronunciation.
Good thread, stoid!
I remember pretending to speak english as a kid, and I’m sure my fake english had a lot of Rs and Ws in it.
So that must have been how it sounded to me, probably because we don’t have that R sound in swedish, and we pronounce W exactly the same as V.
I ( somewhat vaguely ) recall reading some years ago that English takes fewer syllables or words to say things than most languages, which means non-English speakers often speak more quickly to say the same thing.
Also, as I understand it, other languages tend to sound like a nearly unbroken string of babble because they ARE - as is English. When you understand a language, your mind automatically inserts perceived gaps between words that aren’t actually there.
I think the theory you mentioned is very interesting, and it does seem to ring true. I think people like Poe understood its principle.
It is a good thread, but we’ve done it a couple times before and I hate that I can’t search for the older ones (database error). There were some great metaphors. Someone said English sounds like water running over pebbles, for example.
I remember mentioning in that thread talking to a Colombian guy who said that to him, English sounded “mellow”. He used the word “camera” as an example. In his language, it’s all wide open mouth: CAM-EH-RRAH. In English, it’s more gentle: CAM-RUH.
Other interesting threads on this topic: [thread=388989]What are the distinguishing characteristics of english?[/thread] (from 2006, It “Sounds like horses talking” or “It sounds like the wind”), which referenced [thread=119772]What does English sound like to a foreigner?[/thread] (from 2002).
I think what he was describing are the lax vowels, particularly /ə/ and /I/, the most frequent vowels, because of reduction, which are often elided in words like “camera.” My girlfriend (who’s also Colombian), makes fun of my Spanish by mimicking these sounds. In Spanish, the vowels are all tense, and to produce them you need to open the mouth wide.
You can start with this:
Celce-Murcia, Marianne; Brinton, Donna; & Goodwin, Janet. Teaching Pronunciation. (1996). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 151-156, in the chapter titled “Stress, Rhythm, and Adjustments in Connected Speech.” They cite a whole slew of references in the bibliography.
They are describing a series of sentences:
CATS CHASE MICE
The CATS have CHASED MICE
The CATS will CHASE the MICE
The CATS have been CHASing the MICE
The CATS could have been CHASing the MICE
(The capitalized letters show syllable stress.) If you say these sentences to yourself, say them as you would in a natural conversation–not in a pedantic way, as though talking to someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language.
You’ll hardly be able to find more pre-eminent scholars in the field of ESL pedagogy (and good friends of mine).
Its pretty standard, even for non-American English speakers, to imitate an American accent by dragging out every R (think John Wayne).
That guy who imitated the languages was awesome!
I speak Japanese with an American accent sometimes, which is a great hit at parties (Probably because everyone is drunk). I use hard th sounds, roll my rs and put tiny gaps between the syllables.
This phenomenon, called “/r/-coloring,” has such a strong effect on (North-American) English pronunciation that the retroflex quality of /r/ at the end of a syllable constitutes a separate vowel sound. For example, the vowel in “doe” is not the same vowel in “door.”
(There are some regional dialects that drop /r/-coloring, such as the stereotypical Boston accent.)
You mean like the way Mike Barnicle pronounces Barack Obamer?