Keldan ([info]keldan) wrote in [info]learn_languages,
@ 2004-08-13 00:46:00
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English impressions...
I've wondered for some time now, how does English sound? As a native speaker, I can never hear it for the first time. I can never hear without understanding. And so the essential musicality, to whatever degree English possesses such a trait, is lost on me. I can hear and enjoy other languages, where my lack of understanding fades them into a kind of lyrical music, a background of rising and falling vowels and consonants. So my question is half rhetorical and half aimed at those who do not natively speak English. If you have any recollection of what English sounded like to you before you began understanding it, how, then, did it sound? Is it smooth or rough? Sharp? Harsh? Distasteful or ugly? Staccato? Is it lilting or languid? Beautiful? Stirring? Soothing or unpleasant? Is it nasal? Slurred? Twangy? Where does it sit on your tongue, and how does it feel in your mouth? Does it sound tight or loose? Pinched or rolling? What other language(s) does it sound like, or could you compare it to? Etc, etc. Feel free to elaborate with sensory impressions, recollections, etc.

The above adjectives are not a checklist. Please describe your impressions however you are best able.

(from personal journal query a while ago, never really answered)

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on a related note..
[info]mysterious_m
2004-08-12 09:59 pm UTC (link)
i've always wondered what english sounds like to people who don't speak it. i can identify languages like french and german without knowing how to speak them because of the way they sound and i've always wondered what characteristics english has that make it easy to recognize.

i'm a native speaker, though, so i can't really help you with your question. sorry.

xoxo

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[info]syndrometer
2004-08-12 10:05 pm UTC (link)
I'm going to think ugly and staccato. But I am also a native speaker.

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[info]sonatina
2004-08-12 10:15 pm UTC (link)
well, we definately don't have a smooth language like the french language. It would probably most sound sorta like German. and.. well, I have some friends who have heard Germans speak and they say it sounds like they're constantly coughing something up, but.... i like the German language.. it sounds cute to me ^.^ (it doesn't at all to me like they're coughing). well i digress, anyway... I'm sure it would definately sound choppy, as does the german language a bit.

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[info]bizzarossal
2004-08-12 10:17 pm UTC (link)
me too! i have always wondered that.
i am of no help, however.

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[info]eard_stapa
2004-08-12 10:29 pm UTC (link)
someone asked this a little while ago in [info]linguaphiles:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/linguaphiles/905273.html

:)

everyone i've talked to agrees about the slippery thing.

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[info]ilia_yasny
2004-08-13 12:21 am UTC (link)
I'm not a native English speaker, but I started to learn English relatively long ago (at the age of 6) and now it sounds quite familiar to me. But when I started to analyze my feelings the first adjective that came on my mind was gurgling. I also noticed that some native speakers drawl sounds. Of course, you can always recognize English by the sound 'r', which is unknown in any other language I know. Also, native English speakers' speech is the most incomprehensible. I remember one store told by my father. His was at the conference in Germany, there were reporters from different countries. Hindu, Slovaks, Frenchmen, Russians - everyone told his report in English. Everybody understood everything. Then came out one man, he spoke - and everybody was puzzled. Nothing was clear. He turned out to be an Englishman :)

The closest language to the English is not German, to my opinion. It's rather Dutch, however when they spoke near me, I thought it was one of the scandinavian languages.

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[info]doublehelix20
2004-08-13 09:09 am UTC (link)
That r...I had fun trying to teach the Russians I stayed with this summer to say that.

I heard in a phonetics class that the sibilants in english are held longer than in other languages, and I wonder if that's audible as a distinguishing factor.

And of course, all us southerners drawl our vowels!

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[info]yareach
2004-08-13 12:01 pm UTC (link)
I have a friend who speaks Dutch, and I thought at first (because I didn't really know what Dutch sounded like) that she spoke the language with an English accent. Apparently, she doesn't. So I guess Dutch is a pretty good one, except for a few consonants. They have a lot of diphthongs as well, which I think are prevalent in English.

As mentioned above, the "r" is a salient characteristic. I also have to add the vowels to that: English has a very strange collection of vowels.

It doesn't sound like German, though. Never German.

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[info]sabishi
2004-11-03 06:51 pm UTC (link)
It doesn't sound like German, though. Never German.
That's funny, because when my dad asked some of his Mexican friends they all said it sounds like German.

It's probably a fair characterization. English and German both have primary stress on the 2nd syllable most frequently, and on the 1st next most frequently. I don't know if that holds of all germanic languages, but I wouldn't be surprised. Prosidy is a key factor in what the language sounds like to people who don't know it. English is fairly closely related to German, but we've had 800 or so years of romance vocabulary influence. Dutch is a little closer to English. Supposedly the closest language to English is Frissian, but it doesn't really pop up on the major languages list very often. If you speak a germanic language, English probably doesn't seem to sound very much like German.

r's are very interesting. English has quite a couple of options. I don't know if most people mean American or British r's though. The American one is fairly unique, and the British (as well as some New England dialects in the US) tend toward r colored vowels (i.e. high F2 formant) and r dropping.

I think we have the usual suspects vowel wise (for the most part), but tons of dipthongs. I'd need to go look at one of my history of English books or phonetics book.

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[info]yareach
2004-11-04 03:48 am UTC (link)
First off, I have to say, this comment tooke me completely by surprise: how long ago did I even post this? Heh!

Anyway, regarding the German: I mainly hear German spoken with a Swiss accent (I'm not talking Swiss-German, though), which accounts for my saying that English sounds nothing like German. I'm not too familiar with the different dialects, but I guess some would sound more like English than others. Also, you asked Mexican friends, who, I assume speak Spanish. I'm going to make a generalization that languages of the same family could tend to sound similar to those who speak languages of a different family.

About the r's: I was referring to American English.

About the vowels: From what I'm used to, English has a far greater number of more mid-central-ish vowels, which is why I say it has a strange collection.

I guess, to some extent, it depends where you're coming from. Thank you for your comment, though! Interesting.

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[info]shnazzymazzy
2004-09-21 10:04 pm UTC (link)
I used to speak Dutch, before I learned German. If you describe English like Dutch, then the first word that comes to mind is rough. Like sandpaper. I also think of English as really sharp, when spoken correctly, and really smooth, like a blob of letters, when spoken as slang. That's all I can say.

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[info]queenvish
2004-11-05 08:55 pm UTC (link)
Man, I am so nitpicking, but Hindu is NOT a nationality. It is not even an ethnicity. It is a religious affiliation.
Like Christian.

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[info]phrawzty
2004-08-13 12:35 am UTC (link)
Although english isn't my first language, it's the one i speak most often today (and i would call myself a native speaker), so perhaps my view is a little biased. That said, when i was learning Canadian english as a child, i found it to sound "less pretty" than my first language of Brasilian portuguese. At that age, it's hard to pin those sorts of things down, but i suspect that it's due to the Germanic influence of hard stops and fricatives. Of course, english doesn't have those harsh throat noises, so it wasn't THAT bad. :)

Bear in mind, as well, that the english spoken in different areas of the world can actually sound quite different. Southern American english sounds quite different from, say, Québecois english, which again sounds quite different from South African english, and so forth. This colouration would provide different impressions of sound and feel to different people.

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[info]dark_kiseki
2004-08-13 05:42 am UTC (link)
Since i'm from the south. My english sounds more soft and drawn out. Like you can't tell the difference for the words Pin and pen. O.o I don't know why but I just talk like that. Oh and we do say Ya'll a lot. XD

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[info]yaoi_boy
2004-08-13 05:48 am UTC (link)
English and Chinese sounded alike to me. There's lots of 'sh' and 's' and 'f' sounds everywhere with weird 'r' sounds in random places. The only difference being English is slurred together a lot better and the speaker's voice doesn't fluctuate as much due to the lack of tones. The vowels are really "ugly" too... I remember when I was still learning pronunciation the whole class would grunt instead of actually making the sounds because that's what they sounded like.

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[info]wood_elf
2004-08-13 07:40 am UTC (link)
[native speaker, sorry]

Hmm. I suppose that, for those of us with English as a native language, it's very difficult to listen to it for sound, rather than meaning. With other languages, you tune in better to the things mentioned above, as perhaps meaning comes second (especially if you're not too fluent). *unrelatedness*

To me, English is rolling, and quite slow - not 'staccato' (been looking for that word forever, lol) like German. It's fairly forward in your mouth, lots of teeth and lips, although not as much so as French, which always makes the tip of my tongue feel strange. I can't think of another language it sounds like, although if you mixed German and Icelandic together in a linguistic soup, you might get something similar, at least sound-wise.

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[info]nimuroji
2004-08-13 10:06 am UTC (link)
Not sure if you saw this on another post but I thought I'd share anyway.
http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=2815&a=60511 (klick on "se videoklipp")

It's a swedish sketch (kind of making fun of english speakers trying to learn swedish I guess). They are swedish words but spoken in such a way that a swedish person would percieve english. Gives a bit of an idea for us native english speakers :)

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[info]fibbedattention
2004-08-13 01:57 pm UTC (link)
I learned english relatively early. At around the age of six or seven, I had somewhat mastered enough english to get me around. However, before that time, I remember what English sounded like.

It's weird. At first, I percieved English speakers as speaking so fast that I can't see how anyone could understand it. There was a mix of slurs as well as staccato sounds. "I don't know" sounded staccato sorta.

Your question is certainly a very valid question. Often, I think to myself, what does Vietnamese sound like to a person who doesn't speak Vietnamese. Most of my friends, however, have not given me a concrete answer.

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[info]bizzarossal
2004-08-13 02:56 pm UTC (link)
it's choppy to me. with lots of popping sounds.
It reminds me of a whole lot of "ing" words strung together and said in the back of the throat.

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[info]ti_ana
2004-08-13 01:57 pm UTC (link)
I'm not a native speaker, but I began to learn English at a really young age (5 or 6), so I really can't remember what I thought it sounded like before I could understand it. My grandfather, however, speaks no English whatsoever, and whenever I'm watching English-language television, he laughs and says that he doesn't know how I understand what they're saying because it all sounds like "arsh shwarsh rarsh" (or some sounds along those lines). I found it amusing, but it's true that the sounds that most stand out to people who don't speak the language are the "r" and "sh" sounds. Our first language is Spanish, so it probably sounds especially alien to his ears, with our rather strong "rrrrr" and "ch" (not "sh") sounds.

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Learned English early, but still not a native speaker
[info]shortindiangirl
2004-08-14 09:46 am UTC (link)
Accent matters a lot. American English sounds very nasal to me with a lot of w and sh sounds. Very few hard constant sounds like k's or t's. The American English sounds lazy as though the person just got out of bed with a cold.

British English sounds quite different. There's a strange sound that recurrs. It's the hard constant at the end of words that is left unpronounced rather than pronounced. For example What is not pronounced with the T, but pronounced with a sharp stoppage of breath or stopping the sound to indicate the hard consontant. This is the sound I hear more. The other predominant sound in British for me is W.
There is also a lot of tone in British English and it's easier to pick up contextually then is American English. Sentences follow predictable tone modulation patterns based on what is being said.

Indian English is harder for me to analyze. But there are a lot of multiple consontants close together and of course, the rolling R's, that is non existing in either British or American English.

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Re: Learned English early, but still not a native speaker
[info]murkee
2004-08-20 12:37 am UTC (link)
British English sounds quite different.

Being pedantic, there isn't such a thing as 'British English'.

Accents change quite quickly on our little island, much more quickly than seems to happen in the USA. I can go into London 'Sarf of the river', or to Birmingham, or Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, the south west and hear distinct accents.

Of course, with the media and the movement of people, accents are merging to some extent, the accent of the south east is tending to spread somewhat.

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Re: Learned English early, but still not a native speaker
[info]shortindiangirl
2004-08-20 12:44 am UTC (link)
> and hear distinct accents.

It's possible that it is your discerning ear. When I tell foreign travellers that I can hear the different accents of English even as spoken in different regions of India, they are skeptical.

To me the Irish and the Scottish accents are similar enough that I can't necessarily tell one from the other. I'm sure others can, but I cannot.

> British English

English as spoken in Great Britian or England. Yes, U understand the pedantics --> this is "English" and the rest are not.

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[info]giga_the_spy
2004-08-14 03:35 pm UTC (link)
I'm not a native speaker although I can speak English quite well. I agree with shortindiangirl that accent matters a lot.
As I'm sitting here with the TV on in the background (an American movie) I try to concentrate really hard on the text I'm reading, thus being able to listen to the dialogue without understanding (it only works for like one sentence at a time, I can't keep my concentration much longer ;o).
And there's a lot of different between characters. One rather sounded German (harsh), and another French(soft).

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[info]purpleraincat
2004-08-16 12:48 am UTC (link)
aww i see you are from Iceland, you are very lucky =)

do you have Msn or Aim?

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[info]ossian27
2004-08-22 10:40 pm UTC (link)
This is a question I have always asked myself. I am a native speaker of standard American English (Northeast). Sometimes I try to halt my ear's search for meaning and try to hear simply the asthetics, and sometimes I think we sound Germanic. English is, after all, classified as a Germanic language. However, the english I hear is mostly American. This leaves me wondering about my favourite accent: the standard Queen's English. I enjoy that dialect the most, out of any of our other ones, and since it is the original diplomatic English, this is the one I wonder most about. How does it sound to non-native speakers?

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