What does English sound like to non-English speakers?

I forget what started me on this question. But we've all tried to imitate a foreigner's accent sometime. If you haven't taken 60 seconds to think about languages and how others think, (which I have not until a couple of hours ago,) then.. go ahead, i'll wait...... (prepare for a mind fu--)

This video was on the original link. But I watched 5 or more videos on people imitating other languages.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it sure does sound a lot like English. Released as a single on November 3, 1972, the song was designed to seem like American English.

Source: Fox News article - May 6, 2013 I apologize for using a MSM source -_-; (...MSM does throw in some real stuff from time to time.)


An interesting article on topic

Very interested in what the people of ATS have to add, or question.

reply to post by Mugen


The great Adriano Celentano. I think the hot blonde girl must be Raffaella Carra.

Here Roberto Benigni speaking fake chinese :

reply to post by Trueman


Lmfao. Thank you for that. Leads me to wonder. Other languages/ cultures must have a different point of view of comedy, entertainment, music..... I want to travel, Now! Ugh, I thought out-side-space was perplexing... we've many things to explore on earth :/

i kinda dig that video!

Anyway, had a friend that was born in Chile and moved to America as a child, somewhere around 6 years old or so.
We spoke about this very thing, because My sense of Spanish was that it was spoken very rapidly, with very recognizable breaks between the words.
What he said about American English, is that it sounded very slow, and sort of smoother, less staccato sound.
Then he said, like " wahma_dooingg_yu_thingwecango tonite ok" slowly with the words connected.

I always wondered how english sounds to someone who speaks a different language. I've never heard a bit where someone does fake english. But I think every other language I've heard a parody of it/

reply to post by burroughshere


I live in Japan now and have a few Japanese friends who speak some english. I, myself, speak a little Japanese. Word flow is different and Japanese doesn't have some of the sounds we have in english (Ls being the most known) also, I was taught in my Japanese class that they use significantly less muscles in their jaws and mouths to speak.

Sometimes I speak too fast for my friends to understand and vice versa. It's also hard to catch some of the sounds in the words because of how fast they speak. It just takes time to get used to, though.

I think English is a far more difficult language, though, especially when it comes to writing. Our verbs follow no set pattern, we have silent letters and homonyms, and homographs... god... forget about it. But this is where Japanese's 2k+ (relevant) kanji+ (hiragana AND katakana) and Chinese's 5~6k+ (modern) kanji comes in and kicks (my arse for sure) english-speaking foreigners' arses.

Hope that cleared up things a big for you

reply to post by burroughshere


Haha watch a Japanese skit my friend!

I did a lesson today where Delivery was pronounced "deribarī" or in katakana as "デリバリー” plenty of words the Japanese use that they got from English. Sometimes the way its pronounced is freaking terrible and the simplest of words can have native speakers like myself saying wtf.

You'd think since it's an english borrowed word it would sound like english, right? Nah, the Japanese have chopped and screwed "native" english words so that they flow easier with their language.

Interesting topic. For example, to English speakers German sounds "guttural" and French sounds "nasal." It's difficult to type English because it is so pervasive on television, but even there there are huge variations. Standard "television speak" for newscasters is the English spoken in the Northwest of America (Washington, Oregon, etc.) because it is easily understood by everyone. But that is far different than deep country Southern or New England accents with long vowels and no "R"s which are difficult even for Americans to understand. We had a neighbor from Boston who asked my mother id she got her new shots. My mother couldn't figure it out. She didn't get any shots recently. She was saying "shorts." Did you get your new shorts? You listen to the news in "Middle Georgia" (Macon), however, and those folks are speaking Northwestern.

I've noticed when British actors try to imitate an American accent, you can tell because it falls a little flat (though they are very good). I went to a conference in Stockholm a few years ago where there were people from all over the world. The conference "language" was English, of course, and as people got up to speak I could understand them all very well--except the person from Scotland. It must have been a very funny speech because he was laughing a lot, but I couldn't understand a word that he said. The guy from Egypt, though? Like talking to my brother.