What does English sound like?

[Just Joe]

The title sums it up pretty well. When I hear English, I hear words, not sounds. So I'd like to know: what does the language in general sound like? How does it compare with others? What about accents?

 

[DrunkWithPower]

Sounds more coherent because I understand it.

 

[Khedive Rex]

Youi know, I've always wondered something similar. Like, people who don't speak french will sometimes try to imitate the language and they always get very throaty and start over-emphasizing their vowels. I've always wondered what someone who doesn't speak english would sound like mimicking the language. What are the few idiosyncracies of our language that define how we sound?

I honestly have no idea. But it's my goal one day to fly to Russia and find out!

 

[Satin6T]

I was born in Norfolk, grew up in texas, moved to Virginia
and guess what I have absolutely no accent

 

[Graves]

Well, I'm Dutch and I think it sounds smooth. It doesn't have any weird throaty sounds like our language does. There's a difference though between American English and English English (and Scottish, Irish and Australian for that matter).

 

[yeah_so_no]

According to the Japanese people I taught English to, English sounds a lot like Chinese. Which...yeah, whut. But I was told it a lot, and had people ask me if I thought they sounded alike, and then were flabbergasted when I went, "No, not even kind of."

 

[chaosfenrir]

English does not sound like chinese...

I guess it uses less of the tongue, but i find it a working language, not exotic lie thai and japanese, or beautiful like chinese, italian, french, etc. Basically, it sounds fine, but not particularly good

 

[Smudge91]

English is a bugger because it derives from loads of languages so we kinda have different ways of pronouncing going on. I've never had someone try to sound like their english though before :S

 

[Cabisco]

I think it's hard to say what it sounds like, as their are far too many accents to really pin it down to one sound. using the magic of wikipedia this is a list of accents within Great Britain (irony being that i can think of more):

* Black British English
* England (English language in England)
o Northern
+ Cheshire
+ Cumbrian (Cumbria excluding Barrow-in-Furness)
+ Geordie (Newcastle upon Tyne)
+ Lancastrian (Lancashire)
+ Scouse (Merseyside)
+ Mancunian (Manchester)
+ Mackem (Sunderland)
+ Northumbrian (rural Northumberland)
+ Pitmatic (Durham and Northumberland)
+ Yorkshire (also known as Tyke)
+ In the far north, local speech is noticeably Scots in nature.
o East Midlands
o West Midlands
+ Black Country English
+ Brummie (Birmingham)
+ Potteries (north Staffordshire)
o Southern
+ Received Pronunciation
+ Cockney (East London)
+ East Anglian (Norfolk and Suffolk)
+ Estuary (Thames Estuary)
+ Kentish (Kent)
+ Jafaican (Inner London)
o West Country
* Scotland
o Scottish English
+ Highland
+ Glaswegian
+ Cromarty
* Wales
o Welsh English

Ireland

* Mid Ulster English
* Hiberno-English
o Dublin
o Cork

Isle of Man

* Manx English

Channel Islands

* Guernsey English
* Jersey English

Malta

* Maltenglish

 

[sanomaton]

English does not sound like chinese...

I guess it uses less of the tongue, but i find it a working language, not exotic lie thai and japanese, or beautiful like chinese, italian, french, etc. Basically, it sounds fine, but not particularly good

You think French sounds beautiful? I guess we all have our own likes and dislikes...

OT: I have always thought the same about Finnish. Foreigners usually have a lot of troubles pronouncing diphthongs and one of my friends mentioned that Finnish sounds like 'cat speak' as I said something to him in Finnish. (He's Australian) But I can't really answer the question itself because I hear and speak English every day so it's just another language to me.. however I really love Aussie English cos it sounds so smooth.

 

[Spacelord]

Well, I'm Dutch and I think it sounds smooth. It doesn't have any weird throaty sounds like our language does. There's a difference though between American English and English English (and Scottish, Irish and Australian for that matter).

A Danish friend of mine once remarked that Dutch sounded like German spoken backwards.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I was born in Norfolk, grew up in texas, moved to Virginia
and guess what I have absolutely no accent

Perhaps they all cancel each other out.

English sounds bizarre, it's about ten different languages rolled up into one bigass mash up. The result even English speakers struggle to understand each other, get a Sydney, a Glaswegian, a Yorkshireman and a New Yorker talking and hilarity will ensue.

 

[Stalk3rchief]

I'm a proud speaker of the English language, with all of our hidden words and silent characters. I'd hate to learn this shit instead of grow into it.

But in the end, I'd have to call it a pretty ugly language. I only say that on the basis that, when listening to people that speak other languages [French, Japanese, etc.]
It just has more of a melodic flow to it.
Just my personal opinion.

 

[wordsmith]

* Guernsey English
* Jersey English

I can testify that you wouldn't know Channel Island English from any other "Non accented" english (not Somerset, not Newcastle etc.)

Although saying that, there are enough T's and H's dropped for some of our lot to fit in perfectly with the "Lahn-dahn-ahs"

 

[Custard_Angel]

I never wondered about this until now and I'm curious...

Asian languages have the fairly racist "ching-chong" stereotype... Which I can attest to being an accurate, if culturally insensitive, description.

Is there a way to class English in the same way?

 

[Last of the Chinchillas]

Well, it's essentially a language that grew out of a bunch of various European barbarians trying to communicate with each other in mead halls, so I suppose it's understandable that it would sound weird to other cultures, being a mish-mash of several European dialects.

At least, that's what I've always heard. I could be completely wrong.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

* Guernsey English
* Jersey English

I can testify that you wouldn't know Channel Island English from any other "Non accented" english (not Somerset, not Newcastle etc.)

Although saying that, there are enough T's and H's dropped for some of our lot to fit in perfectly with the "Lahn-dahn-ahs"

TWO PEARS A PAHND! And so on.

But that's still a pretty comprehensive list above, there are so many accents, I think a central London accent is probably what they would try and imitate if one was foreign, either that or cockney, they're the two most well known.

 

[Sigel]

I have always thought it was funny how many different American accents there are of the english language. People from New York and New Jersey sound totally different than people from the South. There are even different types of Southern accents. The middle states have their own accent going on ,but it definitely can not be confused with an accent from Wisconsin or Minnesota. Texas is a state and accent all to it's own self, and Cali gave all of us "Valley".

 

[Antzon]

The British accented English i think is the original sounding one. Because English is so wide spreaded every country that uses it have some form of accent drived into it so there will always be variation to it.

If english sound is standardized, everyone will be speaking Queen's English and OMG that will be gay.