What does English sound like to non-native speakers?

[Curtis24]

I've been told that 1) dogs barking; 2) the "th" sound is very prominent.

[MST3K]

It's Cornish a Celtic language, but it has sort of an English sound. This is what I think English sounds like to non-speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80

[Agrippa]

It's Cornish a Celtic language, but it has sort of an English sound. This is what I think English sounds like to non-speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80

Agreed, it really sounds quite similar to English, might it be the English background of the miner or the orignal language, it doesn't matter for the purpose. But that's English if you don't understand it ;)

[Wulfhere]

Cornish is like Welsh without all the unpronounceable bits, such as ll.

[GregSamsa]

It sounds very much like German...as if being spoken underwater... ;P

[The Lawspeaker]

It sounds very much like German...as if being spoken underwater... ;P
And with a hot potato in the mouth and a bad cold to boot. :p

[Boudica]

Haha I've always wondered this my self.

[Peyrol]

I've been told that 1) dogs barking; 2) the "th" sound is very prominent.

This is soooo true.

[Rouxinol]

In the UK: Queen's English sounds much less gutural and more educated and refined than most of the English dialects there (and other Germanic languages). Dialects as cockney, scouse, Scottish English sound rude and uneducated.

[Cail]

It's Cornish a Celtic language, but it has sort of an English sound. This is what I think English sounds like to non-speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80

There are no proper native speakers of the original Cornish anymore, it's a dead language. All current speakers have learned it (some might have learned it as children from their parents, but the parents were not native speakers themselves), and the vast majority are English native speakers (also some Welsh enthusiasts). Hence the English-like sound. The closest living relative of the Cornish is Breton, they most likely had a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Also quite close to Welsh.

[Bridie]

I've been told the Australian accent sounds bloody awful. Uneducated and crude. :D But it's mostly the English that have told me that, so I pay no mind. :wink

[Sabinae]

I first came into contact with English as a 5 year old child... It did sound odd, it didnt have the same "flow" a Romance language has, it was somewhat "abrupt", but the "th" sound made it cute to my ears...especially since i have a lisp, it became hilarious. I assimilated it ok... I can even dream in English... to me its not foreign anymore.

[Imperivm]

What do you all mean the "th" sound? :confused:

I had always thought English sounds like German to non English speakers.

[Graham]

Alot of English speakers can't pronounce the 'th' sound very well, includng myself. Up here it would be 'free' or 'hree' instead of three.

[Bridie]

Alot of English speakers can't pronounce the 'th' sound very well, includng myself. Up here it would be 'free' or 'hree' instead of three.The Irish pronounce the "th" sound as a "t" sound generally and I always thought it was just a learned thing (as accents are learned, of course), but now I wonder if there could be some kind of genetic component to speech sounds since my son, whose father is Irish, has been raised in Australia and otherwise has an Australian accent, finds it difficult to pronounce the "th", instead pronouncing it as "t" or "d", no matter how often I remind him to say it correctly. (Correct for an Australian accent, that is.)

[Wulfhere]

What do you all mean the "th" sound? :confused:

I had always thought English sounds like German to non English speakers.

There are actually two "th" sounds, of course, voiced and unvoiced. As in "then" and "thin".

[Treffie]

Agreed, it really sounds quite similar to English, might it be the English background of the miner or the orignal language, it doesn't matter for the purpose. But that's English if you don't understand it ;)

It only sounds like English because it's spoken in a familiar accent. To me it sounds like a west country English person speaking very poor Welsh :D


There are actually two "th" sounds, of course, voiced and unvoiced. As in "then" and "thin".

I've always thought that English should adopt the Icelandic Ð/ð and Þ/þ to differentiate the two sounds. It was used in Old English.

[billErobreren]

I've been asking myself this for years

[Wulfhere]

It only sounds like English because it's spoken in a familiar accent. To me it sounds like a west country English person speaking very poor Welsh :D



I've always thought that English should adopt the Icelandic Ð/ð and Þ/þ to differentiate the two sounds. It was used in Old English.

Whilst both letters were indeed used in Old English, rather confusingly both of them were used for both the voiced and unvoiced sounds, and in any case thorn (Þ/þ) was far more common than eth (Ð/ð). Thorn continued to be used in Middle English, and was later replaced with a "y" when printing came along, because it resembled it most in shape (and the printers had no thorn in their imported stock). It survives today in vestigial form in the phrase "Ye Olde (etc.)", in which the "Y" is a thorn, pronounced "th".