So to us English speakers, Chinese sounds very staccato, German incredibly guttural and French like talking with a mouth full of marbles.
Two things
1) How do various languages you do not speak sound to you? i.e how does Japanese sound to a Norwegian or a Spaniard?
2)Can anyone who learnt English recently (or just maybe as an adult) explain what English sounded like before they knew it? And maybe even post an audio clip of them doing an imitation of English speakers?
This is one of those funny questions which I'll never be able to fully understand...unless my native language somehow got erased from my brain and replaced with a new one.
Dykes_on_Jay
i can say, "dumb fat bitch that no one likes“ in 7 languages now.
KilldaDJ
once you can speak another language, it doesnt seem so foreign
wha yu wan nao?
Dykes_on_Jay
if you want to learn chinese listen to rap music. i use the words yo, nigga, jigga, e jizzle, dong and jelee everyday. i'm being serious too. my pinyin still gets messed up when i see the letter q. q makes an shh sound in chinese and my brain won't allow it because it doesn't make sense . i'm getting better, but i still often have to drop a thibodong, or a wo bu show hanyu when they assume i can speak well. rockafella.
Chimney
in b4 Lira
German sounds like you're trying to kill someone. Ugly and harsh. Chinese sounds plain weird, however I know that they are very specific on sounds (my best friend being Chinese once told me a couple of words, when repeating them a couple of weeks later, he couldn't understand what I said)
Dykes_on_Jay
mandarin has 4 tones, cantonese has 8. this means a word like ma has 4 very different meanings depending on the tone you use in mandarin. taking a cab here is like playing vatican roulette.
Spam
KilldaDJ
quote:
Originally posted by Dykes_on_Jay
mandarin has 4 tones, cantonese has 8. this means a word like ma has 4 very different meanings depending on the tone you use in mandarin. taking a cab here is like playing vatican roulette.
NEE HAO MA
MAYO MAYO MAYO
freakster
I had a korean girlfriend who said americans sound drawly, she said we all sound southern to her.
Dykes_on_Jay
like konglish is any better. they say b like p, p like b, l like r, r like l, prounounce silent vowels, and add eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee to the end of random words. koreans speaking konglish essentially sounds like they are beig raped by a moose. no one will hire a southener, myself included.
chode_breath
quote:
Originally posted by Chimney
in b4 Lira
German sounds like you're trying to kill someone. Ugly and harsh. Chinese sounds plain weird, however I know that they are very specific on sounds (my best friend being Chinese once told me a couple of words, when repeating them a couple of weeks later, he couldn't understand what I said)
Which nationality are you?
netroM
quote:
Originally posted by chode_breath
1) How do various languages you do not speak sound to you? i.e how does Japanese sound to a Norwegian?
Depends on how much one has heard, really.
Me, I find it really polite. It's not aggressive, it's got many of the same sounds we use in our pronunciations (u, a, e, i, ĺ), so I don't find them very weird/difficult.
I dunno how to describe it, I just really enjoy listening to it :)
Example:
