Question for people learning english, or who speak it as a second language?

Question

I often wonder what the language I speak sounds like to other people who don't understand. I always listen or hear other languages in my country. Particularly  French, and I often listen, even though I don't understand much, and I listen to the way they use their voice raisings and such and say 'wow, that word sounds cool' or 'wow, what an odd pronunciation for a word hehe'.

What are most of your thoughts on the english language when you couldn't understand it? I always wondered what someone thought of it who didn't know it. What does it sound like to you? Can you compare it to other languages? Does it sound interesting? Does it sound dirty or snobby? Tell me what you think, I am really interested.

Cymro i&#39;r Carn · Accepted Answer

Now this is something i always wonder about my first language Welsh, 

Before i could speak English i remeber it sounding very biblical in a way and rather hard. I also found the spelling frustrating. When i would turn on the TV and naturally watch the kid's programm's on S4C(Sianel pedwar Cymru) Our welsh language channel here in wales. It would be completely natural but i remeber switching to the English channel and the best describe would be a mutated form of french and German. Hard like German and quite strong but lyrical and smooth like french

Александр · Answer

You actually should have asked this somewhere else, because the people on Answers supposedly know English, if they don't, they don't understand what you've said. Anyway, I'll try to give you an idea what it sounds like to me.

I don't really *speak* English, because I have ever been exposed neither to native speakers nor to those who'd speak it as their second language. Recently, I got some movies in English, but I can't handle them without subtitles. Imagine that somebody says "bad". But this is not what I hear. I just cannot be sure if it is not "bat", "bet" or "bed", because those 4 words sound quite equally to me. I cannot make out the diphthongs, and sometimes, the things what are said do sound very different from what I expect to hear. E.g., "pot" when spoken in a movie, sounds more like "put". Sometimes, I can hear [r] instead of [t], while I skip the actual [r]'s, which sound like vowels to me.
Also, I only can recognize [Ã°] and [Î¸] in non-rapid speech. Otherwise, they sound to me like [z] and [s] (what I'm aware of, thus I still can understand the word) or like [d] and [t] (and I cannot understand the word then).

I've asked my father listen to what they say in Home Alone and then repeat that. He said something like "jers memeemeemle jes mosha too", and that really sounds gibberish to a Russian speaker. That's how English sounded to me before I began learn it.
The original words were "this many people and no shampoo"

Classiclover · Answer

sounds funny that I really dont remember now how it felt like before I could speak it
But something that I remember is that it was always interesting to hear it and I was always so curious to know the meaning of it

Trending News

Question for people learning english, or who speak it as a second language?

3 Answers