We always knew that the only thing being butchered by John Belushi in his famous SNL samurai sketches was the Japanese language. But after watching such performances by the likes of Robin Williams issuing forth a stream of fake Italian or Chinese, I've had a desire for years to hear what nonsense English sounds like from the perspective of non English speakers.
Recently, I've seen this topic arise on other blogs (Today's Big Thing) and have finally found an example. Nonsense English from the perspective of Italians as expressed through a music video
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That's great! Funny how you think you hear some words and try to make sense of it.
ReplyDeleteI've been theorising on why I don't hear the differences or subtleties in other languages, aside from the sound just not existing in a given language, such as "l" in Japanese, "th" in French, I think there's a wide range of sound that is accepted as the same in English. Take, Path, or vase, and have it said by people with different accents, English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, American, Australian, New Zealand, South African, etc, and then the various regions. There is a wide range of sounds that you will accept as the same, or near enough. When you're use to vowel sounds (or bowel sound) that can be long or short, accented to "ay" or "ar", if another language has three variations on what sounds like clearing your throat you'll never learn Danish from an English base.
My own theory on accents is it has more to do with tongue, lip, and jaw posture combined with muscle memory.
ReplyDeleteTry speaking while using different parts of your tongue for palette flicks. You get a different sound if you use the very tip of your tongue versus areas further back.
Limiting the up/down range of the tongue also ends up adjusting the potential range of vowel sounds along with length of vowel pronunciation and probability of rolling for r's or d's. I can do a pretty good Indian accent by keeping my tongue really close to the upper palette.
For some reason, I can sound Australian if I imagine I've got Vegemite residue on my tongue and I'm trying to brush it off while speaking.
I have to flare my nostrils to do a real occa Aussie accent. Oh and as a key phrase to switch mode, "Yeah right", or "Aw strewth!" yeah right for high pitched, Aw stretwth for a deeper sound. "But, but your blek" courtesy of Lethal Weapon gets you going for South African. "Come oonn" and "Woa Dude" get you one side of the US vs the other.
ReplyDelete