What does English sound like to people who've never spoken it before?

Question

everyone: I KNOW it obviously doesn't make any sense when people hear it, but what does it sound like?? french sounds romantic, spanish is fast and confusing, german is harsh and cold.,. what does english sound like?

Answer 1

I like it. My native language is Italian but I started learning English in elementary school, and I'm using it now as my first language since I live in the USA. English is practical, economic, straight to the point, and has an easy grammar!

As for "what it sounds like", it depends. British English sounds more sophisticated, American English more casual (but also more musical/flowing, at least to my ears) and Aussie English more fun!

Answer 2

I get what you're saying with French sounding romantic, German sounding somewhat harsh, etc. As an English learner, I imagined English being somewhat lazy-sounding compared to other fast and complicated languages like Chinese. But when you hear English and are told that it's English, and later on you hear the same language again, you'll recognize it and imagine some obese American sitting in front of a TV saying it (no offense) because that's what other countries imagine Americans to be, just like you would imagine Germans wearing leather pants and drinking a beer, French with berets on their head and a baguette in their hand, etc. Basically, English sounds lazy because people imagine the people saying it being lazy and fat.

Answer 3

This question reveals a little more than you hoped, I think.

How people perceive the sound of a language is affected by how people feel about the people who speak that language. For example, some people say that French sounds romantic, while others say that it sounds harsh. Whether or not you choose a positive or negative description of the language depends on your opinion of the people who use it, not the language itself.

As a result, the answers you get about how English sounds will depend largely on how the answerers feel about English speakers.

Answer 4

I am a half hungarian,half german woman..i heard the first english words when i was about 3 or 4 years old.It sounded like a song.I liked it a lot and later i decided to start learning it instead of german.Now I am an English language teacher.

Answer 5

I can't answer that question because I forgot what it was like when I first heard English being spoken; it was a long, long time ago. What I can tell you is what people of my country (Japan) think about English, spoken or written. They... oops, we think English is soooooooo cool that we worship it. We drool all over it. We want to make it part of our language, and we've been trying to do so... with some success, I must say. You can see the result of our tireless effort at www.engrish.com - I can't tell you what English sounds like to us, but maybe that web site can show you what written English looks like to us...

Answer 6

Did you watch Lord of the Rings? And when the ring was made there was this voiceover quoting the message on the ring that sounded like "hoshkoshbegosh..." I think that is about what English sounds like to non-English speakers.

Answer 7

I imagine it sounds the same as an english speaking person thinks japanese or russian sounds when they hear it... a bunch of gibberish. They're thinking... 'what the heck is he saying?? Thank God for subtitles lol!

Answer 8

Like Spanish, fast and confusing! My uncle used to say when my husband and I spoke English , stop the gibberish!!

Answer 9

I have always wondered this. I hope we sound as cool as other people with accents, but I have a feeling we don't. I think we just sound like we are speaking fast

Answer 10

Sounds like a human making incoherent noises with the mouth.