How does English actually sound to you?

Question

I know that when ever I think of French I have a certain mindset of how the words sound, even if I'm not saying the correct words. The same goes for Spanish and German. But I was wondering, how do you, if English is not your first language, sound to you? What rhythm does it have - what is distinctive about it?

Answer 1

Maybe I have been learning English as a second language for too long; to me, different varieties of English such as RP, Geordie, Irish English, East coast Amerucan and southern states American English all sound very different - not to mention Australian English and New Zealand English (now that's hilarious...).
Still I think the most "typical" English sound for non-English spakers are the "r" and all those dipthongs - you just can't keep a long monophthong, can you?

Answer 2

I'm a Chinese and English is my first language. I guess it can be described as less structured and more 'flowy' than Chinese. Cos English words can be of varying lengths and syllabus but Chinese characters have only one syllabus each. With regards to pronounciation, it's tricky cos there are so many origins so some words may sound french, others latin or it could be pronounced exactly the way it is spelled. Tricky.

Answer 3

I think that is because in English, we do not have an official rule for stress marks, there are also 8 different ways to pronounce the letter "a", and many ways to pronounce "e" and "i". Some words with "e" on the end are silent (like come) , others are not and everything is just so choppy and unorganized and can be easily mixed up.

Answer 4

Watch out for false cogates=words appear to spell the same or very similar but mean differently. A typical example is actual, which in Spanish means present, now....

Answer 5

I am italian, and my work has been as technical translator
for technical and scietific texts both english to italian and the converse.

But I have a very scarce fluency with spoken english.

In written english and german, many words are written as they are spoken in esnglish:

an example: uncle

onkel

ciao

Answer 6

It sounds me sweetish specially the female version and in the songs. Somewhat like German with less noticeable glottal pause.

Answer 7

I have found that it sounds very similar to German.

This is a good question, and it's one I've thought about. too.
English has a rhythm and a sound similar to German.

Barjesse37

Answer 8

Interesting question. I cant answer it cos English is my first language, but I'm curious to know what people post. Will check back for answers. I'm posting this one just to generate interest. hope it works.

Answer 9

I choose the alternative of your first coach. a competent translator ought to understand the textual content textile and interpret the author's meaning. you ought to reproduce the type of the unique, and you will't do it with word to word translation. fantastically as there can't be a real word to word translation. I had a classification in college the place we'd examine the author's purpose with putting "the, a, no article" in his textual content textile. That replaced right into a brilliant help for my classes of "traductologie", because of the fact we discovered to apply each and every little element of an unique textual content textile so as that we could stay real to the author's purpose. a competent translator has someway to channel the author into his/her very own language. word to word could properly be exciting as a known step of the translation. i take advantage of it each and every so often once I surely have an exceedingly long sentence to translate. It facilitates me information no remember if I ought to spoil up the sentence in areas. notwithstanding that's purely a technical help. the factor is, you ought to understand who will examine your translation. As a consultant, i could on no account have given a translation that wasn't in suitable German or French to my shoppers. They paid me for something they could positioned up, sign or positioned on their cyber web website. So it greater efficient had to place across the right meaning of the unique. If the unique type replaced into sloppy or undesirable, i might purely refine the translation whilst asked to realize this. the customer is king.

Answer 10

Cool.