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On the subject of accents, in case you missed her viral video the first-time around, the absolutely astounding Saara from Finland. "What Languages Sound Like T

On the subject of accents, in case you missed her viral video the first-time around, the absolutely astounding Saara from Finland. "What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners" https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw

sangnoir 10y ago
There's a fantastic English-sounding song by an italian singer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano. It hurts my brain when I try to pick out meaning from the phenomes.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  I love this song. I had always wondered what (American) English sounds like to people who don't understand it. As a native speaker I thought I couldn't know, but when I heard this song I did!
- Eiriksmal 10y ago
  The Sims 2 Maxis audio director [0] went all-in on beefing up Simlish to freakishly mirror English--the same phonemes, only scrambled up into gibberish. When sang with convincing emotion and inflection, it sounds quite incredible and has you nodding along without even realizing the lyrics are completely fabricated. The Humble Brothers produced most of the Simlish tracks in the mid 00s and have an album of their impressive songs available on iTunes. "Upside" is a fine example.[1] [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/simlish-singing-the-music-behind-the-sims/ https://www.cnet.com/news/simlish-singing-the-music-behind-t... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty66tLNus1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty66tLNus1E
_samihasan_ 10y ago
Her pronunciation of Arabic is off a little bit. She just crammed the Semitic sounds in a few made up words sparkled by some real Arabic words and that's it but she should have been making more effort in imitating the rhythm and intonation (prosody) [1] to fool the native Arabic speaker ears that what she speaks was actually Arabic. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28linguistics%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28linguistics%29
laurieg 10y ago
That is a wonderful video. The gibberish she speaks in Each language sounds pretty convincing, although I noticed my relationship with each language affected how it sounded a lot. French and Spanish: I've heard them around but never spoken them. She sounded perfect. Swedish: I used to be able to speak it but have forgotten. She sounded even more convincing than in French. Japanese: I speak it now but not natively. She sounded pretty rough and not all that Japanese to me. English: My native language. My brain tried so hard to make sense of it and pulled out snippets of words but there was no grammar there.
- flojito 10y ago
  Spanish native here: the Spanish that speaks in this video is like an American Spanish with and scent of Italian accent :-) But a very fluent one.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    Do you mean Mexican Spanish? Genuine question as there are MANY Spanish dialects in the Americas.
    - jaimebuelta 10y ago
      No. She goes for a Spain Spanish (specially the last sentence), it doesn't sound Mexican (or any other discernible Latin American accent) at all. It still sounds a little bit Italian...
      - jfroma 10y ago
        She goes for Spain Spanish, you can notice this because most S sound like Z and she says something like "pues" (which is commonly used in spain). The last sentence she says something like "a huevo cabron" with spain accent but the expression itself is very mexican.
        narag 10y ago
wenderen 10y ago
Her Hindi sounds very very different from the real thing.
- sjwright 10y ago
  She annotated the video to acknowledge that it does sound more like Tamil than Hindi.
gotofritz 10y ago
I found the Italian with the stereotypical moving hands incredibly annoying
jpatokal 10y ago
And she's pretty good at actually speaking languages as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1968811363&feature=iv&src_vid=ybcvlxivscw&v=pQrESb5DbEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_19688... ...and note that she's genuinely fluent in only 3 of those!
sethammons 10y ago
An english gibberish song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8. I could not find the original that I heard, but this is most of it. Hilarious.

sangnoir 10y ago

There's a fantastic English-sounding song by an italian singer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano. It hurts my brain when I try to pick out meaning from the phenomes.

nkrisc 10y ago
I love this song. I had always wondered what (American) English sounds like to people who don't understand it. As a native speaker I thought I couldn't know, but when I heard this song I did!
Eiriksmal 10y ago
The Sims 2 Maxis audio director [0] went all-in on beefing up Simlish to freakishly mirror English--the same phonemes, only scrambled up into gibberish. When sang with convincing emotion and inflection, it sounds quite incredible and has you nodding along without even realizing the lyrics are completely fabricated. The Humble Brothers produced most of the Simlish tracks in the mid 00s and have an album of their impressive songs available on iTunes. "Upside" is a fine example.[1] [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/simlish-singing-the-music-behind-the-sims/ https://www.cnet.com/news/simlish-singing-the-music-behind-t... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty66tLNus1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty66tLNus1E

_samihasan_ 10y ago

Her pronunciation of Arabic is off a little bit. She just crammed the Semitic sounds in a few made up words sparkled by some real Arabic words and that's it but she should have been making more effort in imitating the rhythm and intonation (prosody) [1] to fool the native Arabic speaker ears that what she speaks was actually Arabic. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28linguistics%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28linguistics%29

laurieg 10y ago

That is a wonderful video. The gibberish she speaks in Each language sounds pretty convincing, although I noticed my relationship with each language affected how it sounded a lot. French and Spanish: I've heard them around but never spoken them. She sounded perfect. Swedish: I used to be able to speak it but have forgotten. She sounded even more convincing than in French. Japanese: I speak it now but not natively. She sounded pretty rough and not all that Japanese to me. English: My native language. My brain tried so hard to make sense of it and pulled out snippets of words but there was no grammar there.

flojito 10y ago
Spanish native here: the Spanish that speaks in this video is like an American Spanish with and scent of Italian accent :-) But a very fluent one.
- kobeya 10y ago
  Do you mean Mexican Spanish? Genuine question as there are MANY Spanish dialects in the Americas.
  - jaimebuelta 10y ago
    No. She goes for a Spain Spanish (specially the last sentence), it doesn't sound Mexican (or any other discernible Latin American accent) at all. It still sounds a little bit Italian...
    - jfroma 10y ago
      She goes for Spain Spanish, you can notice this because most S sound like Z and she says something like "pues" (which is commonly used in spain). The last sentence she says something like "a huevo cabron" with spain accent but the expression itself is very mexican.
      - narag 10y ago

wenderen 10y ago

Her Hindi sounds very very different from the real thing.

sjwright 10y ago
She annotated the video to acknowledge that it does sound more like Tamil than Hindi.

gotofritz 10y ago

I found the Italian with the stereotypical moving hands incredibly annoying

jpatokal 10y ago

And she's pretty good at actually speaking languages as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1968811363&feature=iv&src_vid=ybcvlxivscw&v=pQrESb5DbEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_19688... ...and note that she's genuinely fluent in only 3 of those!

sethammons 10y ago

An english gibberish song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8. I could not find the original that I heard, but this is most of it. Hilarious.