3 ms·

You're making some very broad generalizations, which is why you are puzzled IMO. Firstly, "English speakers" includes many people who speak multiple languages.

by edanm 5y ago

You're making some very broad generalizations, which is why you are puzzled IMO. Firstly, "English speakers" includes many people who speak multiple languages. Technically, English speakers also includes people who are non-native English speakers, who by definition know another language. Secondly, there are many native English speakers who speak a second language, or who are at least exposed enough to second languages to know how they sound. For example, many states in the United States have a very large Hispanic population, parts of Canada have people who speak both English and French, many people from England speak second languages (French is fairly common if I recall correctly). I think who you're thinking of are only the native English-speaking people who are not much exposed to other languages. There is a fairly large population of these, because the United States is fairly large and has lots of areas that are surrounded by only English speakers (as opposed to most other countries in the world, whose neighbors speak another language). Of course if you're only looking at the subset of people who aren't exposed to another language, you'd expect to see them have little knowledge of foreign languages! (Side note: I wonder if even this phenomenon is decreasing, given greater immigration, the Internet, foreign TV/Movies being more available/popular, etc.)

wink 5y ago
In my (limited) experience there is no discernible difference between Americans and British people mispronouncing Italian (or German, for that matter) and to a degree Spanish words. I think this is what the parent poster meant. If your native language is English AND you don't know any others, then your mispronunciations will be similar.
- qalmakka 5y ago
  This, exactly. I also saw a quite big difference between monolingual English speakers and Italian speakers. The average monolingual Italian speaker that has had a basic exposure to certain English words through TV or media in general WILL definitely mispronounce the words, but the result is never so corrupted and garbled to result incomprehensible to an English speaker. For instance, the average Italian might pronounce a word like "cocktail" as /ˈkoktɛl/ instead of the correct English /ˈkɒkteɪl/, or "underground" as /andɛrˈgraund/ instead of /ʌndəˈɡɹaʊnd/; I've yet to find an English speaker that hasn't studied Italian that doesn't do butcherings like /ʃəˈbɑːda/, which an Italian won't definitely recognize as "ciabatta" due to the fact that it is supposed to sound /tʃaˈbatta/. I think it's a process somewhat similar to how Japanese corrupts loanwords, but in the other direction: English has a vastly larger array of sounds compared to Italian, so speakers somewhat fail to understand that Romance languages (except French and friends, but we don't talk about French) are usually much "flatter" in sound than your average Germanic language with 16 vowels.
  - edanm 5y ago
    I wonder if it is indeed a difference in base language, or just a difference of exposure. I assume that, even without "trying", almost every Italian has more exposure to English than English speakers have to Italian.
    - qalmakka 5y ago
      My personal theory is that it's mostly due to exposure and cultural influence. The English speaking world is mostly refractory towards the non-English speaking world, i.e., books and movies published in Italian will almost always never get an English translation because there really isn't a market for translated novels. In the same way, Italian singers and bands have 0 chances of success unless they start singing in English; that's also the reason why at Eurovision only a very few countries sing in their own languages. This causes people to hear English sounds since their very early childhood - in song, mostly. Movies are dubbed, but in general names of non translatable things are kept as-is, with a "flattened" but somewhat correct pronounciation. English is also a mandatory subject in school. While the vast majority of students suck badly in that subject (I think among my classmates only 3 people, counting myself, had a mark above a passing grade in high school), at least you get that Millennials and some Gen X at least can grasp how stuff is supposed to get pronounced, so they can correct their parents or relatives when they say something completely out of place. I don't think there are enough people knowing a foreign language in English-speaking countries to offset this, so the "creative" pronunciations tend to stick and become the norm.

by edanm 5y ago

wink 5y ago

In my (limited) experience there is no discernible difference between Americans and British people mispronouncing Italian (or German, for that matter) and to a degree Spanish words. I think this is what the parent poster meant. If your native language is English AND you don't know any others, then your mispronunciations will be similar.

qalmakka 5y ago
This, exactly. I also saw a quite big difference between monolingual English speakers and Italian speakers. The average monolingual Italian speaker that has had a basic exposure to certain English words through TV or media in general WILL definitely mispronounce the words, but the result is never so corrupted and garbled to result incomprehensible to an English speaker. For instance, the average Italian might pronounce a word like "cocktail" as /ˈkoktɛl/ instead of the correct English /ˈkɒkteɪl/, or "underground" as /andɛrˈgraund/ instead of /ʌndəˈɡɹaʊnd/; I've yet to find an English speaker that hasn't studied Italian that doesn't do butcherings like /ʃəˈbɑːda/, which an Italian won't definitely recognize as "ciabatta" due to the fact that it is supposed to sound /tʃaˈbatta/. I think it's a process somewhat similar to how Japanese corrupts loanwords, but in the other direction: English has a vastly larger array of sounds compared to Italian, so speakers somewhat fail to understand that Romance languages (except French and friends, but we don't talk about French) are usually much "flatter" in sound than your average Germanic language with 16 vowels.
- edanm 5y ago
  I wonder if it is indeed a difference in base language, or just a difference of exposure. I assume that, even without "trying", almost every Italian has more exposure to English than English speakers have to Italian.
  - qalmakka 5y ago
    My personal theory is that it's mostly due to exposure and cultural influence. The English speaking world is mostly refractory towards the non-English speaking world, i.e., books and movies published in Italian will almost always never get an English translation because there really isn't a market for translated novels. In the same way, Italian singers and bands have 0 chances of success unless they start singing in English; that's also the reason why at Eurovision only a very few countries sing in their own languages. This causes people to hear English sounds since their very early childhood - in song, mostly. Movies are dubbed, but in general names of non translatable things are kept as-is, with a "flattened" but somewhat correct pronounciation. English is also a mandatory subject in school. While the vast majority of students suck badly in that subject (I think among my classmates only 3 people, counting myself, had a mark above a passing grade in high school), at least you get that Millennials and some Gen X at least can grasp how stuff is supposed to get pronounced, so they can correct their parents or relatives when they say something completely out of place. I don't think there are enough people knowing a foreign language in English-speaking countries to offset this, so the "creative" pronunciations tend to stick and become the norm.