World, Writing, Wealth discussion
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Phonetics - how well do you recognize a lingo/dialect?
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I can recognize French and Spanish for sure, as I've studied both. Pretty sure I can recognize Scottish, Irish, Australian, Russian, German, Cockney, Boston, Louisiana, Maine. They're all pretty distinctive. I know I couldn't discern between Japanese and Mandarin.
i'm very good at telling asian languages apart. however, although i am very proficient in the russian language i often found myself having to listen closely to hear the difference between russian and polish.
I'm good at telling various languages apart, such as Japanese and Chinese. I have trouble telling different US dialects apart though; I can do parts of the deep south but that's it.
Does the Western US have a slight accent? Or is it considered to be American standard pronunciation?
I lived most of my life in England, so got exposed to lots of European languages and English dialects. Easy to distinguish for me: French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish. But I couldn't distinguish for example between regions of Germany, or Austrian or Swiss German even though they are themselves different. Further afield, I can tell someone is from a Scandinavian country or from Eastern Europe but couldn't say which country.
In the English speaking world, regional dialects are strong and distinctive: "Home Counties" English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, West Country, London, Essex, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle are readily identifiable. North American - but I can't tell whether someone is American or Canadian, and Australia/New Zealand ditto.
Oddly, many Canadians say they can't tell the difference between English and Australian, which sound utterly different to me.
I think a lot of it stems from what subtleties you are exposed to early on in life. Certain sounds become embedded in your mind, and less familiar ones blend together.
The women in my family tend to marry into other countries, so I have relatives in Germany, Ireland, France, Portugal, Brazil, Canada and probably another few places. I can tell whether someone is from the North or the South in German (Hamburg vs. Munich), French (Normandy vs. Provence) and British English (Yorkshire vs. Kent).I can tell the "western" European languages and their accents when they speak another language apart because I either speak them, or have been exposed to them enough to recognise them.
I cannot tell any of the Eastern European languages apart though. I can make an educated stab at recognising Polish and Russian, but the rest are all the same to me.
I watch a lot of subtitled tv and movies from East Asia, and I took Korean classes for a while, so I can tell Japanese/Korean/Mandarin/Cantonese apart quite well. Except Taiwanese.
I have no idea how to tell apart Indian languages, I couldn't even start to guess at differences between, say, Urdu and Hindi.
Or Northern African ones - I lived in a neighbourhood with a lot of Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian and Egyptian immigrants for a few years, and although I know they speak Arabic and Berber and some others, it all sounded the same to me because I had no previous exposure to these languages.
However, I lived in New Zealand for a while, so I can tell them apart from Australians. But US/Canada I cannot tell. I hear the differences, but I never know which is which, especially since the US has so many different dialects as well.
Alex wrote: "Does the Western US have a slight accent? Or is it considered to be American standard pronunciation?"Southwestern states like Texas definitely have a southern accent.
For a not native speaker, American/Canadian English is the easiest for comprehension. And that's what I hear from others too.Sometimes I can hardly understand a word from the interviews of certain managers of English football clubs -:)
https://greatlanguagegame.com/play/Surprisingly hard. I can usually get around 300, my best score ever is 850. Apparently I mix Vietnamese up with nearly everything.
As a New Zealander who's lived pretty much all over, long enough to file the rough edges off my kiwi accent, I'm pretty much used to being misidentified. Particularly in Swedish, they can tell I'm not a native speaker here, but nobody ever guesses where I'm from, they often guess Spanish/Portuguese or less often Russian I have no idea why, I have a friend who is from Russia and speaks Swedish fluently, and although we both have an accent in Swedish, they're nothing alike.
In English, people think I might be South African most often, which is weird, because I don't have the distinctive SA prosody at all.
For myself, I can usually pick out an Alabama or Texan accent, but anything else southern US is "southern". Northerners, I can usually guess Midwest or northeast, but I generally mix Canadian with the Midwest, and the northwest just sounds "American" to me. I am, or was, pretty handy with British accents, but that's due to having done a whole lot of research work with them (and I'm not sure it's a skill I'll hang on to without listening to them a lot anymore - There was a point I could tell Black Country from Birmingham or Sheffield from Leeds within a half dozen words, right now I'm not sure I could do better than "Northwest" or "Northeast".
It fascinates me though, how few people can tell Danish/Swedish/Norwegian apart - to me they sound as different as a Texas Ranger, the Queen of England and someone raised in Zimbabwe do from each other.
Yeah, Danish is nothing like anything else - to me it sounds like they have a piece of hot potato in their mouths....
Kat wrote: "Yeah, Danish is nothing like anything else - to me it sounds like they have a piece of hot potato in their mouths...."XD
So, how sharp is your ear before of after a couple of beers? Is inbuilt accent recognition functional? :)
After a couple of beers, sign language is key :-) And pretty effective, don't you think?
Maybe not as much as google translate, but booze helps overcoming a language barrier indeed :)
Scout wrote: "After a couple of beers, sign language is key :-) And pretty effective, don't you think?"It depends on how interesting the guy buying the beer is.
Yeah, why bother to overcome the language barrier, when you want a barrier
Which languages do you recognize by ear?
Or if we return to an English speaking world, how precise would you know where a dude/bloke is coming from? Can you discern between a Scottish accent or someone's coming from South Africa, Texas vs. Australia, New Zealand vs Cockney, or NY vs LA?