How English Sounds to Non-English Speakers
As anyone knows who has watched a kitschy foreign film or even tried to learn another language, there's this cloud of hazy articulations, tambers and tones that fill your ears instead of comprehensible patterns when you first struggle to understand. The funny thing is, we often get used to the sound of a language and it's characteristics before we even start to make sense of it's grammar and verbiage. For example, most Americans can typically tell the difference if someone is speaking Spanish or French, or German or Russian, even if they never actually studied these languages.
Although I've always found this phenomenon fascinating, my interest has been re-piqued through our discussions of globalization media and the "like us" effect in world coverage. Having watched foreign television with no subtitles, you become dependent on relying on gestures and tonal ques from characters in shows to try and extrapolate the meaning and plot of the story. Overall, it's not too difficult to figure out what's going on, and you even start to pick up on certain words that get repeated often and different gestures and signs that are utilized in that culture.
I've come across two examples of what English sounds like to Non-English speakers. They are designed to use the phonal qualities of English pronunciation and pitch of expression. This first one is a clip from an Italian skit show from the 70's, much like Monty Python. In it, the teacher is telling the students how to B.S. their way to make it sound like they know English through a Dance/Funk song routine, particularly reminiscent of U.S. Television pop-music performances at that time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8
A little strange, I know, because your mind wants to make sense out of what they're saying. The second one is a more recent creation revolving around a dramatic dinner scene with a couple, titled "Skwerl".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY
The interesting thing about the second video, is the usage of English profanity. This stuck out to me as many foreigners I met who knew very little English, could at the very least spout out a few swear words. I don't know many other languages where the profanity is the more accessible or understandable aspect of the language. When you ask an English speaker (who has not studied a language) what they know in French, German, Spanish, etc., people usually know "Hello", "Yes", "No" and "I love you."
I remember being in Germany once, waiting for the bus to go shopping, and the group of teenagers next to me in heated discussion would once every 5 or 10 words say "sh!#," "mother f@$&er" and "damn". My students in Istanbul had similar habits, which they quickly learned to remedy during my class hour. The most iconic memory I have, though, is walking along a village road in rural Turkey, and a few boys playing soccer stopped, started smiling and waving at me and my friends, yelling "Hello! F@$k you! Hello!"
Anyway, what do you guys think these video's have to say about Anglo culture and how foreign audiences might perceive Americans/English? What might they say about the effects of our "foreign" media on other cultures? Does anyone have any other stories or experiences that might relate to this?
I'm reminded of my younger years growing up in Colorado and only speaking Spanish. When I started going to kindergarten, everyone assumed I was just like any other American child, and they never realized that I didn't speak a word of English.
ReplyDeleteMy kindergarten teacher loved to play her guitar and sing songs, I always heard her say a word that sounded like "Beh-errr" (bear) and so for the longest time I thought that was her name. Every day was a constant struggle to understand what she told us and what my fellow classmates would say to me. My head constantly ached and English seemed like a white noise to me.
It was all thanks to the show "Sesame Street," among other United States shows, that I eventually learned English. I always remember one episode on "Sesame Street" where they were teaching the alphabet, and for the letter "B" I heard the familiar "Beh-errr" that was accompanied of the picture of what I knew to be an "oso." It was then that I finally learned that it meant bear, the big furry animal that would walk around my home town and not the name of the teacher.
It's crazy to think that for the first ten years of my life English was just white noise, alien sounds that made no connection really to anything, like in the two videos you posted, that's what my English sounded like, and it took rigorous amounts of television watching and imitating my classmates to learn how to speak English.
Sounds are the main thing people recognize of another language, and songs tend to become just that as opposed to actual words (like Britney Spear's "oops I did it again" was "oops ay deed ee ageh"). And languages also start copying each other, like many words used in northern Mexico are taken from English, such as: parkiar = to park, lacquiar = to lock, gangas = gangs, carpeta = carpet.
Bantu languages (the most familiar of which being Swahili) have a lot of transliteration involved in them, especially as English is not only an influential international language but also far more descriptive than many languages including Bantu. Keeping in mind that Bantu speakers often switch L's and R's: Buledi is bread; Sipuni is spoon; Foloko is fork; and so on.
ReplyDeleteI was reminded of this in class the other day when we were talking about the romantic stories known in Nigeria as Soyayyas. Though Hausa is technically a Chadic language, it shares the region with Bantu speakers, so I'm taking a little license in assuming there's some shared influence. In Bantu, double letters represent an emphasis. If you break this down, then, it could possibly be (guessing at these kinds of things became quite a fun game) that soyayya could be derived from a combining of the oft tendency of English speakers to say, "So, yeah? Yeah!", while telling colloquial stories. It's fun to think about.
When I was traveling throughout Africa, I also definitely got the, "Hey, you! F#@k you! F@#k you!" a lot, followed by hysterical laughter. Personally I would join in the laughter, but many volunteers were offended. This happened never more than in Ethiopia, for some reason.
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ReplyDeleteI think these videos both reflect Anglo culture as an extension of MTV, which of course encourages foreign audiences to perceive Americans as morally inferior and economically superior. The language used is not pertinent to understanding what’s going on in most music videos, it’s more about the spectacle than anything else.
ReplyDeleteThe effects of our “foreign” media were never more evident to me than sitting in a café in rural Ethiopia and watching “My Super Sweet 16” and “Cribs.” The conclusion any person would draw from these shows is that Americans are worried about nothing but material possessions, which of course makes some people jealous and resentful. Then they would see me and ask if I had any of those things, or if my house looked like the one on the screen, and regardless of what I said or how many times I said it they still looked at me like I was most definitely from another world (not that that didn’t happen anyway, but it was more pronounced on these occasions).
It was interesting to me that young men in Palestine found it so funny to tell me to f@$k my mother. That one never made much sense to me. The f@$k yous were so prevalent and pervasive that they ceased to bother me. I will say that being called a whore and a b!#$& in Arabic was much harder to take for some reason. It seemed more personal and more or a direct attack than when they said the same types of things in English. I could disassociate myself from what was being said if it was being said by them in a language foreign to them.
And yes Adam, it did happen a lot in Ethiopia.
I found the Italian video particularly amusing, thanks for sharing this. I have also wondered about this, especially after endeavoring to learn Chinese. Interesting also that you mention profanity as for me at least I found it somewhat challenging to find people in China willing to teach me their swear words. Even when someone would, they were usually rather shy about it. I also rarely heard Chinese people using English profanity. Must at least be partially due to cultural differences though I suspect that young people still knew plenty but were less likely to use any profanity around me.
ReplyDeleteYoung children in the countryside would often spout what ever English they knew to get my attention, usually just "Hello" but sometimes other more incongruous statements that would strike me as absurd. It was cute at first but eventually grew old as it would often be a prelude to begging or hard sale tactics of trinkets as opposed to starting conversation. I'm also not someone keen on occupying the center of attention in most circumstances.
Watching TV in China certainly helped as well, because even if I didn't know what was going on, it gave me subjects I could inquire about to others as a significant portion television programming exists in the contemporary social conscience.
Another thing I noticed was that I would be expected to know about things from American culture in all situations. For instance Karaoke is rather popular in China, and despite my protestations I eventually deigned to participate. It was assumed that I would know the English songs that they had, but most would be old, obscure or both. I tend to like older music as it is, but while 'Yesterday One More' by the Carpenters is very popular in China, I had never heard of it until then. Instead, I would opt for a Chinese song I had recently learned. I often felt that I was given way too much credit for knowing any Chinese at all, to the point where even just saying "ni hao" would elicit delight/surprise. Though I'm sure much of it was feigned, it was still odd. But I think it was a reflection of some pride since so many Chinese are forced to learn English that they are happy to see a foreigner learning their language. I would think this sentiment could be encountered in many contexts around the world given the ubiquity of English as an international language.
Awesome videos David! I have watched the second video in my Intercultural Training class last quarter. Despite the language part, I also found it's interesting to see how we could interpret the emotion and the story through all the nonverbal signs: gestures, eye contacts, paralinguistic, body positions, facial expressions, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you for mentioning the use of profanity in foreign countries. I don't think I could count how many times I was greeted with "Ching-chong-Ka-Boom-Pao" (or whatever words people made up that sound like "Chinese" or "Japanese" to them) along with a bow and sometimes with the prayer-like palm gestures, and usually followed with loud laughters. I found it pretty funny the first couple times, but it got old. After being here for seven years, I have less tolerant for strangers who come up to me to give me the "greeting" that is not practiced in my culture, and most of them don't have that cultural sensibility to ask where I am from, and how do people greet each other in my country, before they make the assumption.