Jo22 wrote on 2021-08-19, 08:51:

Apparently, in the US, during lock-down the children watched a British cartoon show much more often than it is good for them. 😉

https://abc7news.com/peppa-pig-accent-british … eries/10898049/

I remember that story.

It actually has some interesting and partially unexplored (yet) implications.

Basically, for the entire human history before the 20th century, languages and dialects diverged continuously because no means of instant long-distance communication existed. Since language is always in a state of flux, and the changes are not predetermined, once you cut regular contact between parts of a speaking population, they will diverge inevitably -- first on a small scale, then eventually up to a point where they could become mutually unintelligible (but that would take hundreds of years of course, or at least some very critical changes in the way people live).

In the more recent centuries, but before the invention of the radio and such, compulsory mass education and established standards of literary language ensured a degree of consistency in language use across relatively large populations. These were centralised and controlled, but also limited to only come spheres of social interaction.

Now we have instant communication and theoretically, that could allow to maintain greater consistency over large populations of speakers worldwide. For example, American and British English, or all varieties of English that regularly come into contact, could begin converging back into something more homogeneous. On the other hand, it is equally possible that differences will remain, but certain changes will spread in unpredictable directions thanks to online communication and media, as opposed to being largely restricted to closely-knit populations.

Concerning English, of course there's also the fact that it's being used on a daily basis by lots of non-first-language speakers too, including many highly competent speakers. This presence looks significant enough to theoretically be able to kickstart some changes that could penetrate first-language speaker usage as well, and possible play some part in global convergence, although I cannot imagine what part exactly, at the moment.

Errius wrote on 2021-08-19, 09:50:

I think there are similar issues between north/east Germans and south/west Germans? I seem to remember my school German teacher (who was from southern Germany) saying that Berliners talked funny, but I no longer remember the details.

Yes German dialects can be extreme. Many cannot understand German-speaking Swiss. Funnily I understand them better (as a non-native German speaker) than my native-German speaking wife.

Berliners don't have a mega strong dialect unlike Bavarians or Swabians. I find Swabians almost incomprehensible.

Some Austrian dialects are hard to follow as well. For example in Voralberg they are influenced by Rettoroman which is spoken in Switzerland and you cannot understand a thing unless you speak both.

People find it funny that i can imitate a few dialects in German and French fairly well. I have been accused of being Canadian when speaking English which I take as a high compliment! (I grew on the US side of the border though....)

When I go back to the States I sometimes need a day or two to adjust...

Carrera wrote on 2021-08-20, 08:46:

People find it funny that i can imitate a few dialects in German and French fairly well. I have been accused of being Canadian when speaking English which I take as a high compliment! (I grew on the US side of the border though....)

When I go back to the States I sometimes need a day or two to adjust...

Good to hear! I heard that Germans with slightly better English skills (not so thick German accent)
are sometimes being mistaken for people from Australia..
Accent-wise only, of course (I don't mean to insult any Aussies here.)
I wonder if that's true. 😅

I'm a Brit (well born in US, but raised UK), while not "Queens English", my accent is pretty 'British' with hints of 'west-country' ('pirate' speak). I was in San Antonio once and a waitress said to me... "You English is very nice, you must be Australian"... I'm still confused about that question til this day 🙁. I can only assume in Texas, they deal with more Australians than Brits?

As native speakers, I'm sure we can pick up on little indications here and there when speaking to non-native speakers that they are not native speakers, and for a lot of Germans I find this to be true. However, generally speaking I find Germans the hardest to recognise if they are non-native or not (when speaking English). I think English and German are similar in their sounds and some composition (Anglo-Saxon heritage?) and so as a result it's easier for a German to sound like they speak generic unaccent-ed English if they put just the tinest of effort in (either that, or they all generally speak very good English... which may very well be the case). I feel other languages (e.g. French and Spanish), a lot of effort (or exposure) needs to be put in to sound a native as possible in those languages (as an English speaker). I wonder if this is the same the other way around, Brits speaking German, do they stand out?

In French it's the naisal sounds that probably give most French speaking English away (Certainly those sounds give English speaking French away to me), and in Spanish it's the r's and the s's that give it away to me (Although even I can tell if someone is from Bar-TH-elona or not 😉).

I had a brief stint learning Japanese a few years ago, and then when trying it out a few years later, my Japanese friend asked me if I had a teacher from Tokyo... which I did 😀
Something in the way I said "nan desu dezzzzz ka" apparently was a dead give away. 😀

As a brit in North America, I am frequently mistaken for Australian, I think it's just any accent that's not "BBC English"(oldskool) is thought to be Australian. So to help out Australia's international image I always reply "Pass the vegemite cobber and watch out for the drop bears, nah, yeah?" 😉

Practicing my rusty German on an unsuspecting guy from Dusseldorf, he said I sounded Austrian.

I find that Russians always have very American sounding English, in fact it seems to be a thing that the further back along the Baltic you go the more American their English sounds, so you've got Norway, Denmark and Germany sounding quite English, then Sweden, Poland, Lithuania sounding kinda mid Atlantic, and Finland, Latvia, Estonia sounding quite American, and over to Russia sounding very middle American, do all their language tutors come from Iowa? I dunno.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-20, 15:25:

As a brit in North America, I am frequently mistaken for Australian, I think it's just any accent that's not "BBC English"(oldskool) is thought to be Australian. So to help out Australia's international image I always reply "Pass the vegemite cobber and watch out for the drop bears, nah, yeah?" 😉

Yeah, I forgave the sheila, and promptly ordered a Victoria Bitter. I dunno where these people get their idea's from.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-20, 15:25:

Practicing my rusty German on an unsuspecting guy from Dusseldorf, he said I sounded Austrian.

I guess as long as they don't guess your actual nationality. Anything else should be taken as a compliment, and at least you can say you don't speak German like someone from the UK. 😀

Could have been a veiled insult though, I've heard elsewhere Germans saying Austrians mangle the language, talking like they've got a hot potato in their mouth or something.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-20, 16:49:

[..] I've heard elsewhere Germans saying Austrians mangle the language, talking like they've got a hot potato in their mouth or something.

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger? 😁

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_OaPkR-rVs

(Please excuse my ignorance; I've got little experienc with Austrians, I'm afraid. ^^; )

Well I can't describe it in official linguistic lingo, but based on how the vowels sounds differ it seems like German Germans talk with a tighter throat and more constrained jaw movement, while Austrian is looser jawed or something.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-20, 17:19:

Well I can't describe it in official linguistic lingo, but based on how the vowels sounds differ it seems like German Germans talk with a tighter throat and more constrained jaw movement, while Austrian is looser jawed or something.

Are they what.. Once it's open it is very difficult to get them to shut up....😉

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-20, 15:25:

I find that Russians always have very American sounding English, in fact it seems to be a thing that the further back along the Baltic you go the more American their English sounds, so you've got Norway, Denmark and Germany sounding quite English, then Sweden, Poland, Lithuania sounding kinda mid Atlantic, and Finland, Latvia, Estonia sounding quite American, and over to Russia sounding very middle American, do all their language tutors come from Iowa? I dunno.

Strangely enough, with some exceptions, most Dutch people tend to speak English with an American accent (or shall we say, an attempt at it). This is indeed a very distinct contrast with our German neighbors to the east. I attribute this difference to the fact that on Dutch TV, popular American TV shows and movies have always been enjoyed in their original language with the actors' original voices and subtitles, whereas in Germany the people are used to the voices being dubbed by German voice actors.

Over only a few sentences, I have trouble telling the difference between a Dutch person speaking English and a South African. I have to hear a bit more before my ear gets it dialled in.

Well, that makes sense, given how Afrikaans is an offshoot of Dutch. Native Dutch speakers can understand Afrikaans and vice versa, provided that one is speaking clearly and not too quickly.

To the Dutch, Afrikaans sounds like some kind of weird slang. Especially the use of double negatives. It sounds to us like someone using "ain't no" when speaking English.

I'm not fluent in German, but I learned the language long time ago and I still remember preferring it more than English, because German has very orderly grammatical structure that is almost like a programming language.

brostenen wrote on 2020-11-22, 10:52:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-11-22, 10:19:

Cu.t ... c.nt very offensive word in US. But rest on britain and old colonies, it just means that you are an a..hole.

If you really want to piss off people in England and America at the same time, you will have to say:

You f***ing, s**t-c**nt. 😁 😉

Or one of my favourite words to say in British English 😀 is the word "wanker" !

brostenen wrote on 2020-11-23, 10:35:

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-11-23, 10:02:

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-11-22, 20:31:

We're quite lucky that it's English that is the modern lingua franca. It's rather simple as far as languages go (its slightly tricky phonetics notwithstanding). If it was a language with non-rudimentary conjugation, declension etc., our life would be much more difficult.

The truth is that English is very complicated, you are only used to it.

Just be happy that it is not Danish. 😁

To Quote Harry Harrison from his book The Stainless Steelrat Gets Drafted , when James Bolivar diGriz has a language match with the AI/Robot, where the the AI/Robot says "Hvorfor ikke dansk ? Dansk er et smukt og melodisk sprog". (translation is "Why not Danish ? Danish is a beautiful and melodic language") 😀 I even met HH back in 2007, where he signed two of my Stainless Steelrat books. And asked him about that, and he said he actually thought Danish was a beautiful and melodic language 😀

Errius wrote on 2021-08-19, 09:50:

I recently wanted to watch a Japanese video on Youtube which only had hard-coded Japanese subs. I did it by pasting screenshots into this website: https://translate.yandex.com/ocr

The translation was mostly OK, but there was still some translations that made no sense, at least to me.

There is something similair in retroarch called AI Service, I have just overlooked the surface of the option but it seem to do just that, mixing technology of OCR, Translation and text-to-speech (or maybe does it CC over the text? I've yet to try it). We can assume the next step is an analysis of the scene and we are allowed to imagine a robot companion commenting the game.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-08-19, 08:51:

I think there are similar issues between north/east Germans and south/west Germans? I seem to remember my school German teacher

There is something similar going on about French that's for sure. Some TV stuff are even doubled from French to French with a different accent to gain higher popularity in different area. When they translate from English to French they use what they call international French which is more monotone and flat. I guess they do that so it is easier to identify to a movie hero for instance. Now translation are very well done, gone is the time where you need to listen to a movie in original audio to have great surround mixing and correct dialogue ambiance. I kept the habit to listen to movie in original audio as I think there is still some details that do not pass and I became better at understanding spoken English, British accent pose a real challenge for me to understand in real time as I have difficulty to understand what words are being said.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-20, 15:25:

Dusseldorf

Please don't write it like that. Use ü or ue.
'Dussel' is a light insult against one's inellect.
'Dusseldorf' = 'dorkville'. 😉

We can't find umlauts over here, in English it's Dusseldorf, next you'll be expecting me to call Munich, München, like it's some kind of snack luncheon. We give way on this and we'll have to indulge the French with all those accents, graves, circumflexes and << strange seabirds >>.

I mean Doornkat did mention, you could use "u and e" instead of just u. The famous musician Chris Hülsbeck is also known as Chris Huelsbeck. After all, it is not rocket science. It is the pronunciation, that is the hard part. Not the word.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-04, 17:09:

We can't find umlauts over here, in English it's Dusseldorf, next you'll be expecting me to call Munich, München, like it's some kind of snack luncheon. We give way on this and we'll have to indulge the French with all those accents, graves, circumflexes and << strange seabirds >>.

Vive la résistance !