Friday, May 21

English language accents

This survey ask you to rate how well you like (enjoying hearing and/or consider euphonious or charming, for example) the various accents of native English speakers around the world.

A few notes before we start. I left out all accents, however nice or awful they may be, of people who speak English as a second language. Thus, we all know how Germans, French, Italians, Spaniards, East Indians, and Russians sound when speaking English. But they are not included, even though they may totally fluent, because they have another primary language which just confuses the situation for the purposes of this quiz.

If you are unfamiliar with an accent listed, please select "No judgment" so that you will not skew the results of the survey. Also, this is a survey about the accents themselves, not the people who speak them, their culture, slang, or anything else. You may love a culture but hate their accent. Just judge the accent in isolation, please.

The survey will pop up when you click the link below. Thank you for participating!



You may not get immediate feedback after completing the survey. I'm working on this. If nothing else, after some time has passed, I will report the results manually. Many of the reports from "PollDaddy" aren't available unless you pay, but I can see all your responses at least. If necessary, as I said, I will tally the final results myself and publish them.

43 comments:

Hans said...

I sort of guessed on some (too lazy to YouTube people talking), but I believe it's close enough. Some US areas left out, but you had he major ones. I do like quizzes where I'm not wrong. lol

Metamatician said...

Hehe. Thanks for taking it!

Which US areas do you think should have been included?

Hans said...

Upper midwest with a Swedish twist, Down east Maine - 2 very distinctive accents.

Metamatician said...

You mean like a Fargo accent for the first one, like rural Minnesota?

And Maine... I think I know what you mean - like Stephen King's accent - but not quite sure.

Those are pretty small geographic areas and I could have found half a dozen other English accents too (Birmingham, York, etc). I guess I had to draw the line somewhere!

One fairly major one I did leave out was Chicago. Oh well, it's already made :-)

Thanks for pointing those out though, it's amazing how many accents there really are.

Unknown said...

You included South Africa, Kenya and the West Indies. Guess you should have included India as well!

Anyway... I'm so fascinated by accents, but I'm not sure I could tell the difference between the Edinburgh and the Glasgow accent, for example. Scottish sounds horrible, but I like it, I think it's fun.

What I know for sure is that: I dislike the Boston accent and love the British one, but the Queen's RP is too posh for me.
American southern accent? Very bad, but again... I like it because I find it interesting - and challenging (at least for my comprehension).

I like the average New York accent. And I have a friend from Seattle - I like her accent too (but she was born in Colorado...)!

Mmh... It's very difficult to tell. There are so many, as you said. And, moreover, accents are so much related to class and culture... it's hard to think of the accent by itself...

Unknown said...

P.S. And by culture I mean education...

Metamatician said...

Thanks Giusi and good points - class does have a lot to do with it, especially in England, but less and less so over the years.

It's quite a complex subject really. I'm sure just within Italy there are a host of regional accents and even dialects? Not to mention, say, Swiss Italian...

As far as India... Almost everyone there speaks another primary language - Hindi, Punjab, Sikh, and so on. Yes, many also speak English because of the long British occupation, but I would never say it was their country's primary language.

South Africa is on the fence, because I think they consider English, Afrikaans, and even Dutch all as primary languages. But certainly nearly everyone there - and especially the parliament and "officials" of the country - speak English, even if it's laced with many borrowed words.

And it was my fault in not explaining that by Kenya and other former British African colonies, I meant the people of British descent who still live there. Kinda like the majority population of Australia, not the natives (Aboriginies) or minority Chinese populations. But with Kenya and the former Rhodesia and so forth, yes... you're probably right, and I should have left them off since a) they sound a lot like South Africans anyway, or else like Brits, and b) The MAJORITY population in those countries are black Africans who generally speak a primary language besides English.

With the West Indies and Jamaica though I have to disagree. These countries DO speak English (with minorities speaking French and Spanish), it's just a patois or cajun in most cases in which both the rythmic speech patterns as well as many nouns have been influenced by other languages, and the grammar altered as well. But it's STILL English, at least their own brand of English, and it's no other language. I can understand Jamaican people very well because I've been listening to reggae for years; other people I know can barely understand a word. But that again is because of the slang, the alterations (from our standpoint) to grammatical structure, and the heavy, almost musical accent. The more rural Jamaicans, for example Rastafarian communities, speak a much more radically altered form of English than do the "average" city-dwelling populations. But nevertheless it's a form of English, so that's why I included it.

Plus it sounds cool. :)

Metamatician said...

P.S. If you're wondering, I probably sound a lot like your friend from Seattle/Colorado. The whole Western US speaks a pretty "bland" form of English in which not many sound are inflected or drawled. Except for "duuude!" of course :-)

I'm interested to hear more about accents/dialects in Italy, when you have the time.

Unknown said...

Well, I was thinking of India as part of that huge post-colonial English-speaking world that has been originating so much literature... but I see your point!

Unknown said...

I will tell you more about accents in Italy... I promise! :)

Metamatician said...

Yay! Maybe Sweden too... :)

Sara said...

Ok, here's the scoop from your English friend :-)

East End and Cockney accents are pretty much the same thing. The definition of a cockney is someone born within a square mile of Bow bells which is in the East End of London. Technically my eldest daughter is a Cockney, as she was born in Forest gate E7, athough we moved from there when she was 3 years old and she certainly doesn't have a Cockney accent - thank God!

Also it was interesting that you just put Ireland as one category. There is a big difference between the lovely soft lilt of a Southern Irish accent and the harder stronger accent of Belfast, in the North.

Dunc has a South London, Kentish accent, which is also pretty awful as he drops all his 'h's' and does the glottal stop thing. Fairly similar to the East End.

And did you know that the Boston accent evolved from the Norfolk accent in England? Probably because many of the original settlers set sail from Kings Lynn in Norfolk.

Fascinating stuff isn't it?

Metamatician said...

Hi Mags! You're right, it is fascinating.

I knew you or Raelha was going to obliterate my choices for Britain.

Thanks for the instruction about Cockneys/East Enders... I knew they were very similar, but not the same.

I should have including York or Kent instead, but too late now.

And yes, I actually had Ireland and Northern Ireland as choices before I removed the latter, thinking it might be too hard for people to know the difference. Should have left it as I had it.

Did NOT know that about Boston. So Norfolk is to blame! Wait'll I get my hands on them...

England confuses me a bit in that you have obvious regional accents - Liverpool, Manchester, Kent, many roundabout London, and so forth, but atop that you have education level, so that some people from the North, say, are very difficult to understand whilst some enunciate quite well. The same goes for, I dunno, Oxford and Cambridge and the midlands (the areas, not the universities) - you have posh 'educated' or 'upper class' accents with rolled R's and the whole bit, and then you have very relaxed, less precise but also less irritating accents. This all within the same physical location.

I knew I was opening a can of worms with this post, but it's ok because I'm learning a lot too.

So if YOU were making the survey Mags, which UK accents would you include, up to about a half dozen? Go for maximum distinctiveness.

This way, I'll know for next time! And lessen my ignorance a bit, which is something I like to do every day.

Oh and thanks for participating. :)

Mandula said...

Sorry I dont recognize english native accents easily - I have to hear them a lot, while somebody name them (hear! There is a scottsman talking) to know which is which. I can recignize a few of them, but for Im a foreigner, I may mix them up sometimes. I can spot the difference between american and british accent, 99% surely, and spot approx. 80% surely the australian accent. Jamaican 100%!!! :D Yamaaan! Among the british, I may recognize londoner, cockney (uhh), nothern, scottish, and maybe irish accent, but I had to rewatch the IT Crowd series to be more confident about it. :)))

It is easier for me to "tie" the accents to persons I heard speaking in their own language (subtitled movies and series ftw!).

Examples:
Beautiful, clear speech from a great british actor (and a super-duper wizard), Alan Rickman.
Lovely, but sometimes hardly understandable for me (especially when he talks as fast as hell): one of the hottest scottsmen ever (besides Sir Connery of course), Masterchef Gordon Ramsay.
Funny irish: Roy (Chris O'Dowd) in IT Crowd. The other guy, Roy (Richard Ayoade) has a really funny accent too but i cannot tell, what kind.
Nothern english: the 9th Doctor in Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston). ("He is an alien?" "Yes." "But he has a nothern accent!" "Well, every planet has a nothern side, I suppose..."):D
I-dunno-what-kind but easily recognizabe, typical british accent: Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) from Dollhouse.
Afro-american, educated: agent Broyles in Fringe (Lance Reddick) (did he ever see his family ame written? :D) and Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix) from Dollhouse.
Afro-american, gangster style, hardly understandable: all the gangstas in the movies, plus the rappers. :D
Australian: Chase (Jesse Spencer) in House MD, Claire (Emilie de Ravin) in Lost.
Nice, "simple", easily understandable american: Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Olivia (Anna Torv) in Fringe, Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) in Castle, Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein)in House MD, but I could keep going, this line is very very long, thank gods. :)

I mostly enjoy listening to different accents in english language, including the foreigners accents too. Few exceptions. :D

Unknown said...

OK, as a British northerner I'm going to be picky. You can't just put, British, northern, as an accent. There's Mancunian, Liverpudlian, Yorkhshire, Lancastrian and Geordie for a start :p

I'm not very good on US accents as you know. And Giusi, the Glaswegian Scottish accent is the sexy one, and the Edinburgh accent the posh one.

I've lost most of my accent, partly due to enforced elocution lessons when younger, my mum insisting I spoke 'properly' and then a long university education away from home. However, when I'm back home it does come back a bit.

My students have all picked up my northern vowels, even when thye have to repeat a recorded sentence they'll still pronounce 'baaath' (Queen's English) as 'bath' (no nonsense English), for example. At least I know they're paying attention to me when I speak.

Unknown said...

Yes, this subject is super wide, to say the least!

As far as my country is concerned, Italian is the main language, of course, but several other languages are spoken as well, even if to different degrees (and, obviously, I'm not taking into consideration those languages spoken by the large communities of immigrants). Other languages include: Sardinian, Sicilian, Ladin, Friulan, Venetian, Neapolitan, Umbrian, Piedmontese, Bolognese, Ligurian, and Lombard... but also French and German (the latter two are co-official languages in Valle d'Aosta and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol respectively, two Italian regions enjoying a particular form of autonomy). German excluded, they are all Romance languages, even though not everybody agrees on the term "language".

As a matter of fact, the line between "language" and "dialect" is very blurred - and this is true everywhere, not just in Italy. Some people think that, Italian excluded, they are all dialects. The truth is that some of them do have a codified (written) form and are recognised and/or promoted as minority or regional languages by the Italian state or regions: Sardinian, for instance, is co-official in the whole region (Sardinia); Ladin (a language spoken on the beautiful Dolomites) is recognised but unofficial. But none of these languages is taught at school.

I know, it's a mess. And dialects make the situation even more complex and complicated. We could divide Italian dialects into macrofamilies - even though I bet this term is not appropriate - reflecting the various geographic and linguistic regions. But every single little town and village as its own variety of the same dialect or language, so diversity is immense.

My high school was in Mantua, the capital city of province where I was living as a teenager. And it drew many students from a large and densely populated area. I remember that I liked to ask my schoolmates about their dialects. I wanted to know the translation of very common words, relating to traditional food, animals or landscape features that were pretty much the same for the whole province/region. Well, I couldn't believe how different the terms were! I remember the word "rabbit", ("coniglio", in Italian) and the three versions of three adjoining villages: "dunnèl", "curniöl", "cunich". I am not sure about the spelling, though, as no codified form exist for these dialects, but I found all this very interesting.

Unknown said...

Sorry, I am expaning too much on this, but I cannot resist... I cannot speak any dialect, if you want to know, or other regional language spoken in Italy. Dialects are considered to be a prerogative of people with little education, even though I have well-read friends - some of them even got a PhD - who do speak dialect with their close friends or parents.
Anyway, I can understand many Northern Italian dialects (broadly from Venice or Rimini to Genoa or Turin), thanks to a large amount of similarities that make them mutually intelligible, but I don't get the others.

Italian is a fairly new language. At the unification of Italy in 1861, there was no standard Italian. The language of Alessandro Manzoni - author of the first modern novel in Italian literature, who "rinsed his Milanese language in the waters of the river Arno", Dante's river - was chosen as common idiom, but a very small portion of the population could speak it. Soldiers in the front line during WW1 were speaking different languages, believe it or not. TV came in during the Fifties/Sixties and made Italian the language it is now! And this is why dialects play such an important role...

Accents and lilts are in connection with dialects of course, and each region (and province) has a different one. I can recognize some of them very precisely. Generally, I can understand at least which region they belong to, if not even the province. However, standard Italian spoken with an accent is always understandable.

OK, that's it. I'm awfully sorry, this is the longest comment I have ever written... :-(

Unknown said...

P.S. And thanks, Raelha, for the clarification. Then I'd say I love the Glaswegian Scottish accent ;-)
And Raelha is right. When you study away from home, you lose most of your accent. It happened to me too. And when you meet new people, you're always asked: "But where do you come from?" Generally, people think I am from the North of Italy, but they can't tell exactly from where, due to the Mantua-Milan-Verona-Bologna mix I created! ;-)

@ Mandula: I loved Sawyer's accent in Lost; but also the English singer's accent. Don't remember his name, just saw the first series years ago... :-/ Ah, and I loved Sayid, but not for his accent! ;-)))

Mandula said...

The singer was Charlie. You should watch the rest, it worths the time! Not to mention Sayid (who i liked a lot too). ;)

Metamatician said...

@Raelha, Sorry but I can and have put England, Northern in one category. I think you're being a bit provincial here. Yes, we know there are several distinct kinds. Even I can tell rather easily if someone is from Liverpool or Manchester or York. But there are only so many slots before the survey becomes ridiculously tedious and so I had to lump regions together. I don't think it's a stretch to say all the Northern accents so more like one another than they do to most of the Southern accents. And all of the North of England has about as many people as California does, which is just one state in 50, albeit the most populous one.

So if I ennumerated all those accents you suggested (and I think you were being difficult more than serious), I could have taken your stance and applied it to the USA. Let's see, in New England there is Boston (Massachusetts) speech which is very distinct, but there is also as my mom pointed out a distinct Maine accent, as well an entirely different one for the surrounding small states. In New York alone, I chose a Bronx accent, but you could start a barroom brawl telling people from Manhattan, Queens, Harlem, The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Long Island they sounded like one another - they don't at all. And I listed "USA, Southern" which is a close analogy to "England, Northern" - yet people from Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Missouri, and Georgia ALL sound quite different, as different as the cities you mentioned. There are several Texan accents, Minnesota and Wisconsin have an accent that sounds like a foreign language almost; Chicagoans could feel left out on this list as their speech is very distinctive, and likewise "USA, West" is not uniform as all, and it is a huge region with many, many people. Someone from New Mexico doesn't sound like someone from California, and just watch Brokeback Mountain to hear from people from Wyoming sound like! In addition, you have Jews in New York and LA, Blacks from the South, Blacks from New York, Blacks from out West, and you have Native Americans - all 500 Nations. These people are ALL native, primary English speakers but I didn't have a hundred spots for the USA alone.

If anything I should left off East-End of London as Mags pointed out and added an accent or two from the population-dense SE of England, below London on the map, and maybe an accent for the peninsula extending to the SW where she is, and Birmingham right in the middle.

The fact is it's an impossible chore to separate what is a smooth continuum into discrete categories without someone crying foul, and with a limited number of choices and English being spread literally around the globe, you have to take a broader perspective. In that perspective, "England, North" to me is definitely ONE category. Maybe split out Yorkshire. But although cities like Manchester and Sheffield and Liverpool don't sound identical by any means, they share a lilt, "scouse" is it?, which is similar and obviously spring from the same general region, one which is much different from London, say, which itself is very diverse.

Lastly, I only gave the whole country of Ireland one slot, Australia two, South Africa one, and so on, and I'm sure there is lots more diversity there which any readers who happened to be from any of those countries would protest; and I lumped Jamaican together with the Virgin Island, the Bahamas, Barbados, St Lucia, and all the rest - another example of painting with a very broad brush.

Again, if I were to give Northern England 4 or 5 accents, I'd need 200 spots probably to do justice to all the varieties of English (language) accents around the world at that same level of detail.

Ok enough about that. =P back.

Metamatician said...

@Mandula - I knew this would be difficult for you but it was a good idea to include characters from TV shows and movies as examples! Unfortunately I don't watch any of the TV shows you mentioned so I can't verify or comment on much of what you said, but I think it's cool that you watch shows with subtitles (at least part of the time) rather than dubbed so that you can hear the actor's real voice. And by doing that you recognize at least some very broad differences in the way English is spoken by Scots, English, Irish, Americans, and Aussies, for example. That's great! I imagine Hungary has lots of variety too, given the role it has played in history being part of the Habsburg Empire, occupied by Turks and Germans at various times, and settled by Central Asian people on horseback! You have a language which has elements of several VERY different linguistic strands. It remind me a bit of the situation in New Guinea, where there are literally hundreds of languages, a significant fraction of all the languages still spoken on earth, one one island, all mutually unintelligible and connected in the very distant past, probably before Europe was even settled by our species. And the Australian Aborigines get lumped into one minority group, but they've been there 40,000 years by some estimates (compare that to the ages of modern Italy and Germany, and to the USA), and there surely must be huge variations between cultural groups there - although I admit I know really nothing about it. I'm making a note to look up Native Australian peoples and their language(s)...

Thanks for the contribution!

Metamatician said...

@Giusi, first of all don't ever apologize for a long post on my blog. I'm the worst there ever was about long posts and long comments, and besides, I love it when people take the time to write nice, meaty comments, it gives me more to read and more to learn! So put that thought to bed.

Secondly, thanks for the great summary of languages, dialects, and accents in Italy! I had some idea about how fractured Italy has always been linguistically, culturally, and everything else; it's somewhat like Greece in that way. The outsider looking in may think they "know Italy" or can characterize or stereotype Italians, but it's impossible. Italy and Greece are both united assemblies of vast numbers of ancient tribes, basically, and it's been this way since Classical times. When the Romans conquered the Etruscans or the Greeks conquered the Mycenaeans (Or Mycenae conquered the Minoans of Crete), it wasn't as if the victors suddenly inherited a united Italy or Greece. There were city-states all over the place each with their own language, governance, currency, cuisine, and even gods! Although both countries are more united now, respectively, at least religiously and in terms of currency, the language from what you describe still varies widely all over the place, and I know the cuisine does. Even the peoples' look change as you go from the boot kicking Sicily toward Tunisia, up through Rome and into the mountainous north. It's really a hodgepodge, the way Yugoslavia was before it broke into about 6 different countries.

Anyway, thanks for writing, it was fascinating, and I could sit and listen to you talk about languages all day. Please don't shorten your comments! Space is free on this blog :)

Well, I suppose the comments, if there are more to come, should get back to the topic of English in its many (primary) forms. We'll take up the topic of non-English languages at some future date.

Thanks everyone. It's been a good discussion so far!

Metamatician said...

Oh, and yay! for Mandula bringing up Alan Rickman.

An Gabhar Ban said...

23 comments, boy am I a latecomer. I'm just going to chime in and say I can't tell any of them apart! That's a little fabrication as I'm able to tell a native of Scotland from, say, someone here in the South (USA) but to ask me to pick between regions of a single country? I can't tell most of my fellow countrymen apart (unless they're from the New Jersey area) so I'm fairly certain I'm hopeless. :D

Metamatician said...

That's pretty odd, Karen. I've heard of people who don't process accents well - I wonder if there is a reason why you cannot distinguish between more than a handful or if it's just a matter of not caring or paying attention. I don't mean that negatively, I truly am just curious.

I'm going to find some kind of online test to send to you to test your speech pattern recognition. Could be interesting!

Mandula said...

Ohh, read back second time, i see Raelha mentioned Geordie (and definetly not Geordi LaForge). I got a video a few weeks ago, a funny stuff, which shows how geordie is a completely diffrenet language than "normal" english.

Im trying to find it...

hell yeah, here you are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHHbfY6MVc

Very short, but really funny. :)Any of you understood what the guy said? :D

Metamatician said...

Haha, good find, Mandula!

That's a great example, even if the guy spoke fast and exaggerated his accent quite a bit.

I understood just about all of what he said, but you definitely have to pay attention!

And lol on Geordi LaForge too.

---

I think maybe for the UK I should have picked RP (Queen's English), West County Broad (Devon, for example), Cockney, Manchester/Merseyside (quite different but both obviously from the same general area), Bristol, Birmingham, and Yorkshire.

That's 7, which is a lot, but then again, England's accent's ARE more diverse "per capita" since it's the birthplace of the language.

Ah well, I've learnt a lot and next time I do something about languages I'll have more knowledge to work with. In talking to people from both sides of the Atlantic, it seems to me that most people don't even have a good sense of their own country's accents (they know some, especially the odd ones, but are not experts by any means)!

So I just did the best I could, but I did find this site which is pretty cool:

IDEA

There you can hear people from many countries and places within countries reading the same text, in order to compare pronunciation, and in some cases just hear them talking about themselves or answering questions.

I wish I'd have seen it before!

And Mandi, there are even some Hungarians on there! You should send us an audio file of you speaking English! Don't worry, I wouldn't POST it or anything... ;-)

Unknown said...

The website you linked is addictive, pay atention!!! I cannot stop now!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhh!!! Super interesting!
I+ve listened to all the Italian samples, the Swedish, the Danish... ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! HELP!

Unknown said...

aTtention, of course...

Metamatician said...

Muahahahaha.

*And Giusi never worked again...*

By the way I'm assuming you have an Italian accent in English? It's probably not strong though, since you know the language so well.

Hmm... now I'm interested in what all my friends from other countries sound like! What have I done?!?

Unknown said...

My accent in English is horrible... but it used to be fun - or funny, at least! A mixture of my natural Italian accent, of course, with some Canadian influences - as I spent a few months in Ottawa on an exchange placement when I was a high school student - a vaguely American accent I absorbed from TV series and a British accent (well, sort of) I learnt at school and during my short study stays in the UK.
But since I moved to Sweden, it's got worse and worse... and I'm picking up mistakes and weird accents from all nationalities... We have friends and acquaintances from all over the world here, that's why. But at least we got to try excellent African or Singaporean food, for example! :-) By the way, you forgot Singapore. All our Asian friends from that country dhave English as their first language! The South Europeans have very heavy accents, of course (and we know many of them). But the Danes and the Germans are not that goo either... ;-) (OMG, do you need all these articles "THE" before those names? Never mind...)

Unknown said...

Many interesting Italian accents in English here: http://www.casaitaliananyu.org/content/archive-0

And, by the way, the very bright Director of Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò (New York University) in NYC was born in my village (!), near Mantova. Not sure he remembers me, but I do remember him! Maybe I sound a bit like him... http://www.casaitaliananyu.org/content/archive-0

Mmh, maybe not. Or maybe just sometimes... :-)

Metamatician said...

Ahhh...now you're getting me back by getting me addicted to these links!

Thanks, I am listening to the first and I check out several of the videos from the second. Isabella Rossellini is such a cutie, whatever age she is. She's like Monica Bellucci in that way. I think they will be hot until they die of old age :)

Now I want to hear you talk more than ever! I know what you mean about being in an international setting: Even though I haven't nearly as intensively as you, I have been in places and situations where almost no one spoke English as their primary language, so everyone had to speak it as a second language in order to communicate. And it's fascinating how different people pick up on it; some cultures (countries) definitely do better than others. Russians, for example, seem to have no idea what definite or indefinite article even are! And every V is a W - just the opposite of Germans.

Languages are so fascinating. Thanks for the tip about Singapore, I wasn't sure if it was considered their first language or not. I should have done more research (as usual...)

Unknown said...

Bellucci is beautiful, I agree with you. But she too much aware of that! ;-)
Isabella Rossellini is high above her!

Bellucci's accent in English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7j-MJjDs8U&feature=related

OK, now I need to work! CIAOOO!

Metamatician said...

I'll take one of each, please!

Mandula said...

Me too (and a second turn from Belucci please). ;)

Okay, let's make a deal. I will send you something that you can listen to on my voice, if the others too. I would like to hear your accent guys! Giusi's italian-english must be lovely, I have no experience with such accent, only with spanish/latino english. Is it similar, or totally different? :D

So, if the others say yes too, you could send us a text to read it loud and record it, and put them in your blog, or send them in e-mail to all of us. I will join it I promise, though I hate hearing my own voice through electronical stuff. :) But alone - noooo waaay! :D

Mandula said...

Hehh, I listened to that 3 hungarian recordings.

The first is okay, like a student girl. If I didn't know, I could not tell what her native language was, only that is not english. Could be hungarian, or some other, not very easily recognizable (so to say "neutral" accent) country.

The second - I wouldn't tell she is not american! Okay, I cannot spot the grammar mistakes always if I don't see the written text (and native speakers do mistakes too, sometimes), so I say it only referring to her accent.

And the third, lol, sweet old lady, living in Australia for ages, 40 or 50 years now - _she_ had that accent most hungarian fresh students have, very... schoolish, if you know what I mean, AND, with a touch of australian accent. Dear. :)

Thanks for the Idea. :D

Unknown said...

I hate my voice on recordings too... but you've got a deal!!! :-)

Unknown said...

... but the blogger has to make his own recording!!!

Mandula said...

But of course. ;)

Metamatician said...

Hell no. I'm not THAT curious about you guys.

:-)

Metamatician said...

Oh, and thanks for the feedback on the Hungarian accents, Mandus, it's interesting to hear from a Hungarian herself! I've heard Evet speak (but not in English). She writes in English fairly well, but not as well as you. How is her spoken English compared to yours, do you think? And what about St. George?

Mandula said...

I never heard Eve speak in english - I will ask her one day to say something, I promise. :)

St. George is good, technicly fluent english, though his active vocabulary is way smaller than his passive - understands everything, but have to use dictionary a lot when translating (I am similar to him in this way, but understanding less). When he speaks - well, sooooo very american! :) He spent one of his high-school years out there... mmm... 3 monthts in NY, 6 in Seattle if I remember well. I think he uses a lot of slang, and sometimes likes to speak in hard british accent (dont know which), or sailor-style, or soldier-way, you know, playing with the friends. When he normally speaks in eng... american (f.e. to a tourist), I can hardly understand his pronounciation. :D Im curious what you would say to it. :D

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