Different sounds!

 

Hello everybody! Have you ever thought of how wonderful the sound of a language is? And at the same time how strange a non-native speaker sounds, especially when he or she has a different pronunciation from his/her native language?

In my personal experience even if I do all my best to speak very good the languages I know and I try to hide my native accent, I know that my Italian sound still comes out! It is funny especially when I speak Spanish, to tell you the truth I do get a lot of: “Where are you from?” from people. At this point I think I should tell you guys a little bit of my background so you can understand all the different language influences that I “caught” throughout the years. I lived in Seville for 6 years and one in Palma de Mallorca and I met a lot of Caribbean people, the result is that I have a particular accent that is a mix between Andalusian and Cuban!!! Hehehe curious eh? Many of Spanish-speakers ask me if I come from Canarian Islands, hahaha, so funny!!! In the Canarian Islands there is a high amount of Cubans living there who mixes Castellano words with Cuban ones. I can tell you that I am a sort of a sponge, absorbing what my ear listens to.

The same happens with Portuguese speakers who ask me: “Are you Brasilian?”, just because I learned Brasilian Portuguese and I still have several friends from Brasil who help me a lot in improving my Portuguese, I sound Brasilian, as many say! And many other people who I listened to, speak with a very good and almost native pronunciation, other languages.

But now let’s talk about those who use their proper accent to speak another language. Spanish speakers caught my attention, especially those from the mainland Spain, who speak English with their sounds. It sounds weird because for example English words that begin with s-, are pronounced with the sound es- and this is because all these words begin with the same es- in Spanish, so it is hard for them to cut the e in English:

Study- estudy (Spanish pronunciation)

School- eschool

Spain- Espain

The word Google is pronounced Googel by them (in the majority), or the letter h which is pronounced like the letter j in Spanish with its guttural sound, so the words hip-hop is pronounced ji-jo, because they also cut the words.

This is a difficult scenario to be in, especially for English or Americans who can have a hard time understanding what exactly is being said, and this because of the different sounds that a Spanish speaker uses!!! But it is not their fault, because on one side they have dubbing on Tv programs and films, so it is quite hard to learn a good English and on the other side they are very nationalists since they translate absolutely everything from English to Spanish.

On the opposite side the Italians who pronounce with a very strong Italian accent the English words are Americanized, that is they mix English and Italian today, but they also have dubbing, so it has been quite hard to learn English.

I heard Portuguese speaking English and they do it very well! Even if they have nasal sounds all the time. And Norwegian people, well, they sing according to their Norwegian accent when they speak English and I do it too since I use a mix of Italian, Spanish and Norwegian in my English: I have been told so by my american friends hehehe!

What about the Americans or English speaking Spanish or Italian? Forgive me guys but it sounds funny (in a good way of course)!

First of all for their sound of the letter r and, here I refer to the Americans, the sound of t which is pronounced many times like a d:

Ristretto- ristredou (american pronunciation)

Salita- salida

Vecchietta- vechieda and so on.

Last ones to mention are the Germans (even if I don’t know the German language they paid my attention because they sound funny also in a good way) who speak Italian with a very severe accent and they substitute the syllab ge with ce:

Germania- Cermania (German pronunciation)

Gente- cente and so on.

How funny can we sound? How beautiful is every language with its pros and cons?