It's hard to comprehend what a language you understand perfectly sounds like to people who don't understand it.
Besides a few years of mandatory French during the GCSE years and the occasional titbit of other languages I've picked up and thrown into casual conversation, I know no other tongue besides English.
I'd be able to just about get by in France considering my grasp of their language, but there have been conversations which have gone too fast for me and my brain has stopped understanding what it's being told and instead just switched to linguistic survival mode, trying to pick out words it recognises and remembers.
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I don't know what English sounds like to people who don't understand it as a language, as in my life I've had no experience of not understanding English.
Fortunately, that's where the internet comes in and broadens your horizons, as TikToker @languagesimp is a multilingual bloke who wants you to know what the Anglo lingo sounds like to people who don't understand it.
The effect is a little strange for those of us who do speak English, with one person commenting: “I felt like I should understand what he was saying.”
Another asked: “You are telling me people hear me talking like a Sim?”
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While someone else wrote: “I feel like I understand what he's saying, but I also don't.”
A fourth person said: “This sounds right… but it’s not… ”
Pretty weird, eh?
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As you can hear, it sounds pretty much like Simlish, although the phrase 'you're literally dog water' creeps in at one point.
It seems as though the TikToker achieved this effect by using an accent and intonations which would be present in English but inserting nonsense words.
Basically, it'd sound like English sounds as a language but you wouldn't know the words and thus the meaning of what was being said would be robbed from you.
It's about as close as we're going to get to knowing it.
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But aside from sounding like a Sim, what have people actually said English speakers sound like?
Voiceover website Voices put together a list of sound qualities foreigners have noted about English speakers, and let's just say it's not particularly complimentary.
They think English mainly involves:
- Slurred and garbled sounds
- Harsh 'r' sounds
- Overuse of 's', 'sh' and 'ch' sounds
- Interesting variations in rhythm and inflections
- Lots of 'ing' sounds at the end of words
- Dropping of consonants at the beginning and end of words
- Overemphasis on the beginning of words and underemphasis on the end
- Open and rolling vowel sounds
- Soft consonants
- Flat sounds
Ouch.
Joe Harker