How to Fake English
When foreigners fake or mock speaking English what does it sound like?
e.g. fake Chinese: nee how ba tsing ding pow kuar
fake Japanese: Daimatsu koko sushi hakimasu ka
fake German: Das ist mine paperklip. Ik vil poken de lumpin mit die shticken.
What are the most noticible characteristics of how English sounds?
>>The diphthongs.<<
Depends. If you are talking about [eI] and [oU], not all English dialects have them that much. For instance, my dialect (that of Milwaukee, WI) only has them word-finally or prevocalically, and even then that is only in formal or very stressed speech, and they are only weak diphthongs even then except in some particularly emphatic speech. Otherwise it just has plain monophthongal [e] and [o] (some other phonological weirdness in some idilects with [oU] aside). In particular, it lacks [oU] before consonants except in very stressed cases such as "owwkayyy" (["oUk_he:I] or sometimes ["8}k_he:I]), and [eI] *never* occurs before a consonant in it.
I know that many other dialects in the Upper Midwest also similarly strongly favor monophthongs over diphthongs in this case, as do most dialects in California as well. There likely are plenty of other NAE dialects which downplay the classical [eI] and [oU], but I cannot think of specific examples besides the two previously mentioned at the moment.
>>Depends. If you are talking about [eI] and [oU], not all English dialects have them that much.<<
Generally they do, specially Americans and the English. Anyway, all the ones I have encountered do except maybe the odd Scot. The "owwkayy" as you wrote is one of the first things one hears since "okay" is a common and universal word. The dipthongs are very evident when English speakers speak a foreign language.
Graphie française : « il voudrait bien un peu de thé ».
Graphie 'anglophonisante' : « èl voooodwèÿ bioooon an pah dah tchèÿ ».
Transcrit phonétiquement (et approximativement) :
[ilvudRebjE~9~p2d@te]
[I:5vUu:d_ZwEI_^bjã:Nnõ:Np_h9:d9:t_hEI_^]
Greg's one is pretty much it.
I had a mate that had been in France for a bit, when he came home, knowing very little French, we had a look on his fag packet and it said "Fume Tou" (I think I spelt it wrong,oops) anyway we asked him what it said (we all knew it meant smoking kills, but we wanted a laugh) he said
"fooooomeiiiy twoooo??!! bollocks to it! I can't be arsed!"
Just so you know, "owwkayy" was not supposed to signify the normal pronunciation of "okay" here, but rather a very emphatic pronunciation, as the normal pronunciation here lacks those diphthongs you speak of.
Diphthongs are most often associated with British pronunciations of English. American English typically has only three diphthongs (which is the minimum, because these three are phonemic), whereas British pronunciations often have half a dozen or more, plus several triphthongs.
Even Americans imitating the British will exaggerate and invent diphthongs in order to make their speech sound "British." Dick van Dyke seemed to think this was all that was necessary (cf. Mary Poppins).
Jim C, Eofforwic,
<fumer tue> [fymety]
vs
[fUu:mEI_^t_hUu:] ou, pire : [fjUu:mEI_^t_hjUu:]
>>Graphie française : « il voudrait bien un peu de thé ».
Graphie 'anglophonisante' : « èl voooodwèÿ bioooon an pah dah tchèÿ »
[I:5vUu:d_ZwEI_^bjã:Nnõ:Np_h9:d9:t_hEI_^]<<
I agree with greg with the way such vowels are rendered as diphthongs by English speakers. This begs the question why Americans and the English insist on transcribing [eI] for "-ay" type endings as in "pay" and some even transcribe a monophthong [e] ! I think it's evident to native speakers of other European languages that these vowels are generally more open and are normally rendered as [EI] as greg has written.
>>I agree with greg with the way such vowels are rendered as diphthongs by English speakers. This begs the question why Americans and the English insist on transcribing [eI] for "-ay" type endings as in "pay" and some even transcribe a monophthong [e] ! I think it's evident to native speakers of other European languages that these vowels are generally more open and are normally rendered as [EI] as greg has written.<<
For starters, as for the monophthong [e], the reason why it is used in many transcriptions is that many individuals, in particular many North American English-speakers, happen to have the monophthongal realization [e] in many if not most positions. Not all dialects consistently have a significant diphthong for /e/ (or /eI/). As I said before, many Upper Midwestern and Californian English dialects tend to strongly favor monophthongal realizations of /e/ and /o/; not so coincidentally, these dialects tend even more strongly towards always having purely monophthongal realizations of /i/ and /u/.
As for [eI] versus [EI], the matter is that the starting point of the [eI] in most English dialects, or the monophthongal realization [e], is laxer than some things in other languages also transcribed as [e], such as the Castilian [e] (which to me sounds almost like [i]), but at the same time is still definitely tenser than the [E] found in most English dialects. There are some English dialects, in particular some English English dialects, where the starting point of this diphthong is actually [E], and in transcribing these dialects one would actually use [EI]; note that Australian English dialects use an even loser starting point, and thus one would transcribe such in them as [{I]. However, these are not the majority of English dialects as a whole.
>>As for [eI] versus [EI], the matter is that the starting point of the [eI] in most English dialects, or the monophthongal realization [e], is laxer than some things in other languages also transcribed as [e], such as the Castilian [e] (which to me sounds almost like [i]), but at the same time is still definitely tenser than the [E] found in most English dialects.<<
That makes sense to suggest the Castilian [e] doesn't coincide with the [e] transcribed for English. Then in turn it depends how the [E] of each language is defined and again I find the English [E] overly lax compared to that of other European languages generally.
One note is that in my previous point it should be "note that Australian English dialects use an even LAXER starting point", the all caps marking the changed word.
Fake English? I believe that depends on the perspective of the foreign language. From the perspective of Spanish, I can say that the features that stand out the most are:
- the aspirated plosives
- the NURSE vowel, being rather indistinct to a Spanish ear (rhotacized or not)
- the TRAP vowel
- the stress-timed rhythm of the language.
How to turn all this into a sentence of "fake English" to be read by native English speakers is a bit of a challenge. Nurrm tadder pap kherr, ay?
The tendency of English speakers to turn simple vowels into diphthongs when they speak a foreign language is something I've also noticed. It's a question of phonotactics I suppose. When faced with the Spanish word "norte", the tendency is to use /eI/ for the final 'e'. I never understood why they had to do this, since English has the vowel phoneme in 'bet' that is much closer to the native Spanish realization. Of course, this phoneme has a restricted distribution in English, so I guess that's the reason. The same happens with the 'o' in 'carro', being a monophthong in Spanish.