What does English sound like?

I believe I read somewhere that English has more s and z sounds than most European languages, and that sometimes English speakers create the impression that they're hissing.
Yeah, right think of any non-Romance European language: like the non-Northern Germanic ones, and the Slavonic ones. They certainly have more Ss, Zs, and consonants in general!

=>I believe I read somewhere that English has more s and z sounds than most European languages, and that sometimes English speakers create the impression that they're hissing.<=

I doubt that.

The people who speaks in English sound like they dont have front teeth or their teeth have been beat out by a russian hooligan

>Are you really, really sure that English has more Z sounds than some Continental Languages? [Damian in Zcotland]

No, not at all. If you look at my post, you'll see that I said "I believe I read somewhere" that it had more s and z sounds. I've never tried to analyze them myself.

My first impression, though, is that English does seem to have more sibilants than French. The plural of English nouns would usually have an s or z sound, and the present 3rd person singular of verbs. That's a commonly used person. Taking another Romance language, Spanish would have 's' for noun plurals, but have a 3rd person singular verb without an s or z ending (the 2nd person singular and 1st person plural – that do have s -- wouldn't be as common). English possessive with nouns uses apostrophe 's'. Spanish would use 'de'. Maybe that claim holds for most Romance languages.

German would seem to have a good many sibilants, whether more than English I don't know. Noun plurals -- I'd estimate that English has many more with s. Verbs -- once again, English s for 3rd person singular, German t. Maybe German makes up for that with the subject pronouns, though -- English just she, but German sie, Sie, and es (also the -st in the 2nd pers. fam. sing. verb ending). Possessive -- English 's, German 'des' but also 'der' and other non-sibilant forms. 'The' -- English no sibilant, German sometimes has one (e.g., das).

It would take a lot of time to do a really accurate comparison. My first impression is that English is probably more sibilant than the Romance languages. As for German and the other Germanic languages, I won't venture a guess. Also that goes for the Slavic languages.

<< I believe I read somewhere that English has more s and z sounds than most European languages, and that sometimes English speakers create the impression that they're hissing. >>

In this sentence, I count 6 s sounds, 5 z sounds, 3 sh sounds, and 1 zh sound. So that makes a total of 15 silabants, in one sentence. And there are some who say English doesn't sound like a snake hissing...

I thought the letter "s" was the most used constanant and second most used letter in the English langauge, the first being "e".

Slavic languages are very fricative ---> lot of "zh" and "sh", rolled r's and constonant clusters.

Anyway, as to the sound of English, my father said that when he was a child and couldn't speak English, he said English sounded very rounded...the way he described it was "boop blop booh blooh blah blah", if that makes any sense.

"boop blop booh blooh blah blah", if that makes any sense? No not at all.

The "boop blop..." that I wrote above was my me trying to put down an imitation of my dad imitating how English sounds to his ears before he learnt to speak English

<<I'm a native English speaker so I can't judge it myself. Uriel...humm, interesting comment! ;) >>

Uh, but it's a NICE kind of spitting.... ;)
No offense, Candy! But you gotta understand, when you're used to hearing half the T's and twice the R's and a kind of slurred drawl, you all come across like machine gun fire....

This is my opinion, Any resemblance with reality is pure coincidence.

British : Perfectionist, sometimes cockya nd arrogant.

Australian : Awkward, not pleasant.

Jamaican : Funny and vivid.

African : African is the best word i can use to describe it .( Primitive ???)

Standad American : Musical, emotional, practical sometimes immature.

Southern American : Lazy, country .

Canadian : Has Aerican and Bitish features.

None taken, Uriel! ;)

I've always assumed that British people speak with a much more 'up and down' kind of rhythm, whereas American speech is more 'monotonous'. Is this a fair generalisation?

Hard to say. I've heard that said before, but like you, I have trouble hearing my own accent. Maybe a third party, like one of our Australians or Scots, could answer that better?

(For the record, I've never noticed any up-and-down rhythm to British English, but then that wouldn't be one of the first features I noticed anyway. And with my ear attuned to American speech patterns, I don't find them monotonous -- but someone else might.)

Well I'd say an English newreader is more melodious than an American newsreader but I couldn't tell you re natural speech, probably.

It's difficult for me to say too. A lot of the Germans I know say the intonation of English sounds very 'up and down' to them (sorry, I can't think of a better way of expressing that!), at least in comparison to German - perhaps not compared to other languages, though. And most of them are only used to hearing British English and rarely hear Americans - all films and TV shows are dubbed here. :(

I didn't mean monotonous in the sense of boring, let me hasten to add - perhaps flat, or level, would be better.