And everyone tries to speak it... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dABo_DCIdpM&feature=player_embedded :clap:
Well, some were good (British ones) however not something I'd be too proud of His Liverpool accent (where I'm originally from) isn't that good to be honest. Now check out Harry Enfield's The Scoucers on YouTube. That's what we sound like :lol: Saying that, I never did as you can hear from the YouTube video I put up about the video captures. Yakumo
If you ask me, British accents are the best sounding ones along with the Indian accent (which is obviously also inspired by the British). Redneck American English sounds absolutely awful to me, also the English American teens tend to use ("it's just like... anyway, whatever..." arghh). >_< His German accent had quite a couple of flaws. The most common mistakes are word-by-word translations ("Will you have my ticket? I just have buyed it down at ziss selling station!") It also depends on the individual of course, the worst are girls who feel cool by immitating the American accent. The outsome sounds something like "So, I jasst felt like dat. Anyway, sis is jis my oppinyon, fursermoah what I'm jis tryin to say is zatt I am really werry pripearred.". I also hate the stuff Tarantino did in his movie Inglourious Basterds. He may made the movie trilingular with French, English and German parts - but totally inconsequently. Everyone speaks 100% perfect French, English and German - even the French farmer has academic English to show off with and German commanders are no different. Just stupid accents are added which makes the entire thing even more ridiculous - they have perfect grammer & vocabulary, but some strange, slight accent. Shit... and it happens in lots of movies. Has nobody ever told the producers that accents include grammatical mistakes? Like the female/male forms... one thing that I find so charming about French women speaking German are the mix-ups of fe/male forms. Dü 'ast gerahdö einen Küschlein gegessen! ^^
Can't really judge the quality of most of them, but still, impressive ray: Well, there's English, and then there's Pidgin English... Unfortunately many germans, including that guy, can't even manage the latter (at least when speaking in front of a bigger audience). I've seen enough coworkers crash and burn when speaking at international conferences to know better than to try it myself (professional simultaneous translation ftw). I guess they might now be aware that that might even be a problem at all, see this table
The NY accent reminds me of Joe Pesci He's doing a NY Italian-american accent. Not all newyorkers talk like that
If you ask me, I prefer the southern american accents, perhaps the softer Louisianan accents over the Georgian ones, but they're all nice to hear. There will always be people that sounds like trash from all accents and languages, but in general...
It's still english... Not British english (which encompasses a variety of dialects in itself) but english nontheless. This would be like saying that people in Latin America don't speak spanish, and people in Spain do... I'm a big fan on philology... It's a very interesting subject. I've been reading Shakespeare since I was 14 years old and It's amazing how I sometimes use some expressions from shakespearian english in my speech (I remember one time in which I slip the expression "yester night" in a casual conversation and the guy I was talking to just laughed his ass off). It is really interesting to see how a particular language has evolved since it's inception to the present day. The case of english in particular holds much interest for me.
I missed the Dutch accent, while it's so easy to do. Just add uhhhhh to the end of all english words.
I mean bad example as in, my accent is not "totally heavy", and neither is your German accent. And I would not say your "English" is American as one said about Germans speaking english in general, earlier in this thread.
http://www.nicholasjohnpatrick.com/post/767354896/did-americans-in-1776-have-british-accents Sorry to break it to you Brits, but you speak bad English and Americans still speak "proper" English. To be fair, some points are dead on and others are off. To assume one is proper vs the other based on a hard "r" sound as the sole point of divergence is a bit much IMO. Not surprising the British accent is heavily influenced by the upper class. As an American who was born and raised in California (where you get the accent most movie actors use so you all should be familiar with it) with a dad from Missouri (where you "warsh" the car) and a grandfather from Mississippi (all kinds of fun tidbits there) I'd have to say the most amusing accent is more a dialect where most of respectable America calls it a "soda" rather than "pop" or the hilariously generic "coke" in the south. Guy 1: I'd like a coke. Guy 2: Cherry coke, vanilla coke, diet coke, regular coke? Guy 1: No a Sprite. Though I personally find the deep Southern accents almost unintelligible to the point where I wonder if they don't inject Novocaine into their tongues every morning.
APE: hmm you call American English for "Proper" English, then the rest of the world would call it a bastardised version of English, but then again I am not here to piss off the Americans, cause I have done that enough. But as long you bloody write an in front of anything that has a vowel sound in the noun, and an "a" in front of any consonant sounding noun, then I am a happy person. But also I know some people are dyslexic , so again I am not the one (any more) who will correct other peoples English, I am just happy about my personal English is being improved all the time, no matter how "crappy" my English is.
Well, I just call them both "English"... But basically treat them like completely different languages - BE the one being taught in school, and AE being the one you actually get to use in real life. Despite BE being forced upon us, we eat chips not crisps, fries not chips, etc., also the chances of meeting an American are way higher despite the UK being much closer. In my book, while in the beginning AE might have been a "bastardized" version of "proper" english, it's now the obvious winner of the (not-really-a-)contest, even if only by quantity (of usage) over quality. Sorry Brits.
My thoughts exactly, and that does seem to be the main thrust of his argument. Seems an odd one to pick, given how far American dialects range in other respects. For the most part I'm not fussed about accents, American English is harsh in some aspects but it's not a big deal. I dislike contradictory colloquialisms like "I could care less", though. Also phonetically-derived misspellings that change meaning, like "more then enough", "could of been better" etc, but these are pervasive wherever you're from.
