[OFF TOPIC] Language Thread

[Federer91 3,089]

Never had a problem with English, even though it is not that similar to Bulgarian. It always came with ease, well maybe because i was watching Cartoon Network from 5 years old  German on the other hand, oh Boy.. It took me years to become on a good level and then school ended, never had to use it in University and it all disappeared....

[heywoodu 16,183]

44 minutes ago, Federer91 said:

well maybe because i was watching Cartoon Network from 5 years old 

This helped so much  (although Dragonball Z in my case, and a bit older age)

 

Which is why it's sad to see more and more children's programs nowadays being dubbed in Dutch instead of simply having subtitles, every single bit of research ever shows that subtitles instead of voice-overs greatly improve language skills..

[Bohemia 1,490]

36 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Which is why it's sad to see more and more children's programs nowadays being dubbed in Dutch instead of simply having subtitles, every single bit of research ever shows that subtitles instead of voice-overs greatly improve language skills..

I'm incredibly jealous of countries where most shows and movies have subtitles instead of being dubbed. The dubbing is always bad... and it's sad to not be able to appreciate the actor's, well, acting. I wish subtitles were a normal thing here.

[Grassmarket 4,128]

13 hours ago, heywoodu said:

This helped so much  (although Dragonball Z in my case, and a bit older age)

 

Which is why it's sad to see more and more children's programs nowadays being dubbed in Dutch instead of simply having subtitles, every single bit of research ever shows that subtitles instead of voice-overs greatly improve language skills..

In Flanders Engliish-language TV shows are always shown subtitled: in Wallonia they are always shown dubbed.  As a result far more Flemish people are fluent in English.

[Olympian1010 8,276]

Wired’s been doing a fun series on American English dialects/accents. They haven’t talked about California much yet, but they’ve covered the East, South, Midwest, and Great Lakes pretty well.

 

Part 1:

 

Part 2:

For those of you who have heard me speak on the podcast, is there anything about my English that stands out, or sounds different? Maybe @OlympicIRL could provide some insight here. I’m curious since I obviously have no way of knowing. I do definitely say “ing” as “een” like he points out that those west of the Rockies do at the end of part 2. 

[OlympicIRL 6,165]

1 hour ago, Olympian1010 said:

Wired’s been doing a fun series on American English dialects/accents. They haven’t talked about California much yet, but they’ve covered the East, South, Midwest, and Great Lakes pretty well.

 

For those of you who have heard me speak on the podcast, is there anything about my English that stands out, or sounds different? Maybe @OlympicIRL could provide some insight here. I’m curious since I obviously have no way of knowing. I do definitely say “ing” as “een” like he points out that those west of the Rockies do at the end of part 2. 

I did a quick re-listen of your last podcast to see what I could pick up on as “notheen” came to mind straight away . 

I just know you have a very clear accent and you pronounce most sounds really clearly. 
You pronounce the “s” sound very clearly at the beginning and at the end of words. Almost like a double “ss” if that makes sense. On the other hand you don’t stress vowel sounds too much.

 

And one word I noticed a difference in how I pronounce the word was “digress”. You said it like dig as in to dig a hole, whereas I pronounce it as die  But I “die-gress”.

 

And that is my totally amateur take on your accent. You could have more fun analysing mine and trying to understand it  

[Olympian1010 8,276]

29 minutes ago, OlympicIRL said:

I did a quick re-listen of your last podcast to see what I could pick up on as “notheen” came to mind straight away . 

I just know you have a very clear accent and you pronounce most sounds really clearly. 
You pronounce the “s” sound very clearly at the beginning and at the end of words. Almost like a double “ss” if that makes sense. On the other hand you don’t stress vowel sounds too much.

 

And one word I noticed a difference in how I pronounce the word was “digress”. You said it like dig as in to dig a hole, whereas I pronounce it as die  But I “die-gress”.

 

And that is my totally amateur take on your accent. You could have more fun analysing mine and trying to understand it  

Yeah, I definitely have the “een.”

 

Huh, I had no clue about the hard “s” sound. I’ll have to listen to some other accents and see if I notice a difference. 
 

I would also normally say “die-gress” as well, so that might have just been a flub 

 

Thanks for your thoughts though. Now I have some things “interesteen” things to research 

[Olympian1010 8,276]

@OlympicIRL Apparently I should have a funky “r” as well. Perhaps the “s” you noticed is related to that in some way.

 

[De_Gambassi 1,282]

On 02/01/2021 at 16:33, Grassmarket said:

Yeah, but it is all the same English words!  I read an article about baseball in Montreal, which is obviously a French-speaking city, and very touchy about it. When MLB started there in the 70s, the French-language commentators were give specially-prepared-by-University-Professors French equivalents for all the English baseball terms.  After about a week they just ripped them up & threw them away, because it was just easier to use the English terms.  

 

It goes a bit more deep than that  Most of this terms are still used today I believe.

 

http://www.sabrquebec.org/vocabulaire/

 

(english version at the bottom)

[Olympian1010 8,276]

On 19/02/2021 at 14:10, OlympicIRL said:

I did a quick re-listen of your last podcast to see what I could pick up on as “notheen” came to mind straight away . 

I just know you have a very clear accent and you pronounce most sounds really clearly. 
You pronounce the “s” sound very clearly at the beginning and at the end of words. Almost like a double “ss” if that makes sense. On the other hand you don’t stress vowel sounds too much.

 

And one word I noticed a difference in how I pronounce the word was “digress”. You said it like dig as in to dig a hole, whereas I pronounce it as die  But I “die-gress”.

 

And that is my totally amateur take on your accent. You could have more fun analysing mine and trying to understand it  

Alright, some of this might be explained by part 3:

 

“You don’t stress the vowel sounds too much.” Yep, that’s vowel reduction, and I definitely do that. There’s some examples of that when the women is comparing Chicano English (which doesn’t have vowel reduction) to other SoCal English (which does have vowel reduction). 

Still didn’t say anything about the “s” sound you noticed. During the Chicano English segment they talk about something to do with the “s” sound. Is that what you were talking about, or something different?

 

So the digress thing might be related to the vowel position switching he was talking about. I generally say it as “die-gress” as well, but there are definitely people in SoCal who do say it as “dig-ress”