Americanisms....Tom A toe, Tom Ah Toe.

[RCM 800]

All American language is a slang derivative.

What gets me though, is all the Brit's that don't know English... ...

I was gonna mention some of the people from the same island do a pretty good job of making the language sound like gibberish. I mean you really need an Ozzy to English translator most of the time.

 

[Marshall Stack]

Interesting that the 1766 London accent is almost like American English or mid western American English. I once read a paper which claimed that hill billy English is closer to proper old English than the more evolved forms. The author hypothesized that some societies evolve their speech more, as means of setting themselves apart from societies they don't want to be associated with.

In modern American English, the word dove (the bird) doesn't have an oh sound to the O vowel. If speaking of the dove bird, it would be Duv (uhh sound, not as in Hugh for the U sound).

When I began to study Japanese, other Japanese speakers would sometimes mock me because of my American English starting points for most vowls. So to illustrate, or to elaborate on the topic, how sounds in languages differ and evolve, I'm going to talk a little about speaking Japanese.

In most American English the common vowels sound:

A=aay as in hay field or hey there.
I= aye as in aye aye sir or a tear filled eye.
o= uh, or oh, or ahh
E= ee or eh
u=eew or you

In Japanese the five vowels are:
A= ahh
I=ee
o= oh
E= aay or ye
U= eew

In English diphongs are very common. A diphong is two or more sounds blended together in the same space in time. In Japanese, diphongs are not allowed. Each sound or sylllable occupies one space in time. It's like musical notatation with a constant cadence or beat. (Tokyo dialect can sound like shred guitar it can be so fast) English speeds up and slows down almost at random, with accents and emphasis placed on certain vowels. Also, all words in Japanese must end in a vowel sound, or in N, to comply with the cadence. In English, words can end in any hard consonant, or in N. Or if it is a vowel, the vowel is usually silent. English is like playing along with a drummer who can't keep time.

There are of course diphongs introduced into Japanese through forgein accents. This was the case when people immigrated to Japan from China (the two languages have no common origin and have nothing in common outside of loan words) and when Japanese families started sending their kids to study in Chinese universities during the 15th century. The Japanese nation was called Yawa meaning the land of peace in the native accent. But in the Chinese accent, or on (pronounced own) reading, it had a diphong, so it was pronounced Yamatai. Therefore, the Japanese changed it to Yamato.

Incidently, the Japanese word for yes, or hai, sounds a lot like hi or high. This is not a native diphong, but occurs because after positioning the tounge, and shaping the mouth, to make the ah sound followed by the ee sound, the ee sound becomes unvoiced, whith the ah cut short, and together it sounds like hi or high.

Also it depends on the level of politeness to how vowels are pronounced. The to be verb: Desu, sounds like Desu at high levels of politeness, but sounds like dess, the U being unvoiced, at lower levels of politeness, but could be just da during causul speech. There are also, just like in English, some rather profound regional differences.

Sounds like a hard language to learn. German is really easy. If you watch Hogan's Heroes they sound a lot like English. For some reason "Hogan" sounds like "Hoooogaaan". At least from a Kommadant.

 

[CoyotesGator]

Swamp and Texas?

Yes, please!

 

[Trumpet Rider]

I gave up on the language when "gender" became analogous with "sex." There is no saving the culture now.

 

[Kinkless Tetrode]

Sounds like a hard language to learn. German is really easy. If you watch Hogan's Heroes they sound a lot like English. For some reason "Hogan" sounds like "Hoooogaaan". At least from a Kommadant.

The 15th century versions of London accent in the video posted by mcblink sounds a lot like Norwegian. And Norwegian is a dialect of German.

 

[Georgiatec]

'I could care less".....wrong!!
"I couldn't care less"......correct.

 

[Seanxk]

Keeping ones self on a more fitting theme of our beloved Marshall Amplifier, I too have some niggles....

Tube versus Valve is an obvious one, but Tube is becoming part of the language here in the UK now.

Mullard, it's ''ard'' as in Yard and not ''urd'' as in Turd, they are the best and deserve more.

Solder, there's an ''L'' as in Sold, I can't work out an example for what is said in the US, Saaw?

 

[PelliX]

'Walking out the door' to me always sounded like someone was taking their door for a walk. Very confusing....

German is really easy.

No, just no. I speak and write German at the level that Germans assume I'm a German, no questions asked. It's a horrible language, though. The rules change every year or two (Neue Deutsche Rechtschreibung), and if that's not bad enough nouns are capitalized. They half-inched the Greek beta and use it as a sort of double-S substitute - but not entirely. Then you have three Umlauts which could (and now often are) skipped and the original letter gets an 'e' appended.

I was gonna mention some of the people from the same island do a pretty good job of making the language sound like gibberish. I mean you really need an Ozzy to English translator most of the time.

Here in the Netherlands it's fairly safe to say that many people have a superior understanding of the English language, certainly in writing, compared to the British themselves. That's Brits, not Brit's.

The good bit is that, after growing up in English and learning German, Dutch is just a funny mixup of the two for the most part. Once you've conquered those three, Danish becomes legible...

 

[Arc Anjil]

"They're there when their flight arrives."

Sign in English shop window, "English spoken here, American understood".

 

[PowerTube44]

 

[Kinkless Tetrode]

No, just no. I speak and write German at the level that Germans assume I'm a German, no questions asked. It's a horrible language, though. The rules change every year or two (Neue Deutsche Rechtschreibung), and if that's not bad enough nouns are capitalized. They half-inched the Greek beta and use it as a sort of double-S substitute - but not entirely. Then you have three Umlauts which could (and now often are) skipped and the original letter gets an 'e' appended.



Here in the Netherlands it's fairly safe to say that many people have a superior understanding of the English language, certainly in writing, compared to the British themselves. That's Brits, not Brit's.

The good bit is that, after growing up in English and learning German, Dutch is just a funny mixup of the two for the most part. Once you've conquered those three, Danish becomes legible...

Agreed, I took a semester of German at university back in the day.

I got to thinking since English was a Germantic language I would pickup up on it easier. Wrong!

 

[Dogs of Doom]

That's Brits, not Brit's.

the reason I put apostrophes in certain words, is because they are shortened versions of a longer word...

For instance, amp's is short for amplifiers. cab's in short for cabinets.

Brit's is short for Britannians... ... In ze Deutcsh, ze Englander...

but... forum speak is very informal anyway, so...

I was talking to someone in a local forum, because someone noted that they took "Latin" classes, back in the '50s. Someone was marveled, because they taught Latin. But... they were thinking "Latino", which is more of a Hispanic cultural ideology these days, from south of the US border, that, can capture a large swath of cultures really, from So America, Central America & the islands inbetween. Italian Latin was a popular language to learn, because if you could learn that, it could help when learning other languages..

Back, when I was in highschool, a friend of mine's Mother had signed up for foreign exchange students. Around here, we have a bunch of Mexican immigrants, & many of them speak Spanish. I remember they got a student from Spain & when we got him together w/ a local that spoke fluent Spanish, it took them around 2½ hours before they could understand each other, because the American Spanish is a slang version, & has changed over the years. Spain's language has probably progressed as well, but, they both progressed in different directions independent of each other...

I know that, even in the German states, their versions of German language varies. I had a write up in Metal Hammer magazine & I had to have it translated. My Mom knew someone who was from Germany, but, she had a tough time translating the article...

So, the different dialects between similar rooted languages aren't anything unique, to English.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

what do the British call this article of clothing?

 

[PelliX]

Brit's is short for Britannians... ... In ze Deutcsh, ze Englander...

It took me a moment, but that wasn't a stab at you ....

I was talking to someone in a local forum, because someone noted that they took "Latin" classes, back in the '50s. Someone was marveled, because they taught Latin. But... they were thinking "Latino", which is more of a Hispanic cultural ideology these days, from south of the US border, that, can capture a large swath of cultures really, from So America, Central America & the islands inbetween. Italian Latin was a popular language to learn, because if you could learn that, it could help when learning other languages..

"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people."

-- Dan Quayle, Vice President at the time, I believe. Maybe before, can't remember.

I know that, even in the German states, their versions of German language varies. I had a write up in Metal Hammer magazine & I had to have it translated.

When spoken, there are all kinds of mannerisms across the country and so on, yup. There are dialects like Bavarian which have their own grammar and vocabulary together with a strong accent. On paper there is only one 'correct' German (you would expect a DIN standard, but... )

 

[Matthews Guitars]

I'm no linguist but I can pick out words by their similarities to English via their shared Latin roots.

I laugh at the notion that German has any root connection to English. There's no evidence of that as far as my ears and eyes are concerned.

I'm learning German by the usual way: Watching Rammstein videos with the English captions turned on.

 

[PelliX]

I'm no linguist but I can pick out words by their similarities to English via their shared Latin roots.

I laugh at the notion that German has any root connection to English. There's no evidence of that as far as my ears and eyes are concerned.

I'm learning German by the usual way: Watching Rammstein videos with the English captions turned on.

Lol, Rammstein...



But let's not forget that the Anglo-saxons were ... Saxons. That's now in the heart of Germany.

In ze Deutcsh, ze Englander...

As it happens, the term "Inselaffen" was used a lot when I was there during the 90's. It's a vaguely insulting term meaning "island monkeys", but quite benign. Or I was the butt end of a lot of remarks without understanding the gravity...

 

[DirtySteve]

This thread is great! Where's Holme when you need him?

 

[Kinkless Tetrode]

Sounds like a hard language to learn.

In some ways Japanese is very straight forward. It is not bogged down by a bunch of conjugation rules and exceptions to every rule. Verbs just have present and past tense, and future tense is in a conditional way. Use of pronouns are limited. Another thing Japanese is not cluttered up by a bunch of equivalents of "of" "a" "an" "the" "to" and so forth.

The thing about Japanese is that it is a SOV language, where as most of the world's languages are now mostly SVO. This refers to the word order which in a language like English is vital to a sentence making sense. For example, " The dog chased the cat." In this example, "The (subject marker) dog (the Subject) chased (the Verb) the (object marker) cat (the Object) is how most English sentences are constructed, or SVO.

In Japanese the verb always come last, not in the middle. The above sentence would be something like " Cat the dog chased." or SOV. In Japanese, subjects and objects are usually interchangeable in word order. Subjects and object marker words or subfixes are also post position rather than prepositions. The most common marker word heard is "wa."

However, If your watching a Japanese movie and trying to figure out the dialog you will hear a lot of sentences ending in "ne" which is not a verb. Usually in conversational Japanese the last word of the sentence will not be the verb but an agreement seeker, which is ne. It's like putting a Right? or huh? at the end of a statement. This doesn't mean the speaker is unsure of him/her self, but in Japanese culture it is considered rude to take away the free choice of the person being spoken to, to disagree or have no opinion to what your saying.

Another word that often comes at the end of sentence and is not the verb is ka. Ka signals it is a question. So to say, "Was that a cat?" it would be, neko deshta ka.

Another thing that makes Japanese more difficult for English speakers to learn is that unless it's absolutely necessary by having a complete sentence to understand what is being said, the sentence will usually be an incomplete sentence. Usually what is being talked about is understood by context. Conversational Japanese is often a bunch of incomplete sentences.

 

[Vinsanitizer]

American English is the correct annunciation. The British are the ones who are way off. For example, when we say a word like "time", how ITF does that translate to "cahn yew please teel me woot toym it ees?"

And don't even get me started on the Australians.

(Update: actually, didn't I just say that with more of an Oz accent than Brit?)

 

[Vinsanitizer]

All American language is a slang derivative.
What gets me though, is all the Brit's that don't know English... ...

You mean like when they call a pack of cigarettes "fags"? Yeah.