Comments on: A music video that demonstrates how English sounds to non-English speakers https://habitablezone.com/2013/09/09/a-music-video-that-demonstrates-how-english-sounds-to-non-english-speakers/ Tue, 12 May 2026 20:11:45 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: ER https://habitablezone.com/2013/09/09/a-music-video-that-demonstrates-how-english-sounds-to-non-english-speakers/#comment-26655 ER Mon, 09 Sep 2013 20:24:45 +0000 http://www.habitablezone.com/?p=37571#comment-26655 But without the music and subtitles, its quite jarring. It uses a little domestic melodrama spanning a spectrum of emotional responses, for comparison. It captures the sounds, rhythms and cadences of American speech, but it is pure gibberish, so it sounds like you're listening to a language you don't know. It also occasionally intersperses familiar phrases from common US speech, that people who know no English may recognize. I've actually asked non-English speaking Spanish folks what English sounds like to them, and although I can't really get into their heads to find out, I suspect this clip does it justice. Of course, when I asked them to try and duplicate verbally what they heard, they had an atrocious Spanish accent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY [youtube id="Vt4Dfa4fOEY" /] But without the music and subtitles, its quite jarring. It uses a little domestic melodrama spanning a spectrum of emotional responses, for comparison.

It captures the sounds, rhythms and cadences of American speech, but it is pure gibberish, so it sounds like you’re listening to a language you don’t know. It also occasionally intersperses familiar phrases from common US speech, that people who know no English may recognize.

I’ve actually asked non-English speaking Spanish folks what English sounds like to them, and although I can’t really get into their heads to find out, I suspect this clip does it justice. Of course, when I asked them to try and duplicate verbally what they heard, they had an atrocious Spanish accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY

[youtube id="Vt4Dfa4fOEY" /]

]]>