Have you ever had the experience of hearing someone speak a language that you don’t know, but could guess what the language is because of its recognizable sound?
Well, since we don’t know the lexicon (vocabulary) or the grammar, most of what we notice is called prosody – the rhythm, intonation (up and down) and stress of the language. Of course, you also hear how the sounds of that language – its phonemic inventory – are realized and strung together in words and sentences.
Listen to this guy pretending to speak Chinese, French, Italian, Russian and Japanese.
Any native speakers of these languages out there? How did he do?
And what about English? Ever wonder how non-English speakers hear English? This girl gives fake English a try:
Weirdly English-like, right?
If you wanna compare the fake against the real, check out the flashcards in our language lab, available in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese.
