at what point in history do you think americans stopped having british accents
Actually, Americans still have the original British accent. We kept it over time and Britain didn’t. What we currently coin as a British accent developed in England during the 19th century among the upper class as a symbol of status. Historians often claim that Shakespeare sounds better in an American accent.
except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbour
“English doesn’t borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.” ― James Nicoll
I love it when a rule has more exceptions than feasible examples.
We’ve all heard examples of fake Chinese or German from speakers who lack familiarity with either language. While typically cringe-worthy, these examples do raise interesting questions regarding our own language. What does English sound like to non-English speakers? After more than 40 years, Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol” remains one of the most illuminating examples.
The entire song is nonsense verse, neither English nor Italian, but the sounds are meant to resemble English. Linguist Mark Liberman wrote an interesting post about this sort of thing over at Language Log discussing yaourter, the French word for an attempt to speak or sing in a foreign language that one doesn’t know all that well. This often involves trying to sing a foreign song with nonsense or random words filling in the blanks. Liberman shares this wonderful quote from a random Internet user:
Just for the story, in France, when we don’t speak English and we want to imitate the sound, we call it “yaourter”(to yoghourt), the imitation sounds like a very nasal language, kind of like a baby crying. It mostly imitates the “cowboy” accent.
jesus christ this is actually reALLY FRUSTRATING IT SOUNDS LIKE ENGLISH BUT IT DOESNT MAKE WORDS
COOLEST FUCKING THING
This is just about the best thing I’ve ever watched/heard.
In French you don’t say “I’m on my period” you say “Les Anglais ont débarqué” which translates into English as “The English have arrived.” I find that beautiful. The English. Small Englishmen are pouring out of your vagina. They are here. There is no stopping them.
So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. —Dead Poets Society
I'm Kaytie! 23, Hoosier. I'm all music and passion and video games. A right-brained nerdy bookworm sometimes-hipster who's constantly looking for beauty and love. Red-head (not naturally unfortunately) and lover of red hair.
If you're curious, this is what I look like, here are things I've written, and thisis what I'm looking for in a guy.
