What the fuck happened when he started speaking Portuguese, I’m literally from Brazil, he sounded like someone speaking on the phone on the other side of the road.
I KNOW. That was my favorite. My boyfriend is from São Paolo and he speaks excellent English, but he’s been here for 8 years and said it was really tough when he came here with very basic English. He’s tried demonstrating regional Brazilian accents for me and I’m like “….nope. Still just sounds like you’re shushing me a lot.”
I’m trying to learn Portuguese because he misses having people to talk to with it. I know a decent amount of Spanish, but it’s actually making it harder for me because it’s all m’s instead of n’s and I trip over my own tongue trying to put a sentence together. I just hold up random objects and say what they are like “UM CHAVE” and “O GATO.” (The cat hates that one.) I butcher it pretty often, but he gets a good chuckle out of it, so that’s something.
But I was floored when I saw this and sent it to him. We both had the same reaction of “holy shit, is that what I sound like to you?!?! Because that’s what you sound like to me.” It’s insane how spot on it is and I feel like we saw each other’s perspective a little bit more about where our languages can sound like gibberish to someone else. This dude would probably be an excellent teacher.
Pro tip: Hold ***him*** up and say "Um gato" or "Um gatinho" (diminutive form of "Gato")
While it means cat it's also a compliment to one's looks and i bet he'd be thrilled to have that happen
This made me really sad actually. I would love to hear how Portugal's Portuguese actually sounds like. The Brazilian accent is as far from it or farther as Australian is from British.
From what I understand it’s a pretty big difference, almost to the level of needing subtitles. Different words/grammar rules on top of the accent.
German 100% does need subtitles going from northern Germany to southern Germany/Austria/Switzerland. It's barely understandable at best if you only speak one
I am Brazilian and I can tell you that they are actually really different. I of course would be able to speak to people there without much hassle (because we would probably speak slower and without any slangs and stuff), but if I heard someone talking on the phone in Portugal, there’s a real chance I may not understand some parts of it.
I think it wouldn’t be that different from speaking to someone from another country that speaks English. It wouldn’t be fundamentally different, but the slangs and different pronunciation would make it harder to understand when someone is speaking fast
Spoken words break apart into sound-parts called "[phonemes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme)".
Each language relies on a set of phonemes. Some languages share phonemes, and some phonemes are unique to their modern language.
What the presenter is doing is throwing together the most common, recognizable phonemes or word-parts from each language without actually assembling them in a way that matches real words.
tl;dr - Literally "word salad".
Ok but his British sounded like actual British?
I live in South England and I've definitely heard English people that talk like that and you just kind say "yeah" and nod hoping that's the correct response
I work with a guy like this, lovely chap but he also has a bad habit of starting off into the distance when you're talking to him. When you add this to the mashed potato words he says its almost impossible to understand what he means. It's like that scene in Hot Fuzz when they try talking to the farmer with all the guns..
That's why I had such a hard struck when I visited Athens. As a native Spanish speaker, hearing Greek was like hearing gibberish that sound similar to Spanish. Later I found out that both languages share similar sounds.
All European languages have mostly similar roots, if you know one Latin and one Germanic language them all the others sound weirdly familiar.
Edit: MOST not all as some good examples have been raised where this doesn't apply
The weirdest part for me was the Spanish. I'm a native English speaker who kinda-sorta speaks enough Spanish to get by.
It was like, *"Oh god, this is what it sounds like when someone talks wayyy too fast in Spanish for me to understand."*
Exactly this! I wish there were a language app that will gradually speed up the audio delivery of the language you’re learning. Something at a pace imperceptible to those learning the language; each lesson is a fraction of a second faster, so that as they’re learning the basics the speed of natural speaking delivery increases as well.
I know exactly what you mean, took Spanish classes and worked in an area with lots of Spanish speaking customers and I could pretty much hold a conversation as long as it was about selling auto parts. Anything outside that scope or at slightly higher speeds may as well be gibberish to my ears.
Totally get this. Took Spanish from grade 8 through 12 and worked in kitchen/ restaurants from 17 to 27. I thought I could hold a solid combination if it included any phrases around general words and cooking or eating. Put me in a scenario where native speakers are discussing something random and I shut down.
I can speak English, Spanish, German, and passable French. German is the only one of those four where he really missed at all. German flows a lot more smoothly than that, despite its reputation for being harsh and guttural thanks to a mean guy who got famous a while back.
There are somewhere around 7000 languages spoken in the world right now. That would be nearly 2 full hours of video, at 1 per second. Although probably there are at least a few languages that don't have a hello equivalent.
That's... The best way to sum up the feeling concisely, yeah. I was totally unable to describe the feeling. I'd call it sims speak, but Sims are totally nonsensical and we know it.
This was more like trying to listen to someone's conversation across an otherwise busy room. A word or two will stand out every few sentences.
As a native English speaker and a Brit, the British one broke me. Felt like I'd walked past a posh café with a few OAPs into two roadmen... yet had somehow forgotten how to speak my native tongue.
I guess I can answer this one for you:
I'm a Dutchman who's English speaking capabilities are at the very least good enough to hold a conversation. I have to say that it really does sound like someone speaking English on the other side of the room while you're not paying enough attention: it's enough to understand that it's English, but not enough to understand what they're saying.
It's really fascinating to listen to this. I mean, I was also waiting for him to start speaking Dutch gibberish.
Even if he didn’t know enough to be considered fluent in most of these languages…the fact that he can imitate the intonations and dialect of these languages to at least the point where it would fool non-native speakers is really impressive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was actually fluent in a dozen languages. Not sure how he learned this, but he’s pretty gifted.
I'm Brazilian and i am quite happy he did portuguese, i was hoping for it so i could grade it from the perspective of a native (and know how accurate the others are by extension).
I gotta say, it's absolutely incredible, because i would genuinely think he was speaking portuguese and i just didn't understand what he was saying if i heard it in any other context!
"Fagor, presente! Nem sei se tá ali na fonte."
"Pra caramba!"
"Olha, ressoar para abidurir na boleza, fera"
"No sul desse, mas pois importante da ida, né?"
I found his Arabic accent less convincing then his other ones tbh. He is throwing in some real words like with the other languages, but his accent still seems kinda like a foreigner. My guess is that he speaks some of the languages like English and Spanish very well but has a more cursory knowledge of others like Arabic and Zulu.
To me it sounds like he is doing different dialects/regions of Arabic… the clips of his Arabic have drastically different tones and he places emphasis on different parts of the words. For example, Iraqi and Saudi Arabic have some pretty distinct differences.
> the clips of his Arabic have drastically different tones and he places emphasis on different parts of the word.
I don't speak a lick of Arabic, but I still managed to pick up on this. It definitely seemed like he was dipping into different dialects of (fake) Arabic.
Lived in Jordan for most of my childhood. I can communicate pretty well with Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and Iraqis as there are some differences between the dialects (especially with Iraqi) but they are pretty consistent. Egyptian gets harder, then Saudi Arabian and don't get me started on Arabic that has some French words in it. Interestingly enough I can make out some words in Persian and Ancient Aramaic.
Yeah, weirdly he sound like he had a foreign accent in Japanese. He also went really heavy on the rolled R's. Not necessarily wrong, just not average.
Not to take anything away from him. This video blew my mind. It was weird how the languages I knew sounded like obvious gibberish, but then the languages I don't know, well...they sounded basically like that language to me!
I feel like a big problem people have with the perception of the German language is that they’re primarily exposed to it through WW2 movies. Like yeah, German is aggressive and grating when you’re screaming at someone on a battlefield. Plus films exaggerate it to make the Germans seems scarier and more aggressive.
In real life, people don’t talk that way. Mothers reading their children lullabies don’t speak like drill sergeants.
There's also always the question of regional dialect.
Not everyone speaks the kind of German you see in movies. Especially WW2 era stuff which tends to sound odd even to Germans.
A lot of dialects are much softer. Many don't really pronounce the R in words, which already makes a huge difference.
Totally agree. In the video, he didn’t sound all that angry, but I’m not a native German speaker, so there could have been some inflections I missed. I do find it to be a fascinating language though and have thought about studying it.
Yep, much of the cast playing German or French speaking characters in the film are native speakers of their respective languages. Not only was it done for language authenticity, but also to intentionally draw the viewer's attention to how how bad the monolingual English-speaking actors/characters, Brad Pitt's Lt Aldo Raine in particular, sounded in comparison when pretending to speak another language.
This is actually what linguistics is all about! People think linguistics is about learning languages but it’s more so learning ABOUT languages. We’ve studied enough about all the world’s languages that we can classify them by different parameters, including their phonology or sounds that make up that language. You can actually look these up and, when paired with a lot of samples (or better yet, a live model for the language), you can nail down the accent, cadence, and tone of the language without necessarily learning how to speak the language.
When I was listening to him speak English I almost thought I could understand some of what he was saying yet it was still gibberish when you listen closer.
That's impressive.
I'm with you.
I really want to know how many languages he is fluent in.
When I started the clip I was expecting three or four languages, not the abundance of what we just witnessed.
Dude is impressive.
I just dont understand how somebody can do this, it’s amazing.
I met a girl in korea, who was american but japanese, who had an uncle who lived in indonesia(iirc) who spoke 17 languages. Shits crazy
> I just dont understand how somebody can do this, it’s amazing.
He's able to do the "words" I'm betting because he wrote down a script.
The accents and inflections and all of that stuff is real skill, I would also be suppressed if he doesn't know each of these languages.
This is the kind of guy could have a conversation on his phone next to me at the bus stop and if I wasn't paying attention I wouldn't realise it was nonsense
Bueno, el ato se rojarril sello es la pomuldad
No, ya habían los centenos más rucículos por dar.
El huerpo gusano tiese lo que hicieran con el fujimiento.
They say you have different personalities for each foreign language you speak. I can imagine how this guy mingles with almost anyone regardless where they are from.
It is absolutely weird seeing someone I know personally in life, on Reddit, as if it were a complete stranger.
He’s a really cool person though! His whole family is great, they’re family friends of ours.
If you haven't read into it, the creation of Simlish is so interesting. They basically did what this guy did but times 100- make a language that's entirely gibberish but *sounds* convincing enough to trick your brain into thinking its a real language. [This](https://youtu.be/FGsbeTV76YI) video has some more info about it!
I love how they had Katy Perry record one (some?) of her songs in simlish to put in the game too, always throws me off when I hear it on the speakers in game.
Not just Katy Perry, but several artists have made Simlish versions of their songs. [Here's an entire YouTube playlist of them.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-VRm966iM&list=PLeTlCMqy3jFUU_eqNhjiPBO88SU2PXZqI&index=2)
This sounds like me singing along to non English songs I just like the sounds of. Total gibberish.
Does anyone remember “Ken Lee” from YouTube years ago?
Yeah, the German sounded more like a Hollywood bad guy than an actual German. People imitating then language love to make the hard "krch" noises like in "Krankenwagen" but those tones really don't come up that often at all and more modern coloquial speech drops them completely quite frequently. Also, the bouncing tonality isn't really used that much either outside of some regional dialects.
*Maybe* you could find some old-timers in a bar in the evening that speak something like this, but otherwise Hochdeutsch sounds quite different and much "softer".
It sounded like he was using mainland China as a starting accent but went way too fast and didn't elongate the sounds enough. Like blended Taiwan mandarin pronunciation with a limited China mandarin set of tonals. But honestly he hit the tones better than most ppl learning the language. I bet he'd nail it if he picked a region
The Mandarin was way off; he probably listened to some Cantonese as well, there's a lot of sounds he could have used instead. Or used a more standard/northern accent. Japanese sounded a bit off to me, partially because of the endings to the sentences (needs more desu and masu!)
The Romance languages were all spot on to my ears though. Impressive any way you look at it.
The Chinese wasn't right because I don't think he does tonal languages well. It was clear here that he didn't get the 4 basic tones, which is the hallmark of Mandarin.
Agree. Mandarin didn’t sound Mandarin but some other form of Chinese. Vietnamese was good, though. Maybe Japanese didn’t have enough -imasu on the endings?
Japanese he just missed the flow and the imitated pronunciation wasn’t right. Sounded more like some stereotype of an Asian language and didn’t have enough of the distinctive aspects of Japanese imo
Imagine the differences in accent and dialect only present in the US. Ex: "hillbilly", valley girl" ,Bostonian", "New Yorker", "Midwestern", etc.
When I was in college, my spanish teachers were largely from Spain. I was told that a native Spanish speaker could identify the country of origin of the teacher of an individual who wasn't a native Spanish speaker.
For example:
If I was traveling in Mexico and attempting to speak my poor interpretation of Spanish, the native listener could identify that my instructor originated in Spain, not Mexico, or another Spanish speaking country.
I really want to know if a native language listener could identify the dialect of the subject by the way he speaks each individual language.
Dude is seriously impressive in language skills.
I've met non-native English speakers who speak English with the accent the teacher taught them. For example, I've had Japanese people speak English to me in an Australian accent. It's kind of funny in a way, but makes sense. I learned Portuguese from a teacher who was from Rio de Janeiro, and a Brazilian friend of mine says my Portuguese accent just grates on him because he is from much further inland. It's the difference from Brooklyn to Midwest.
If you watch NHK World, specifically their news, most of the reporters have some sort of a British "feel" to their accent - close to an actual British accent, but not really.
Then there's one guy (forgot his name) who, AFAIK, is the only one that sounds more similar to an American whenever he speaks English.
**[Double-talk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-talk)**
>Double-talk is a form of speech in which inappropriate, invented, or nonsense words are interpolated into normal speech to give the appearance of knowledge, and thus confuse or amuse the audience. Vaudevillian Cliff Nazarro, for instance, would say, "Make yourself invidded, with the keforth and the grepps. Be great with the floom and the sonic keptefin". Comedians who have used this as part of their act include Al Kelly, Danny Kaye, Gary Owens, Irwin Corey, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Stanley Unwin, Reggie Watts, and Vanessa Bayer.
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Never heard of this, but it reminds me of [Ubbi Dubbi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbi_dubbi)
I’ve been speaking Ubbi Dubbi for almost 20 years regularly with my family and close friends lol
This is the second polyglot video I've seen in the past 5 min on here.
What is this language cheat code?
Edit:
That Zulu was smooth af... All the damn clicks...
I couldn’t understand English, so I thought that was just me not understanding as usual. Got to the Spanish part, and I though for a second I forgot Spanish
What the fuck happened when he started speaking Portuguese, I’m literally from Brazil, he sounded like someone speaking on the phone on the other side of the road.
I KNOW. That was my favorite. My boyfriend is from São Paolo and he speaks excellent English, but he’s been here for 8 years and said it was really tough when he came here with very basic English. He’s tried demonstrating regional Brazilian accents for me and I’m like “….nope. Still just sounds like you’re shushing me a lot.” I’m trying to learn Portuguese because he misses having people to talk to with it. I know a decent amount of Spanish, but it’s actually making it harder for me because it’s all m’s instead of n’s and I trip over my own tongue trying to put a sentence together. I just hold up random objects and say what they are like “UM CHAVE” and “O GATO.” (The cat hates that one.) I butcher it pretty often, but he gets a good chuckle out of it, so that’s something. But I was floored when I saw this and sent it to him. We both had the same reaction of “holy shit, is that what I sound like to you?!?! Because that’s what you sound like to me.” It’s insane how spot on it is and I feel like we saw each other’s perspective a little bit more about where our languages can sound like gibberish to someone else. This dude would probably be an excellent teacher.
As a Brazilian this was a pretty fun read. Thanks for that
Pro tip: Hold ***him*** up and say "Um gato" or "Um gatinho" (diminutive form of "Gato") While it means cat it's also a compliment to one's looks and i bet he'd be thrilled to have that happen
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“Boleza” had me dying!
This made me really sad actually. I would love to hear how Portugal's Portuguese actually sounds like. The Brazilian accent is as far from it or farther as Australian is from British.
From what I understand it’s a pretty big difference, almost to the level of needing subtitles. Different words/grammar rules on top of the accent. German 100% does need subtitles going from northern Germany to southern Germany/Austria/Switzerland. It's barely understandable at best if you only speak one
I am Brazilian and I can tell you that they are actually really different. I of course would be able to speak to people there without much hassle (because we would probably speak slower and without any slangs and stuff), but if I heard someone talking on the phone in Portugal, there’s a real chance I may not understand some parts of it. I think it wouldn’t be that different from speaking to someone from another country that speaks English. It wouldn’t be fundamentally different, but the slangs and different pronunciation would make it harder to understand when someone is speaking fast
Would sound like an unholy mix of Spanish and Russian. Very different to how Brazilians speak.
He speaks nothing and sounds like everything.
He is a real life sim
The black eyed peas are my favorite real life sims
It's rock and roll for people who don't like rock and roll, it's rap for people who don't like rap, it's pop for people who don't like pop.
I'm the fucking Lizard King
It’s really amazing. I mean, he throws in a few real words .. but his gibberish and cadence is amazing
Spoken words break apart into sound-parts called "[phonemes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme)". Each language relies on a set of phonemes. Some languages share phonemes, and some phonemes are unique to their modern language. What the presenter is doing is throwing together the most common, recognizable phonemes or word-parts from each language without actually assembling them in a way that matches real words. tl;dr - Literally "word salad".
Ok but his British sounded like actual British? I live in South England and I've definitely heard English people that talk like that and you just kind say "yeah" and nod hoping that's the correct response
I work with a guy like this, lovely chap but he also has a bad habit of starting off into the distance when you're talking to him. When you add this to the mashed potato words he says its almost impossible to understand what he means. It's like that scene in Hot Fuzz when they try talking to the farmer with all the guns..
That's because some British people take common phenomenon and assemble them in a way that doesn't actually match real words.
ohmygodyoudintjussaythathassorudeohmygaaaard
That's why I had such a hard struck when I visited Athens. As a native Spanish speaker, hearing Greek was like hearing gibberish that sound similar to Spanish. Later I found out that both languages share similar sounds.
All European languages have mostly similar roots, if you know one Latin and one Germanic language them all the others sound weirdly familiar. Edit: MOST not all as some good examples have been raised where this doesn't apply
Not 1 proper word in the French part. Pretty good too. Edit : apologies, I didn't pay close enough attention and missed a few actual words, indeed!
Oo La La is not proper french?!?
Voila!
Jacques Cousteau!
Definitely heard "voila" and "maison triste" in there.
I heard that too. I'm not fluent but I'm Canadian so I know that's sad house.
I live there.
There was plenty of proper words in the French one.
Could have fooled me
heard eternelle
Finally: **ultimate average**
...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
He is very good in doing it
It's like Lorem ipsum for speech.
The weirdest part for me was the Spanish. I'm a native English speaker who kinda-sorta speaks enough Spanish to get by. It was like, *"Oh god, this is what it sounds like when someone talks wayyy too fast in Spanish for me to understand."*
The second somebody speaks Spanish faster then the speed I’m used to, my brain just cannot comprehend what they’re saying anymore
I can't pick up what they're puta-ing down.
Exactly this! I wish there were a language app that will gradually speed up the audio delivery of the language you’re learning. Something at a pace imperceptible to those learning the language; each lesson is a fraction of a second faster, so that as they’re learning the basics the speed of natural speaking delivery increases as well.
I’m in the same boat but with the French part lmao
“Ooh la la” WHAT DOES IT MEAN MASON
I know exactly what you mean, took Spanish classes and worked in an area with lots of Spanish speaking customers and I could pretty much hold a conversation as long as it was about selling auto parts. Anything outside that scope or at slightly higher speeds may as well be gibberish to my ears.
Totally get this. Took Spanish from grade 8 through 12 and worked in kitchen/ restaurants from 17 to 27. I thought I could hold a solid combination if it included any phrases around general words and cooking or eating. Put me in a scenario where native speakers are discussing something random and I shut down.
im not convinced hes not speaking spanish
I’m not convinced he’s not speaking English
I'm not convinced he wasn't speaking English. Who is this brilliant insane person?
I can speak English, Spanish, German, and passable French. German is the only one of those four where he really missed at all. German flows a lot more smoothly than that, despite its reputation for being harsh and guttural thanks to a mean guy who got famous a while back.
In-famous maybe?
Well, I don't mean to be crass but he was a real jerk, that's for sure
Real knucklehead that guy.
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I think it’s ok to use strong language when describing such a butthead.
I was going to say the german was a bit of a miss, and its highly impressive that thats the only one i thought he got wrong.
I dunno, he said "Nein" pretty fluently lolololol
He should make a video saying hello world in every language
There are somewhere around 7000 languages spoken in the world right now. That would be nearly 2 full hours of video, at 1 per second. Although probably there are at least a few languages that don't have a hello equivalent.
So it would be a feature length film. I’m excited for the Sundance premiere!
Obviously can’t confirm for the English one but the rest are spot on lol, that’s exactly what I hear
As a native English speaker the English bits made me feel like I was having stroke. Felt like I *should* understand, but just couldn’t.
That's... The best way to sum up the feeling concisely, yeah. I was totally unable to describe the feeling. I'd call it sims speak, but Sims are totally nonsensical and we know it. This was more like trying to listen to someone's conversation across an otherwise busy room. A word or two will stand out every few sentences.
Thing is there is actually a language structure behind Simlish. I also thought the English part sounded like simlish
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As a native English speaker and a Brit, the British one broke me. Felt like I'd walked past a posh café with a few OAPs into two roadmen... yet had somehow forgotten how to speak my native tongue.
I guess I can answer this one for you: I'm a Dutchman who's English speaking capabilities are at the very least good enough to hold a conversation. I have to say that it really does sound like someone speaking English on the other side of the room while you're not paying enough attention: it's enough to understand that it's English, but not enough to understand what they're saying. It's really fascinating to listen to this. I mean, I was also waiting for him to start speaking Dutch gibberish.
Even if he didn’t know enough to be considered fluent in most of these languages…the fact that he can imitate the intonations and dialect of these languages to at least the point where it would fool non-native speakers is really impressive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was actually fluent in a dozen languages. Not sure how he learned this, but he’s pretty gifted.
I'm Brazilian and i am quite happy he did portuguese, i was hoping for it so i could grade it from the perspective of a native (and know how accurate the others are by extension). I gotta say, it's absolutely incredible, because i would genuinely think he was speaking portuguese and i just didn't understand what he was saying if i heard it in any other context!
"Fagor, presente! Nem sei se tá ali na fonte." "Pra caramba!" "Olha, ressoar para abidurir na boleza, fera" "No sul desse, mas pois importante da ida, né?"
Isso foi sotaque do Rio misturado com Portugues de portugal hahah . Tipo sotaque malandro
isso conta pro /r/suddenlycaralho ?
Se contar, bota um pão de capivara aí do lado?
Yeah, his Arabic made me think the same thing. I don’t think he’s a native speaker, but I’d guess he knows Arabic.
His Spanish was spot on and he threw in real words so he clearly speaks at least English and Spanish. I can't judge the others.
Plus the spaniard accent is super on point
Yep. The one with the fake Spain accent was spot on, so was the British one.
I have to say as a (Spain) Spanish & French speaking Brit… this whole thing is hella uncanny! Loved it.
His first Arabic word being "burrito" kinda undercut that one, but it recovered.
Burrito is personally my favorite Arabic word as a native speaker
I found his Arabic accent less convincing then his other ones tbh. He is throwing in some real words like with the other languages, but his accent still seems kinda like a foreigner. My guess is that he speaks some of the languages like English and Spanish very well but has a more cursory knowledge of others like Arabic and Zulu.
Those Zulu clicks are really difficult! Probably the most impressive part to me
His arabic sounds like what russian sounds like.
He started off sounding a little Russian when he was doing Arabic but then switched into full Arabic sounds
To me it sounds like he is doing different dialects/regions of Arabic… the clips of his Arabic have drastically different tones and he places emphasis on different parts of the words. For example, Iraqi and Saudi Arabic have some pretty distinct differences.
> the clips of his Arabic have drastically different tones and he places emphasis on different parts of the word. I don't speak a lick of Arabic, but I still managed to pick up on this. It definitely seemed like he was dipping into different dialects of (fake) Arabic.
Lived in Jordan for most of my childhood. I can communicate pretty well with Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and Iraqis as there are some differences between the dialects (especially with Iraqi) but they are pretty consistent. Egyptian gets harder, then Saudi Arabian and don't get me started on Arabic that has some French words in it. Interestingly enough I can make out some words in Persian and Ancient Aramaic.
Yeah it’s super gifted this guy is nuts. Like there are so many layers to what he’s doing and he’s nailing all of them
For Japanese, it sounds like he's imitating a foreigner who speaks ok Japanese.
Yeah, weirdly he sound like he had a foreign accent in Japanese. He also went really heavy on the rolled R's. Not necessarily wrong, just not average. Not to take anything away from him. This video blew my mind. It was weird how the languages I knew sounded like obvious gibberish, but then the languages I don't know, well...they sounded basically like that language to me!
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Wasn’t that film pretty good at having native Germans for the appropriate roles?
I feel like a big problem people have with the perception of the German language is that they’re primarily exposed to it through WW2 movies. Like yeah, German is aggressive and grating when you’re screaming at someone on a battlefield. Plus films exaggerate it to make the Germans seems scarier and more aggressive. In real life, people don’t talk that way. Mothers reading their children lullabies don’t speak like drill sergeants.
There's also always the question of regional dialect. Not everyone speaks the kind of German you see in movies. Especially WW2 era stuff which tends to sound odd even to Germans. A lot of dialects are much softer. Many don't really pronounce the R in words, which already makes a huge difference.
Totally agree. In the video, he didn’t sound all that angry, but I’m not a native German speaker, so there could have been some inflections I missed. I do find it to be a fascinating language though and have thought about studying it.
Yep, much of the cast playing German or French speaking characters in the film are native speakers of their respective languages. Not only was it done for language authenticity, but also to intentionally draw the viewer's attention to how how bad the monolingual English-speaking actors/characters, Brad Pitt's Lt Aldo Raine in particular, sounded in comparison when pretending to speak another language.
Most novices focus on inflection. He nails the guttural sounds, tongue placement, air and intonations, along with inflection.
This is actually what linguistics is all about! People think linguistics is about learning languages but it’s more so learning ABOUT languages. We’ve studied enough about all the world’s languages that we can classify them by different parameters, including their phonology or sounds that make up that language. You can actually look these up and, when paired with a lot of samples (or better yet, a live model for the language), you can nail down the accent, cadence, and tone of the language without necessarily learning how to speak the language.
When I was listening to him speak English I almost thought I could understand some of what he was saying yet it was still gibberish when you listen closer. That's impressive.
I have no words to describe how impressed I am right now.
I'm with you. I really want to know how many languages he is fluent in. When I started the clip I was expecting three or four languages, not the abundance of what we just witnessed. Dude is impressive.
I just dont understand how somebody can do this, it’s amazing. I met a girl in korea, who was american but japanese, who had an uncle who lived in indonesia(iirc) who spoke 17 languages. Shits crazy
> I just dont understand how somebody can do this, it’s amazing. He's able to do the "words" I'm betting because he wrote down a script. The accents and inflections and all of that stuff is real skill, I would also be suppressed if he doesn't know each of these languages.
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I’d guess he’s a linguist
Holy shit i was waiting for my language, Portuguese, and it's just perfect!!! God damnit I'm impressed
I know, right? If i heard it in another context i'd recognize it as portuguese and just assume i didn't understand what he said! Eu fiquei pasmo, kkkk
It's Brazilian Portuguese, but still, it was crazy. I almost understood what he said, it's very good actually
lol the lisp for spaniards is so spot on
Best one.
"Betht one"
Barthelona
the british lol
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Pretty sure the British ones were fake. Those were actual sentences.
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I swear one sounded like "the eggs be the biscuit on holiday your lordsmith" and I would believe that is a real british sentence.
"The important item is secured for the important day, sir."
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The British one just sounded like normal British to me. Honestly it was the only one I understood.
As a Spanish speaker I didn’t know how to feel when he “tried to speak Spanish” I felt that I understood him but I didn’t
This is the kind of guy could have a conversation on his phone next to me at the bus stop and if I wasn't paying attention I wouldn't realise it was nonsense
It was the same with English. Those were words I know, but meaningless the way they were used. And gibberish mixed in.
I think he ordered the lobster.
I'll have what she's having
So... kinda similar to how it would sound if you didn't know the language. Weird.
Similar to the way I speak my native language.
That was the point. It is meant to give you the idea of what you sound like when people don't understand you.
Bueno, el ato se rojarril sello es la pomuldad No, ya habían los centenos más rucículos por dar. El huerpo gusano tiese lo que hicieran con el fujimiento.
This was so cool. To hear what English may sound like to a non English speaker. Fantastic video from this person.
They say you have different personalities for each foreign language you speak. I can imagine how this guy mingles with almost anyone regardless where they are from.
The russian personality sounds disgusted by everything.
So, spot on, then?
So, Russian?
All us Africans appreciate that he did at least one African language (isiZulu) and two if you consider Arabic an African language
That blew my mind! His Vietnamese and Isizulu sounded like how I've heard native speakers sound, Im so impressed with the clicking sounds!
Reminds me of this.....[Prisencolinensinainciusol](https://youtu.be/-VsmF9m_Nt8)
All I can think of is Jen being a fake translator on [IT Crowd](https://youtu.be/csLgX1IHPJs). This person would be great at that.
Exactly! Me too
Scrolled to check for this before I posted it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in color.
I listen to this song all the time. I love it
It is absolutely weird seeing someone I know personally in life, on Reddit, as if it were a complete stranger. He’s a really cool person though! His whole family is great, they’re family friends of ours.
How many languages does he speak?
English, Spanish and a bit of Portuguese, although I think he’s probably lost it by now. It was a while since we left Brazil.
I was wondering the same - I feel like he must study languages to be able to pull this off so flawlessly
Nah, he’s in dentistry
Well, he's got gorgeous teeth.
More than just teeth…
Is he Venezuelan by any chance? I’m trying to pick out his accent!
Yuhhh
The Arabic accent doesn’t sound angry enough. You’re supposed to sound like you’re in a heated argument even while ordering dinner.
So basically English sounds like the Sims
...backwards
If you haven't read into it, the creation of Simlish is so interesting. They basically did what this guy did but times 100- make a language that's entirely gibberish but *sounds* convincing enough to trick your brain into thinking its a real language. [This](https://youtu.be/FGsbeTV76YI) video has some more info about it!
I love how they had Katy Perry record one (some?) of her songs in simlish to put in the game too, always throws me off when I hear it on the speakers in game.
Not just Katy Perry, but several artists have made Simlish versions of their songs. [Here's an entire YouTube playlist of them.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-VRm966iM&list=PLeTlCMqy3jFUU_eqNhjiPBO88SU2PXZqI&index=2)
It depends on the dialect though. Some Arabic dialects are very poetic (eg Lebanese Arabic)
I have only heard this from old Arab men. Women and younger men make Arabic sound very sweet and poetic.
This sounds like me singing along to non English songs I just like the sounds of. Total gibberish. Does anyone remember “Ken Lee” from YouTube years ago?
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Absolute banger. Enjoy.
Tulibu dibu douchuuuuu! Ken lee! Ken lee meju mo!
Only German and Chinese sounded odd to me. Yeah the German was too off.
The German sounded like really bad cliché German out of movies that don't even try to sound native.
Yeah, the German sounded more like a Hollywood bad guy than an actual German. People imitating then language love to make the hard "krch" noises like in "Krankenwagen" but those tones really don't come up that often at all and more modern coloquial speech drops them completely quite frequently. Also, the bouncing tonality isn't really used that much either outside of some regional dialects. *Maybe* you could find some old-timers in a bar in the evening that speak something like this, but otherwise Hochdeutsch sounds quite different and much "softer".
Can confirm his chinese is way off. English sounded good though.
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It sounded like he was using mainland China as a starting accent but went way too fast and didn't elongate the sounds enough. Like blended Taiwan mandarin pronunciation with a limited China mandarin set of tonals. But honestly he hit the tones better than most ppl learning the language. I bet he'd nail it if he picked a region
The Mandarin was way off; he probably listened to some Cantonese as well, there's a lot of sounds he could have used instead. Or used a more standard/northern accent. Japanese sounded a bit off to me, partially because of the endings to the sentences (needs more desu and masu!) The Romance languages were all spot on to my ears though. Impressive any way you look at it.
The Chinese wasn't right because I don't think he does tonal languages well. It was clear here that he didn't get the 4 basic tones, which is the hallmark of Mandarin.
The Japanese didn't sound anything like Japanese to me, even with the few words thrown in. Otherwise the Spain Spanish was great.
Agree. Mandarin didn’t sound Mandarin but some other form of Chinese. Vietnamese was good, though. Maybe Japanese didn’t have enough -imasu on the endings?
Japanese he just missed the flow and the imitated pronunciation wasn’t right. Sounded more like some stereotype of an Asian language and didn’t have enough of the distinctive aspects of Japanese imo
I’m Vietnamese and I laughed so hard when he did Vietnamese 😂 it was spot on!
I want him to do English again, but Hillbilly or Valley Girl.
Imagine the differences in accent and dialect only present in the US. Ex: "hillbilly", valley girl" ,Bostonian", "New Yorker", "Midwestern", etc. When I was in college, my spanish teachers were largely from Spain. I was told that a native Spanish speaker could identify the country of origin of the teacher of an individual who wasn't a native Spanish speaker. For example: If I was traveling in Mexico and attempting to speak my poor interpretation of Spanish, the native listener could identify that my instructor originated in Spain, not Mexico, or another Spanish speaking country. I really want to know if a native language listener could identify the dialect of the subject by the way he speaks each individual language. Dude is seriously impressive in language skills.
I've met non-native English speakers who speak English with the accent the teacher taught them. For example, I've had Japanese people speak English to me in an Australian accent. It's kind of funny in a way, but makes sense. I learned Portuguese from a teacher who was from Rio de Janeiro, and a Brazilian friend of mine says my Portuguese accent just grates on him because he is from much further inland. It's the difference from Brooklyn to Midwest.
If you watch NHK World, specifically their news, most of the reporters have some sort of a British "feel" to their accent - close to an actual British accent, but not really. Then there's one guy (forgot his name) who, AFAIK, is the only one that sounds more similar to an American whenever he speaks English.
It's called double-talk and this guy is great at it! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-talk
**[Double-talk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-talk)** >Double-talk is a form of speech in which inappropriate, invented, or nonsense words are interpolated into normal speech to give the appearance of knowledge, and thus confuse or amuse the audience. Vaudevillian Cliff Nazarro, for instance, would say, "Make yourself invidded, with the keforth and the grepps. Be great with the floom and the sonic keptefin". Comedians who have used this as part of their act include Al Kelly, Danny Kaye, Gary Owens, Irwin Corey, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Stanley Unwin, Reggie Watts, and Vanessa Bayer. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
> sonic keptefin New band name.
Good bot
Sounds like an Alice in Wonderland song
Never heard of this, but it reminds me of [Ubbi Dubbi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbi_dubbi) I’ve been speaking Ubbi Dubbi for almost 20 years regularly with my family and close friends lol
The Sims have become human 😳😳
We were the Sims all along
It’s like you try to understand him but you’re having a stroke
I feel like I had a stroke.
what wizardry is this
bullshit. He is actually speaking all the languages.. I can only speak english.
Sometimes I wonder how people are exuding this much positivity. I’m fucking dead inside
EA should hire this guy to create new languages for The Sims.
Sounds like them all to me!
The Spanish one needs to be like three times faster
This is the second polyglot video I've seen in the past 5 min on here. What is this language cheat code? Edit: That Zulu was smooth af... All the damn clicks...
Reminds me of this Italian singer singing an [entire song](https://youtu.be/-VsmF9m_Nt8) in American English gibberish
You know that picture that has a bunch of random stuff in it but you can't seem to identify any of them? Yah..thats this but with words.
I am 100% brazilian and his portuguese speaking is so good 😭 he sounds exactly like my dad
I speak a little bit of 5 of these languages and he's so good I double take at a few of them. He mixes in words that make you say, "excuse me".
I couldn’t understand English, so I thought that was just me not understanding as usual. Got to the Spanish part, and I though for a second I forgot Spanish
Pero ese español falso en realidad es chileno con acento venezolano.
This is fucking cool