I'm a huge nerd

I have spent hours, probably days of my life looking up stuff like this.  It's so interesting to me...

I love different accents and I love different phonetic sounds languages make.

Oh where to begin?  I'm like a kid in a candy store on youtube with this stuff.

So here's the thing... since you speak English, you can't fully understand or appreciate all the sounds, the rhythm and the flow of your own native tongue... crazy right?  When you hear someone speak English, all you hear are words and you're too used to the rhythm and sounds to really point out the uniqueness.  I found two videos that just use the phonetic sounds of English to show what English would sound like to someone who doesn't know the language.

This first one is a super old song that was filmed for an Italian tv show.  The first bit before the music is Italian, but when the music starts you'll hear what English sounds like to non-speakers.  You will think you hear words, and some of the sounds do kinda make words, but it's all gibberish.  Unfortunately, it's blocked from being used on blogger, so you need to go to youtube... but it's worth watching.

The crazy thing I noticed from that video is that is how many "d, g, b and j" sounds there are in English.  I always thought it was kind of a harsh language, but all the sounds are pretty soft.  The rhythm is a little jerky though.

This second one is similar, but it's spoken instead of sung.  Sorry, they for some reason do cuss a little even though it's supposed to be gibberish.  But, it's a really cool example to what it might be like if you were at a restaurant in America, and you didn't speak English, and you heard it being spoken at the table next to you.

The first time I watched this, I really thought they were speaking English but I couldn't hear it, so I kept turning up my speakers.

Next, I'm going to show you some different accents within our own language, it's beautiful how many variations there are in English alone.

This woman is just super impressive.

I saw this next video a long time ago.  I don't know why, but I think it's funny, when in reality, it's probably kinda stupid.  I am guessing he has his own web show, I had never heard of him.  But he is challenged to speak in his best American accent on some show that was trying to raise money for a charity.  His accents aren't really great, but it's kinda funny still and he has fun while doing it.  It starts about 51 seconds into the video if you wanna skip a bit of talking.

This next one shows a good example of a variation between British English and American English.  It's called the glottal stop.  A lot of times, in British English, letters just seem to disappear.  For example: the word "butter" could become "buh-er."  There are also some pretty good stereotypes in this, kinda funny.

Okay, I know I just gave you a bunch of nerdy, long, boring videos, but like I said in these posts: Why be Bilingual- parts one, two, and three, I really think there are just so many interesting things about language.  The intricacy and beauty that languages have, even our own, is just overwhelming to me.  I might revisit this later, I'm sure I'll watch more videos soon.