Fake English!

April 13th, 2007
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The answer to a question that Megan and I used to discuss pretty frequently is being answered thanks to the wonder that is YouTube! Something that we used to ponder back while we were studying at Waseda was how English would have sounded to us, were we studying it as a foreign language. Or as a foreign language we weren’t studying – whichever. Being native English speakers, we felt like this wasn’t something we’d never really discover. We knew what our mimicry of foreign languages sounded like, but were incapable of faking English. Well, some guy on YouTube called “crehnquist” has got the ball rolling. Here’s the first video I’ve seen where someone successfully (in my opinion) fakes English.

German guy fakes English (YouTube)
Dude calls for fake language exchange (YouTube)
English speaker responds (YouTube)

What’s funny to me now is that as a person who has studied Japanese for a bit now, I understand how far off the fake Japanese of the guy behind the original video is. It sounds bad to me. And I listen to real Japanese that I don’t understand everyday. In spite of that, the languages which I don’t speak sounded like reasonable approximations. Is that weird or what? The phonemes might be right, but I guess you have to fake intonation, pacing, phrasing, and sentence construction too to make the whole thing work. I really hope some native speakers of other languages respond to his video. I wonder if my opinion of his “reasonable approximations” is shared by other folks. I wonder if a person who spoke Russian would listen and say “Man, his Russian sounds like poo, but his other stuff sounds pretty accurate!” Fun stuff.

On another note – some of the interesting things that they came up with involves faked English created by native English speakers. The 3rd video in the list up there is one example of a fluent English speaker faking it, though crehnquist mentions the gibberish of comedians like Stanley Unwin (YouTube) and Peter Sellers [UPDATE: (YouTube), skip to 2:20 to hear him demonstrate an American announcer using "American sounds" in lieu of real words.]. Simlish was also mentioned in passing. Anyway, I too hope that some legitimate non-English speakers get some fake English put up soon. Knowing something about the language seems like cheating in this game, doesn’t it? For instance, I couldn’t fake Japanese at this point, because I’d be trying to not speak in Japanese…not faking it…and my knowledge of the language would shape my attempted approximations. Besides, this is about what it sounds like to foreign people, or how foreign people pretend to speak in English, not about actually accurately duplicating the sound of English. Gibberish goes a long way in that respect, anyway. Anyway, I hope you guys found that interesting.

Oh yeah, and this blip hit my radar screen thanks to Digg.com’s Videos section.

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  • Ha ha - I'll see what I can do. The thing is, most of the people I come in contact with, while they cannot really speak English, have had formal English lessons in school. Also, I cannot use my students for this purpose...despite the fact that they routinely mock me (and therefore English)...the teacher-student relationship and all of that. There might be something I can figure out, though. Lemme see. ;-)
  • The videos are pure curiosity - like a lot of people, it seems, I've discussed the whole 'What would fake English sound like' thing with friends and thought, well, here's my chance to find out.

    To be clear, even though a minature Fake Language community has sprung up on YouTube, I'm still not satisfied that I know what genuinely Fake English sounds like - ie, someone gibbering away in their approximation of English in the same way I've done in 'Japanese'.

    I suspect it would take someone who has ready access to real non-English speakers (who can also speak their language) to really find out (nudge-nudge, wink-wink).
  • Wow! I'm surprised that you found my blog. It's an honor. I am pretty stoked about your fake language videos. Just wondering, are you studying them as an academic pursuit, or purely out of curiosity? I look forward to following the discussion as it unfolds. :-) Thanks for dropping by!
  • Hi, I'm crehnquist, the guy responsible for some of the videos you're talking about here.

    Glad you found them interesting. The critical points you raise are worthwhile.

    This was actually kind of what I was hoping would come out of the video - debate and discussion on blogs, etc. It's taken a few months since I posted it, but it's great to be able to read this stuff!
  • Megan
    Deas, Rob (you remember Rob, really tall guy, hung around with Wade sometimes?) posted this comment to my livejournal. I thought you might find it interesting, if you didn't already know it.

    In response to comments about faking English, I still think it wouldn't be so hard to fake it as a native speaker. You wouldn't be able to do it on the fly, for sure, but I think that if you thought it out, you would be able to make a good attempt at it.

    I think it's funny that YamaKiyo didn't like the Spanish, Chinese and Japanese that the guy spoke, but made no comment on the German. I thought the German was so-so, but the Chinese sounded okay to me. *laughs* The thing that impresses me the most is his accent. Even if the words he was saying sounded like crap, the way he changed his voice sounded pretty authentic (I can't speak to the Chinese, fo course). That's just cool.
  • As someone who has studied Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and now Korean, in that order...

    His Chinese sounds horrible - way too flat. No variation in tones.
    Japanese is also equally bad - not even close in my opinion.
    Spanish sounded a bit better in terms of rhythm, but he sure likes ending his sentences with "S" sounds, and what in the world is "pi?"

    The two examples of fake English were kind of interesting. Although I kind of want to hear fake English in other accents as well.

    I don't know how well I can fake English or Japanese, but it's pretty easy for me to pretend like I'm a Japanese person trying to speak English. I can also do the stereotypical gaijin accent in Japanese.
  • My sentiments exactly, Clay. For the same reason, I feel that people who are close to English can't truly fake it either.
  • I can't fake Japanese. I'm too close to it.
  • Yeah - I have the same problem with getting lost in YouTube. Same goes for the Digg Videos section. Ha ha. I only let myself get into that stuff when I have a lot of free time to kill and nothing that I need to be doing.

    And as cool as the videos are....I still want more...haha.
  • Megan
    So I could get lost on YouTube really easily. As it was I was watching something on French linguistics when I realized I still wanted to comment on this post... :D

    I think it would be easy to fake English if you were writing it out and going to present it to a camera the way the gentlemen on YouTube did. The guy with the curly blond hair had better fake English, and listening to his fake English gave the best approximation of how it would sound, I think. The German guy did a good job too.

    I have to say though, hearing the same fake English through all the different accents was awesome. Mostly because I was really jealous of the guy's ability to do accents.

    That was really awesome. Thanks, Deas.
  • Ha ha ha - you just admitted to singing in fake Japanese when nobody is around. I vote that you tape yourself and submit it for consideration. ;-)

    I agree with why you think it's hard to fake English as an English speaker. It also makes me wonder if using gibberish you could do different dialects and accents inside say, American or British English. I also want to hear a Japanese person speak in fake Japanese! That would be really interesting to me. :-)
  • Kathy
    I tried to do fake Japanese. I do try to speak it more than fake it. Buuut I think I can do it ok sometimes.....but better when I sing haha. I actually make up Japanese often when I feel like singing a "Japanese" song- these are usually actually made up tune I create when I'm bored and alone although I sometimes since my "fake Japanese" to the melodies of real songs. Basically, it's a lot easier to sing fake Japanese. =P

    As for fake English, definitely a lot harder. I think it would be possible if I made up a script or something and spoke it, because when I try fake English I concentrate too much on making the words "not real" that I lose my natural speech/stress patterns.
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