9 INSANELY CHALLENGING English Accents: Can You Name Them?
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🤷🏼♂️🌏 Think you can guess the native countries from their English accents? This game is trickier than you might think. Brag in the comments with your wins!
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Intro
0:13 – Accent 1
1:25 – Accent 2
2:15 – Accent 3
3:17 – Accent 4
4:02 – Accent 5
5:05 – Accent 6
6:20 – Accent 7
7:35 – Accent 8
8:36 – Accent 9
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
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speaking ONLY English for 1 day! (thai student ver) นักเรียนไทยพูดแต่อังกฤษหนึ่งวัน?!
Speaking English With Thai Accent (Tenglish)
Ready for another accent challenge? 👉🏼https://youtu.be/atjQLPMZ4jc?si=5TO9smHkb70EmuQf
People who learn Arabic complain that the Arabic dialects from North Africa to the Middle East are completely different.
Just look at English and Chinese!
Note: if you study the standard form of a language, then you will not have this problem.
Arabic Dialects Are different because they share one same Root which is Classic Arabic or Fussha mixed with Berber, French mostly, Turkish, now lots of American words, while each country have different vocabulary of the words they use, that’s why it’s confusing…and different pronunciations of the letters as well which indicates the geographical origin of the speaker !! English is not a language compared to the Ole English is completely different it’s a Germanic language mixed with Danish or Scandinavian, while Hebrew was a dead language for ages, they revived it, now a half a dozen or more speak it while it’s just like Arabic but a bit twisted if u know what am sayin’ or what I mean. 🙂
I feel like a bit of a nerd most of the time, but I can see that I’m in good company here.
In the past few months, I’ve detected an English accent to within 20 miles.
Yes; the accent of Burton on Trent is neither West Midlands nor East Midlands.
Great video.
Thank you.
My step-dad was from Newcastle upon Tyne (Geordie?)but he spoke with a Received Pronunciation. He received it across his bottom in some piah public school.
I got 5-9, not bad!
1. Russian (got it wrong, Ukrainian) 2. Sweden (got it right) 3. Romanian (got it right) 4. Hebrew (got it right) 5. Cantonese (got it right) 6. Italian (got it wrong but close enough, Sicilian) 7. Nigerian (got it wrong, Swahili/Kenyan) 8. Greek (got it right) 9. Vietnamese (got it wrong, Thai)
Want to hear your accent in a foreign language? Try recording yourself. You’ll probably discover it’s not a good as you think! 😂
I’m going to start doing that! I’ll start recording myself learning French, Spanish, Italian, and German.💪 Hope I’m not gonna embarrass my future self too much!
I agree!
When I was younger if I sounded even sort of fluent I would think “wow I sound like a native” but then would wonder why native speakers would laugh at me
I got Swedish, Romanian, Hong Kong/Cantonese, Greek and Thai right. I thought Ukrainian was Russian, Israeli was Turkish, Sicilian was Arabic (really blew that one) and Kenyan was Trinidadian English.
I thought Sicilian was Arabic too
tons of Arabic influence on Sicilian pronunciation so this isn’t much of a stretch at all
I find the Israeli accent of spoken English very unique and fascinating since I’m an almost fluent speaker of Hebrew myself (been learning over five years now). Although I have heard sometimes some subtleties in some Israeli accents I’ve come across; in cases where they speak American English or with a slight American accent the rhoticity is there somewhat and you can tell instantly along with the cadence. In other cases I’ve heard Israeli accents with a British slant if they’re speaking UK English meaning r’s are dropped with certain words and it’s almost “Oh, yes, darling. Twinings, twinings. Tea, dear?”. In a good way I must add. 😂
To me, the Hebrew giveaway is that “ehhhh” they do instead of “umm” ..the “ehhhh” is frequent and pronounced, at least in Israel it is, and the IsraeliArabs don’t do “ehhh” when speaking Heb lol (Arabs be like 🤌 “Yella! Yellllah” )
@Lavender TrebuchetThat’s specifically known as ‘אם/Em…’ what you’re talking about. Yeah, fascinating otherwise.
I am a lot more conflicted about accents…
Yes, they can be lovely but only as long as they don’t impede comprehension. While an English native may be able to negotiate most foreign accents, one must also remember that English is often used as a lingua franca between two people neither of whom is a native (a Thai and a Czech, a Mexican and a Cantonese, etc.).
Therefore, don’t drop your “listen and repeat” drills just yet. A bit of an accent is ok, but only just a bit.
9:31 Err Indonesian isn’t a tonal language and we roll our Rrrrrr like Spanish/Italian speakers so we don’t sound like our Thai friends at all. We might sound a tiny itsy bit like our neighbors in the Philippines whenever we speak in English (but unlike most Filipinos who are fluent in English we don’t really speak the language LOL).
And despite being close neighbors, our English sounds nothing like them Malaysians; being ex-colonies of the British Empire, Malaysia and Singapore are the closest relatives in Southeast Asia with their Manglish and Singlish. I have videos in which I speak in English on my channel if you want some examples on how an Indonesian would sound like.
I love my accent. Its unique and distinctive. Im from Hawaii and we speak Pidgin English. A classic plantation soup of language. Even within the islands, a local can tell what area u from based on how u speak Pidgin.
Are you an English teacher
@sercan nope
That is interesting and reminds me of Creole
I only got Swedish and Israeli lmao.
Unbelievable, I only got the Hong Kong accent right. 🗿
I was living in Canada for two years and I got surprised when I was told that even if I had a strong accent, it was not the classical Spanish accent the Spanish native speakers have when they speak English. Even though I’m Mexican I unconsciously developped a weird and maybe original accent.
Heritage or not, I’d say it’s still preferable that a person learning a new language will attempt their best to adapt to a common accent of it, especially if they move to a place where it’s spoken so it’s expected the person will imitate their surrounding’s accent through immersion.
I’d say as an Israeli, the 4th example is when someone (here probably on purpose) completely doesn’t try to refine their English pronunciation. There are actually some Israelis who’ve been living in the USA for decades and still sound like this, perhaps because they feel they would sound ridiculous if they were to “fake an accent”.
And while an Israeli accent in English is likely understandable to most, when I visited London recently, on some occasions speaking to immigrants of South Asian origin (possibly Pakistani) proved almost incomprehensible to me when their accent was entirely unadjusted.
This of course could also happen with native English accents that are less familiar on a global level.
I agree that people learning a new language should sound close to the general accent of that country, but too much. I cringe a bit when I hear British people put on a really thick French or Italian accent.
@Zomerset Perhaps if you’re British and feel like you’re watching another brit making an impression, you get a cringing effect (mirroring their own supposed feelings which I mentioned earlier, of feeling like you fake an accent and sound ridiculous).
But I think to a native listener it would sound more natural even if the accent is only half-accurate.
The clips are too short to identify most of them other than the general group and in general most of these activities ends are fairly rarely encountered. And most of these countries have significantly different regional accents themselves so an individual speaker may not have an accent that is particularly typical of a speaker of the “preferred” native dialect of their country.
I guess I have a North Welsh-North Carolinian hybrid accent. I doubt anyone would have guessed mine!
The video example for accent 7 was interesting! Them being unable to pronounce diagnosed and somehow turning it into “diagonized” (those are so different, I’m not even sure how that happened!) reminded me of another accent video you did that showed folks in Miami using the non-existent word “supposebly” lol I bet you could make a whole video on little words like these that get morphed into other words in some dialects because the speakers just can’t seem to pronounce them for whatever reason, and it becomes something unquestioned by the locals.
Yep. On the W Coast, we don’t enunciate the following 2 words differently, the way New Yorkers do (they say them each distinctly, we pronounce them identically:
Hairy …and… Harry
😂
Let’s see… I guessed Swedish on my own, Romanian after you showed the guy teaching how to do the accent, Israeli when you said it was one of the oldest languages (I was guessing Iranian before that). That’s all.
And I don’t know what accent I have. I was raised in Louisiana by parents from Montana and California with many older siblings after they traveled around the country in the military, near an Air Force base so there were lots of other people like that, and I picked up words and pronunciations in a deliberate sort of way instead of intuitively. I lived the last 30 years in California and I’m now in Texas. My accent and indeed my regional speech are both kind of a hash at this point.
Lmao I thought the Sicilian guy was from Louisiana😂
I didn’t get any right, but I enjoyed the video. I also find accents fascinating, especially in the UK where the accent can change dramatically in such a short distance (i.e. Manchester and Liverpool)