One of the finest things about English, and the reason it is pre-eminent in Science and Aviation, is that it can be uniquely clear and un-ambiguous in the speech of someone who knows how to use it. (I believe that is part of the reason that French has long been referred to as the language of diplomacy, is that it can be quite subtle and bent to mean many things, so one can see why people have perceived the French language in that fashion)
It surrenders to a degree in the beauty and flow characteristic of Latin languages such as French and Spanish, as it can sound rather gutteral in comparison, but English on its own can also be flowing and beautiful.
On a humorous side, everyone knows that cultures often find the sound of a language of another culture worthy of humor. This isn’t a secret, and not only isn’t a secret, every single culture sees the humor up to and including the point of ridicule.
I was at a party once several decades ago, and a guy was doing a drop dead funny impression of a person from India speaking Hindi, complete with the sing-song inflection, and had us in stitches!
We talked about how widespread this trait of poking fun at other people’s languages is, and one of our group was a native German. He was laughing at the various imitations, and he said:
“Do you know what Americans sound like to Germans? They sound like this: ARK ARK ARK ARK!”
We just about fell on the floor at the sharp, loud, barking gutteral impression he made!
This is one of the evils of Leftism, that humor must be politically correct. It is destroying humor, and I am not alone in observing this.
When our party group made fun of what Germans sound like to us, the guy from Germany laughed as hard as everyone else, and turnabout was fair play for the Americans when we were made fun of.
Yes. I like to watch foreign films with sub titles to listen to the languages. Indian films are particularly interesting because often a Hindi conversation is punctuated with an English phrase.
What this generation needs is a binge weekend of Dean Martin Roasts. I'm amazed the Googzilla still allows them on YouTube.
Used to drink with a bunch of reprobates that adopted accents, as we engaged in alcohol fueled repartee...It was a blast. Peter Sellers is/was my favorite, when it comes to accents.
That’s a good story - I like that. Kind of reminds me of when I was a kid (1990’s). There was no taint of hatred anywhere due to race or sex (not amongst us kids, anyway), and political correctness was still made fun of.
Talk about joy-sucking. Nothing is funny to those people unless it’s some expression of hate for someone they disagree with.
There is a funny segment from the Graham Norton show where Mila Kunis and other guests are discussing Russian. She is fluent and loves the Russian language, but they all, including her, think it hilarious when it is pointed out that it sounds like Klingon.