How English sounds to non-English speakers

Brian and Karl1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2013–2017

YouTube

comedy · general · evergreen · 2013–2017 on HN

'Skwerl' is a short film by Brian and Karl made entirely in fake English, imitating how English sounds to people who don't speak it. It was made for Kino Sydney and shown on QI.

HN cites it as the best-known example of gibberish that mimics the sound of a language, in threads about fake languages and nonsense imitations.

Language & linguistics Stand-up & sketch comedy #fakelanguage #shortfilm #accents #linguistics

3 comments from Hacker News

@tehmaco2017-07 · in “Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer”

There's a short film on YouTube that explores that idea: ▶ this video It's a very strange experience hearing it!

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@niccaluim2015-12 · in “Recurrent Net Dreams Up Fake Chinese Characters in Vector Format with TensorFlow”

I wonder what RNN-generated fake Latin characters would look like. Sort of a handwriting version of that "what does English sounds like to non-English-speaking people" video. ( ▶ this video )

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@CKKim2013-01 · in “It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something ”

A similar effect can be heard in "Skwerl (How English sounds to non-English speakers)": ▶ this video (speaking starts at 0m30s). It's not quite as good, is it? I wonder if this effect is easier to achieve in a song or if it's more a case of how much time, talent, and effort goes into making it.

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