<p>As a native speaker of English, I cannot ever experience what it’d be like for a would-be ESL person to listen to Anglophones. So for those who think they have an idea what language English resembles aurally, or have been non-speakers at some point in their lives and have experienced unfamiliarity, what does it sound like? I’ve heard that it resembles Dutch, which sounds like softer German to me.</p>
<p>My German aunt doesn’t speak harshly at all…so yeah, English and German sound very similar to me.</p>
<p>English is a Germanic language. Sort of like with romance languages (they say if you speak French you can pick up Italian, etc), once you know one Germanic, the rest come pretty easily.
After four years of German, I could read Dutch.
I think the sounds themselves are not necessarily too similar…German is much more guttural, many sounds are made in the back of the throat. It also contains sounds never heard in English, such as the o-umlaut.<br>
Overall, though, I think German is closest to English
They don’t call them sister languages for nothing, you know!</p>
<p>Uh…ESL in Canada, when I’d just moved from Japan.</p>
<p>I thought it sounded like French (only class I ever failed when I was little – honestly, how the heck was I supposed to learn French when I couldn’t understand the lesson in English?). Of course, unfamiliar languages may just have sounded alike, since it sure as heck didn’t sound like Chinese or Japanese.</p>
<p>It really depends on one’s mother tongue and the lack of knowledge of other languages. Once you’re exposed to it enough, it doesn’t sound like anything else but itself.</p>
<p>English is a combination of romance and germanic languages*</p>
<p>My old french teacher learned English from a Chinese man. that’s a random fact.</p>
<p>A friend of mine who emigrated from Venezuela to the US said that when she first got here and didn’t yet understand English, it sounded to her like most of the words ended in “ts” – as in parts, hats, bits, etc.</p>
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<p>English is considered a Germanic language because it is directly descended from Anglo-Saxon. It has a Germanic structure and grammar. And it has also has a heavy influx of romance vocabularly. About 60% of modern English words derive either directly or indirectly from Latin.</p>
<p>she immigrated, not emigrated.</p>
<p>^^She did both. She emigrated from Venezuela and immigrated into the US.</p>
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<p>Frisian is even closer to English than is German. I’ve heard Frisian sentences that could be understood with no translation.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_language[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_language</a></p>
<p>haha, you changed it so it’s correct.
now I look crazy. :p</p>
<p>I think English sounds a lot like German, but I think German is more rough.</p>