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Home  >  Teaching English • Uncategorized  >  What Does American English Sound Like?
Posted inTeaching English Uncategorized

What Does American English Sound Like?

Posted By Becky Ances Posted on December 30, 2009
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When American’s want to parody what Chinese sounds like we (offensively) say “Ching chong wing wong.”
When we want to parody Swedish we say “Smorgish, borgish, upsadasee.” (a la Swedish Chef.)
When we want to parody Italian we say “Now dat’s a spicy-a meatball.” (Sorry Italian people, you can blame commercials in the early 90’s for that one.)
So what does American English sound like when a foreigner parodies it? I never gave it much thought until now. But once I found the answer I realized it was a question that was worth asking. Without further ado may I present to you Italian actor/singer Adriano Celentano singing “Prisencolinensinainciusol” a song with jibberish words that sounds like English to a foreigner.
(It’s also quite a catchy tune and who could resist that awesome 70’s style.)

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today’s Big Thing.

Personally, if you had asked me what American English sounded like to foreigners I might have said something like, “Heeeyy yall,” but I like his version better.

Tags: English foreigner Italian
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3 Comments

  1. erick
    December 30, 2009 at 6:34 am

    Great, and very catchy. Can’t get it out of my head. I found a video that has the “translation” of the nonsense words.
    http://soubory.com/en/video/Prisencolinensinainciusol-with-English-subtitles-S00Br2SSrY8/

    Reply
  2. Becky
    January 1, 2010 at 9:43 pm

    Yeah, isn’t a surprisingly good song! Thanks for the link, but I can’t watch the video here. Video’s seem to be the most blocked things here in China. 🙁

    Reply
  3. american english
    January 10, 2010 at 12:39 pm

    Sounds like this is not Adriano Celentano’s voice 🙂

    Reply

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