Man’s video revealing what English language sounds like to people who don’t speak it goes viral
What English sounds like to foreigners: Video of multilingual man revealing what the language sounds like to people who don’t speak the language goes viral
- TikToker shares what English language sounds like to non-English speakers
- @languagesimp shared that native English speakers sound like Sim
- The video has been viewed eight million times and has amazed English speakers
A man has revealed what the English language sounds like to non-English speakers, sparking confused reactions from TikTok users.
TikTok user @languagesimp shared that native English speakers sound like Sim – from the popular Sims video game franchise – to non-native speakers.
In a clip that has been viewed more than eight million times, he shares a short, nonsensical speech to demonstrate how the English language will sound to someone who does not speak or understand it.
The video has left English speakers a bit confused, with one TikTok user commenting, “I felt like I had to understand what he was saying.”
A man revealed what the English language sounds like to non-English speakers, sparking confused reactions from TikTok users
TikTok user @languagesimp shared that native English speakers sound like Sim – from the popular Sims video game franchise – to non-native speakers
A second added, “You tell me people hear me talk like a Sim?”
Another wrote, “I feel like I understand what he’s saying, but I don’t.”
A fourth person said, “This sounds good…but it isn’t…”
This is because researchers say Multicultural London English (MLE) could become the dominant dialect in Britain over the next 100 years.
The dialect is an amalgamation of languages from cultures outside Britain. For example, the greeting ‘wagwan’ (what’s going on?) comes from Jamaican English.
MLE speakers have largely immigrant roots and have also replaced the Cockney dialect in working-class areas of the capital, meaning pronouncing your Hs could be back in style within the next 100 years.
The dialect first took hold when immigrants who did not speak English or only knew it as their second language spoke Patois, an English-based creole language with Jamaican roots.
Professor Matt Gardner, lecturer in linguistics at the University of Oxford, said: ‘We don’t speak in the same way people did in Shakespeare’s or Chaucer’s time.
London, the economic and cultural hub, is driving these changes. We’ve seen that in the last 100 years and we’ll see it in the next 100 years.’
It means that using the word ‘man’ as a pronoun instead of ‘I’, ‘you’ or ‘he’ could become commonplace in the UK.