Fuddland

Here’s the question I’ve recently been asking whoever will listen: as an English speaker, I can — if I’m feeling mildly offensive — imitate the sounds of other languages to give a caricature of somebody from that part of the world. For example, I can make certain noises, peppered with one or two words I’ve picked up over the years, that could be identified as “French”, “Italian”, “German” or “Chinese”, without actually knowing how to speak the language.

But what are the words and/or noises that correspond to somebody speaking English? I suppose there’s a fair chunk of accent involved, so let’s narrow it down and ask what would you do to imitate an English-speaker from a certain part of the world, without using more than a handful of genuine words? I think this is very difficult to imagine if you already speak English fluently, but perhaps bilingual folks have more of an insight.

[If it helps, I’ve found that saying “ears” is a good way to imitate an extremely upper-class person saying, “Yes.”]

#1

Daisy | 2006 / 09 / 12 – 19:25

South Wales valleys:

ambag (handbag)
yerrs (ears and years)
ponzee-etta (stress on the “ett”)
over by yerr (here)
now in a minute (now)

Will think up some more now in a minute :-)

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