I once asked a German colleague what English sounds like. She didn't get my question at first, but then I imitated the sound of German for her, "eechshanschplakengooberskratchen" and she came back with, "Bow dow now dow gow dow bow". I think we both learned something that day.
Hilarious and a Spanish friend of mine said English to their ears is a plethora of ‘S’ sounds which makes there ears bleed. Yess, suss, diss, soss, shuss, liss etc…
A lot of the humour relies on the 'ish' part of Swedish. Ish being sort of, similar to, a crude example of. So he's a Swede...ish chef, rather than a Swedish chef.
This is the concept behind 'Simlish', the language of all spoken dialogue in The Sims games. In order to save on localisation across the MANY languages of Europe, the developers deliberately got voice actors who could speak gibberish that COULD be any number of languages (with more of a Romance/Germanic flavour for simplicity) but give it the right emotional inflection to sell what the line is going for. Apart from common keywords like 'sul sul' for 'hello' there is little internal consistency, but it parses surprisingly well
@@slake9727Well, if you look at English and American together, it can be seen that all they have in common are the letters "i" and "e".. Hope this helps.
The reason Prisencolinensinainciusol is made up was because this period was the time American music got really popular in Europe, so to make a point that Italians (or Europeans in general) would listen to anything sounding remotely like American English, Adriano released Prisencolinensinainciusol. His experiment worked because it became a hit in the countries you said
In the first round of one of the first series of Dutch Idols, there was a young woman who sang Killing Me Softly. Her version had the jury in stitches, because she sang “Strong in my pants with his fingers”, and she didn’t have a clue why that was so funny.
@@JordanDeeb28 I couldn't find her whole audition or the judges' reaction, sadly. But in this mash-up she's the first one :) ua-cam.com/video/BllaYxxnxYM/v-deo.html
I think Young Americans by David Bowie has the greatest number of unintelligible lyrics Ive ever heard in my life. 'Her bread went and begs off the bathroom floor we, liquid justice these 20 years just to have to die for the 50 mohair' (and so many more!)
As an outback Australian, yep, we do talk like that, and we also like throwing in completely contradictory elements that make complete sense to us 'Yeah, nah' and we can derive infinite depths of inflection from 'eh'
It took me several reads of your comment to get it punctuated correctly, I hope. I kept concluding the you were telling us the (very weird) name of your deity. If you're asking 'is Stephen's Aussie accent perfect?', the short answer is 'no'. The long answer is 'perfect for which part of Aus?'. And still the answer is 'no'. It's close, even fair to good, as long as he doesn't say much. The more he says, the worse it becomes. It might pass outside Aus, for non-Aussie listeners. But ANYwhere within Aus it would be immediately spotted as fake.
@@trueaussie9230 Yes. The Australian accent is very difficult to duplicate, particularly if it's done for any length of time. Off the top of my head I can't think of any non-Australian who's managed it.
Ken Lee is actually from Bulgaria on a show called Music Idol (their American Idol), not Malaysia. Malaysia's just grouped with other countries like Singapore, Philippines, and Taiwan and called Asia's Got Talent. Don't diss the woman! Her confidence that the song was called Ken Lee and what she was singing was English is something I admire. Truly inspires us all
As a Malaysian, I can attest to this. However, we did have a Ken Lee singing contest here in Malaysia almost a decade ago when the Bulgarian singer's version went viral. That's probably why people thought it was a Malaysian thing when it actually wasn't.
Also they missed out the best ever gibberish performance. It was from from Paul Whitehouse doing the 'I was very, very drunk at the time' sketch, which he did brilliantly for several seasons of the Fast show.
As an Australian I whole heartedly approve of Stephen Fry's Aussie accent! Between the heartburn and Hillsy's eg I realise the Aussie accent is just drunk and verbatim 😂
There’s a character in the novel The Name of the Rose that speaks sentences that totally mix several European languages. In the movie he’s played by Ron Perlman because he speaks most of those languages and could pull it off very convincingly. It’s very difficult to do it and not sound forced.
I'm only proficient in two languages and my brain freezes every time I need to switch between the two, especially when I'm not expecting to have to switch. Think of a beginner driver trying to shift gears and almost stalling...
I think if you NOT speak a language, it's easier to imitate anything you want. As soon as you have knowledge on pronounciation you start to add it, to your speaking.
In Israel, l got a lift with a Russian truck driver who couldn't speak a word of English. He played a tape of Smokie's greatest hits, happily singing along to "Living next door to Alice." Sounded like "Linnging exfloor tuatlas."
I’m English, my husband is Australian. We were absolutely lost in translation for about three months when we met. He couldn’t really understand everything I said, and I definitely couldn’t understand him….but, he was handsome and kind, so I just shrugged it off 😂
The American television show "WKRP" had a song over the credits with lyrics that people could just not quite understand. Most had a mondegreen version they thought was right. Turns out the songwriter was scat singing what he expected to be a saxaphone melody, but the show producers loved it because no one can understand the words to rock songs anyway.
I remember the Allo Allo episode where the Germans were trying to sound like British airmen to fool the French Resistance. The would say "Fa Fa Fa" because that is what English sounded like to them. And of course, Officer Crabtree thinking he sounded like a native French speaker.
It was very clever how they all spoke English, but still managed to convey what their native language was and what language they were supposed to be speaking at the time.
The Ketchup Song /Asereje/ Ragatanga is also a case of "this sounds a bit like english to me". It is a parody of Rapper's Delight. The song is about Diego, a probably latino guy, that is euphoric to sing his favorite song, but he doesn't know the lyrics, so he sings: Aserejé-ja-dejé De jebe tu de jebere seibiunouva majavi an de bugui an de güididípi Which is suppose to be: I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie To the hip hip hop-a you don't stop the rock It to the bang-bang boogie, say up jump the boogie To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat It is not word for word, but you can see clearly at: - The beggining: "I said a hip, hop, the hippie" with "Asereje,-ja-deje" - The middle: "The hippie to the hip hip hop" with "Dejebe tu de jebere" - The End: "of the boogie, the beat" and "de buigui an deguidipi"
I’ve listened to that song about 1000 times at parties, and then at uni, and then again in my sad adult life, and I’ve only just noticed that. I wrote my uni diss on Spanish popular music and I still didn’t know 😂😂😂
Weirdly enough, i genuinely thought that first rap song WAS in English when I first heard it, but I was just having trouble hearing the words properly (I'm hearing-impaired, and there were no faces to lip-read, so that was plausible for me.) So yeah, for all you normal-hearing people... that's also kind of like what being hearing-impaired feels like.
Same. I'm technically not hearing impaired, but I often have much difficulty understanding people without seeing their lips too. Made the pandemic difficult with everyone wearing masks 😂
I've learned English as a second language and I first heard the song AFTER doing so. I can understand English almost perfectly, except in song lyrics; I genuinely thought it actually was English until I looked up the text.
@@twentyeight602 I have strong reason to suspect I'm ADHD, and as far as I know I don't have Auditory Processing Disorder, but I did look it up for a writing project and man, does it sound close to instances I've encountered in life many times. Those times where the person has just spoken gibberish at you, and you're aware that it's gibberish, and then your brain turns it around a bit and realizes, belatedly, exactly what was said, or at least enough of it to get the right gist and to divide the words the right way. Now that you've mentioned ADHD, I'm going to be wondering if that's my ADHD brain at work. (In Auditory Processing Disorder, it's a little like dyslexia but for audio, not being able to easily parse it and figure out how the incoming sounds map to words to concepts to phrases and sentences and such. In my fic, both Clint Barton and Bucky Barnes have it, but Bucky didn't realize (until talking with Clint) that it's an actual brain problem and not just him being dumb, inattentive, or the like, which is what he was always told growing up -- the condition was discovered a little *after* the war ended, so Bucky never had the benefit of the medical community recognizing that it existed.)
It'd be interesting to have people who's native languages are from different language families record what they think English sounds like and see if there's differences. I'm curious if say, a German's perception of English is different from a Korean person.
I was in Iraq at one time and stopped by an Aussie outpost, and I absolutely shit my pants laughing when their translator came out and had a full on bogan accent. Couldn't concentrate, forgot what I was there for. Maybe not relevant to this vid, but it reminded me. Good times.
In the early 90's Ace of Base was very popular in the former Soviet Union. The song "All that the wants" was particularly popular. However, those were not the lyrics. Everyone sang it as "Ooo machi boss"
Adrian Celentano was name checked in Ian Dury's 'Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 3) - "Saying okey-dokey, sing-a-long a Smokie Coming out of chokie John Coltrane's soprano, Adie Celentano Beuno Colino"
I once had to do an assignment on nonsense verse in highschool and it was one of my great delights to discover The Jabberwocky had been translated into multiple languages.
I can't believe that none of them have heard of Adriano Celentano. I live in Turkey and he was always very famous even here, since my childhood. Many of his films have played in theaters here in the 70's and 80's. For quite some time he was as famous as a Hollywood star.
In general England tends to culturally isolate itself, especially when it comes to music. For example on national radio u will only ever hear English or American songs, unlike other European countries where they play songs from all over Europe.
No idea if you have ever seen it, but there is a bar in Antalya, with pictures on the wall of famous Turkish film stars, who all look, *almost* like famous Hollywood stars from previous decades. There's "Charlie Chaplin", "Yul Brynner", "Sophia Loren", "Elizabeth Taylor", "Clark Gable" and dozens of others.
Haahahaa.. I can relate. When I was 5, me and my sister before we actually learned proper English in school, our parents only spoke to us in our native tongue, but as little kids we only mostly watch English shows and cartoons without subs, so some words, and the accent and the dictions are like very familiar to us, so we imitate them and play pretend that we speak in English when we play. It's hilarious how we understood one another speaking gibberish English and know what the other is trying to say. I can't wrap my head around that. Mannn... kids imagination and creativity are truly remarkable sometimes.
English speaking kids do this anyway (and probably other kids in other cultures). Your vocab isn't fully developed AND (in many cases as a child) you don't understand the concepts being discussed so you just substitute the words you do know and come up with an entirely different meaning eg. the way kids misinterpret many Christmas carols
a funny thing for non english speakers is when you think you hear something in your language in an english song. most famous examples in France would be : Metallica : New blood comes to earth, and quickly they subdure --> nous battons des oeufs, et cui-cui, ils sont durs --> we are beating eggs, and twit-twit, they're hard-boiled. Ray Charles: Makes me feel so good --> J'ai des puces aux c*uilles --> I've got flees on my balls and David Bowie: Ground control to major tom --> grand contrôle de mes têt0ns --> great control over my t1ts.
@@imhalida Well, if it had happened in somewhere in Western Europe or the States, he would definitely remember it correctly but because it's Eastern Europe, it might as well have happened in Eastern Asia.
It's a little like that with Norwegian vs Dutch. And can I say I love this "we are the world" feel here. Love to all.❤️ And don't do the thing, Putin. The world is to good of a thing.
This is priceless 😂 especially the gibberish bit with the Aussie bloke, my boyfriend is Australian, and over the phone that's EXACTLY how he sounds when he's drunk 🤣🤣🤣 like a pirate underwater. But more than once when I'm drunk, he's told me to slow down because my dialects get too thick, so I guess it's mutual 😂
Adam himself did a whole famous bit on languages. And the concept of hearing English as a non english speaker and stereotypical language “sounds.” I’m a bit surprised he didn’t roll into any of that material during this bit
When I worked for one of the larger tech companies back in 2001, I was on a conference call with two gentlemen from our Greenock, Scotland office. I knew they were speaking English but I couldn't understand a single word other than 'Aye'
I had a couple of academic acquaintances (American / anglophone Canadian) who were able to communicate with a Scotsman better in French than in English
@@geoffroi-le-Hook I went to Montreal once with a friend, neither of us knowing any French, having a waitress who barely knew English... we actually managed to communicate with her using high school *Spanish.*
I once had the experience of spending some time with a couple of people from somewhere in rural New Zealand, and it took me some time to be able to parse just about anything they said, mainly because they were speaking a dialect that mixed up just about all of the vowel sounds (e.g. "friend" was pronounced "freend").
Every time I watch one of those ‘what English sounds like to foreigners’ I feel like I’m having a stroke because you wouldn’t think it would work but it works better than anything
That celentano song is actually from 1972, but the version played here is a remix from 1992, that's why it sounds more modern than one would expect. The original sounds pretty cool actually.
Point of order - the version of Prisencolinensinainciusol they played is a more modern remix with dance music drums and electronic bits. Both versions are bangers but the 1973 version is better for sounding more organic: ua-cam.com/video/-VsmF9m_Nt8/v-deo.html
Yeah, if a song sounded like that in 1973, it wouldn't just be "ahead of its time", but probably a result of some time-travel shenanigans. The fact that none on the panel can spot this couldn't *possibly* be from the 70'e is a bit worrying.
That is almost certainly something to do with "rights issues" i.e the law of copyright. The BBC is one of very few organisations that pays proper heed to such things.
I always think of Margarita Pracatan the Cuban singer on the Clive James Show in the 90s whenever anyone mentions 'English by a foreigner'. Her rendition of popular songs, like "Hello" by Lionel Richie, were hilarious! 😅😅😅 It's available on UA-cam.
You must look up the late swedish entertainer Jokkmokks-Jocke performing his number 1 hit Gulli-Gullan in english. He didn’t know english 😊 Fantastic character
the song "Asereje" by Las Ketchup is a similar story to the Mariah Carey story. The song is about a Latino boy who loves Sugar Hill Gang's "Rappers Delight" but doesn't know the words. ("Aserejé-ja-de jé, de jebe tu de jebere" = "I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie to the hip hip hop...")
Did he also insinuate that Mariah Carey had written the song Without You? If so, Badfinger are turning in their grave. Actually I’m not sure if they’re dead but the song is supposedly cursed.
Growing up in Sweden hearing english I often talked this kind of jibberish or "Ken Lee-d" existing songs (like some did with ABBA, hackenary sisters instead of How can I resist you?) Then I learned english in school but can still remember some "lyrics" I sang to songs, and laugh
If you listened to that and thought, "crikey, that really does sound ahead of its time," that's because it was a remix. The 90s drum loop was added later, as was the delay effect on the horns that also contributes to the 90s dance music vibe. The original backing sounds much more of its time, but the vocals are still pretty extraordinary.
Adriano Celentano was very popular while I was growing up in Spain during the 1960s. Many of his songs are familiar and he also had a great sense of humour.
Adding a couple actual words to the giberish really sells it, even as an English speaker. When you hear foreign dialogue of a familiar language like French or Spanish you'll often pick up one or two words. Also, Stephen does a weird thing that's common for English people doing Italian accents. When he says Adriano he adds an A after the D. I guess we do this because Italian annunciates all it's vowels when we tend to drop a lot of them so it makes it sound more Italian to us (and less so to actual Italians)
I think the Adriano thing might also be because rolled R's don't really exist like that in English, so it's easier to say after a vowel rather than a D.
I love that Aussies know exactly what Adam Hills was saying. I’d love to know if non-Aussies know? I never realised our language really was just.. noise 😂
I love this except Without You is not Mariah's song... it's the Welsh group Badfinger's but the guy who popularized it and has what I would consider the offical version that Mariah was covering was Harry Nilsson. And that version is perfect.
A group of us included some Swedish exchange students, and we asked them how they pretended to speak English when they didn't know English - like kids do. Their response: "bla-bla-wah-wah-wah" left us in stitches! Even funnier was when one of them did the "Bear Necessities" song (from Disney's "The Jungle Book") in Swedish, after inhaling a bunch of helium from a birthday balloon.
The video is wonderful, I was lucky enough to find it a few years back. My whole life I've seen mock-other languages, Sid Ceaser was a genius at it, fun to see the English version.
I love that the whole intent of Prisencolinensinainciusol is for it to sound like a generic American accent, but when Stephen says it, it ends up sounds like some ancient elvish dialect
Hi from France! To my friends, us English sounds like someone eating gum and not articulating a word 😂😂😂 and without knowing it they actually say some real words 🤪🤣 And us people hear French as something nice with rrrrrrr guttural sounds now and then 😂😂😂 I loved it so funny !!
The guy who says he isn't an actor is the spitting image of the Irish actor who was in 'Fifty Shades Of Gray'. I think his name is Jamie Dornan. Not that I've seen FSOG...honest!
There is no better feeling than running into a fellow Aussie overseas. . . Doesn't matter what class or background either of you have, you just automatically slide straight back into speaking 'normally' and not having to try lol
Danny Kaye did this back in the day as part of his Vaudevillian skits... and bits can be heard in some of his movies. I bet this kind of imitative language humor is nothing new in the larger scope of human history. 🎉🎉🎉🎉
There's an excellent Eric Idle sketch on Rutland weekend television where the interview is conducted entirely in gibberish made of english words but used entirely out of context and inappropriately. it's on youtube, just search for 'rutland gibberish'
I'm always wondering what we sound like to animals. Like, we know that they have their own vocabulary but there are only about 10 sounds that a cat makes, though they probably hear upwards of 50. So what do we sound like to them. Do they hear blah blether laugh shout the same way we hear meow, growl, purr and hiss?
I've heard that song before, the music video is funny, but he wrote it as an experiment to see if Italians would like the song just because it sounds English, even if it wasn't (and he was right)
It's not Malaysia's got talent, Ken Lee is actually in Bulgaria. I often feel tempted to ignore this, since it's good that nobody remembers my country for this, but since this is QI I also HAVE to correct it.
I wish everyone could understand Danish or Norwegian. There's a famous clip from Norwegians television, where they make fun of Danish (they often do in a loving way) for becoming an extinct language that nobody speaks anymore. When the actors speak Danish it's gibberish, but for a Dane it could actually sound like Danish words.
Haha classic, I got confused where they were from when he said he was from Australia but the other guy sounded kiwi but you can see him saying im kiwi as someone talks over him haha.
I always wondered this as I've often made-up gibberish in all kinds of other languages, I tried asking English as a second language speakers to imitate what English sounds like, but they gave me confused side eyes.
I love Stephen Fry, and Sandy, and the 'regulars' from QI! It's been so long, I've forgotten the main one, except he said, a LOT, 'blue whale! Also, I miss VOXTOX, we need more intelligent stuff like these! Sandy, talk your wife into doing more VOXTOX!!! 👍💙💙💙🥰✌
In his comedy show with Harry Enfield, ‘The Fast Show’, Paul Whitehouse used to do a skit of an old posh guy at his club in front of a roaring fire, drinking a large brandy. The character would speak making these very funny utterances in a kind of ‘Boris Johnson’ way that didn’t make any sense at all even to British people, then at the end he’d say slightly more coherently…’But of course, I was very, very drunk…’ It was hilarious. It struck me that it was so funny because posh, upper class English people must sound like that to most people not just those whose first language isn’t English.
I once asked a German colleague what English sounds like. She didn't get my question at first, but then I imitated the sound of German for her, "eechshanschplakengooberskratchen" and she came back with, "Bow dow now dow gow dow bow".
I think we both learned something that day.
😂😂😂😂😂
As a Dutch woman, i agree with the both of you. Spot on 👌😂😂😂
Hilarious and a Spanish friend of mine said English to their ears is a plethora of ‘S’ sounds which makes there ears bleed. Yess, suss, diss, soss, shuss, liss etc…
Their
I love this.
Fun fact: As a swede I just wanna say that the swedish chef does not elicit the same effect on us.
You must understand everything he says.
Hahaha! Noted.
That's because the chef does not have a dick in his mouth.
A lot of the humour relies on the 'ish' part of Swedish. Ish being sort of, similar to, a crude example of. So he's a Swede...ish chef, rather than a Swedish chef.
To a swede he sounds more like a norwegian. They are known for their cuisine 😅.
This is the concept behind 'Simlish', the language of all spoken dialogue in The Sims games. In order to save on localisation across the MANY languages of Europe, the developers deliberately got voice actors who could speak gibberish that COULD be any number of languages (with more of a Romance/Germanic flavour for simplicity) but give it the right emotional inflection to sell what the line is going for. Apart from common keywords like 'sul sul' for 'hello' there is little internal consistency, but it parses surprisingly well
Sul Sul! 👋
@@NoorAnomaly challenge everything *ea noise*
A rubede snad. Comon snala?
I always found simlish sounded like italian in an american accent.
Simlish kinda sounds like Japanese with a heavy Californian accent.
I think it's funny how the original song is imitating English/American but then Stephen reads the lyrics with the Italian pronunciations
Exactly - so we miss how the Italian was trying to sound.
What exactly is the difference between english and american?
@@slake9727Well, if you look at English and American together, it can be seen that all they have in common are the letters "i" and "e"..
Hope this helps.
@@longjonwhite and N
@@witherblaze haha! How the hell did I miss that?!
The reason Prisencolinensinainciusol is made up was because this period was the time American music got really popular in Europe, so to make a point that Italians (or Europeans in general) would listen to anything sounding remotely like American English, Adriano released Prisencolinensinainciusol. His experiment worked because it became a hit in the countries you said
It's still a hit! It seems to come back around every so often.
Still is popular in eastern Europe, the main difference being EDM with dodgy English pronunciation sung by some random Russian woman
🤯
To be fair tho, it is a massive bop
In the first round of one of the first series of Dutch Idols, there was a young woman who sang Killing Me Softly. Her version had the jury in stitches, because she sang “Strong in my pants with his fingers”, and she didn’t have a clue why that was so funny.
Well, I'm never going to be able to sing it the right way again.
Is there video of this it sounds hilarious
These are the lyrics now.
@@JordanDeeb28 I couldn't find her whole audition or the judges' reaction, sadly. But in this mash-up she's the first one :)
ua-cam.com/video/BllaYxxnxYM/v-deo.html
I think Young Americans by David Bowie has the greatest number of unintelligible lyrics Ive ever heard in my life. 'Her bread went and begs off the bathroom floor we, liquid justice these 20 years just to have to die for the 50 mohair' (and so many more!)
As an outback Australian, yep, we do talk like that, and we also like throwing in completely contradictory elements that make complete sense to us 'Yeah, nah' and we can derive infinite depths of inflection from 'eh'
yeah no is English too bud 😂
@@Darkside-origin Nah, yeah!
Not to mention the dozen inflections of "mate"
@@TheAlps36 InfLections. Infections you get from mates are a totally different thing. ;)
@@boges11 sorry - autocorrect. Of course I meant inflections
Yes, as an Australian I can also converse in that dialect. Also, My god is Stephens Australian accent perfect.
Yeah, nah.
It's almost perfect. Not quite, but as close as I have ever heard
It took me several reads of your comment to get it punctuated correctly, I hope.
I kept concluding the you were telling us the (very weird) name of your deity.
If you're asking 'is Stephen's Aussie accent perfect?', the short answer is 'no'.
The long answer is 'perfect for which part of Aus?'.
And still the answer is 'no'.
It's close, even fair to good, as long as he doesn't say much.
The more he says, the worse it becomes.
It might pass outside Aus, for non-Aussie listeners.
But ANYwhere within Aus it would be immediately spotted as fake.
@@trueaussie9230 Yes. The Australian accent is very difficult to duplicate, particularly if it's done for any length of time. Off the top of my head I can't think of any non-Australian who's managed it.
@@trueaussie9230 Chippy much ?
The Cocteau Twins deserve a mention for singing in a psuedo language that seemed able to convey emotion even without any meaning.
Glossolalia it’s called.
Cherry cola
Also Lisa Gerrard
Was thinking the same thing. 😉
And Sigur Ros
Stephen nailed it with the heartburn!
Ken Lee is actually from Bulgaria on a show called Music Idol (their American Idol), not Malaysia. Malaysia's just grouped with other countries like Singapore, Philippines, and Taiwan and called Asia's Got Talent. Don't diss the woman! Her confidence that the song was called Ken Lee and what she was singing was English is something I admire. Truly inspires us all
You honour us with your knowledge oh Supreme Leader!
Praise Jeepers
As a Malaysian, I can attest to this. However, we did have a Ken Lee singing contest here in Malaysia almost a decade ago when the Bulgarian singer's version went viral. That's probably why people thought it was a Malaysian thing when it actually wasn't.
Ken Leeeee when dibba dibba douchyou. KEN LEE!! KEN LEE ENN EEMO!
They really missed out not showing the video that goes along with the Italian gibberish song - it's amazing!
The blonde dancer just passed away earlier this year.
@@dutchreagan3676 Oh, that's so sad.
Maybe they didn't get permission to show the video?
Also they missed out the best ever gibberish performance. It was from from Paul Whitehouse doing the 'I was very, very drunk at the time' sketch, which he did brilliantly for several seasons of the Fast show.
Link to the video plz
I always love how the video is mostly gibberish and then "fucking asshole" lol
Standard friendly pub conversation, in my experience. 😂
@3:16 Jack looks really pleased and chuffed with his joke!
As an Australian I whole heartedly approve of Stephen Fry's Aussie accent! Between the heartburn and Hillsy's eg I realise the Aussie accent is just drunk and verbatim 😂
I think we all just assumed that the Aussie accent developed over drinks.
When he did the heartburn thing I totally got reminded of Clive James! Man, I miss him, he was a funny dude!
There’s a character in the novel The Name of the Rose that speaks sentences that totally mix several European languages. In the movie he’s played by Ron Perlman because he speaks most of those languages and could pull it off very convincingly. It’s very difficult to do it and not sound forced.
Good ole Salvatore. *_Penitenziagite!_*
I'm only proficient in two languages and my brain freezes every time I need to switch between the two, especially when I'm not expecting to have to switch. Think of a beginner driver trying to shift gears and almost stalling...
You know they recently did a tv series adaptation of that that was very good. John Turturro played William of Baskerville. He was great.
I think if you NOT speak a language, it's easier to imitate anything you want. As soon as you have knowledge on pronounciation you start to add it, to your speaking.
Good old Salvatore
In Israel, l got a lift with a Russian truck driver who couldn't speak a word of English. He played a tape of Smokie's greatest hits, happily singing along to "Living next door to Alice."
Sounded like "Linnging exfloor tuatlas."
I’m English, my husband is Australian. We were absolutely lost in translation for about three months when we met. He couldn’t really understand everything I said, and I definitely couldn’t understand him….but, he was handsome and kind, so I just shrugged it off 😂
The American television show "WKRP" had a song over the credits with lyrics that people could just not quite understand. Most had a mondegreen version they thought was right. Turns out the songwriter was scat singing what he expected to be a saxaphone melody, but the show producers loved it because no one can understand the words to rock songs anyway.
It's funny when people online insist that they've figured out the words.
I remember the Allo Allo episode where the Germans were trying to sound like British airmen to fool the French Resistance. The would say "Fa Fa Fa" because that is what English sounded like to them. And of course, Officer Crabtree thinking he sounded like a native French speaker.
Good moaning! that is an absolutely fantastic show
Which reminds me of The Flight of the Conchords 'French song', Fou du fa fa (or somesuch).
It was very clever how they all spoke English, but still managed to convey what their native language was and what language they were supposed to be speaking at the time.
He spoke French so badly, but did it so easily. It was like a “piss of pee” to him.
(Piece of pie)
@@kjamison5951 That's not the original British expression :).
The Ketchup Song /Asereje/ Ragatanga is also a case of "this sounds a bit like english to me".
It is a parody of Rapper's Delight.
The song is about Diego, a probably latino guy, that is euphoric to sing his favorite song, but he doesn't know the lyrics, so he sings:
Aserejé-ja-dejé
De jebe tu de jebere seibiunouva majavi an de bugui an de güididípi
Which is suppose to be:
I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie
To the hip hip hop-a you don't stop the rock
It to the bang-bang boogie, say up jump the boogie
To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
It is not word for word, but you can see clearly at:
- The beggining: "I said a hip, hop, the hippie" with "Asereje,-ja-deje"
- The middle: "The hippie to the hip hip hop" with "Dejebe tu de jebere"
- The End: "of the boogie, the beat" and "de buigui an deguidipi"
I’ve listened to that song about 1000 times at parties, and then at uni, and then again in my sad adult life, and I’ve only just noticed that. I wrote my uni diss on Spanish popular music and I still didn’t know 😂😂😂
That's awesome
I'm 27. I've only just learned this. I've spent the past 15 minutes going over this and blowing my mind every single time...
Wow! I've never seen this. I'm skid of the 90s, a obviously an idiot! 😄
Bro you’ve just blew my mind with this information
Weirdly enough, i genuinely thought that first rap song WAS in English when I first heard it, but I was just having trouble hearing the words properly (I'm hearing-impaired, and there were no faces to lip-read, so that was plausible for me.) So yeah, for all you normal-hearing people... that's also kind of like what being hearing-impaired feels like.
Same. I'm technically not hearing impaired, but I often have much difficulty understanding people without seeing their lips too. Made the pandemic difficult with everyone wearing masks 😂
I've learned English as a second language and I first heard the song AFTER doing so.
I can understand English almost perfectly, except in song lyrics; I genuinely thought it actually was English until I looked up the text.
Not hearing impaired but ADHD and it's kind of what it sounds like when I zone out while someone's talking
@@twentyeight602 I have strong reason to suspect I'm ADHD, and as far as I know I don't have Auditory Processing Disorder, but I did look it up for a writing project and man, does it sound close to instances I've encountered in life many times. Those times where the person has just spoken gibberish at you, and you're aware that it's gibberish, and then your brain turns it around a bit and realizes, belatedly, exactly what was said, or at least enough of it to get the right gist and to divide the words the right way.
Now that you've mentioned ADHD, I'm going to be wondering if that's my ADHD brain at work. (In Auditory Processing Disorder, it's a little like dyslexia but for audio, not being able to easily parse it and figure out how the incoming sounds map to words to concepts to phrases and sentences and such. In my fic, both Clint Barton and Bucky Barnes have it, but Bucky didn't realize (until talking with Clint) that it's an actual brain problem and not just him being dumb, inattentive, or the like, which is what he was always told growing up -- the condition was discovered a little *after* the war ended, so Bucky never had the benefit of the medical community recognizing that it existed.)
@@Arkylie Pardon me for butting in, but is your fic on AO3? Sounds like I'd like to read it 🤓
As an Aussie, Stephen Fry saying "you think I haven't noticed" may be the most natural Australian accent I've heard from a non-Aussie.
There’s a fry and Laurie sketch they do which is based on Aussie soaps and it’s hilarious xD
@@Alonetogether13 just watched it now and I totally agree, felt like I was watching old soapies in the arvo with my grandma XD
It'd be interesting to have people who's native languages are from different language families record what they think English sounds like and see if there's differences. I'm curious if say, a German's perception of English is different from a Korean person.
I was in Iraq at one time and stopped by an Aussie outpost, and I absolutely shit my pants laughing when their translator came out and had a full on bogan accent. Couldn't concentrate, forgot what I was there for. Maybe not relevant to this vid, but it reminded me. Good times.
For those curious, Adam said "So you okay, having a good night, going alright?" to which he responded "Yeah it's alright, going alright mate".
In the early 90's Ace of Base was very popular in the former Soviet Union. The song "All that the wants" was particularly popular. However, those were not the lyrics. Everyone sang it as "Ooo machi boss"
Adrian Celentano was name checked in Ian Dury's 'Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 3) -
"Saying okey-dokey, sing-a-long a Smokie
Coming out of chokie
John Coltrane's soprano, Adie Celentano
Beuno Colino"
I once had to do an assignment on nonsense verse in highschool and it was one of my great delights to discover The Jabberwocky had been translated into multiple languages.
I can't believe that none of them have heard of Adriano Celentano. I live in Turkey and he was always very famous even here, since my childhood. Many of his films have played in theaters here in the 70's and 80's. For quite some time he was as famous as a Hollywood star.
Yes, but do you know who Ian Botham is ?
@@hb1338 If he had also made movies with Edwige Fenech or Carole Bouquet, I certainly would have known.
He was extremely popular in the USSR, and some of his songs are still in rotation on oldies radio stations in the region.
In general England tends to culturally isolate itself, especially when it comes to music. For example on national radio u will only ever hear English or American songs, unlike other European countries where they play songs from all over Europe.
No idea if you have ever seen it, but there is a bar in Antalya, with pictures on the wall of famous Turkish film stars, who all look, *almost* like famous Hollywood stars from previous decades. There's "Charlie Chaplin", "Yul Brynner", "Sophia Loren", "Elizabeth Taylor", "Clark Gable" and dozens of others.
Bulgarian here, I remember when the Ken Lee girl was on TV, we knew a new meme was born, we simply had no idea how big of a meme it would’ve been
Haahahaa.. I can relate. When I was 5, me and my sister before we actually learned proper English in school, our parents only spoke to us in our native tongue, but as little kids we only mostly watch English shows and cartoons without subs, so some words, and the accent and the dictions are like very familiar to us, so we imitate them and play pretend that we speak in English when we play. It's hilarious how we understood one another speaking gibberish English and know what the other is trying to say. I can't wrap my head around that. Mannn... kids imagination and creativity are truly remarkable sometimes.
English speaking kids do this anyway (and probably other kids in other cultures). Your vocab isn't fully developed AND (in many cases as a child) you don't understand the concepts being discussed so you just substitute the words you do know and come up with an entirely different meaning eg. the way kids misinterpret many Christmas carols
a funny thing for non english speakers is when you think you hear something in your language in an english song. most famous examples in France would be :
Metallica : New blood comes to earth, and quickly they subdure --> nous battons des oeufs, et cui-cui, ils sont durs --> we are beating eggs, and twit-twit, they're hard-boiled.
Ray Charles: Makes me feel so good --> J'ai des puces aux c*uilles --> I've got flees on my balls
and David Bowie: Ground control to major tom --> grand contrôle de mes têt0ns --> great control over my t1ts.
Ken Lee is actually from a Bulgarian Music Idol, not Malaysia 😁
Yes! The people in the video were clearly Europeans. How could he mistake them as Malaysians. 🙄
@@imhalida Well, if it had happened in somewhere in Western Europe or the States, he would definitely remember it correctly but because it's Eastern Europe, it might as well have happened in Eastern Asia.
Ken Lee is the greatest song ever written... Lyrics so moving
warm greetings from Malaysia..!
I remember when I was a kid, before learning English. We pretended to speak English while playing with barbies, and it sounded just like that.
I love how Sara and Jack are groovin' as they listen!!
Jack’s posh noises at the end always send me hahahahah
Stephen getting in the groove at the beginning, loved it!
For us Finns is much easier: Hungarian sounds very much like Finnish, but one cannot recognize any words.
Frisian sounds a lot like English, but it is a far less widely spoken language than Hungarian.
It's a little like that with Norwegian vs Dutch. And can I say I love this "we are the world" feel here. Love to all.❤️
And don't do the thing, Putin. The world is to good of a thing.
I find the same thing with Welsh as an Englishman. It almost sounds like English that I can't comprehend until I realise its Welsh.
Apparently the Finnish and Hungarian languages have the same roots - unlike the people !
@@mariannerognerud Putin won't do anything stupid, but his generals might.
This is priceless 😂 especially the gibberish bit with the Aussie bloke, my boyfriend is Australian, and over the phone that's EXACTLY how he sounds when he's drunk 🤣🤣🤣 like a pirate underwater.
But more than once when I'm drunk, he's told me to slow down because my dialects get too thick, so I guess it's mutual 😂
Adam himself did a whole famous bit on languages. And the concept of hearing English as a non english speaker and stereotypical language “sounds.”
I’m a bit surprised he didn’t roll into any of that material during this bit
He probably did, it just didn't make the edit. it might have been in the XL version though.
The Famous "Ken Li" cover was actually sung on the Bulgarian X Factor by a contestant.
When I worked for one of the larger tech companies back in 2001, I was on a conference call with two gentlemen from our Greenock, Scotland office. I knew they were speaking English but I couldn't understand a single word other than 'Aye'
I had a couple of academic acquaintances (American / anglophone Canadian) who were able to communicate with a Scotsman better in French than in English
@@geoffroi-le-Hook I went to Montreal once with a friend, neither of us knowing any French, having a waitress who barely knew English... we actually managed to communicate with her using high school *Spanish.*
I once had the experience of spending some time with a couple of people from somewhere in rural New Zealand, and it took me some time to be able to parse just about anything they said, mainly because they were speaking a dialect that mixed up just about all of the vowel sounds (e.g. "friend" was pronounced "freend").
@@balok63a40 many Kiwis substitute "i" for 'u" e.g Fish n chips becomes Fush n Chups.
Every time I watch one of those ‘what English sounds like to foreigners’ I feel like I’m having a stroke because you wouldn’t think it would work but it works better than anything
I don't understand what the point of those is
That celentano song is actually from 1972, but the version played here is a remix from 1992, that's why it sounds more modern than one would expect. The original sounds pretty cool actually.
Point of order - the version of Prisencolinensinainciusol they played is a more modern remix with dance music drums and electronic bits. Both versions are bangers but the 1973 version is better for sounding more organic:
ua-cam.com/video/-VsmF9m_Nt8/v-deo.html
Excellent spot - the original is fantastic (first time I've heard it).
Yeah, if a song sounded like that in 1973, it wouldn't just be "ahead of its time", but probably a result of some time-travel shenanigans. The fact that none on the panel can spot this couldn't *possibly* be from the 70'e is a bit worrying.
That is almost certainly something to do with "rights issues" i.e the law of copyright. The BBC is one of very few organisations that pays proper heed to such things.
@@hb1338 or one of the QI elves just picked out the first version they found…
I always think of Margarita Pracatan the Cuban singer on the Clive James Show in the 90s whenever anyone mentions 'English by a foreigner'. Her rendition of popular songs, like "Hello" by Lionel Richie, were hilarious! 😅😅😅 It's available on UA-cam.
Oh my god. I had completely forgotten about her! I'm sure l saw her on that show too. Off to search YT now.
It would have been funnier if when those guys in the audience started talking to Stephen, they pretended they could only talk in gibberish.
You must look up the late swedish entertainer Jokkmokks-Jocke performing his number 1 hit Gulli-Gullan in english. He didn’t know english 😊 Fantastic character
the song "Asereje" by Las Ketchup is a similar story to the Mariah Carey story. The song is about a Latino boy who loves Sugar Hill Gang's "Rappers Delight" but doesn't know the words. ("Aserejé-ja-de jé, de jebe tu de jebere" = "I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie to the hip hip hop...")
Bless Jack Whitehall for just repeating internet memes as material.
Did he also insinuate that Mariah Carey had written the song Without You? If so, Badfinger are turning in their grave. Actually I’m not sure if they’re dead but the song is supposedly cursed.
@@borismuller86 It would appear so. Even when Harry Nilsson took it to the top of the charts, it was known to be a cover version.
I mean, I'd never heard of it before.
@@andrew66862 wait, what?
@@andrew66862 yeah there’s a video all about it. Really sad stuff. IIRC one killed himself, then the other couldn’t handle it and followed suit.
Growing up in Sweden hearing english I often talked this kind of jibberish or "Ken Lee-d" existing songs (like some did with ABBA, hackenary sisters instead of How can I resist you?)
Then I learned english in school but can still remember some "lyrics" I sang to songs, and laugh
If you listened to that and thought, "crikey, that really does sound ahead of its time," that's because it was a remix. The 90s drum loop was added later, as was the delay effect on the horns that also contributes to the 90s dance music vibe. The original backing sounds much more of its time, but the vocals are still pretty extraordinary.
The Australian babbling sounds extremely accurate
I love the bit Jack does at the end, so on point
Adriano Celentano was very popular while I was growing up in Spain during the 1960s. Many of his songs are familiar and he also had a great sense of humour.
Adriano Celentano was big in Greece in the 70s and the 80s. Same goes with Mina ,Rafaella Carra and many other Italian singers.
Just because you're below the Carrà line of good sex
1:00 its not a Malaysia clip but a Bulgarian and its called in youtube ''music idol Ken Lee''
Adding a couple actual words to the giberish really sells it, even as an English speaker. When you hear foreign dialogue of a familiar language like French or Spanish you'll often pick up one or two words. Also, Stephen does a weird thing that's common for English people doing Italian accents. When he says Adriano he adds an A after the D. I guess we do this because Italian annunciates all it's vowels when we tend to drop a lot of them so it makes it sound more Italian to us (and less so to actual Italians)
I think the Adriano thing might also be because rolled R's don't really exist like that in English, so it's easier to say after a vowel rather than a D.
No-one mentioning that the Italian fella's rap is basically the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme tune!? 🤔
Princce Bel-Aire
I love that Aussies know exactly what Adam Hills was saying.
I’d love to know if non-Aussies know?
I never realised our language really was just.. noise 😂
I love this except Without You is not Mariah's song... it's the Welsh group Badfinger's but the guy who popularized it and has what I would consider the offical version that Mariah was covering was Harry Nilsson. And that version is perfect.
A group of us included some Swedish exchange students, and we asked them how they pretended to speak English when they didn't know English - like kids do. Their response: "bla-bla-wah-wah-wah" left us in stitches!
Even funnier was when one of them did the "Bear Necessities" song (from Disney's "The Jungle Book") in Swedish, after inhaling a bunch of helium from a birthday balloon.
"Ken-li" was a masterpiece sung by a Roma lady on a hearing for The Voice of Bulgaria.
The video is wonderful, I was lucky enough to find it a few years back.
My whole life I've seen mock-other languages, Sid Ceaser was a genius at it, fun to see the English version.
I love that the whole intent of Prisencolinensinainciusol is for it to sound like a generic American accent, but when Stephen says it, it ends up sounds like some ancient elvish dialect
Can't live without you, performed by Harry Nilsson, is one of the best songs ever recorded. Nobody else has or ever will come close.
I really wish that something like this was done with British English, I really want to know how it sounds to others!
It sounds the same, just with a British accent. Lol
Hi from France! To my friends, us English sounds like someone eating gum and not articulating a word 😂😂😂 and without knowing it they actually say some real words 🤪🤣 And us people hear French as something nice with rrrrrrr guttural sounds now and then 😂😂😂 I loved it so funny !!
Sid Caeser was the best at faking languases. He could jibberish French, Russian, German, Italian, anything. Also, Danny Kaye.
The guy who says he isn't an actor is the spitting image of the Irish actor who was in 'Fifty Shades Of Gray'. I think his name is Jamie Dornan. Not that I've seen FSOG...honest!
Of course you have seen it - what you are supposed to do is invent a really good reason for doing so, which doesn't involve Dakota Johnson.
4:00 - This part is fucking GOLD! I love Aussies doing this. I never know if it is real or not, and I don´t effing care ;D I just laughed my head off.
There is no better feeling than running into a fellow Aussie overseas. . . Doesn't matter what class or background either of you have, you just automatically slide straight back into speaking 'normally' and not having to try lol
He said
"so carl you had a good night? you going alright?"
"Yeah right it was alright mate"
"Are you enjoying our time alright?"
"It was alright"
Omg Ken Lee!
Judges "What language was that?"
With a completely straight face "English"
IMO The video for Prisencolinensinainciusol is pretty good
Danny Kaye did this back in the day as part of his Vaudevillian skits... and bits can be heard in some of his movies. I bet this kind of imitative language humor is nothing new in the larger scope of human history. 🎉🎉🎉🎉
There's an excellent Eric Idle sketch on Rutland weekend television where the interview is conducted entirely in gibberish made of english words but used entirely out of context and inappropriately. it's on youtube, just search for 'rutland gibberish'
I'm always wondering what we sound like to animals. Like, we know that they have their own vocabulary but there are only about 10 sounds that a cat makes, though they probably hear upwards of 50. So what do we sound like to them. Do they hear blah blether laugh shout the same way we hear meow, growl, purr and hiss?
I've heard that song before, the music video is funny, but he wrote it as an experiment to see if Italians would like the song just because it sounds English, even if it wasn't (and he was right)
It was a good song tho
Bulgaria. It was a Bulgarian talent show where Ken Lee got introduced to the world to libudubudowchoo.
It's not Malaysia's got talent, Ken Lee is actually in Bulgaria. I often feel tempted to ignore this, since it's good that nobody remembers my country for this, but since this is QI I also HAVE to correct it.
I wish everyone could understand Danish or Norwegian. There's a famous clip from Norwegians television, where they make fun of Danish (they often do in a loving way) for becoming an extinct language that nobody speaks anymore. When the actors speak Danish it's gibberish, but for a Dane it could actually sound like Danish words.
“Ken Lee” woman was from Bulgaria.
Wow so this is the episode where I discovered the “Ken Lee” video a decade ago. Good times.
Good times. Yeah. You were a kid, and adults ran the world. Those were fun times.
@@waynemarvin5661 I was a young adult and old adults ran the world 😂
That was a brilliant little film. I used it to test the 55/38/7% theory of communication. Was going to link it here when I saw the title!
Fascinating and so true 😊
00:59 'Ken Lee' was sung by a woman on a Bulgarian show, not Malaysian.
I asked what English sounds like to non-English speakers. He said: “waffle, waffle, waffle”.
True story.
Haha classic, I got confused where they were from when he said he was from Australia but the other guy sounded kiwi but you can see him saying im kiwi as someone talks over him haha.
There's an anecdote regarding Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbán where he claims that English sounds to him like dogs barking.
i love that, as an australian, i knew what the australians were saying :P
I love the original of this song and video.
How possibly could someone not know Adriano Celentano ? Non è possibile! 🇮🇹😘
I always wondered this as I've often made-up gibberish in all kinds of other languages, I tried asking English as a second language speakers to imitate what English sounds like, but they gave me confused side eyes.
I think it's honestly harder when you know the language. It's easier to speak gibberish in another language to me because I know English too well.
There is a youtuber who asks Japanese people to imitate What English Sounds Like, and it is incredible.
ua-cam.com/video/tNQoZ0XVFKo/v-deo.html
Jack is sooo lovely
@1:01 it't not Malaysia's got talent. It's the Bulgarian Idol.
I've been waiting for this to be clipped! I love Prisencolin!
Keep up the great work, and thank you!
I love Stephen Fry, and Sandy, and the 'regulars' from QI! It's been so long, I've forgotten the main one, except he said, a LOT, 'blue whale! Also, I miss VOXTOX, we need more intelligent stuff like these! Sandy, talk your wife into doing more VOXTOX!!! 👍💙💙💙🥰✌
In his comedy show with Harry Enfield, ‘The Fast Show’, Paul Whitehouse used to do a skit of an old posh guy at his club in front of a roaring fire, drinking a large brandy. The character would speak making these very funny utterances in a kind of ‘Boris Johnson’ way that didn’t make any sense at all even to British people, then at the end he’d say slightly more coherently…’But of course, I was very, very drunk…’ It was hilarious. It struck me that it was so funny because posh, upper class English people must sound like that to most people not just those whose first language isn’t English.