Gosh, it's so crazy how Greeks and Spanish sounds so similar! I remember to have listened to two girls in the bus while the bus was standing and I thought why I don't understand this "Spanish" at all (I know at least some Spanish). When the bus driver joined them and after some time I got it that it was Greek, not Spanish XD
I could tell the difference obviously because I understand Spanish but as far as the sounds are concerned, I find it may be true with Castilian with the Madrid accent especially not so much Latin American Spanish. I'm surrounded by Mexican Spanish and it doesn't sound Greek to me.
I think the Greek who speaks is Elena Paparizou who won the Eurovision in 2005. she was born and raised in Sweden... that's why it's not exactly the Greek dialect
Trickiest thing is it depends on the person. 2 people who speak the same language, with the same accent, can have different accents individually, when speaking English. All depending on how well/much they focus on pronunciation, pending they're both at the same level of fluency. Though I like that, makes it more of a challenge.
I got France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Holland, Japan and in fact China. Far from the most Chinese person ever and I almost didn’t get it but the ‘r’ to ‘w’ and odd tonality when he said ‘different’, ‘backgrounds’ and ‘brothers’ at the end made it easier.
I was happy to hear the Finnish accent there, I've learned to recognize the accent of my fellow Finns over the years. It's quite unique. If you want to hear something wild look up Finnish rally English. Now that's an accent, if you can even call it that.
It wasn't a very heavy or stereotypical accent though I can see why Metatron would have trouble placing it. Sure when you know the accent you can place easily, he had kind of similar accent to what my dad had.
His retracted "s"s and rolled "r"s had genuinely tricked me into thinking he would be from Spain. Guess I should have paid more attention to the intonation
@@mikanunx I also guessed Finnish because of Nightwish (it instantly reminded me of Tarja shouting "Gracias" on stage here in Argentina); however, before that, I also thought Finnish during the Icelandic audio (probably my brain mixing Björk and Tarja somehow).
@Abiodun92 Yes. Native Finn, here. That was almost stereotypical Finnish accent. Maybe the speaker was also bored; and that’s, why he sounded even more monotonous, than we usually do. We usually stress the first syllable a bit more; but that’s, in Finnish, itself (Finnish actually has 3 distinct stress-levels: Strong stress (for the 1st syllable), sub-stress (for the 3rd syllable of a word, and the 1st syllable of the 2nd part of a compound word), and unstressed). But; when we speak other languages, like English, where the stressing of the word varies, between words; we might take a safe bet, and minimize the stress, altogether (thus, flattening the intonation), if we’re not sure about the stressing of a particular word. But, for anyone reading this: The difference I mentioned (of the word-initial stress, in Finnish being stronger, usually) is really quite minute (especially, to the ears of beginners); so, don’t go overboard; or you’ll sound weird. I, also, don’t see, how some people (like Barbs, from ”Geography Now”) can hear Finnish or the Finnish accent with a Swedish intonation. He didn’t say it sounds Swedish; but, when he emulated, how he heard Finnish; it was litterally gibberish, with an over-exaggerated Swedish accent 🤯.
As a New Yorker, I thought I would do better BUT I did get the Chinese! ( to be fair, I teach English skills to mostly Asian MBA students). Maybe U.S. Chinese?! You did really well. Accents are great !
I was so confident that Finnish and Greek were Spanish. It's surprising they didn't put any Latino accent because our accent is arguably the most common foreign accent
Yes. I was like: ”Are they trying to give us that?!”. They could just as well have had Julien Miquel doing the Hollywood-Italian accent, for ”Italian”. 😅
As an Israeli, I can confirm 100% that's how Hebrew native speakers generally sound in English, I picked it up in 2 seconds with no doubts. Regarding the Chinese guy, I thought dutch 😂 and Saudi I thought someone slavic 😂. Alo the Brazilian i thought SE asia 😂.
@@oleksijm that's exactly how Israelis pronounce the English R when they talk. They know they shouldn't make the uvular R.. so it becomes something in between. Also I'm pretty sure I can tell who this person is, just by his voice.
@@oleksijm well, I can never verify that. As far as I know, most Israelis would make an effort to use the American R, with various degrees of success.. and I have been talking to Israelis all my life.
I instantly recognized German since I went to school with some .The Vietnamese kids were too Americanized to have a noticable accent.The Dutch person made sense since it was almost perfect English and Dutch is very close to that.This was quite hard since they didn't use obvious accents except maybe the Japanese lady.
You can spot a Brazilian speaking English when they say "two", "to" or "too", cause it's common people from here saying "tchu" (or "choo" for anglophones). Also, another common mistake is our T and D being pronounced in English words like in "different" sounding like "geeferent". And, the most Brazilian thing to do is to add vowels in the end of words that have the last syllable unstressed, like UA-came, Iphonee, what'sappee, etc
7:45 Yeah, I was also thinking of maybe Spanish, from Latin America. Then again, it could be Romanian, too. The phonemes are very strong and clear, which I associate with Romanian (except a word-final ”I”, after a consonant, which litterally just modifies the preceding consonant, making it more palatalized, like the Russian ”ь”; «Мягкий Знак», _”Myagkiy Znak”,_ or the ”Soft Mark”).
At 3:09, that "dgiferent" was the hint for Portuguese. So I got that (full point), and got Arabic. The rest it was all like same as you. The Chinese didn't sound Chinese at all. And the Nordics are all so good! :-) Fun game
First one is French, being the the stereotype of a French speaking English. It makes me think of some French movies, where some French try to speak English, and have that kind of accent, like in the movie " La grande Vadrouille". A classic French movie, I recommend it, a great and funny movie. But Some French can speak really good English. Second one, I would guess German/Germanic. Third one, Spanish. Fourth one , no idea. Fifth one: Italian. Sixth one: German. Seven one: German, finally, lol. Eight one: Swedish?. Ninth one: Slavic/Russian. Tenth one: No idea. Eleventh one : No idea. Twelfth one : Romanian? Thirteenth: Japanese. Fourteenth: Spanish. Fifteenth: No idea. Sixteenth: No idea. Seventeenth: Germanic/Nordic. Well, I was pretty bad, lol. Oh well, can't win them all. Anyway, good job Metatron. Also good job to those who participated in the challenge. That was fun. Thanks for the video. Have a good day, and the same to the Nobles one , and those who read this. Good weekend to you all. Cheers.
12:36 It’s OK, Raffaello. My weak spot turned out to be the Asian languages (especially Mandarin and Vietnamese); except Japanese, because that ”R” (and some added vowels) was a dead give-away. But; for me, as a Finn; when I heard the Finnish one, my reaction was exactly the same, as yours was, to the Italian one. That was *_SO_* (stereo)typical a Finnish accent 😅. It’s usually called: _”Ralli-Englanti”_ (”Rally-English”), over here, because it’s the stereotypical rally-driver’s accent, when they give interviews, in English (coupled with literal translations of Finnish expressions and idioms). My Friend and I call it: _”Himas-Englanti”_ (”Himas-English”, or ”Himanen’s English”), though; because it’s the accent of the Finnish Philosopher, Pekka Himanen.
Instantly had the Dutch one 🤣 But I'm from NL too :P I think I even got a hint of what region she's from (I'd go for Brabant). Fun challenge, I guessed most of them right, but some of them were quite tricky. I guessed Hungarian instead of Finnish, wrong weird European language :P It did remind me somewhat of how my Hungarian friend speaks, but when I think of it also how some Finnish guy speaks that I've recently met. The accents have some features in common for sure (at least to my ear).
6:48 Yeah; when he got to ”70 *_PERcent”,_* it sounded Russian. I think it’s Russian 🇷🇺. *EDIT:* 7:00 My thoughts, exactly, Metatron. That *_”PERcent”_* had the typical Russian broad ”Э”-sound.
I'm Spaniard. With my look and my accent when I go to Ireland, the moment I say hello, everybody instantly knows that I'm not from around the place. When I went to Greece each time I step into a place and said "Iassas" every body spoke to me in Greeck asuming that I was local. It is incredible how similar are the phonetics of Greek and my variety if Castilian Spanish
Almost sure the Hebrew one was from Asi Azar (which Europeans would know from hosting the Eurovision). Though I must admit I didn't pick it up myself before seeing it. Usually I'm good at picking up Israeli accent. The fact that he said ummm instead of emmm completely through me off.
I think I love the Japanese accent even more now after having started to study it. I learned Spain, Spanish, and I have a friend who lived in Greece for 20 years, but I still thought the Greek accent was from Spain. The German accent was incredibly easy and hard at the same time: I was in German major in college, and I heard so much of a beautiful, thick German accent, that I started to tune it out. Eventually, once the girls got comfortable with me, they would all ask me to help work on their accent and by that time I could barely hear it. Lol. That’s why we should all use our foreign languages as much as possible because people will intuitively understand us the more of our speech they hear. The human brain is an amazing thing.
Japanese being my mom's native language (and the first I have learned as a child), it was easy. I could even mimic them trying to speak horrible English. Others, it was more difficult than I thought. I guessed Asia when it was Europeans speaking (and vice-versa). However, I got Dutch right. For some reasons, I love the way they speak English. Kinda American sounding, minus the excessive twangs.
My guesses were: French Korean African Vietnamese Italian Slavic? German Belgium? Sounded almost French but not quite Russian Romance language? Southeast Asia? Slavic Japanese Scandinavian Dutch Polish? Danish
That was fun! As a Ticinese I didn't recognise the Italian 😮 but got the French and German- but I'm bilingual F + have been living in Zurich. I kept thinking of Dutch (even for Chinese😅), got Greek, Danish and Russian 👍😊🙋♀️
1:38 I’m gonna say: Russian 🇷🇺. *EDIT:* I was as stumped, as you, Metatron. I honestly thought, for the life of me, that it was Slavic, and Russian is a pretty safe bet, among Slavs, because of the sheer number of speakers. Polish, too, because Poles are very international and/or *_*AHEM!_** *_cosmo-POLE-itan_* people 💀. But Chinese 🇨🇳?! *_WTF?!_*
I picked up German & Dutch, living in Berlino.. but thats about it.. was waiting for Indian-type accent, still am. At same time, everyone was quite understandable, which is quite impressive.
I couldn’t, for the life of me, have guessed ”Icelandic”, either. I don’t really associate post-alveolar fricatives, like ”š”, or [ʃ] (the ”sh”-sound), with Icelandic 🇮🇸. 😮
I got Iceland because it sounded North Germanic but when she said "lots of likes" I heard a bit of pre-aspiration on "lots" /lɔʰts/ which convinced be it was Icelandic. Danish was obvious to me because you can hear a bit of that typical 'stød' sound
For Japanese a harder recognition challenge would be something from Yuta or maybe Tanuki That lady's accent was so unmistakably Japanese it sounded like a more proficient English speaker imitating the accent for laughs
As an Italian my guesses were: 1 - FRENCH!! Are you kidding me? 2 - no clue - Chinese don't speak like that 3 - some African political leader, sounds very typical but it's not Easy to spot the Place 4 - not Easy but I got Brazil 5 - honestly It sounded more of a Greek accent, perhaps someone from South Italy 6 - Arabic, got this easily 7 - German!!! No doubt 8 - I thought maybe Israel but I was not so sure 9 - I got Russian 10 - Greek but It was short I was not super sure 11 - no idea 12 - sounded Indiana at First 13 - Japan 😂 korean accent Is a bit similar 14 - no clue maybe Spanish 15 - I thought Dutch maybe 16 - no idea 17 - someone from North Europe area 😊
I got pretty much the same as Raf, with the exception of Dutch, Danish (was there for five years), Finnish (got plenty of colleagues), Icelandic (guessed some kind of Nordic), and Greek (native speaker)
french, #3 african 4) romanian 5) 6) arabic 7) german 8) Netherlands 9) Russian 10) Brazilian 11) ? 12) India 13) 14) 15) 16) 17) Swedish well I did horribly
He’s nearly the most Russian person I’ve ever heard, although there was a Soviet defector whose accent was so broad he had to have subtitles on a British TV programme I saw once. His twangy ‘ee’ sound meant he said ‘tea’ as ‘tyee’ or even ‘chyee’! The Dutch one was very obviously Dutch (th becoming d and s becoming sh) but then I also wrongly thought the Icelandic one was too and the Greek one should’ve had the speaker saying something with an sh, ch or j sound like ‘fish and chips’ or ‘cheese and jam sandwiches’ which becomes ‘fees and tseeps’ and ‘tseez and dzam sandweetsees’ 😂
I got like 4. All the nordic accents I knew their were from one of their countries but I couldn't a single one correctly xD but, tbf, most of the examples didn't have their typical accent which made it way harder than it could be.
Number 12 is recognizable by the way she rolls her letter R, but I am from Czech Republic, so it was quite easy for me. For example her way of pronouncing the word "nature" is quite indicating of Czech accent, at least for me.
@@jwessel1969 Well they are really close to each other. The Slavic languages are in this fun limbo space where Poles understand Czechs very well, Russians fine. Bulgarians understand Serbo-Croatian very well and Russian fine, but Bulgarians and Poles barely understand each other at all lmao (Used these countries specifically because they are farthest away from each other linguistically speaking).
For most of them I was either pretty sure of the region or had no idea. The most embarrassing one for me was Finnish, because it was near the end and I seemed to think it was certain that they would have a Spanish accent in the video, I thought the Finnish accent sounded Spanish… And Spanish is my second language. 😵
That was a brilliant video! My guesses were generally lousy; but one or two of the accents I feel I should have recognised (Dutch, for example) just didn't seem to exhibit the more "typical" (even stereotypical) kind of stresses and tonality I would expect and associate with that accent, which totally threw me.
Of the tough ones, I got Brazilian Portuguese, for the Icelandic I thought Swedish so close enough... the Czech woman was obviously eastern European for me, I was hesitating between Polish and Romanian... btw the Russian text was from a speech by Putin promoting some major international sports competition, either the 2012 winter Olympics or the 2018 football world cup. The Italian, French, German and African were easy AF (although I didn't place the last one specifically to Kenya).
9:09 I’m gonna use my ”Romanian”-guess, here. The phonemes; and the vowels, especially, are very strong and distinct; and the ”R” is a very strong trill (rolled ”R”); which is very reminiscent of Finnish (my native language) and Estonian. At the same time; she had this very Romance, passionate intonation. I’m gonna say: ”Romanian 🇷🇴”. *EDIT:* OK. I hear Czech pronunciation is very much like Finnish, too. But I wasn’t expecting that Romance, almost Mediterranean, vivacious passion, in the intonation. But, maybe it was just an emotional situation. What do I know 🤷🏼♂️?
Number 5, the italian, I got it right on the spot and I can tell you who he is. Is none other than Gennaro Contaldo, I would recognize that voice and that accent anywhere
I was only able to guess the most obvious ones like French, German, and Japanese, but I did manage to guess Chinese. His English is quite fluent so he’s not typical but for me the way he struggled with some of the final consonants is a sure tell. I’m sure you know this since you have the experience with East Asian speakers, but Chinese words rarely ends in a consonant, most end in a vowel just like Japanese.
The Finnish one I thought was Swedish until the last word where I heard that it was Finnish. The Danish one was really easy. I was way of on some of the others. The Vietnamese sounded African. Didn't sound like the Vietnamese people I've met.
That was fun. Although I though Czech was Slovenian. Danish has a very specific intonation compared to Norwegian and Swedish. It sounds like statements are questions to my English speaking ear.
The Dutch accent was a bit subtle, but recognizable characteristics are how all closed vowels are pronounced short, and how the th sounds like a d. Another common giveaway is devoicing of voiced final consonants, but she didn't use any words where you would notice that (e.g. "bed" sounding like "bet").
I got about half of them correct, and I'm proud of myself. I got Russian right off the bat, given the heavy L. I didn't get any of the Far Eastern or the Scandinavian accents, but hearing "dunk it" sounding exactly like "danke", I knew it was German. I got Greek (I used to work for them in the New York City diners), and wouldn't have been great if Lithuanian or Estonian were included? Who'd be able to guess that?
When I read the title for this, I thought Raff was going tell us where "his accent" was from cause when I hear him speak I always giggle cause it sounds very British to me. And he reminds me of a German friend I have who sounds very similar in accent to him.
I guessed Kenyan for #3. Pretty close
Also "Dunk it in ze mustart" has to be the single most german thing I've heard in my entire life
was that flula borg?
Thank you for playing along Metatron! Glad you enjoyed :)
# Russian was actually spoken by Putin, his speech before the Sochi olympics games
Gosh, it's so crazy how Greeks and Spanish sounds so similar! I remember to have listened to two girls in the bus while the bus was standing and I thought why I don't understand this "Spanish" at all (I know at least some Spanish). When the bus driver joined them and after some time I got it that it was Greek, not Spanish XD
Happens to us as well, don't worry. We have to rely on secondary cues to tell that someone is not Greek, if we can't clearly hear them.
I could tell the difference obviously because I understand Spanish but as far as the sounds are concerned, I find it may be true with Castilian with the Madrid accent especially not so much Latin American Spanish. I'm surrounded by Mexican Spanish and it doesn't sound Greek to me.
Brazilian here.
What is absolutely unmistakable in the brazilian accent: notice how she pronounces the 'd' in "diferent people" (like 'Jiferent')
And the final sound of 'people', that also sounds so much like a Brazilian pronounce.
There's also the unmistakable t, as in "tchwo" instead of "two" that like 99% of us do.
And the Ls
"Peopou" 😂
Unmistakable
Yeah, Metatron really fluked this one. One of the easiest, for sure
@@mikanunx Yes; of course, it was gonna be Brazil, or: ”Braziw” 🇧🇷.
I think
the Greek who speaks is Elena Paparizou who won the Eurovision in 2005. she was born and raised in Sweden... that's why it's not exactly the Greek dialect
I knew she didn't sound Greek, I had guessed somehwere in scandinavia, but couldn't quite place it.
When it’s Slavic but with Romance-like vowels and intonation, it’s Czech.
Trickiest thing is it depends on the person. 2 people who speak the same language, with the same accent, can have different accents individually, when speaking English. All depending on how well/much they focus on pronunciation, pending they're both at the same level of fluency. Though I like that, makes it more of a challenge.
Czech is the closest language to polish and I would spot polish accent right away but the czech one... I thought it must be something from Africa
I got France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Holland, Japan and in fact China. Far from the most Chinese person ever and I almost didn’t get it but the ‘r’ to ‘w’ and odd tonality when he said ‘different’, ‘backgrounds’ and ‘brothers’ at the end made it easier.
What I had to sort out was that most were speaking British English, so it was guessing a composite accent. I did fairly badly.
I was pretty bad but i knew Arabic immediately. But i'm Czech and didn't guess that one, i thought it was something Asian 🤣
I also thought Asian for the Czech audio, specifically Indonesia (Javanese) or Philippines (Tagalog?)
I was happy to hear the Finnish accent there, I've learned to recognize the accent of my fellow Finns over the years. It's quite unique. If you want to hear something wild look up Finnish rally English. Now that's an accent, if you can even call it that.
It wasn't a very heavy or stereotypical accent though I can see why Metatron would have trouble placing it. Sure when you know the accent you can place easily, he had kind of similar accent to what my dad had.
I would not blame you not getting the Chinese. It was definitely not a typical Chinese speaking English.
I knew immediately number 16 was Finnish, he had that unmistakable monotonous voice, hard consonants and rolled r's that are so typical for Finns 😂🇫🇮
His retracted "s"s and rolled "r"s had genuinely tricked me into thinking he would be from Spain. Guess I should have paid more attention to the intonation
Yep. I guessed it correctly too. Maybe because I've heard a good amount of Finnish people speaking english (Nightwish interviews 😂)
I thought it's Hungarian.
@@mikanunx I also guessed Finnish because of Nightwish (it instantly reminded me of Tarja shouting "Gracias" on stage here in Argentina); however, before that, I also thought Finnish during the Icelandic audio (probably my brain mixing Björk and Tarja somehow).
@Abiodun92 Yes. Native Finn, here. That was almost stereotypical Finnish accent. Maybe the speaker was also bored; and that’s, why he sounded even more monotonous, than we usually do. We usually stress the first syllable a bit more; but that’s, in Finnish, itself (Finnish actually has 3 distinct stress-levels: Strong stress (for the 1st syllable), sub-stress (for the 3rd syllable of a word, and the 1st syllable of the 2nd part of a compound word), and unstressed). But; when we speak other languages, like English, where the stressing of the word varies, between words; we might take a safe bet, and minimize the stress, altogether (thus, flattening the intonation), if we’re not sure about the stressing of a particular word. But, for anyone reading this: The difference I mentioned (of the word-initial stress, in Finnish being stronger, usually) is really quite minute (especially, to the ears of beginners); so, don’t go overboard; or you’ll sound weird. I, also, don’t see, how some people (like Barbs, from ”Geography Now”) can hear Finnish or the Finnish accent with a Swedish intonation. He didn’t say it sounds Swedish; but, when he emulated, how he heard Finnish; it was litterally gibberish, with an over-exaggerated Swedish accent 🤯.
As a New Yorker, I thought I would do better BUT I did get the Chinese! ( to be fair, I teach English skills to mostly Asian MBA students). Maybe U.S. Chinese?!
You did really well. Accents are great !
#10 When I heard "Thank you so muts" I was pretty sure it was Greek. :D
I really should’ve spotted that! 😖
I was so confident that Finnish and Greek were Spanish. It's surprising they didn't put any Latino accent because our accent is arguably the most common foreign accent
I noticed that.I think they were going for the more obscure except for a few.
The same here. The Greek sound like Salma Hayek for a moment.
I myself also thought the Greek and the Finnish one were Spanish accents...
Right. My guess for Greek was Latin-American Spanish
The French one was nearly a caricature ! So much fun !
Yes. I was like: ”Are they trying to give us that?!”. They could just as well have had Julien Miquel doing the Hollywood-Italian accent, for ”Italian”. 😅
I recognized the brazilian by the way she pronouced "to" like a "choo".
How come the Netherlands is Central Europe for you😅???
As an Israeli, I can confirm 100% that's how Hebrew native speakers generally sound in English, I picked it up in 2 seconds with no doubts. Regarding the Chinese guy, I thought dutch 😂 and Saudi I thought someone slavic 😂. Alo the Brazilian i thought SE asia 😂.
Me too thinking Chinese was Dutch 😂
he did not have a typical Israeli Hebrew native accent. His R's were not uvular fricative either.
@@oleksijm that's exactly how Israelis pronounce the English R when they talk. They know they shouldn't make the uvular R.. so it becomes something in between.
Also I'm pretty sure I can tell who this person is, just by his voice.
@@Abilliph I talk to Israelis every day and the majority employ the uvular realization of R in English as well.
@@oleksijm well, I can never verify that. As far as I know, most Israelis would make an effort to use the American R, with various degrees of success.. and I have been talking to Israelis all my life.
I instantly recognized German since I went to school with some .The Vietnamese kids were too Americanized to have a noticable accent.The Dutch person made sense since it was almost perfect English and Dutch is very close to that.This was quite hard since they didn't use obvious accents except maybe the Japanese lady.
You can spot a Brazilian speaking English when they say "two", "to" or "too", cause it's common people from here saying "tchu" (or "choo" for anglophones). Also, another common mistake is our T and D being pronounced in English words like in "different" sounding like "geeferent". And, the most Brazilian thing to do is to add vowels in the end of words that have the last syllable unstressed, like UA-came, Iphonee, what'sappee, etc
I guessed 1 French, 2 x, 3 x, 4 Brazilian, 5 Italian, 6 Arabic, 7 German, 8 x, 9 Russian, 10 Greek, 11 Vietmamese, 12 x, 13 Japanese, 14 x, 15 x, 16 Finnish, 17 x
3:42 Of course, it’s gonna be Portuguese from ”Braził”, with that Dark L 🇧🇷😅.
7:45 Yeah, I was also thinking of maybe Spanish, from Latin America. Then again, it could be Romanian, too. The phonemes are very strong and clear, which I associate with Romanian (except a word-final ”I”, after a consonant, which litterally just modifies the preceding consonant, making it more palatalized, like the Russian ”ь”; «Мягкий Знак», _”Myagkiy Znak”,_ or the ”Soft Mark”).
At 3:09, that "dgiferent" was the hint for Portuguese.
So I got that (full point), and got Arabic.
The rest it was all like same as you.
The Chinese didn't sound Chinese at all.
And the Nordics are all so good! :-)
Fun game
First one is French, being the the stereotype of a French speaking English. It makes me think of some French movies, where some French try to speak English, and have that kind of accent, like in the movie " La grande Vadrouille". A classic French movie, I recommend it, a great and funny movie. But Some French can speak really good English.
Second one, I would guess German/Germanic. Third one, Spanish. Fourth one , no idea. Fifth one: Italian. Sixth one: German. Seven one: German, finally, lol. Eight one: Swedish?. Ninth one: Slavic/Russian. Tenth one: No idea. Eleventh one : No idea. Twelfth one : Romanian? Thirteenth: Japanese. Fourteenth: Spanish. Fifteenth: No idea. Sixteenth: No idea. Seventeenth: Germanic/Nordic.
Well, I was pretty bad, lol. Oh well, can't win them all. Anyway, good job Metatron. Also good job to those who participated in the challenge.
That was fun. Thanks for the video. Have a good day, and the same to the Nobles one , and those who read this. Good weekend to you all. Cheers.
That was FUN
12:36 It’s OK, Raffaello. My weak spot turned out to be the Asian languages (especially Mandarin and Vietnamese); except Japanese, because that ”R” (and some added vowels) was a dead give-away. But; for me, as a Finn; when I heard the Finnish one, my reaction was exactly the same, as yours was, to the Italian one. That was *_SO_* (stereo)typical a Finnish accent 😅. It’s usually called: _”Ralli-Englanti”_
(”Rally-English”), over here, because it’s the stereotypical rally-driver’s accent, when they give interviews, in English (coupled with literal translations of Finnish expressions and idioms). My Friend and I call it: _”Himas-Englanti”_ (”Himas-English”, or ”Himanen’s English”), though; because it’s the accent of the Finnish Philosopher, Pekka Himanen.
9:55 Yeah; that ”R”, in ”Engrishu”, was a give-away 😅. *_THAT’S_* an ”Intrusive R”.
Instantly had the Dutch one 🤣 But I'm from NL too :P I think I even got a hint of what region she's from (I'd go for Brabant).
Fun challenge, I guessed most of them right, but some of them were quite tricky.
I guessed Hungarian instead of Finnish, wrong weird European language :P It did remind me somewhat of how my Hungarian friend speaks, but when I think of it also how some Finnish guy speaks that I've recently met. The accents have some features in common for sure (at least to my ear).
That Chinese accent is quite typical of educated Mandarin speakers, particularly from northern China.
That Russian voice is you know whom's...
6:48 Yeah; when he got to ”70 *_PERcent”,_* it sounded Russian. I think it’s Russian 🇷🇺.
*EDIT:* 7:00 My thoughts, exactly, Metatron. That *_”PERcent”_* had the typical Russian broad ”Э”-sound.
I only guessed #14 correctly because of that video where Björk is taking apart her TV.
You shouldn’t trust poets
can you do more of this? is so good I liked a lot this video
8:49 I was gonna guess some Romance language, again; but Vietnamese?! I think we can establish it: I’m not good with Asian languages/accents 😅.
10 Spanish... 😅😅 Oh no it is Greek
Same XD
Same, and I was so sure and confident about it... :D
I'm Spaniard. With my look and my accent when I go to Ireland, the moment I say hello, everybody instantly knows that I'm not from around the place. When I went to Greece each time I step into a place and said "Iassas" every body spoke to me in Greeck asuming that I was local.
It is incredible how similar are the phonetics of Greek and my variety if Castilian Spanish
Another great idea to look for!
Almost sure the Hebrew one was from Asi Azar (which Europeans would know from hosting the Eurovision). Though I must admit I didn't pick it up myself before seeing it. Usually I'm good at picking up Israeli accent. The fact that he said ummm instead of emmm completely through me off.
I think I love the Japanese accent even more now after having started to study it. I learned Spain, Spanish, and I have a friend who lived in Greece for 20 years, but I still thought the Greek accent was from Spain. The German accent was incredibly easy and hard at the same time: I was in German major in college, and I heard so much of a beautiful, thick German accent, that I started to tune it out. Eventually, once the girls got comfortable with me, they would all ask me to help work on their accent and by that time I could barely hear it. Lol. That’s why we should all use our foreign languages as much as possible because people will intuitively understand us the more of our speech they hear. The human brain is an amazing thing.
Japanese being my mom's native language (and the first I have learned as a child), it was easy. I could even mimic them trying to speak horrible English.
Others, it was more difficult than I thought. I guessed Asia when it was Europeans speaking (and vice-versa). However, I got Dutch right. For some reasons, I love the way they speak English. Kinda American sounding, minus the excessive twangs.
My guesses were:
French
Korean
African
Vietnamese
Italian
Slavic?
German
Belgium? Sounded almost French but not quite
Russian
Romance language?
Southeast Asia?
Slavic
Japanese
Scandinavian
Dutch
Polish?
Danish
Good guess about Hebrew. If it sounds a bit French to you, but it has clear vowels (no umlauts or nasal sounds).. it's probably Hebrew.
Italian dude be like
*explaining how to make pizza dough*
*stereotypical Italian music in the background*
Mamma mia!
That was fun! As a Ticinese I didn't recognise the Italian 😮 but got the French and German- but I'm bilingual F + have been living in Zurich. I kept thinking of Dutch (even for Chinese😅), got Greek, Danish and Russian 👍😊🙋♀️
1:38 I’m gonna say: Russian 🇷🇺.
*EDIT:* I was as stumped, as you, Metatron. I honestly thought, for the life of me, that it was Slavic, and Russian is a pretty safe bet, among Slavs, because of the sheer number of speakers. Polish, too, because Poles are very international and/or *_*AHEM!_** *_cosmo-POLE-itan_* people 💀. But Chinese 🇨🇳?! *_WTF?!_*
After living in Japan for 6 years, I got that one easily too.
Haven't lived there, got it anyway
#5 was easy, That's Gennaro Contaldo, Jamie Oliver's mentor. He's amazing.
IMO, this test is a bit sub-par, as the accents are not equally heavy.
I picked up German & Dutch, living in Berlino.. but thats about it.. was waiting for Indian-type accent, still am. At same time, everyone was quite understandable, which is quite impressive.
The ultimate proof that Portuguese and Slavic languages sound a bit alike is that I mistook the Brazilian girl for a Polish speaker 😂
I couldn’t, for the life of me, have guessed ”Icelandic”, either. I don’t really associate post-alveolar fricatives, like ”š”, or [ʃ] (the ”sh”-sound), with Icelandic 🇮🇸. 😮
At the moment that woman start to speak I knew it was a Brazillian. We can easily pinpoint our accent!
I got Iceland because it sounded North Germanic but when she said "lots of likes" I heard a bit of pre-aspiration on "lots" /lɔʰts/ which convinced be it was Icelandic.
Danish was obvious to me because you can hear a bit of that typical 'stød' sound
Am I the only native german speaker to have never substituted the th-sound for a s/z-sound ever? Grinds my gears everytime I hear it.
It’s iconic though, you should start doing it
#10
I realised that was Greek speaker after the 3rd word .....I am a performer...
I was sure that 10 is Spanish…
Turns out to be Greek.
These two languages phonology is almost the same.
For Japanese a harder recognition challenge would be something from Yuta or maybe Tanuki
That lady's accent was so unmistakably Japanese it sounded like a more proficient English speaker imitating the accent for laughs
that channel is cool, i used to attempt their "guess the language", "guess the country outline" and something more years ago
The Brazilian Portuguese speaking Too as TCHU, I felt that Brazilian vibe
I got the icelandic, because she just speaks like Björk
As an Italian my guesses were:
1 - FRENCH!! Are you kidding me?
2 - no clue - Chinese don't speak like that
3 - some African political leader, sounds very typical but it's not Easy to spot the Place
4 - not Easy but I got Brazil
5 - honestly It sounded more of a Greek accent, perhaps someone from South Italy
6 - Arabic, got this easily
7 - German!!! No doubt
8 - I thought maybe Israel but I was not so sure
9 - I got Russian
10 - Greek but It was short I was not super sure
11 - no idea
12 - sounded Indiana at First
13 - Japan 😂 korean accent Is a bit similar
14 - no clue maybe Spanish
15 - I thought Dutch maybe
16 - no idea
17 - someone from North Europe area
😊
I got pretty much the same as Raf, with the exception of Dutch, Danish (was there for five years), Finnish (got plenty of colleagues), Icelandic (guessed some kind of Nordic), and Greek (native speaker)
french, #3 african 4) romanian 5) 6) arabic 7) german 8) Netherlands 9) Russian 10) Brazilian 11) ? 12) India 13) 14) 15) 16) 17) Swedish well I did horribly
I dont see how he missed Arabic. Guy was practically screaming allahu ackbar
Yeah the Russian is REALLY a Russian!!! 😎 Please continue with this quiz!!!
He’s nearly the most Russian person I’ve ever heard, although there was a Soviet defector whose accent was so broad he had to have subtitles on a British TV programme I saw once. His twangy ‘ee’ sound meant he said ‘tea’ as ‘tyee’ or even ‘chyee’! The Dutch one was very obviously Dutch (th becoming d and s becoming sh) but then I also wrongly thought the Icelandic one was too and the Greek one should’ve had the speaker saying something with an sh, ch or j sound like ‘fish and chips’ or ‘cheese and jam sandwiches’ which becomes ‘fees and tseeps’ and ‘tseez and dzam sandweetsees’ 😂
I had the exact same reaction as you at the first one🤣🤣
I got like 4. All the nordic accents I knew their were from one of their countries but I couldn't a single one correctly xD but, tbf, most of the examples didn't have their typical accent which made it way harder than it could be.
Number 12 is recognizable by the way she rolls her letter R, but I am from Czech Republic, so it was quite easy for me. For example her way of pronouncing the word "nature" is quite indicating of Czech accent, at least for me.
When I heard it I thought Polish.
Well, if you are from Czechia it is easier for you to identify this accent 🙂
@@jwessel1969 Not a bad guess actually...
I'm Czech and I didn't guess the Czech one. It sounded Asian to me 😂
@@jwessel1969 Well they are really close to each other. The Slavic languages are in this fun limbo space where Poles understand Czechs very well, Russians fine. Bulgarians understand Serbo-Croatian very well and Russian fine, but Bulgarians and Poles barely understand each other at all lmao (Used these countries specifically because they are farthest away from each other linguistically speaking).
For most of them I was either pretty sure of the region or had no idea. The most embarrassing one for me was Finnish, because it was near the end and I seemed to think it was certain that they would have a Spanish accent in the video, I thought the Finnish accent sounded Spanish… And Spanish is my second language. 😵
My results almost exactly like yours, except I got Dutch but not Danish. And all my comments were repeated word for word by you! Great fun.
#13 it was the japanese girl interviewing Leo di Caprio
Singging can be found regionally in England
I'm Cajun, and curious about this, thank you Metatron!
#2 I guessed Chinese right away 很明顯, to say he “didn’t have a Chinese accent” is funny to me lol Vietnamese I got quickly too.
3:09 "Different peopeuuu"
I Don't know any other people that turns L's into U's
That was a brilliant video! My guesses were generally lousy; but one or two of the accents I feel I should have recognised (Dutch, for example) just didn't seem to exhibit the more "typical" (even stereotypical) kind of stresses and tonality I would expect and associate with that accent, which totally threw me.
6:27 that was literally Putin speaking
Yeah I recognised him.
Of the tough ones, I got Brazilian Portuguese, for the Icelandic I thought Swedish so close enough... the Czech woman was obviously eastern European for me, I was hesitating between Polish and Romanian... btw the Russian text was from a speech by Putin promoting some major international sports competition, either the 2012 winter Olympics or the 2018 football world cup.
The Italian, French, German and African were easy AF (although I didn't place the last one specifically to Kenya).
Danish was unmistakable. They stick out of the other nordics like a sore thumb.
For the Israeli guy I thought of something like... Greece? At least the flags have similar colors :D
9:09 I’m gonna use my ”Romanian”-guess, here. The phonemes; and the vowels, especially, are very strong and distinct; and the ”R” is a very strong trill (rolled ”R”); which is very reminiscent of Finnish (my native language) and Estonian. At the same time; she had this very Romance, passionate intonation. I’m gonna say: ”Romanian 🇷🇴”.
*EDIT:* OK. I hear Czech pronunciation is very much like Finnish, too. But I wasn’t expecting that Romance, almost Mediterranean, vivacious passion, in the intonation. But, maybe it was just an emotional situation. What do I know 🤷🏼♂️?
I guessed Romanian too!
0:57 French 🇫🇷.
I know quite a few native Israeli’s and I’d say that that is a pretty normal Isreali accent, but they can definitely be much thicker.
Number 5, the italian, I got it right on the spot and I can tell you who he is. Is none other than Gennaro Contaldo, I would recognize that voice and that accent anywhere
Pretty confident that was Putin, can't get more russian than that 😆
I was only able to guess the most obvious ones like French, German, and Japanese, but I did manage to guess Chinese. His English is quite fluent so he’s not typical but for me the way he struggled with some of the final consonants is a sure tell. I’m sure you know this since you have the experience with East Asian speakers, but Chinese words rarely ends in a consonant, most end in a vowel just like Japanese.
The Finnish one I thought was Swedish until the last word where I heard that it was Finnish. The Danish one was really easy. I was way of on some of the others. The Vietnamese sounded African. Didn't sound like the Vietnamese people I've met.
The Arabic one I got right exactly. I said either Iraq or Saudi Arabia. I don’t know how you go the Italian one 😂 he was soo British
My guesses:
1 - French.
2 - Belgian.
3 - South African.
4 - South African.
5 - Spanish.
6 - Dutch.
7 - German.
8 - Spanish.
9 - Ukraine.
10 - Portuguese from Brazil.
11 - Dutch.
12 - Indian.
13 - Japanese.
14 - Welsh.
15 - Israeli.
16 - Spanish.
17 - Sweden.
I'm terrible with this stuff.
"djiferent" gave away the Brazilian.
the Danish one had kamelåså all over it.
That was fun. Although I though Czech was Slovenian. Danish has a very specific intonation compared to Norwegian and Swedish. It sounds like statements are questions to my English speaking ear.
The Dutch accent was a bit subtle, but recognizable characteristics are how all closed vowels are pronounced short, and how the th sounds like a d. Another common giveaway is devoicing of voiced final consonants, but she didn't use any words where you would notice that (e.g. "bed" sounding like "bet").
"Bad" sounds also like "bet"
@@alfonsmelenhorst9672 Yep, and that's because of the final consonant devoicing (bed→bet) *combined* with the shortening of closed vowels (bad→bed).
@@MarianneExJohnson The same as in German and all Slavic languages (Russian, Polish etc)
I got about half of them correct, and I'm proud of myself. I got Russian right off the bat, given the heavy L. I didn't get any of the Far Eastern or the Scandinavian accents, but hearing "dunk it" sounding exactly like "danke", I knew it was German. I got Greek (I used to work for them in the New York City diners), and wouldn't have been great if Lithuanian or Estonian were included? Who'd be able to guess that?
I got 14.
The Finnish one was so obvious. That was fun.
One tip Norwegian and Swedish are tonal languages. Danish has no tone and swallow words
...that's the generous way of phrasing it.
I feel like they chose people that barely had an accent, in many cases.
When I read the title for this, I thought Raff was going tell us where "his accent" was from cause when I hear him speak I always giggle cause it sounds very British to me. And he reminds me of a German friend I have who sounds very similar in accent to him.
He's Italian, specifically from Cicely I believe.
I thought the second accent was Romanian, but I was surprised to see that it is Chinese; same with the video number ten. 🙂
#1 is French