Friday, March 16, 2012

Accents and Languages

Now, I'm bilingual, and I've always had a certain fascination with language, speech, and writing. I have a fairly long list of languages which I'd very much like to learn and I love trying to imitate accents.

So at the moment, I speak English, Hebrew, and I'm learning French. On my "to learn" list are German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, and Arabic. I'm a German citizen, so I'd like to learn German, and it's quite close to English in many words. So far I can only count to ten, but...it's a start, isn't it. As for Dutch, I'd really love to visit the Netherlands, and my mom went to school there. I know a few words here and there, among them eighty-eight and rainbow. Italian is a really cool language which has a nice sound, and I was in Italy a few summers ago, which made me appreciate it more. Russian - part of my family is Russian and half of Israel speaks it, so it would be fairly useful, I guess. Arabic is, well, useful as well, because the other half of Israel speaks that, and Hebrew borrows words from it all the time, so it would be easier.

In English, I can currently do an American accent (No! Really?), an Israeli accent, Estuary English, and I guess a bit of southern United States. I'm trying to figure out Scottish accents by watching tons of David Tennant and Karen Gillan interviews, and I suppose I'd like to be able to do a German one.

Sometimes, when I'm listening or watching British people talk, I think, "Why on Earth was I cursed with a bland American accent? I mean, listening to them talk sounds so much better than listening to me talk." I don't know, maybe I watch too much British stuff, but why oh why couldn't I get a British accent? Sigh. Life isn't fair.

No comments:

Post a Comment