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Mika's accent and other languages


lollipop_monkey

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Mika seems to speak pieces of quite a few languages - French, Italian, and Spanish, at least.

 

To native speakers of these languages - how does he sound to you? As in, how is his pronunciation, sentence structure, and choice of words? Is it obvious that these aren't his native languages? Does he speak them with an English accent?

 

To native English speakers - when he speaks, does he sound more "American" or more "British" to you? To my Canadian ears he sounds distinctly British, although not nearly as thick as, say Lily Allen.

 

I'm a language nerd. :mf_rosetinted:

 

I think he sounds a little American to me.

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No I think he sounds very British... but he has lived in (correct me if I'm wrong) 3 different countries while he was young, so every now and again he has a bit of a nothing accent.. does that make sense?

 

Yes. Sort of.

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I'm native English speaker and to me his accent is a classic mid-Atlantic, and it can sometimes veer towards more British or more American, probably depending on where he is, and who he's talking to. Sometimes he sounds very British, even using the glottal stop (missing the 't' out) which is quite London, other times he has a definite American twang and intonation.

 

As a former languages teacher all I can say is, he is a fantastic role model for British youngsters, as we are famously rubbish as a nation in this department and language teachers in Britain really have a hard time trying to get across to children the importance of trying to speak another language and not being afraid to have a go..

 

So good on yer Mika! :wub2:

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I cant hear american in him that much.

I love accents, at school when the german exchange students visit it sounds funny to hear the ones (most of them) that have learnt from an american teacher, because then they end up with a german and american accent.

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I don't think I''ve heard him speak spanish before :S

If I have I can't remember....

and when he speaks English he has an accent, I just wouldn't be able to place it if I didn't know he was half american and spoke french

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Mika seems to speak pieces of quite a few languages - French, Italian, and Spanish, at least.

 

To native speakers of these languages - how does he sound to you? As in, how is his pronunciation, sentence structure, and choice of words? Is it obvious that these aren't his native languages? Does he speak them with an English accent?

 

To native English speakers - when he speaks, does he sound more "American" or more "British" to you? To my Canadian ears he sounds distinctly British, although not nearly as thick as, say Lily Allen.

 

I'm a language nerd. :mf_rosetinted:

 

haha Mika's spanish is really good and fluent...I've heard other artists and they sound not natural, or pronounce like the english vowels...Not Mika!! His spanish is the one they speak in some parts of spain, but without a strong accent...he had some grammar issues a few times.

 

in regard to his english, It always sound to me a little bit Borat...haha. But he has a beautiful color of voice, and that fixes everything...

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the glottal stop (missing the 't' out) which is quite London, other times he has a definite American twang and intonation.

 

Oh glottal, that's it. I was trying to say that yesterday and wrote gluttural. Then someone started talking about Paolo Nutini's guttural sound and I thought no, that's not what I mean. I've got something wrong there. :doh:

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Wow, this sounds very interesting to me ( I love these accent issues ) but I don't have a clue of what it means !! :biggrin2:

Do you mean not pronouncing the "t" somewhere ?

 

Yes, a glottal stop is saying "dir ee" instead of "dirty", "flir ee" instead of "flirty"

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Mika speaks a very fluent spanish, but he feels insecure speaking to it in big crowds, like a concert and that. He doesn´t have a weird accent. He really speaks great :)

 

Where does he learn all this? :roftl: I've been taking Spanish for 5 years, going on 10 different classes, and I'm only good at reading and writing. I can speak, but not fluently, and I can only understand well if someone speaks to me very slowly. Do they start teaching a language at very very young ages in Europe? I had Spanish when I was twelve and learned numbers, letters and basic words, then ages 13-18 more advanced.

 

ANYWAY... :roftl:

To me, he sounds British primarily, but there are some times when I barely hear a twang of an English accent, and that's usually in American interviews. In the "Don't Zoom in On My Boogers..." interview, there are only certain words where he sounds British, but otherwise it's full-out American. When he says, "camera man," "doing," "my" and "aunt" (the order of those words is not intended to say what it does :roftl:), you can hear it. One thing with his accent is that he generally does not use the British pronunciation of the letter "r." Instead of, "Ah," he says "Ahr." I noticed yesterday listening to him on the radio that he says "car" very American. It's got a kind of odd-sounding twang to it, but it sounds like a strange American dialect. Sort of like, "core." Also, "Santa Barbara" sticks out to me.

 

He sounds like my Language teacher from high school. She was born in London and raised there until she was 15, then she moved to America and had been there for about 25 years. Sometimes she sounded very British, especially when we had been watching an English film and then she had spoken to the class afterwards, but normally she sounded very American except for a little twang.

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Where does he learn all this? :roftl: I've been taking Spanish for 5 years, going on 10 different classes, and I'm only good at reading and writing. I can speak, but not fluently, and I can only understand well if someone speaks to me very slowly. Do they start teaching a language at very very young ages in Europe?

 

I think since French is his first language he would pick up other romance languages a lot easier than other English speakers. I've had no exposure to Italian but when I went to Venice I found it easier to understand Italian speech than French speech because it is more phonetic. Through reading I've picked up enough French vocabulary to get by but I have a hard time understanding the speech because of all the dropped consonants. I can recognize a lot of words in Italian and Spanish because they sound like phonetic versions of the written French words - or at least close enough to give you some hints.

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One thing with his accent is that he generally does not use the British pronunciation of the letter "r." Instead of, "Ah," he says "Ahr." I noticed yesterday listening to him on the radio that he says "car" very American. It's got a kind of odd-sounding twang to it, but it sounds like a strange American dialect. Sort of like, "core." Also, "Santa Barbara" sticks out to me.

 

That "r" thing is called a rhotic accent versus a non-rhotic accent. It's actually kind of interesting, and Wikipedia has a lot of info on it:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents

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That "r" thing is called a rhotic accent versus a non-rhotic accent. It's actually kind of interesting, and Wikipedia has a lot of info on it:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents

 

I think it's funny when people slap on an extra R that doesn't even belong there. I wonder if Mika gets called Meeker on occasion.

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I think it's funny when people slap on an extra R that doesn't even belong there. I wonder if Mika gets called Meeker on occasion.

 

:roftl: 'Meeker' sounds like some sort of dirty word. You meeker.

 

In "Love Today," does he sing, "Wait till your mamm-er and your pappa's gone...?" :biggrin2:

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Nice, a language thread!

 

I think since French is his first language he would pick up other romance languages a lot easier than other English speakers.

I was thinking exactly the same... I'm not saying that he can speak Italian and Spanish because he speaks French - that is like 'I speak German and Danish because I speak Dutch' which doesn't make sense. But languages like Italian and Spanish have the same grammar structure (is that the word?) as French, which is his first language, so it might be relatively easy for him to learn Italian and Spanish.

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Nice, a language thread!

 

This language and pronunciation thread just reminded me on something... It goes back to last year, when Mika played in the Trabendo, in Paris. He was on a french tv show, called "On a tout essayé" with french interviewer Laurent Ruquier. At one point, Laurent Ruquier talked about Will Smith, which he pronounced in the most typically and horribly french way... something like Will Smisss And it was really funny because, at first Mika didn't understand who he was talking about, and then, when he finally got it, he showed Ruquier how to pronounce Smith properly :bleh: .

And I remember thinking : It's funny, anyone doing this on a live Tv show could have sounded horribly arrogant and pedant, but this guy just sounds absolutely adorable ! There was something so simple and genuinely "I'm just trying to help" about his way of doing it... I guess that's one of the first things that made me like Mika...:wub2:

 

After, of course, I heard him singing... :mf_lustslow:

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Nice, a language thread!

 

 

I was thinking exactly the same... I'm not saying that he can speak Italian and Spanish because he speaks French - that is like 'I speak German and Danish because I speak Dutch' which doesn't make sense. But languages like Italian and Spanish have the same grammar structure (is that the word?) as French, which is his first language, so it might be relatively easy for him to learn Italian and Spanish.

 

Yes it's definitely easier to pick up other romance languages once you know one. I speak three Romance languages but although I've never studied Italian I can read it, and even understand it if spoken slowly, and I can even understand a bit of Romanian.

 

The thing is, Mika's comfortable having a go, he isn't inhibited about making mistakes, that's so important with foreign language learning. As I said before, he's an excellent role model for British kids, and the British in general as we are not famed for our language skills! Generally speaking as a nation we are lazy linguists.

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As to me,a frenchie I think He has quite a good accent but you can feel he hasn't lived his whole life in France we can feel that he's english,by the expressions he use and he has probably lost some vocab.it's a bit like hugh grant :biggrin2: but better much much better.

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