A research challenge

[ajva]

You know I absolutely love people speaking languages, particularly British politicians. So! Apparently Nick Clegg speaks Dutch, German, French and Spanish. I've found a video of the first of these, and very impressive it is too - his Mum is Dutch, apparently - but I'd pay good money to find video examples of him speaking the other languages. But in my first research attempt, I've had difficulty. So I'll throw this out to the floor, and make this pledge: £10 per different language to the charity of your choice for anyone who can find me a clear video of Clegg speaking French, German or Spanish that lasts long enough to show he does it well or badly (i.e. "merci monsieur!" as a protester throws a croissant in his face would not quite suffice).

Here's my offered Dutch one.

Comments

[ajva.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting. Yes, from what I can tell, he seems to be pretty much bilingual in Dutch and English (he sounds native to me, although I'm not Dutch, of course) but I guess he won't have much opportunity to use Dutch. And I think I'm right in saying that Spanish was the last of the four he tackled, starting to acquire it only once he'd met Miriam in his 20s.

[barakta]

I can often identify weirdnesses in people's accents that others don't notice. At uni I had a tutor who one minute sounded Scottish and the next he sounded American. It was extremely confusing cos he slid between the two. Eventually I asked my personal tutor where he was from and explained - turns out he's a Scot who lived in America for a while and is now in Sheffield married to an American :) She was amazed I picked it up.

Part of it is how I understand people, I very much pattern match to an existing pattern, so I will think "X sounds like Y, ok apply Y rules to parsing X" which works pretty well as a basic heuristic.

I case as much about rate and cadence as I do about volume and I struggle with significant changes in vowel sounds from accents I am less accustomed to. I am ok with many Scottish accents (although the really broad ones like pure Aberdonian are beyond me) cos my mum's a Scot and prefer Germanic sounding accents to anything Romancy or Asian or African all of which I am terrible at parsing.

After nearly 2 years in Brum I'm finally getting to work out how they speak and understand them most of the time, although I still meet people I am unable to parse at all.