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One lad has revealed how the English language sounds to non-English speakers - and it’s much weirder than you'd think.
If you’ve ever visited a foreign country, between checking out their exciting crisp selection and discovering new beers, you may have wondered how you sound to non-English speaking locals.
Thanks to one TikTok user, there's no need to wonder anymore. He's shared how a language can sound when you don't actually understand the words, and, apparently, we sound a bit like those Sims characters.
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You can click here to listen for yourself:
TikToker the Language Simp - or @languagesimp - can speak several languages, including English, so has a good understanding of how we are likely to sound to non-English speakers.
In a clip that’s since been viewed more than eight million times, he shares a short piece of dialogue that sounds like a bizarre gibberish language. Tonally, it sounds a lot like English, but listening to the 'words' (if you can call them that), it makes absolutely no sense.
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The feeling it gives those of us who do speak English is a little confusing. One person commented: “I felt like I should understand what he was saying.”
While another asked: “You are telling me people hear me talking like a Sim?”
Someone else wrote: “I feel like I understand what he's saying, but I also don't.”
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A fourth person said: “This sounds right… but it’s not… ”
If odd linguistic information is your thing, then you may also be interested to know that earlier this year a study found that the majority of Brits could end up talking like a 'roadman' within the next 100 years.
Words like 'peng', 'wagwan' and 'bare' are part of a dialect known as 'Multicultural London English' (MLE), and it's believed that it could become the dominant dialect in the UK over the next century.
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The popular dialect comes from several languages mixing together in London, and has surpassed Cockney as the main dialect among working class people in the capital.
According to Professor Paul Kerswill of the University of York, Multicultural London English is a dialect born in the British capital in the early 1980s - but traces its roots back to the Windrush generation.
With most younger generations in the UK already familiar with MLE dialect, the study suggests that they will keep using these phrases into adulthood and pass it onto their own children.
Harley Young