Do you have a good ear for languages?

I can tell the difference between the language spoken by white Americans and black Americans

I can tell the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin; I used to be able to differentiate between Flemish and Dutch. I doubt I could tell the difference among Swedish, Danish and Norwegian; Icelandic, like English, uses the TH sound.

Yup. I'm a linguist and professor. I grew up in a multilingual home.

But don't ask me to explain fractals or quarks.

I know a little Russian so I can tell the difference between major Slavic languages (Russian, Serbiocroatian, Polish).

Scandinavian languages sound all the same to me although I've seen plenty of movies from those countries.

And I can spot Southern Italian dialects because they never pronounce the last vowel: for instance, they pronounce "uomo" ad "uom".

I tend to learn foreign languages relatively quickly. I can tell the difference between Danish and Swedish because I used to study them.

But I can't really tell the difference between Czech and Polish or Russian and Ukranian, even though I am of Slavic descent.

Hohn hohn hohn - baguette!

I've always wondered about this, if Americans (and English speakers in general) can hear the difference between Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.

I'm guessing very few people are able to recognize languages or spot the differences from other language families - people who speak Germanic langauges think all the Slavic langauages sound the same, Slavic people think all the Germanic languages sound the same etc.

Intercontinental linguistic differences are naturally even bigger.

OP, you're going to be as bad as the music/singles troll, aren't you?

So... if Americans can't hear the difference between the Scandinavian languages I'm guessing they can't hear the difference between the Norwegian dialects either? Not even the very distinct Bergen dialect, with the special r's being uvular trills, the same as in French.

I can R8, but that is because I studied the Scandi languages at university.

Swedish and Danish don't sound that similar. I studied Swedish a while and still know the basics, but can hardly understand Danish unless it's written. It sounds like gargling to me.

I can usually detect the Skanska dialect (southern).

No but I have an eerily good ear for voices. Unless that's a normal thing.

I can barely understand English.

I can tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese.

I can tell the difference between Dutch and Frisian.

I was born with a very good ear for learning foreign languages--studied French in school (and still speak it fairly well because I have worked at it over the years) and have learned enough Spanish to travel pretty well in Mexico and Spain without speaking English (though my French is much, much better) and also Italian in the last 10 years. I was watching a couple of Danish TV shows (wonderful, both of them)--Borgen, a political drama--fantastic if you can find it--and Rita, which is a hilarious bawdy comedy about a sexy grade school teacher and her adorable gay teenage son and their various partners over 3 seasons. So I do recognize Danish fairly easily. I've also seen a lot of Bergman films over the years, so I find it easy to tell the difference between the two languages. Norwegian I have not heard very much, so probably would think it was Danish. I can distinguish Mandarin from Cantonese, again because of seeing a lot of movies in both languages. I can usually guess :Polish but not other slavic languages.

It is fun to travel to countries where I can get by in the language--especially France, where people typically don't speak good English (although that's changed a lot over the years). I think you're either born with a good ear or you're not, but learning a language to where your have a reasonable command of it is a lot of work for everybody, no matter how much native ability you have. There's just a lot of memorizing and drilling and there's no real way around it. And many people without a "good ear" become very fluent in other languages. It's just how much work you're willing to put in.

I'm pretty good but it's not my thing where I"m exceptional.

Aren't Danish and Swedish supposed to be mutually intelligible to native speakers, R12? Your comment would seem to indicate otherwise.

Languages are structured to be easily learned by children owing to the incompleteness of their intellectual equipment. To learn languages readily as an adult is very difficult unless you have retained some of the same unconnected synapses that toddlers have. Not that this means you are stupid or developmentally delayed, just that boasting about this ability might be out of place.

When I was in Denmark years ago, they told me that they understood Swedish but that Swedes could not understand them, and could certainly not pronounce words properly in Danish, which of course they find very amusing as they considered Swedes pompous. Danish is one of those languages that sounds very different from the way it looks on the page, and I think you have to be born there to reproduce the sounds correctly. Plus of course they all speak such fluent English that you could live there forever and never need to learn the language (same with Swedish. My friend's son lives and works in Stockholm and is married to a Swedish girl and has learned very little if any Swedish.) Swedish is grammatically difficult apparently but not impossible to pronounce like Danish. Supposedly Norwegian is most similar to English gramatically and would be the easiest (i.e., the version spoken in Oslo I think) for an English speaker to learn. Again, they all speak perfect English there, so why bother.

Bump

I can easily tell all Asian languages apart. I can't do it for any other region of the work. I went to school and church with several Vietnamese people. (big community near where I grew up). Watched a ton of Japanese anime as a kid, and watch Korean soap operas in China. I can't speak any of them except the barest Japanese. Chinese I can only recognize as being none of the other three.

I can tell the difference between all European languages since I travel around the old continent a lot. But I guess it still comes down to your ears, not your travel mileage in the end: my friend once had a boyfriend from Scotland and he was a well-read guy and had visited all of the continents (well, minus Antarctica). We were once standing in line behind a group of loudass Czech people at some museum and he said: "Could these Germans get any louder?!"

I can tell the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin and I can also recognize the difference between Japanese and Korean which are very similar.

I thought all the north Indian languages were mutually intelligible, but apparently not. My ex from Bombay spoke a couple of them, but couldn't follow Bengali or Punjabi at all.

I would like to learn Italian, if only for the ability to really ham it up, which apparently they would take as a compliment rather than a parody.

I have a good eye for languages. I can read languages better than understand someone who is speaking.

When I took Russian, the alphabet was the easiest part. Also, the spelling rules made sense to me, but not to others in my class. After a while, I automatically knew when to use a soft sign.

Only one time in my many years of working in hospitals in NYC was I stumped by a language. It sounded like Italian, but it also had that guttural middle eastern sound you hear in Hebrew and Arabic. Turned out to be Maltese, which is basically a mix of Italian and Arabic.

Portuguese was a weird one, because people from Portugal (as opposed to people from Brazil) when speaking Portuguese sound a bit Russian.

Also a professor and linguist. I can tell the differences among Scandinavian languages, even a few dialects thereof. Ditto Slavic languages, although I have trouble distinguishing between Upper and Lower Lusatian (Sorbian) until I can zero in on a few lexical differences.

East Asian languages are pretty easy to differentiate to me, but that mishmash of Indian languages scrambles my ears.

I think the most fascinating-sounding European language is Albanian. It sounds like about 10 different languages (like Dutch, Greek and Slavic languages) mixed into one. And it really is one of a kind, since there are no other closely-related langauges.

I'm getting pretty good at distinguishing Gulf Arabic from Levantine Arabic.

I can usually tell the difference between written forms of swedish and danish, though I only know some Danish. I can also hear the difference between Danish and German but I'm guessing that's no achievement...

I don’t have conversational fluency in Japanese by any means, but after years of listening to various public figures (usually celebrities) there talk on camera I’m getting a feel for the accent & picking out words.

I can also sometimes pick out different dialects, now, which is a very cool recent development. Watching this livestream by Araki Hirofumi I knew before looking it up that he was using Kansaiben. I’m not sure what differentiates his Kobe accent from Osaka or Kyoto yet, but that seems like a tough distinction for a Westerner who has never lived in Japan anyway. I’m weirdly proud of myself for managing this much. It’s all in the sentence endings (Kansaiben often ends phrases in “yo”) and the soft ‘f’s’ (pron. like “h”).

R27 I’m the total opposite. I’m a musical learner and hyperlexic, so mimicry & aural practice is how I learn. I spent over 7 years trying to learn French from school/college classes via books and barely anything took. My compassionate highschool teacher once told me to just move there if I wanted to learn for real, as I do probably pick it up fluently by ear within 18 months. My written grammar/comprehension was always atrocious so I think he realised that wasn’t my best learning style long before I did.

I can tell the difference in Southern accents, listening to my friends from MS, TX and GA there are subtle differences between them.

Even though I'm hearing impaired, as a life-long fan of non-English speaking films and a traveller, I recognize most Scandinavian, Nordic, Near, Middle and East Asian and European languages. I can pick up a Finnish accent in Swedish and the Aussie or Brit accent they're trying to hide in American English. I can recognize Mancunian, Scouse, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, French, Italian, Spanish as spoken in Argentina, Mexico and Spain, Portugese, Dutch, Flemish, German, Russian, Polish, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic and Iranian.

Yes, OP. I also have a musical ear. Where are you going with this?

Hi Norwegian R7! I can tell the difference between Swedish and Norwegian, but that's mostly because I've learnt Swedish. Norwegian is Swedish that I don't understand. It's like, it sounds like it's Swedish, but actually it's not. I can still have conversations with Norwegians. I speak Swedish to them, and they answer me in a way that I understand. Kämpbra !

Danish is very ugly. I do not understand it a bit.

Icelandic is cute but I don't understand it a bit.

I was in Bergen though, and didn't understand a thing. Beautiful place. The men are off-the-charts rude. Way too expensive. I'd go back, but there's a budget to think of. Gorgeous weather when I was there, almost criminal. Met a lot of hiking nuts.

R19, that's Norwegian and Swedish you're thinking about. Danish is a nightmare language to listen to, not unlike Dutch in that regard. Tough to say which one is uglier. Dutch sounds like someone vomiting, and Danish like nails on a chalboard.

Danish sounds like someone is speaking German, Swedish and attempting to swallow at the same time.

Queen of Denmark:

Me and two other American gay guys flew to Amsterdam via Brussels . One asked me what the language was during the departure announcement. I said it sounds Flemish. They laughed thinking I meant "phlegm-ish". They had not heard of that language.

I cannot understand a word of Caribbean Spanish including Venezuela!

You mean there are other languages besides English?