What is it called when a language sounds strange to a speaker of another language?

Question

Is there a linguistic term for, for example, certain Russian words sounding strange to the ears of a native English speaker?

Thanks

I usually describe that as * foreign* – Jim Nov 15 '14 at 22:24 — Jim, Nov 15 '14 at 22:24

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 15 '14 at 20:15

In linguistics, this phenomenon is called cross-language speech perception.

A large amount of research has studied how users of a language perceive foreign speech (referred to as cross-language speech perception) or second-language speech (second-language speech perception). The latter falls within the domain of second language acquisition.

Languages differ in their phonemic inventories. Naturally, this creates difficulties when a foreign language is encountered. For example, if two foreign-language sounds are assimilated to a single mother-tongue category the difference between them will be very difficult to discern.

_{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_perception}

More concrete example of the text's example: Japanese has a roughly 'r'-sounding phoneme that is nearly halfway between English's 'r' and 'l', which is why hearing the difference between those is difficult for Japanese speakers. — Nich Del, Nov 16 '14 at 20:39

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 15 '14 at 20:12

-1

The best term I can come up with is non-native phoneme.

answered Nov 15 '14 at 20:12

user97804

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What is it called when a language sounds strange to a speaker of another language?

2 Answers2