# Why meshuggah members speak perfect english?



## geofreesun (Apr 13, 2011)

ya so i was wondering, why do they speak like native english speakers, like americans? do swedish people all speak like that?


----------



## MFB (Apr 13, 2011)

Sweden, and most rest of the world, starts English at either 2nd or 3rd grade and continues on with it until what we would call high-school; in Germany there's at least two (I know Gymnasium and don't remember there others) different types of schooling after 8th grade and not sure about other countries.

So they get hammered with another language and turn out to be awesome at it (hopefully) from a young age, unlike us, where we only offer it - if at all - once you're in HS


----------



## geofreesun (Apr 13, 2011)

ya i get that europeans learn english early but for example, all the german friends i have met speak great english BUT with an accent, and you can immediately tell they are non-native speakers. when i hear thomas haake and marten speak, they sound exactly like americans. if u hear alexi laiho speak, u know he is a non-native speaker as well...so...i don't know.


----------



## signalgrey (Apr 14, 2011)

as mentioned above its the age at which you start it.
My elementary students are incredible learners, my middle school students are not so much...and god forbid you get low level HS students...its like pouring water in a bucket with no bottom.

America should really revise (everything) the language system.


----------



## geofreesun (Apr 14, 2011)

ah i see~ age makes all the difference., small kids learn language better than, say, people that are mature enough to appreciate metal \m/


----------



## MFB (Apr 14, 2011)

signalgrey said:


> as mentioned above its the age at which you start it.
> My elementary students are incredible learners, my middle school students are not so much...and god forbid you get low level HS students...its like pouring water in a bucket with no bottom.
> 
> America should really revise (everything) the language system.



This.

I fucking DETEST that I had to wait until HS to learn a foreign language, but at the same time I knew if I pursued it outside school, I wouldn't have put much effort into it. That's why as my final class of college I'll be re-learning German and hopefully learning more outside of the class.


----------



## McCap (Apr 14, 2011)

Well, it is true that we europeans must learn english at school (at least I think most of us).
This leads to most people having a good foundation. 
In germany those people who are interested in the language and like to use it normally get to be pretty good at it; and if they even spend a year in some english speaking country, they often loose their accent.

Now there's big differences in europe (caution, these are total clichees) with a tendency towards the northern countries (scandinavia) speaking very good english, while the southern countries (italy, spain) don't speak so well (or at least they don't like to).

The big difference between germany and sweden as far as I understand, and the reason the swedes speak better english (in average) seems to be that in germany the TV programm is dubbed (everythings in german), while the swedes get to see english language films in their original language. I think this is important for losing that accent, as for instance my english teacher in school did an exccelent job at teaching, but had a strong german accent. So you'll learn what you hear.

Add to that, that bands like meshuggah tour the world quite often where they have to speak english and probalby are in contact with english native speakers quite often.


PS: Oh, and in germany you either start with english in 5th grade or 7th grade, if you took latin or french or whatever as first language (yes we have to take two languages). Schools have 9, 10 or 12 grades in total, so most people had at least 5 years of english lessons.


----------



## CFB (Apr 14, 2011)

A few of us learn english well, but a majority speak it decent enough to get by. Then there's a small group that are just terrible. I doubt that we're much better then the rest of the world.


----------



## AySay (Apr 14, 2011)

They do have a very distinct accent. It may not be over the top like some other accents, but you can definitely hear it.



Listen to how he speaks here. You can still hear that accent, for example in the way he pronounces "friends" or "guitar" or "nothing" etc...


----------



## Murmel (Apr 14, 2011)

CFB said:


> A few of us learn english well, but a majority speak it decent enough to get by. Then there's a small group that are just terrible. I doubt that we're much better then the rest of the world.


Pretty much this. 
Bands that are known world-wide and tour around the world get in contact with English A LOT, and _communication > all_ when learning languages.

We start learning it in the 2nd grade, then every year until we finish school basically.
We pretty much never dub TV shows, which gives us more contact with how the language sounds.

But as CFB said, I don't think we're that much better than the rest of the world. Not many of us are as good as the touring Scandinavian artists like Alexi or Meshuggah. Most of us get by, some just suck, others do excellent.

Also, regarding Children of Bodom; I don't know if you've noticed that everyone in that band is terrible at English except for Alexi and Henkka 

I also find it funny how our grammar and structure when typing is often miles better than native speakers


----------



## TomAwesome (Apr 14, 2011)

Their English is good, but it's definitely apparent that it's not their first language.


----------



## Deadnightshade (Apr 14, 2011)

The answer why they have such qualities like good english accent and djent,relies on the quantum physics and chaos theory that also applies in *Nexus Chaosphere Of The Universe Celestials*.


----------



## leandroab (Apr 14, 2011)

I'm from Brazil and I started to study English since I was like 8 or 10...

All my PC games were in English. Movies in English. etc...

So... There ya go


----------



## Skyblue (Apr 14, 2011)

Some are better in learning foreign languages, some aren't so good at it, that's for starters. Now, like many already said- they start learning it early, which definitely helps. and it also depends how much contact do they have with english outside of school- movies, computers and so on. 
you can still hear their accent btw, it's just not as heavy as other accents~


----------



## Mordacain (Apr 14, 2011)

geofreesun said:


> ya i get that europeans learn english early but for example, all the german friends i have met speak great english BUT with an accent, and you can immediately tell they are non-native speakers. when i hear thomas haake and marten speak, they sound exactly like americans. if u hear alexi laiho speak, u know he is a non-native speaker as well...so...i don't know.



Schooling would be the start of it but I'd say this would more likely be due to touring America and hanging out with Americans. Americans are very quick to correct people when the wrong contextual word choice or wrong inflection is used. We're just rude like that


----------



## synrgy (Apr 14, 2011)

AySay said:


> They do have a very distinct accent.



Yeah.. Never sounded native to me.


----------



## Scar Symmetry (Apr 14, 2011)

McCap said:


> Well, it is true that we europeans must learn english at school (at least I think most of us).
> This leads to most people having a good foundation.
> In germany those people who are interested in the language and like to use it normally get to be pretty good at it; and if they even spend a year in some english speaking country, they often loose their accent.
> 
> ...



Great post


----------



## USMarine75 (Apr 14, 2011)

Well not everyone can master the art of the English language like... Shono.


----------



## USMarine75 (Apr 14, 2011)

Yeah totally native sounding here... I thought he was from Boston...


----------



## Sang-Drax (Apr 14, 2011)

McCap said:


> Now there's big differences in europe (caution, these are total clichees) with a tendency towards the northern countries (scandinavia) speaking very good english, while the southern countries (italy, spain) don't speak so well (or at least they don't like to).



But then there's the fact that English and Swedish/Norwegian/Danish share a closer common root in comparison to Romantic languages.

Regardless, I suppose the reason is a lot more due to the educational system. I have three cousins who grew in Denmark and, despite their mother tongue being Portuguese, they do write perfect English (I've never actually heard them speaking).

In here, although everyone does take English classes in school like Leandro pointed out, it's usually only slightly better than useless. I remember I had an English teacher back in high school who couldn't say how to say "bald" in English and didn't know the translation for "mighty" 

The curious thing is that 15 years ago Spanish wasn't even an option for a third language at high school. I had English and French, for example. Yes, as if we were still in the freaking 1910s.


----------



## vampiregenocide (Apr 14, 2011)

I wish I'd learnt a language at school at a younger age. I would've loved to have learnt German or Russian, I just don't have the time to learn one now and it's difficult when you're not immersed in it.


----------



## synrgy (Apr 14, 2011)

I tried to learn French in the 2nd grade. It didn't take at all. I can barely count from 1-9 and say 'hello, my name is Carl'. 6 months well spent.


----------



## gunshow86de (Apr 14, 2011)

I can read the menus at Mexican restaurants. 

Of course I don't have to learn another language, I speak American.


----------



## Double A (Apr 14, 2011)

gunshow86de said:


> Of course I don't have to learn another language, I speak American.




I believe you mean Murrican.

I wish I knew a second language I have taken classes for French, Spanish and ummm...Latin. lol I have a mere smattering of the first two. I could order at a restaurant and ask where the commode is but that is about it. 

I think the reason it is not a big deal here is because for most of this countries history English was spoken coast to coast so a second language has never been much of a necessity. While Europe has many languages packed in close proximity so a second (or third) language comes in extremely handy.

Of course this is kind of changing lately and certainly learning Spanish as a second language in this country should now be taught as early as second languages are taught by our European counterparts.


----------



## gunshow86de (Apr 14, 2011)

^

Oh yeah, I have 3 years of high-school Spanish (made an A every time) and I can't speak a word of Spanish. I can actually read Spanish, albeit very slowly. I really need to try out Rosetta Stone or something, and then practice on my friends. It's would be a really useful language to know in the southern part of Texas, both in for business and social purposes.


----------



## Xaios (Apr 14, 2011)

I imagine part of it is because English is the current Lingua Franca of the western world. While it tends to adopted as such better by some people than others, it operates as a bridge language between two people who don't share the same mother tongue. In a place like Europe where you've got so many different languages packed into such a confined space, that's important. I imagine that fact in itself also plays a part in why Europeans, generally speaking, are highly proficient in a number of languages, because they have to be. Europe is fifty countries packed into 10.2 million square kilometers. Canada, meanwhile, is very nearly the same size a 9.9 million square kilometers, but we only have, count em, two official languages.

Fact is, people from some countries just have an easier time learning some foreign languages than others if they're not completely immersed in them. I imagine languages within the same language group are easier to pick up than languages with a totally different background. Scandinavians probably have such an easier time because English and most languages spoken in Scandinavia are Germanic languages. Conversely, I've never met an asian immigrant that was particularly fluent, even if they'd lived in Canada for most of their life, unless they moved to Canada at a very young age. I imagine they're out there, but I've yet to come accross it.

This post brought to you by Wikipedia and armchair intellectualism. 

For my own experience, I was actually placed in a French Immersion program right in grade 1 and followed it through to the end of high school, so I "know" french. Alas, while I can read it with ease, my spoken french is terrible compared to what it was in high school. I'm told my accent is actually pretty decent and I speak with the kind of ennunciated clarity that comes from having a northwestern accent (I've actually had a few people in the last couple years ask me if I was american, despite the fact that I've never spent more than a week in the US), but the words just don't flow like they used to because I'm terribly out of practice. There is a fairly decent sized french speaking community in the Yukon, but they are *very* cloistered. They basically go out of their way to create a little slice of Quebec in the Yukon. They have their own french-only school (which I happen to live only three or so blocks away from). One of the older ladies from my church who is french started working there about a year ago as an admin assistant, and she was shocked at how hostile the other staff at the school are to anyone who utters an inkling of English. All this to say that I never really get the opportunity to practice my french, because the people who live here who are fluent in french go out of their way to disassociate from the rest of the populace. 

As an anecdote, I'm a personal insurance broker. I happen to work in the same office as my mother, who is a commercial insurance broker. Last week, she had a french client. Now, my mother does speak a bit of french. This was good because when this guy walked in, he absolutely insisted that he didn't speak or understand english. However, as the conversation went along, it became apparent that my mother didn't know enough french to help this guy. After he had a tantrum and started yelling at her, he calmed down... and started speaking English. Go figure.

Wow, I'm gonna stop now, I'm going way off topic.


----------



## cataclysm_child (Apr 14, 2011)

I guess you haven't heard Fredrik speak then?


----------



## Double A (Apr 14, 2011)

Xaios said:


> I imagine part of it is because English is the current Lingua Franca of the western world. While it tends to adopted as such better by some people than others, it operates as a bridge language between two people who don't share the same mother tongue. In a place like Europe where you've got so many different languages packed into such a confined space, that's important. I imagine that fact in itself also plays a part in why Europeans, generally speaking, are highly proficient in a number of languages, because they have to be. Europe is fifty countries packed into 10.2 million square kilometers. Canada, meanwhile, is very nearly the same size a 9.9 million square kilometers, but we only have, count em, two official languages.
> 
> Fact is, people from some countries just have an easier time learning some foreign languages than others if they're not completely immersed in them. I imagine languages within the same language group are easier to pick up than languages with a totally different background. Scandinavians probably have such an easier time because English and most languages spoken in Scandinavia are Germanic languages. Conversely, I've never met an asian immigrant that was particularly fluent, even if they'd lived in Canada for most of their life, unless they moved to Canada at a very young age. I imagine they're out there, but I've yet to come accross it.
> 
> ...


I live in a part of Maine that is famous for it's French speaking population most of which had immigrated here from Quebec and my god... I know cultural identity is important but from my trips there and from some of even my own distant members of my family the hostility to anything besides speaking French is totally insane and flat out doesn't make sense. The Quebecois sense of pride is the butt of many, many jokes here.


----------



## darbdavys (Apr 14, 2011)

Speaking from my own experience, it's also very good to have a good ear. I think the fact that I've been around music from childhood benefitted towards a good accent a lot. Basically, I've learnt how to speak in a good British accent (close to RP) just by watching Harry Potter movies when I was little and then a little BBC World News now and then 
The most paradoxical thing is that I can't speak in American accent at all, while one of my main goals after school is to go to study in the US and not in Britain, because I can't stand the order and traditions there 

The most important thing here is a desire to learn to speak in a certain accent. As long as you really want to do it, you can


----------



## heilarkyguitar (Apr 14, 2011)

Aliens??????????????????????????


----------



## Customisbetter (Apr 14, 2011)

signalgrey said:


> as mentioned above its the age at which you start it.
> My elementary students are incredible learners, my middle school students are not so much...and god forbid you get low level HS students...its like pouring water in a bucket with no bottom.
> 
> America should really revise (everything) the language system.



My neighbor is a french teacher and her two young boys (around 7 and 9) can speak fluent French. Its insane how well kids pick up on language.


----------



## Konfyouzd (Apr 14, 2011)

Umm... Because not every other country is America where you can be an ignorant ass and just force everyone else to speak your language...


----------



## geofreesun (Apr 14, 2011)

true, ya, fredrik doesnt speak all that much lol but i do think (at least from the ALIVE DVD) Marten and Tomas speak very very good English, and without paying much attention i can't pick out any weird accents or anything like that.
it could be ignorance on my part, but can you guys point out metal band members who speak perfect english but are not native english speakers?

i am not a native english speaker, but i speak rather like a native one. some people can't tell english is actually my 2nd language 



cataclysm_child said:


> I guess you haven't heard Fredrik speak then?


----------



## Konfyouzd (Apr 14, 2011)

I learned Spanish 2nd even though I come from Cuban roots. A lot of ppl can't tell that Spanish was my 2nd language although I feel it's painfully obvious sometimes. There are some countries where ppl speak like 5 languages... I don't see what's so weird about it.


----------



## josh pelican (Apr 15, 2011)

gunshow86de said:


> Oh yeah, I have 3 years of high-school Spanish (made an A every time) and I can't speak a word of Spanish. I can actually read Spanish, albeit very slowly. I really need to try out Rosetta Stone or something, and then practice on my friends. It's would be a really useful language to know in the southern part of Texas, both in for business and social purposes.



I'm with you here, dude. I knew a small amount of Spanish and have been learning more since my girlfriend of almost a year is from El Salvador. I can read and write it a hell of a lot better than I can speak it.


----------



## Asrial (Apr 15, 2011)

I just heard we scands are fucking awesome at learning english, since we in ye olde times raided England and Scotland to the ground.


----------



## McKay (Apr 15, 2011)

Depending on where you are from Sweden, your vowel pronunciation isn't all that dissimilar from a bunch of English accents (American, Irish, various British accents).

Not to mention that they're probably already rhotic, meaning they pronounce the R in all positions. Germans and Danes don't do this, the Swedes generally do, save for the southern areas influenced by Denmark.

So they have less work to do to convincingly sound American/English than many other Europeans do.


----------



## darbdavys (Apr 15, 2011)

McKay said:


> Depending on where you are from Sweden, your vowel pronunciation isn't all that dissimilar from a bunch of English accents (American, Irish, various British accents).
> 
> Not to mention that they're probably already rhotic, meaning they pronounce the R in all positions. Germans and Danes don't do this, the Swedes generally do, save for the southern areas influenced by Denmark.
> 
> So they have less work to do to convincingly sound American/English than many other Europeans do.


Most European languages are rhotic, so that's not so much of an influence. Unless you're Bavarian of course, then I don't see how can you learn any other language to sound fluent at all  (no offense meant)
German is mostly rhotic as well, it's only more of a guttural r they use


----------



## Cyntex (Apr 15, 2011)

Here in Holland depending on your age you have 5 to 6 years worth of English lessons when you graduate from high school. Also you learn either French or German for 4 years. And the tv shows are subtitled instead of dubbed. Maybe it's the same in Sweden? 

I remember as a kid when watching a movie with my parents I could say the lines before the actors did because of the subtitles, which really confused my parents


----------



## soliloquy (Apr 15, 2011)

it also depends on what you were raised on.
for example, i was born and raised in saudi arabia. even though they had english in all their schools from kinder garden, but it was obvious that people spoke in numerous different accents.

my accent was influenced by watching TONS of MacGuyver, Simpsons, and Mission Impossible (the show). as such, my accent was very close to the american accent, while my friends accents were typical indian/arabic/sudanies accents. so i stuck out like a soar thumb...but when i moved to canada, i fit in just fine, and people were AMAZED that i can speak english.... and to add to that, without an accent


----------



## Varcolac (Apr 16, 2011)

darbdavys said:


> Speaking from my own experience, it's also very good to have a good ear. I think the fact that I've been around music from childhood benefitted towards a good accent a lot. Basically, I've learnt how to speak in a good British accent (close to RP) just by watching Harry Potter movies when I was little and then a little BBC World News now and then
> The most paradoxical thing is that I can't speak in American accent at all, while one of my main goals after school is to go to study in the US and not in Britain, because I can't stand the order and traditions there
> 
> The most important thing here is a desire to learn to speak in a certain accent. As long as you really want to do it, you can



Just a tip, you shouldn't be aiming for RP. No contemporary spoken English accents are particularly close to it. The British standard, if you can even argue there is such a thing, is Estuary English, the accent of London and the Thames Estuary, and even that's not particularly close to RP. Received Pronunciation sounds unnatural, even to native English speakers.

Furthermore there was a survey conducted in the last 10 years which noted that a statement read with an RP accent was more likely to be rated "untrustworthy" than the same statement read in a regional accent. The accent's long association with authority and bureaucracy has led to it being percieved as the voice of lying government.

Anyway, Meshuggah speak English okay. It's not perfect. I'd rate them CEFR B2.2, maybe C1 if I'd heard them talk about any subjects other than music. They've gotten plenty of practice touring the world and answering interview questions for the last decade and a half. Combine that with the good grammatical grounding from continental European language tuition and they've got no excuse for speaking English badly. If I had to tour the Spanish-speaking world answering interviews and ordering beers for fifteen years, my secondary-school Spanish would be pretty sodding good by now.


----------



## Explorer (Apr 16, 2011)

To the OP: It's a bit sad that your subject heading and first sentence in this thread have errors in them. You might want to start working your grammar and spelling now, before your errors become fossilized. 

Imagine putting the kind of effort into those that you have probably put into music. It will pay off when you reach the job market....


----------



## Dan_Vacant (Apr 17, 2011)

It is like some people said how many eruopean schools teach kids english. 
and there are a few forigen exchange students at my school one is from denmark and he speak english rely good, he said he learned in second grade but there are also some french kids and they didn't know any enlgish when they came, you can rely hear a accent when they talk


----------



## Jakke (Apr 17, 2011)

I love these threads!

To me, both of them speak with a noticable accent, but that's probably just because it's "my" accent. 

If I could judge myself, I'd say I speak a good english, as I have been fortunate enough to have grown up in a musical home, and that we don't dub our movies/TV-series. That's one of the worst things a country can do if they want their citizens to be very good english speakers.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim (Apr 17, 2011)

There have been a number of studies done about perceived accent and how it is linked with the age at which someone began learning the language and how much exposure they had to it. 

Here's a link to one of them:

http://jimflege.com/files/Flege_Munro_factors_affecting_JASA_1995.pdf

And here's a snippet from the intro:

"Based on a literature review, Long (1990) concluded that the L2 is generally spoken without accent up to an age of learning (AOL) of 6 yr; with a foreign accent by nearly all subjects having AOLs greater than 12 yr; and either with or without foreign accent by subjects in the intervening AOL range. However, despite the many foreign accent studies that have been undertaken, three important questions remain unanswered: (1) What is the earliest AOL at which persistent foreign accents become common? (2) What is the latest AOL at which accent-free pronunciation of an L2 remains possible? (3) Does the critical period for speech learning affect all individuals?"

It's an interesting read, if you like this sort of thing.


----------

