Sometimes, in humor (or an attempt thereof), people will make up gibberish in a certain language in an attempt to poke fun at a language or its speakers. Made-up French, German, Italian, Chinese, most of us have heard this.
My first question is, does anybody have any examples of non-English speakers making up "English" gibberish? English is my native language. I am very curious about the perception of how English sounds by non-English speakers.
Edit: I previously stated that I believed it was difficult for a speaker to create gibberish in their own language (or at least, I've never heard it). The link posted by Josh Jolly below proved that incorrect. So, more accurately, it seems there is a significant difference between mimicking a language one is fluent in vs. a language one does not know at all. The former has a bias towards constructs known to have significance (e.g. common word roots), while the latter has a bias towards perceived common sounds independent of their context.
I find this whole concept of gibberish incredibly fascinating. One has to perceive a language that they do not understand, make judgments (often grossly inaccurate) about its defining sounds and tone, then construct sounds that mimic that, but all this is done by a mind that is trained to perceive and construct sounds in their native language. A French speaker may fail to notice subtle sounds and inflections that are meaningful and significant to, say, a German speaker, and therefore a native French speaker and German speaker may end up producing completely different results when making up "Italian" sounding words.
So, my second question is, is there anybody here who is fluent in other languages besides English that has any interesting anecdotes about the differences in gibberish among speakers of different languages? Does made up "French" sound significantly different in, say, Japanese than it does in English? A non-French-speaking Japanese speaker and English speaker may perceive and process French and produce "French" gibberish in entirely different ways. Examples, especially in comedy, would be appreciated.
Update: As an example of this, consider the French gibberish spoken by British comedian Kenneth Williams (via Leon Conrad's answer below) vs. American comedian Louis C.K. (or American comedian Reggie Watts, a master of gibberish, at 0:40 in this video). As I mentioned in a comment below, while I have no concrete evidence, it seems to me that when imitating French, Americans tend to include more fricatives (particularly v, z, ʒ) while Britons tend to focus more on nasal vowels (the video examples support this). I wonder if this is somehow related to exposure to different intensities of sounds like 'r' (a difference that commonly comes up when British and Australian English speakers mock American or Canadian English)?
I of course acknowledge that "humor" is subjective, and it is indeed true that prejudice and racial humor is a common source of this type of gibberish. That aside, I do find the process fascinating.
Best Answer
"Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a song by the Italian singer/comedian Adriano Celentano with nonsense lyrics that are intended to sound like American-accented English. As it happens, I played it for my wife two nights ago and asked her to guess what language it was sung in; she eventually guessed English, though she couldn't understand the words. So if it's convincing enough to fool my wife, a native English speaker, I'm happy to accept that it's a pretty good simulation of what English sounds like to non-English speakers, or at least to Italians. Celentano apparently speaks no English himself, so it's a "pure" simulation, untainted by any actual knowledge of the language on the part of the singer.
You can see and hear "Prisencolinensinainciusol" here, and listen to an entertaining NPR radio story about it here. Warning: this song is incredibly addicting.