doomposting about jannik “not winning anything this year” that i’m seeing on different socials right now is crazy. jannik sinner. the jannik sinner who won us open while going through the biggest stress of his life. jannik sinner who won wimbledon right after the heartbreak of roland garros. jannik sinner who lost in a SEMI FINAL against novak djokovic, not a random bum in R1. that jannik sinner. people have lost their goddamn minds
People were doing the same with jannik after Roland Garros and the Us open 2025 , jannik's career was finished. Something that tennis has shown me is that you can't really predict,and as jannik says himself,things can change quickly. And people were also talking after Australia Open ,Miami and Wimbledon 2025 of Carlos too. This discourse happening is the most predictable thing in tennis.
Ok but according to google translate and the korean subtitles of that sincaraz video where a fan asked Carlos if he is single. Carlos answered: I HAVE JANNIK???? Although, because the laughs I can't hear what he says.
Sorry but I have been laughing of all this situation for hours, all the korea Exho content has even haters talking and creating their own stories. I have seen Spanish accounts saying Ferrero was against sincaraz friendship and even tried to stop it. New speculation about ferrero's split has been " created" or new ideas for a03 or who knows ...
Sending you this link to a reddit comment with new-to-me Sinner Lore TM (a clip from an article). I had no idea that Rafa backed/vouched Sinner for sponsors when Jannik was so young! It makes me wonder if Nike asked his opinion as well.
It no longer surprises me that every time I read an anecdote from Jannik's former coaches, it's always about how he couldn't stay still and how much he loves speed.
Plus: hard to imagine him like that, but well, it must be the Italian in him
coming in with my second installement of "linguistics analysis because i'm bored" and our chosen player this time is jannik!
i actually hesitated a lot in doing his accent breakdown because english is not jannik's second language and that plays a huge part in how he learned it and his accent! however, i decided i would take on this challenge (that nobody asked for) and here is this monstrosity of a post.
DISCLAIMER: i don't speak italian nor german, so if i'm saying something completely wrong about both languages, please tell me!! i did a lot of research on this, but i won't have the same nuance as a native speaker. do remember this was done with linguistic research in mind!! and i'm not making things up. i will link all my sources through the post. also, i will be using north american english as a default when i mention the english language.
so, you might be wondering why third language acquisition is different from second language acquisition and how that impacts language learning. in simple terms, a third language is a language acquired chronologically after the first and the second or after the two first languages in the case of early bilinguals. you can imagine it as a continuous process, like for example walking (L1), then learning to drive a car (L2) and then facing the challenge of driving a bus (L3). third language learners already have at least two languages in their linguistic repertoire and can use this broader linguistic repertoire when learning a third language. for example, they can relate new structures, new vocabulary or new ways of communcating the two languages they already know, not just to one of them, as in the case of monolinguals. this has been proven to be very useful to learn other languages and multilingual speakers who have gone through the process of acquiring a third langauge do explain that other languages are useful and that they are used as a basis. so, jannik already has a pretty interesting linguistic "avantage" here!
(we can see it when he started giving interviews in spanish this year. a lot of it was a mix of italian and spanish, but i assume as he progress in learning it (i might be wrong but i don't think he's fluent enough to hold an entire conversation without mixing languages), we will see the influence from the other languages he knows ! i guess this happens a lot with english and german as well, since they're both germanic languages and share a lot of similarities).
according to this really cool article, south tyrol, where jannik is from, is a trilingual province, where three languages are officially recognized: italian, german, and ladin. within italy, the german-language group is a minority, while in south tyrol itself it forms the overwhelming majority. besides a bavarian variety , which is their first language, members of the german-speaking community have also a regional german standard variety as well as italian in their linguistic repertoire. therefore, english becomes the third language more learned and used.
(fun fact: there is a few german speaking comunities in brazil today who were originally tyrolean immigrants.)
from what i could find on the internet, up until 13 years old, jannik most probably spoke in his dialect at home and standard german at school, while studying english and italian as second languages. the level he could/should have reached in those languages at the end of primary school (from 6 to 11 years old) would be A1 (basic 1 level/ beginner level according to CEFR), so he could have been an A2 when he moved to bordighera.
at 13 years old, you are still able to learn a second or third language well enough (as in, you can retain what you learn rather easily compared to an adult*) especially one you were exposed to since you were small. however, jannik's situation is a bit pecualiar: as someone who started traveling abroad since a young age, he most probably had to start speaking in english more often than any of the other languages he knows, making it so that he had to juggle learning two languages (italian and english) at the same time. (there's also the factor he stayed with a host family, but i guess they spoke italian with him (?) to communicate.).
*if you want to know more about this, here is the link to a very interesting article about language aquisicion at a young age.
going on a deep dive on his accent, i noticed most english speakers perceive jannik's accent in english as italian, even though his native language isn't italian. because of that, i thought it would be interesting to look into what might make his accent in english sound "italian" and wether we hear any german influence from it!
so, without further ado, here is a breakdown of jannik's accent in english:
1)lack of the /ð/ sound pronunciation
this post was inspired primarily because of tan's (@/chousery) comment on why jannik pronounces 'th' (ð) on words like 'this' and 'that' as a 'd' (d) sound and the 'd' sound of words like day and diary as the 'th' sound. you can hear the first phenomenon here, when he says "this is a question i really don't know". it sounds a lot like he is pronouncing 'this' /ðɪs/ as /dɪs/. for the second phenomenon, you can hear it here, when he says "my dad" he is pronouncing /dæd/ as /ðæd/. all of this a result of differences in the phonetic alphabet of english and italian. according to this article, english and italian have almost the same number of consonant phonemes, 25 and 23 respectively. however, while italian has seven vowel phonemes, english has 12 – 15 (depending on the source).
the english dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ are not part of the italian inventory of phonemes, so these phonemes must be acquired by italian speakers when they learn english. it is generally difficult for italian spakers to place their tongue between their teeth and let
air escape through the gap. instead, they tend to keep the tongue inside and press it against the teeth, forming the alveolar stop [t] or placing the teeth on the lip, forming the labial-dental fricative [f] (for /θ/) (for example, /θæŋk/ becomes /tæŋk/). you can hear it here whe he says "couple of things better than i did". similarly, they also tend to form the alveolar stop [d] (for /ð/). besides that, most romance language speakers in general can't produce this sound and rely on their own language repertoire to try to get as close as possible to what they hear and what they can pronounce. (as a romance language speaker myself, i also can't hear the difference, so i understand you jannik!) (obviously, studying linguistics i CAN hear the difference, but on day to day life, i don't really hear the difference when native english speakers pronounce it). this explanation also includes the /θ/ sound in words like think, thing, thought, etc. if anyone was wondering german also doesn't have both sounds (/ð/ and /θ/), so regardless of which language he learned first, he would still have trouble pronouncing these sounds.
2) non-aspiration of consonants
italians speakers do not aspirate /p, t, k/. for instance, the [t] in italian is made with a relaxed tongue tip just touching the back of the teeth. in english, the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge and then pulls down releasing a puff of air (aspiration). predictably, "tug" /tʌg/ can sound quite like "dug" /dʌg/ when uttered by an italian speaker. for example, when he says "i had set point", (3:56) it sounds like he pronounces /sɛt/ as /sɛd/. i always notice the lack of aspiriation on the /t/ whenever jannik says the word "team" or "take". you can hear how it's very soft it almost blends in with the next letter, as contrary to a native english speaker, who would pronounce it with a lot more air coming out. i also think he pronounces the [t] slightly higher on the roof of the mouth, with the tip of the tongue positioned exactly on the back of the front teeth, as opposed to how is pronounced in english, with the tip of the tongue being positioned slightly backwards. just a minor detail, but that makes total difference when you listen to his accent!
i decided to make a comparison with flavio, and his accent in english is much easier to notice these phenomenons. for example, when he says "proud" and "play", the /p/ is not aspirated enough, it almost sounds like a /b/. during my research, i found out he doesn't aspirate the consonant "h" as well! you can hear it here, wheh he says "i'm really happy". not sure if this is because of his own accent in italian (since the research doesn't mention the consonant "h"). if anyone knows more about flavio's accent in italian, please let me know!!
3) vowels sounds and its difficulties
now, there are other phenomenons that are common to italian speakers speaking english, but don't appear when jannik speaks english. for example, the vowel sounds. vowels in italian are non-contrastively long in open non-final stressed syllables (for example, cioccolato [tʃok.ko.laːto] and fato/fatto [faːto]/[fatto] {fate/fact}); all other vowels are short in italian. (if you want to know more about stress and vowel lenght, i made a post about it here). it can be difficult for italian speakers to differentiate words in english that are distinguished solely by a vowel (e.g., sheep/ship, beg/bag, etc.) (this happens to other romance languages speakers, so that's normal. jannik does have this problem as well, but it is not as proeminent). also, english has five reduced vowels that occur in unstressed syllables, the schwa [ə], a mid-central vowel sound, being the most prevalent. this is where things get interesting!! the schwa also exists in the german phonetic alphabet, so jannik doesn't share the same struggles italian speakers do when trying to pronounce it. (or in this case, mono/bilingual italian speakers). in spoken english, the schwa sound is the most common vowel. since many italian words end in a vowel, italian speakers often add a short
vowel sound, often [ə], to english words ending in a consonant:
english speaker: “I ate SOUP for lunch.”
(stress on soup, equal time for I ate, soup, and for lunch)
italian speake: “I atə soupə for lunchə.”
(equal stress and time on all syllables)
flavio does this pretty much on all his sentences, so that's why he sounds a bit "lazy" in english. he's always stressing the vowels more than it should. (carlos also does that too! somehow, i find their accents to way more lazy than other romance language speaking players. this might be directly affected by their own accents in their native language, so (again) if you know more about it, please let me know!!)
4) german influence
even tough german is his native language, a lot of people attribute his accent in english to an italian influence. here are a few examples on how german also influences it:
/ʒ/ and /dʒ/ are rare in german. german speakers often pronounce them as /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ in english: `mesher' for measure; chain for Jane. jannik does this here when he says "margins" (it is not as strong as the examples before, but you can still here a slight influence).
the voiced sounds /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /z/, /v/, /b/, /d/ and /g/ do not occur at the ends of words in german. it can make german speakers confuse them with or replace them by their unvoiced equivalents in this position: beish for beige; etch for edge; rice for rise; leaf for leave; pup for pub; set for said; dock for dog. jannik does this when he says "i believe": you can hear how much air he is pushing out between his lips, almost making the /f/ sound, which is the voiceless equivalent for /v/ like mentioned above. this is so fascinating because the /v/ sound does exist in italian, and most italian speakers would probably pronounce "believe" as in english. (i couldn't find a vide o flavio saying the word believe, but i found this and i'ts pretty much the same sound. i'm highlighting the word "have" and how clearly he pronounces it as /v/.) in the same sentence, jannik says "if you lose" and pronounces the "if" /ɪf/ as /ɪv/. obs: the italian influence does help with avoiding another phenomenon for german speakers; replacing vine for wine or (less often) wine for vine.
/ɹ/ may be pronounced with the back of the tongue (as in french /ʁ/) or as a flap ) or like english /ɹ̠/, but more energetic, depending on the variety of german). jannik leans towards the second phenomenon, but i think his /r/ doesn't sound as pronounced as how american players pronounce it. i'm not sure if his own german dialect plays into it, but you can see clearly that italian doesn't. another comparison with flavio, who pronounces it as /r/ here.
and that's it! basically: both italian and german have an influence on jannik's accent in english. however, italian sounds more pronounced than german, because the german and english phonological systems are broadly similar, and german speakers do not have serious dificulty in perceiving or pronouncing most english sounds. this means german makes more room for italian phonology " to shine" and becames more noticeable to english speakers. it's interesting that there is still a mix of both languages in his accent and how each one manifests itself. jannik would make such an good study case for phonetics and language acquisition.
if you made this far, i hope this was interesting and that you learned something! please, comment if you have any more insights about this and thanks for reading ;)
About jannik's host family? They comunicated in Italian but they were Croatian ,so Italian wasn't their first language either, jannik still had a strong German accent but the children of the family learned Italian with him. Another thing is that he communicated in Italian with all his coaches and trainers. Also Jannik studied in German through middle school and transitioned to Italian for high school.
Tennis off-season is so long and boring. Deleting old photos of my gallery , and I found this photos of jannik that I like, so sharing this here for fun.
Tennis fans were all this week asking why tennis players go to Maldives or tend to go to the same destinations,and the answer is there in their Instagram, they have partnerships and collabs to give private tennis lessons and play with people in these luxury resorts. They post # collab and tag the resorts or the managemet company . Berrettini and Badosa are this week but Medvedev, Ruud were there last week for the same reason(and the past years). Belinda Bencic, Iga zwiatek , Zverev , Rune were in the Maldives in 2024 and 2023 . Even Carlos Alcaraz's vacations in Mexico after the Miami Open were with this company, lux tennis, he went to Punta Cana last year, and would be in Turk and Caicos in December 2025,but it's the same system. Djokovic is in Turk and Caicos hosting a retreat as ambassador of Aman resorts . Iga, Vasherot and Khachahov in Mauritius.
And If you search a tennis player and some luxury resort , it will appear an event like this, Marina Hingis,Sharapova, Kerber ,Ferrero, Fritz ,Raducanu,Musetti, Shapovalov, Humbert, Nishikori, Fokina, Munar, Berdych, verdasco, Ferrer , Tiafoe, Vekic, Cilic, Thiem,Svitolina. And even if they aren't there for those private events ,I'm sure that they must have collabs or benefits for still going to those resorts , they tagged them; and it seems Maldives is the one with the biggest offert.
