Re: CHAT: feckly off-topic (was: THEORY: Storage Vs. Computation)
| From: | Boudewijn Rempt <bsarempt@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, June 20, 1999, 7:18 |
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On Sat, 19 Jun 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:
> "J.Barefoot" wrote:
> > I think German is absolutely
> > gorgeous when it's spoken softly; it's horribly grating when it's yelled.
>
> And Arabic, which has a bad reputation phonetically-wise, I think is
> absolutely beautiful, or at least the Lebanese dialect, I've had no
> exposure to other dialects.
>
I think the reputation of Arabic (and German and Dutch - and I suppose
since I made the correct pronounciation of Charya public, Denden too)
is just due to the prejudice most speakers of English have against anything
fricative spoken at the back of the mouth - German and Dutch _g_ and _ch_,
and Arabic _h_ You'll soon hear complaints of 'gutturals' - I'm
personally very fond of uvular fricatives - but I like the simultaneous
pronounciation of kp and gb in some African languages too, and I think
an _r_ can go with any other consonant, either before or after...
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt