Re: CHAT: feckly off-topic (was: THEORY: Storage Vs. Computation)

On Sat, 19 Jun 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> > _diphtheria_.  Absolutely beautiful word!  That is, if you pronounce it
> > as it should be pronounced, with an /f/ instead of a /p/.  Oh well,
> > it's all a matter of taste, I suppose.
>
> I s'pose.  T's an okay word, I s'pose.  Reminds me of a chat I had with
> Tom, while he was designing his Phaleran, and he told me that he always
> like the Greek clusters like /pt/ in word-initial position.  To me,
> there's nothing uglier than two stops at the beginning of a word.  YUCK!
I don't think it's the phth cluster I like in diphtheria.  It's the ia
ending.  And the initial dental, although I'd like "tithelia" much better.

Of course, my taste is skewed.  I think Hebrew is inexpressibly beautiful,
and french sounds like someone gargling with whipped cream.  Spanish
sounds tinny, but Portuguese sounds rich and full.  Chinese just makes me
nervous, and I cannot endure German at all.

Nothing beats Latin, though.

Oh, and English?  A friend of mine from France put it best (okay, actually
it was her mother, but who wants to deal with all those annoying
genitives?):  "English sounds like two cats making love in a paper sack."

Actually, she didn't say "making love."

--Patrick