Re: Opinions on English (was Re: basic vocab)

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000 14:39:17 -0400, Robert Hailman <robert@...>
wrote:

>> I regret I don't know Latin yet.  I actually *don't* like French's
>> *sound,* aesthetically.  All these people were going on about how
>> romantic it sounded, and all I heard were these honking nasals.
>> <apologetic look>  Polish and Russian, OTOH, sound quite romantic to me.
>
>The nasals don't sound romantic to me, either. Actually, I thing of
>French as being a very, very ugly language, because whenever I hear it,
>it's Quebec French, which is, shall we say, not the nicest of dialects.
>I'm sure the French from France sounds a lot better.
>
>When I think of romantic languages, Polish & Russian are on the list for
>me, too.
It's not just the nasal vowels, because Portuguese has them, and when I
hear Portuguese sung (I rarely hear it any other way), I find it very
pleasing. French, on the other hand, doesn't strike me as especially
pleasant. And it's amazing how nice Polish really sounds -- when on paper
it looks as if it ought to sound especially nasty. But it occurs to me that
I've been neglecting the nasal vowel sounds in my conlangs. Many of my
speakers have very prominent muzzles, which might produce even stronger
distinctions between nasal and oral vowels.

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