Re: The beautifulest phonology

--- In conlang@y..., Andreas Johansson <and_yo@H...> wrote:

> It may be because I'ven't seen sufficiently many war movies featuring evil
> nazis, but I can't get into my head that [x] should be a harsh sound. I
> mean, it's soft, nice, cosy!
Yeah.  Many B-movie educated Americans don't seem able to distinguish
[x] and [C] from [X].  While [X] sounds undeniably rough, the former
two are actually quite smooth.

I never quite understood why people call German "guttural".  Unless
you use the Hitler-style drumroll /r/ and uvular /X/s, there is very
little about the language that would deserve that predicate.

Then again, which average American can distinguish German from Dutch?
;-)


-- Christian Thalmann

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