Re: Thought and Language

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> At 06:17 16/12/98 -0600, you wrote:
> >Daniel Baisden wrote:
> >> French is an artistic sounding language
> >
> >That's a rather subjective judgement.  To me, French doesn't sound at
> >all "artistic", it sounds like a horrible mess of unpleasant sounds.
> >
>
>         Thank you very much Nik! It depends very much on your own langu=
age. For
> me, English is not so artistic. Spanish and Italian are the most "artis=
tic'
> languages I know well for me. And German is the most unpleasant one!
I realize these are opinions, but have you actually studied these
languages so that your opinion is at least informed? I have studied
German for many years, and I find that it has beauties which are
just waiting to be appreciated, but are not necessarily how you'd
expect.  The main objection that most people raise seems to be
its phonology:  "It's too gutteral!".  I on the other hand feel that
some of those gutteral sounds, like the palatal fricative that occurs
as an allophone of /x/ when situated around front vowels is quite
beautiful sounding, almost as much to me as the interdental fricatives
in English are.  Even simple words like "gleich" [glaiC] have a nice
sounding ring to them for me.

As for whether Spanish or Italian are beautiful, I have not studied
either of them in any detail, so I would refrain from making any
comments about their "beauty".

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Tom Wier <twier@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

"S=F4=F0 is gecy=FEed / =FE=E6t mihtig God manna
cynes / w=EAold w=EEde-ferh=F0."
 _Beowulf_, ll. 700-702
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